Chapter 89

If that was really the case, then things were going to be bad.

Everyone who had lived through the zombie crisis understood how serious the situation was.

But there was no way to draw a definite conclusion yet. Jiang Cheng could only say, “Come on. Let’s see if there are any more in the courtyard.”

For the people staying in the residential complex, the zombies breaking out at this hour were much less of a threat than last time.

That was because there weren’t many people in the complex at this time of day.

Even though so many people had hurried back after hearing Jiang Cheng’s warning, almost all of them—apart from the last few—had made it back to their apartments in time.

The courtyard was deserted. It was much better than last time.

Even in residential complexes other than the Youth Apartments, this was generally a time when there were fewer people around.

Of those who stayed home, whether elderly people or housewives, many had already started preparing dinner in the kitchen by this hour.

Office workers and students weren’t home.

People gradually began coming down from the various buildings.

And most of those who came down were wearing armor. In other words, they only dared to come down because they had armor.

Of course, there were also a few bold people who had made their own protective gear and come down without armor.

This was their own complex, after all. Especially when they saw Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing downstairs, they naturally felt emboldened enough to come down.

Some people were born leaders. As long as they stood there, they had the power to steady everyone else.

Song Jingshuo called Jiang Cheng. After learning that they were downstairs, he came down as well.

Unfortunately for him, the elevator stopped on the way to the first floor.

When the doors opened, a zombie outside was busy gnawing on someone. Hearing the noise, it turned its head—and its eyes met Song Jingshuo’s.

Song Jingshuo: “...”

Song Jingshuo felt that today was truly cursed.

The one lucky thing in all that bad luck was that this was a second-generation zombie.

The movement patterns of second-generation zombies were easy to predict: they moved in straight lines.

Sure enough, the zombie dropped the half-eaten person in its hands and charged straight toward the elevator.

Ever since the previous zombie crisis ended, Song Jingshuo had been worried about the asymmetry between his two arms.

He had swung his right arm so many times while killing zombies that he felt the muscles in his right arm no longer looked quite the same as those in his left.

The upside, however, was that he had trained his reflexes and explosive power to a remarkable level.

The zombie charged into the elevator. In the instant Song Jingshuo dodged to the side, his blade was already coming down.

A head fell to the floor.

Song Jingshuo had bought the knife during his travels, deep in a region inhabited by an ethnic minority. It wasn’t some crudely made decorative blade from a tourist attraction. He had spent quite a bit of effort persuading the owner to sell it to him, and paid a high price for it.

After the zombie crisis ended, he had sharpened it once more before putting it away in a cabinet.

It was razor-sharp.

He kicked the zombie’s corpse out of the elevator.

Then he walked over to the person who had been bitten. The person was already on the verge of death, but still breathing. He stared at Song Jingshuo with his eyes open, unable to speak.

Song Jingshuo tightened his grip on the knife.

Then tightened it again.

In the end, he still couldn’t bring himself to swing.

He bent down, grabbed the man by the wrist, and dragged him into the elevator.

Ultimately, he still couldn’t bring himself to cut off the head of someone who was, for now, still “human.”

He dragged the man out of the building.

By then, dozens of people had gathered in the courtyard. When someone saw him, they shouted, “Song Jingshuo!”

Everyone hurried over. When they saw the person he was dragging, those who knew him let out sighs of dismay.

Jiang Cheng asked, “Did you run into a zombie upstairs?”

“Already dealt with it,” Song Jingshuo replied.

“What kind of zombie?”

Song Jingshuo was slightly surprised by the question. “It should’ve been a second-generation one.”

As soon as he said it, he realized something too.

“Why was it a second-generation zombie?”

Everyone had only just woken up. There might even still be people who hadn’t woken up yet. So how had a second-generation zombie already appeared?

Li Jiangbing told him, “Things are bad now. They can mutate directly into second-generation zombies. And the one we just encountered had already evolved—it mutated directly into an evolved one. Ugh, that’s such a mouthful. Can’t we just call it a third-generation zombie?”

A lot of people agreed.

“Let’s call it a third-generation zombie.”

“I was already wondering whether that counted as the third generation.”

‘Third generation’ is easier to say.”

And so, without any official definition, the Youth Apartments took it upon themselves to name this newly emerged type of zombie a “third-generation zombie.”

Song Jingshuo dragged the person to an open area and released him. Then he told the people nearby, “Keep an eye on him.”

The group searched the courtyard but found no other zombies. They gathered around the injured man to guard against the possibility of him mutating.

