Chapter 129

Back when there had been plenty of vacant rooms, Jiang Cheng had insisted on putting Duoduo, Guo Jun, and the others together with two of the property-management staff in each room.

Song Jingshuo had joked that she was a born capitalist.

Looking back now, hadn’t that been the behavior of a true operator?

A good operator would rather destroy defective products than let employees take them home as benefits.

It sounded cold, heartless, and wasteful.

But it effectively maintained quality control and prevented the defective-product rate from suddenly soaring.

What Wang Haotian wanted when he said he wanted to “follow the right leader” was exactly the state Song Jingshuo was in now.

Because she had followed the right leader, everything was comfortable and went smoothly. There was no need to overthink anything—just follow her and get the job done.

That was the ideal state for a wage earner.

Song Jingshuo glanced at Jiang Cheng, then at Mo Li, who was snoring away on Jiang Cheng’s lap. “He fell asleep that fast?”

“Yep.” Jiang Cheng stroked Mo Li’s jet-black fur.

Maximizing the energy expenditure had been quite substantial.

In fact, from a practical standpoint, there had been no need to maximize the attack. A single blow at ordinary strength would have been enough to kill Cao Jiacai. But Jiang Cheng had been determined to give Mo Li a proper debut today.

Since it was a debut, it had to be impressive.

Nothing left a stronger impression than going all out.

Everyone seemed to have accepted it quite well.

Gao Yuxuan kept shifting around as though something were poking him beneath his backside. He simply couldn’t sit still, twisting this way and that.

As soon as Song Jingshuo finished speaking, he seized the opportunity to cut in. “Jiang Cheng, how was Mo Li able to transform?”

The people in the bus all fell silent. Gao Yuxuan had asked the question everyone wanted answered.

Jiang Cheng said, “I don’t know either, but my guess is that it has something to do with the zombie virus. Look at us—we all have supernatural abilities. Maybe this is just a small animal’s supernatural ability.”

“Anyway, it’s a good thing for us right now.”

Yes. As long as it was a good thing, that was enough.

Song Jingshuo could actually imagine that Mo Li must have been able to transform for some time already. Jiang Cheng had clearly been waiting for the right opportunity to make Mo Li’s existence publicly acceptable.

Today’s opportunity had been perfect. Cao Jiacai had practically delivered himself to them as a stepping stone.

The more vile Cao Jiacai behaved, the more righteous Mo Li’s appearance seemed.

No one would worry that Mo Li might be a monster, or that he might hurt them as well.

Suddenly, someone at the front let out a cry.

Everyone looked outside the bus and was struck speechless.

Their destination was Gaoxin Middle School, but they had to pass Gaoxin Elementary School on the way there.

The street outside was filled with zombies.

In the four days since the second outbreak, the only time Song Jingshuo, Zhou Wang, and the others had seen so many zombies had been at the district government offices.

There had been very few zombies in the residential areas—so few that Jixiang West Street had not even needed to be sealed off. The two residential compounds could come and go as they pleased.

So all the zombies from the residential areas had gathered here.

But everyone had already seen plenty of zombies. They had seen swarms of them, even crowds packed together as densely as ants. The sheer number of zombies lining a street would not have shocked them.

What left them speechless was that this was the first time they had seen so many female zombies.

At a glance, almost all of them were women.

There were a few male zombies, of course, but so few that they were practically negligible.

Someone muttered, “They’re all the mothers...”

Yes. Looking down the street outside the elementary school, all they could see were zombie mothers.

Tears began streaming down Su Yu’s face.

Li Jiangbing quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of tissues for her.

While everyone was still stunned, Jiang Cheng shouted, “Cui Haiyang! Give it a try!”

Cui Haiyang came back to himself. “Oh! Right!”

Cui Haiyang stood up, and several other metal-type ability users rose with him.

They each grabbed one of the support poles inside the bus, or simply pressed their hands against the walls.

These 535 buses had already been modified by the metal-type ability users on the way back.

During the previous disaster, Cui Haiyang and the others had welded crude iron bars over the windows. The bus station had since removed those bars, and the windows shattered by the second-generation zombies had been replaced as well.

This time, they did not need to weld anything. They had found materials at the bus station, pressed them against the windows, and activated their abilities. In no time, they had equipped the buses with strong, tightly spaced metal grilles, ensuring the passengers’ safety.

Now, as they passed in front of the elementary school, the zombie mothers on the street leaped up and slammed against the buses. They could only strike the metal grilles; they could not break the glass behind them.

The ability users began exerting their powers.

Guillotine blades began to “grow” from the metal bus bodies.

From the outside, it looked as though the buses had suddenly begun spitting out metal “tongues” all over themselves.

They shot out in an instant, then vanished just as quickly.

They emerged at shoulder height. The moment they extended, they severed a zombie’s neck, sending its head rolling away.

The next instant, they retracted, leaving the bus body smooth and seamless once more.

Heads rolled all along the street outside the elementary school.

This was Jiang Cheng’s suggestion to the metal-type ability users.

With their supernatural powers backing them up, they only needed to let their imaginations run wild. Whether they could actually do it was something the ability users could experiment with themselves.

When Cui Haiyang and the others heard the idea, they had immediately thought it was feasible.

They had turned a public bus into a moving blade-covered vehicle.

“Holy shit!” Zhao Yi exclaimed.

Gao Yuxuan burst out laughing.

As an electric-type ability user, Gao Yuxuan had gone along with them to work on the buses. He had already seen the metal users testing them on the way back.

At that moment, it became possible to distinguish the third-generation zombies from the huge mass of second-generation ones.

The second-generation zombies continued charging blindly at the buses, trying to smash through the windows.