He was covered in blood and kept his eyes open without blinking.

Su Yu couldn’t bear to watch. She went over and knelt beside his head, asking him, “Do you have any last words? Is there anyone you want us to contact?”

Li Jiangbing said, “It’s no use. He can’t speak anymore.”

He tried to comfort Su Yu. “Forget it. There’s nothing we can do.”

Su Yu sighed and gave up.

She couldn’t help feeling that her heart was growing harder too. Maybe it was because she had seen too many dead people.

Someone shouted, “Zombie!”

Everyone turned to look. Sure enough, a zombie had emerged from one of the buildings. The crowd immediately swarmed toward it.

Li Jiangbing grabbed Su Yu. “Don’t go with everyone else. The two of us will stay here and watch him.”

The noise coming from the courtyard was probably especially conspicuous in the current environment.

The residential area was separated from the technology park by some distance, with a river between them, so the neighborhood was unusually quiet at this hour.

There weren’t even the piercing car alarms caused by the chain-reaction accidents in the city. It was simply silent.

As a result, everyone’s shouts and cries rang out particularly loudly.

It seemed that the noise had drawn the zombies out of the buildings.

Song Jingshuo and Jiang Cheng didn’t move either. There were already enough people rushing over.

Song Jingshuo asked Jiang Cheng, “How many zombies do you think there could be?”

“Not many,” Jiang Cheng said. “Not that many people came back in the first place.”

Song Jingshuo sounded regretful. “If only we had official data.”

He really wanted to know the mutation rate from the previous outbreak.

But the authorities had never released any figures—not even the death toll, let alone data like the mutation rate, which would have been even harder to verify.

The noise in the courtyard attracted the zombies inside the buildings.

Although second-generation zombies were more agile than the original zombies, they still hadn’t developed intelligence. When they were drawn by sound, they didn’t open the doors and come downstairs. Instead, they simply smashed through the windows and jumped.

One second-generation zombie jumped from the tenth floor.

Even a second-generation zombie with extraordinary jumping ability couldn’t withstand a fall from that height. It slammed into the ground, likely shattering its bones, and could no longer get up. It writhed helplessly on the pavement.

The others went over and chopped off its head.

Someone even made a point of running back to tell Jiang Cheng, “It was a second-generation one, not a third-generation one.”

Jiang Cheng nodded.

Then he asked Song Jingshuo, “Do you think they’ll continue evolving after the third generation?”

Just imagining it made Song Jingshuo’s skin crawl. “Don’t jinx us.”

Jiang Cheng watched as everyone charged toward another newly emerged zombie in the distance. “I’m only wondering—why shouldn’t this be considered the evolution of a species?”

Faster. Stronger.

The previous weakness had been their lack of intelligence. The appearance of the third generation had clearly repaired that shortcoming.

As for their thirst for blood and flesh—humans had once developed from a stage of eating raw meat and drinking blood themselves.

That was simply how nature worked.

Even in a civilized society, people no longer ate raw flesh or drank blood directly, but they had merely found another way to consume them.

That was the law governing the world.

Song Jingshuo’s face was tense. “I don’t accept this kind of ‘evolution,’ and I don’t think it’s ‘evolution.’ Humanity spent tens of thousands of years building the civilization we have today. If this is what ‘evolution’ looks like, then why did we bother standing upright in the first place? Why did we learn to make fire, cook, and eat cooked food?”

He said, “At most, this is aberration. It absolutely isn’t evolution.”

Jiang Cheng shot him a glance.

Song Jingshuo said, “...If you have something to say, just say it.”

They had been through life and death together. There was nothing they couldn’t say to each other directly.

Jiang Cheng sighed. “I didn’t expect you to have such proper values.”

Song Jingshuo: “...”

So, in Jiang Cheng’s mind, had he always been someone with twisted values?

As dusk fell, more and more people gathered in the courtyard. They made plenty of noise, drawing out quite a few zombies, which they promptly dealt with.

They were all primitive zombies and second-generation zombies.

The person Li Jiangbing and Su Yu had been guarding finally breathed his last and then mutated. Li Jiangbing took care of him.

Song Jingshuo let out a sigh of relief. “Looks like there aren’t that many third-generation zombies.”

When it came to jinxing things, Song Jingshuo was the real deal.

The moment he finished speaking, a window in Building Three shattered with a crash. Two zombies, tangled together, fell from above and hit the ground with a tremendous bang.

One of them was especially enormous.

Everyone was startled.

He Tian licked between her fingers, cleaning them completely.

It still wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She knew she had to get out, so she opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

The corridor stretched a long way. She followed it to the elevator lobby, knowing that she had to go down from there.

She pried open the elevator doors with her hands. Inside was a pitch-black shaft, and a foul-smelling draft rose from below.

He Tian was just about to jump down when she heard a noise coming from somewhere else.

Following the sound, she entered the stairwell.

She lived on a high floor, and the sound was coming from below.

With several powerful leaps, she descended several floors at once. Soon, she saw the source of the noise.

A huge, fat, disgusting body.

It was someone she hated very much—Nie Kuizhang.

There had been many times when He Tian had thought, I really want to kill that disgusting bastard Nie Kuizhang.

But back then, it had only been an emotional outburst. Killing someone had been impossible.

But now, when Nie Kuizhang raised his head with blood and flesh filling his mouth, and the two of them met each other’s eyes, He Tian thought:

I can.

I can kill him.

Kill him.

He Tian leaped into the air and pounced on Nie Kuizhang.

The two of them fought as they tumbled down several flights of stairs, crashing into the corridor. Still locked in combat, they smashed through the glass at the end of the hallway and fell together.

Below them was the canopy over the building’s entrance.

With a loud crack, the canopy could not withstand Nie Kuizhang’s enormous body and the force of the fall. It collapsed beneath them.

The commotion startled everyone.

A male zombie and a female zombie sprang out of the wreckage, then immediately tore into each other again.

Primitive attacks—claw-like hands, teeth, and heads smashing into one another.

They tried to bite through each other’s throats, wrench off each other’s arms, and crush each other’s skulls.

No one had ever seen two zombies attack each other before. Everyone was stunned.

Someone shouted, “Nie Kuizhang! That’s Nie Kuizhang!”

Nie Kuizhang’s distinctive build made him easy to recognize.

But most people couldn’t tell who the female zombie was. Her hair hung loose, always covering her face, and her movements were too fast. On top of that, dusk had deepened, while the streetlights had yet to come on, making it impossible to see clearly.

Only Su Yu’s expression changed drastically.

She rushed forward, but Jiang Cheng was quick enough to grab her by the arm.

He had recognized who the girl was.

Su Yu turned around, her voice hoarse and trembling. “He Tian... It’s He Tian!”

Gao Yuxuan quietly told Zhao Yi, “It’s the girl who walked the little dog.”

Zhao Yi stared for a moment, then said with certainty, “They’re both third-generation zombies!”

He Tian let out a ferocious howl that sounded nothing like a human cry.

Nie Kuizhang tried to escape.

Back when they had both been human, He Tian and Nie Kuizhang had been on completely different levels.

Nie Kuizhang could have shoved He Tian to the ground with one blow and left her unable to get back up.

But Nie Kuizhang was not a strongman like Li Jiangbing, who had built his body through hard work and sweat.

Nie Kuizhang was simply tall and naturally big. Because his body mass was so immense, he had considerable strength as well.

But he did not possess the kind of powerful physique forged through the high-intensity training and drills of a soldier. After mutation, he was not on the same level as an ordinary zombie.

At the end of the day, he was still just an ordinary person.

After mutating into a zombie, his cells underwent a comprehensive transformation at the genetic level.

His speed and strength were greatly enhanced.

Under this kind of enhancement, the differences between ordinary people were leveled out.

He Tian was not at a disadvantage.

In fact, with the same jumping ability, He Tian’s lighter and more agile body gave her the upper hand. Nie Kuizhang’s attacks missed her again and again. His massive weight, rather than benefiting him after mutation, had become nothing but a burden.

He failed to dodge He Tian’s attacks several times, and he grew visibly more agitated, roaring loudly as well.

He Tian bit down on Nie Kuizhang’s ear and tore it off. He threw a punch that struck her shoulder and sent her flying, then turned and tried to run.

But He Tian’s desire to kill him had been strengthened along with her genes. With a roar, she sprang into the air, pounced onto Nie Kuizhang’s back, and sent them both rolling into the bushes.

The animalistic roar from the bushes suddenly cut off.

Everyone froze.

The next instant, the streetlights, set on an automatic timer, suddenly flickered on.

A figure leaped up from the bushes in the darkness of the night.

She was slender, with long hair, and her delicate features could still be seen.

But her skin and eyes had mutated beyond recognition.

In her hand, she held a human head.

A massive head twisted off its body.

He Tian had delivered the killing blow to Nie Kuizhang.