The ones that retreated instead were the third-generation zombies.

Third-generation zombies knew that they had to stay alive. They were like people who knew to run home when it started raining.

Everyone had grown accustomed to seeing one or two third-generation zombies mixed into a swarm.

But Zhao Yi suddenly said quietly to Gao Yuxuan, “Do you think they could evolve even further?”

Could human zombies evolve into enormous creatures like Mo Li?

Mo Li’s transformation had to be connected to the zombie virus. If a tiny cat could evolve into something like that, why couldn’t human zombies do the same?

Gao Yuxuan said firmly, “Even if they can, there’ll definitely be some kind of balance. We’ll be able to evolve too.”

Balance?

Zhao Yi thought about it. In fact, Mo Li’s appearance today had already upset the balance.

Before Mo Li transformed into a giant beast, the existence of third-generation zombies and the emergence of human ability users had already created a balance.

Mo Li’s appearance was not balance—it was a disruption of balance.

And besides, balance...

That thing called balance had always existed faintly in the background.

So who, exactly, was maintaining it?

That question touched on the root of how the zombie virus had originated.

By now, almost no one asked anymore. Everyone knew there was no answer.

Although their destination was the middle school, they could not simply ignore the elementary school after seeing what had happened.

Besides, there were far too many zombies in the street. They had to clear them out.

The public buses drove back and forth along Xueqian Street several times. Soon, the road was covered with headless corpses and rolling heads.

Then they stopped.

Su Yu raised a protective barrier and got off the bus with Cui Haiyang. Together, they opened the elementary school’s large iron gate.

Zhou Wang entered first at flying speed to scout the area. When he returned, he let out a long sigh. “Sigh...”

No one needed him to explain. If the mothers outside had become zombies, then the elementary school must be full of zombified students.

Everyone’s mood grew heavy.

“Let Mo Li go first.” Jiang Cheng patted Mo Li awake. “Wake up.”

Mo Li was bleary-eyed. He stretched out his front paws and gave a long, luxurious stretch across Jiang Cheng’s lap.

Now that Mo Li could transform whenever it wanted, without having to hide from humans, it was very happy too. “Meow~”

Jiang Cheng said, “Go on.”

He opened the car door specifically for Mo Li and let it out.

The bus followed it into the school.

Sure enough, there were many child zombies only half a person’s height.

It was a heartbreaking sight.

But Mo Li felt no such pity.

Once humans mutated into zombies, their scent changed completely. To Mo Li, they had become an entirely different species.

Everyone crowded toward the front of the bus, especially Zhao Yi and Gao Yuxuan. They were practically plastered against the windshield.

So they got to watch Mo Li transform once again.

“Huh? It can control its size too?”

“Damn, that’s so responsive!”

This time, Mo Li didn’t grow to its maximum size. It transformed into a leopard roughly the size of an ordinary one.

Against elementary-school-aged zombies, it didn’t even need to leap. While running, it could bite their necks clean through.

Its speed was like lightning. Only Zhou Wang could match it.

535

The bus was too large. All four vehicles couldn’t drive in, so they brought in only one. That way, it would have enough room to turn around.

But the elementary-school zombies were simply too short.

Some of the lower-grade students were practically little bean sprouts.

The metal-element superpowered user had to press his face against the window to spot them clearly, then release guillotine-like blades at the exact height needed to sever their heads.

After clearing out the zombies around the school in batches, everyone finally got out of the vehicles.

Someone sighed, “This makes things so much easier.”

At least they didn’t have to fight the zombies hand-to-hand right from the start.

Gao Yuxuan raised a megaphone. “Are there any survivors? Are there any survivors?”

A window above opened, and a child shouted, “Help! Help!”

There really were survivors.

Little Huang said, “I’ll go take a look.”

He went straight into the school building.

Everyone followed him inside. They watched as Little Huang maneuvered through the zombies in the corridor. The little zombies all tried to pounce on him, but they simply couldn’t lock onto him.

His footwork was god-tier. He moved through the horde as if no one else were there.

Everyone who had ever played video games was insanely jealous.

Su Yu had specifically taken an electronic watch from the supermarket so she could time her protective barrier and record how long it could last.

During battles that weren’t especially intense, they tried not to push their superpowers to the point of total exhaustion.

After several days of experimenting, everyone had worked out quite a few patterns.

With normal use and repeated practice, they could quickly improve their control, such as their precision and accuracy.

Gao Yuxuan could release exactly the voltage he wanted—several volts if he wanted several volts. That was something he had trained himself to do.

The advantage was that it placed no additional burden on the brain, and a short rest was enough for a rapid recovery.

The disadvantage was that it had little effect on raising the upper limit of their abilities.

The other method of training was to push themselves to exhaustion—to the point where their noses and ears bled, or even their eyeballs began to ache and bleed.

The downside was that this was training with their lives on the line. It inflicted enormous pain on both the brain and the body, and recovery took a long time.

Even after sleeping through the entire night, Li Jiangbing still felt terrible the next day.

The advantage, however, was that this was the best way to raise the upper limit of their superpowers.

Su Yu had now gotten used to walking at the front and serving as a human shield.

Her protective barrier couldn’t remain active for long periods, but even if she was ambushed, her body would instinctively raise the barrier on its own.

Walking in front was the safest position for her.

Su Yu was no longer afraid of zombies.

But when the little bean sprouts came shrieking and lunging at her, she still suffered.

These were elementary-school children who used to have to jump up and cling to the cafeteria serving window, their feet dangling and kicking helplessly in midair.

With tears streaming down her face, Su Yu tightened her grip on her weapon, gritted her teeth, and struck.