Xiao Ziran, who had also heard the gunshot, almost jumped out of his seat. He shouted angrily, “Which bastard fired that shot?”
Zuo Li immediately shook his head. “It wouldn’t be one of our people. The Chief specifically instructed everyone not to fire recklessly. Besides, all the people in the vehicles at the front are ability users.” Even their team could not possibly have every single person be an ability user, but with their tacit cooperation and solid military training, even the ordinary people possessed considerable combat strength.
Before long, the vehicles in front began to slow down. The people behind knew that they were about to stop.
Xiao Ziran quickly got out of the vehicle and led his people toward the front.
Chu Tian and Quan Xiaoyu also got out of the vehicle. They happened to meet Xiao Ziran and the others coming up from behind, so they all walked forward together.
“What happened?” Xiao Ziran immediately spotted Ouyang Jing standing beside the first vehicle and asked.
Ouyang Jing raised his chin, indicating that they should look ahead. His face was also unable to conceal his anger.
About five hundred meters ahead, a group of people was engaged in battle with a small wave of zombies. Several ability users were fighting the zombies outside their vehicle, but the people inside one of the vehicles were hiding inside and continuously firing at the zombie horde.
As the gunshots rang out, more and more zombies gathered instead.
The zombies now were no longer the primitive zombies of the past. Most of them were Level One and Level Two, and they could gather extremely quickly.
The people’s defensive line gradually came under pressure. The several ability users became increasingly passive and slowly fell into the encirclement of the zombies. Seeing that the situation was bad, that off-road vehicle immediately accelerated and charged toward them. Clearly, they had also seen the people on this side.
“Fuck!” Ouyang Jing cursed roughly. “Bastards!”
Those people were obviously trying to divert the disaster onto them!
“Captain Ouyang, have your sniper blow out their tires!” Xiao Ziran made the decision without hesitation. He did not care whether those people lived or died. “Everyone else, get ready. Everyone except the drivers, get out of the vehicles. Whether ability users or people using guns, once they enter firing range, kill everything—people or zombies alike!”
Everyone on Xiao Ziran’s side carried out the order, taking up their positions and preparing for battle. Ouyang Jing’s people also all got out of their vehicles. Before carrying out the order, however, they all looked at Ouyang Jing. Seeing him nod, they immediately took their positions as well, without the slightest hesitation.
The sniper reacted very quickly. Almost at the exact moment Ouyang Jing nodded, his bullet flew out.
The speeding off-road vehicle ahead immediately tilted to one side, bouncing several times along the roadside.
“Bang!”
Another gunshot rang out. The second bullet followed immediately, striking the other front tire.
The off-road vehicle finally came to a halt.
Seeing that the ability users who had been protecting the vehicles behind them had already been swallowed up by the zombie horde and that the zombies were getting closer and closer, the people inside the off-road vehicle seemed to panic. Someone took out a strip of cloth, stuck it out of the window, and waved it desperately, seemingly asking for help.
“Don’t pay any attention to them. Open fire once the zombies enter firing range. Don’t worry about them,” Xiao Ziran said coldly.
What he meant was that they would not deliberately shoot and kill those people, but neither would they deliberately avoid them. They would simply treat them as air and focus on killing the zombies. If someone happened to be injured or killed in the process, then too bad. What did that have to do with them?
Hearing this, the sniper fired another shot and knocked away the strip of cloth they were waving, clearly indicating his refusal.
The people inside the vehicle seemed helpless as well. They opened the doors, and a total of six people got out. It seemed they had finally decided to face the enemy head-on.
“We won’t move for now. If they fight, let them fight for a while. The snipers can assist by shooting the zombies,” Ouyang Jing ordered this time.
The Doctor did not object. Their purpose in the first place was not to kill people, but to kill zombies. The zombies had been drawn over by those people themselves, so it was perfectly reasonable to let them deal with them.
Since the ability users at present were basically Level One and Level Two, their average long-range attack range was only within a radius of two or three hundred meters. The zombies had not yet entered firing range. At present, the only weapon capable of attacking from such a distance was a sniper rifle.
Thus, the two snipers on Ouyang Jing’s side entered combat mode and began shooting the zombies closest to their position from long range.
Old Wu also joined the sniping. In Xiao Ziran’s team, apart from Chu Tian and Bai Mingxi, he was the only one who had received formal, systematic firearms training. Everyone else was only half-competent when it came to firearms, including the Doctor.
The six people on the other side did not hold back either. Someone actually took a Russian rocket launcher out of the vehicle and fired it straight into the zombie horde.
The ability users who had previously been fighting outside the vehicle had long since been swallowed by the zombie horde. They did not hold back at all, firing rocket after rocket at the zombies.
Xiao Ziran and the others on this side were left staring in astonishment.
With this kind of firepower, why hadn’t they used it earlier?
The surprise that followed was even greater.
As the zombies approached, the wild grass on the ground suddenly began to grow wildly. It grew taller and taller, thicker and thicker, and then began weaving together like vines, forming a net that blocked the zombies behind it.
Afterward, the person holding the rocket launcher fired one shot after another. Very quickly, many zombies were blown apart, and the number of zombies began to decrease rapidly.
Xiao Ziran and Ouyang Jing looked at each other, both speechless.
With this kind of combat strength, why hadn’t they used it earlier?
Why hadn’t they used it earlier?!
What was the meaning of looking so miserable at the beginning?
In fact, at this moment, Xiao Ziran’s shock was greater than Ouyang Jing’s. Ouyang Jing was merely surprised by the enormous contrast between their condition before and after.
Xiao Ziran, however, was shocked by the ability of that plant-type ability user.
Others might not be able to see it, but as an ability user of the same type, Xiao Ziran could tell at a glance that this person’s strength was indeed greater than his own!
This discovery made Xiao Ziran extremely unhappy.
He had thought that he was already strong enough. He had never expected to discover someone who was even stronger than him—and, on top of that, their first meeting had been extremely unpleasant.
Others had not noticed it, but Chu Tian and Quan Xiaoyu saw it at once.
That person’s plant-type ability had already surpassed the Doctor’s.
The Doctor had also been stuck at the early stage of Level Three for a long time. Furthermore, he often needed to handle team affairs, so he had relatively little time to go out and fight directly. He also did not have the enhancement provided by crystal cores.
On top of that, he had remained in S City all this time and had not encountered any powerful opponents, which had caused his strength to stagnate for quite some time.
Quan Xiaoyu and Chu Tian exchanged a glance.
This could not continue!
Both of them read the same meaning in each other’s eyes.
Having someone else stronger than their own people was not a good thing no matter how they looked at it.
Thus, with a single glance, they had finished communicating.
Chu Tian immediately walked toward the Doctor.
Without saying a word, Chu Tian pulled the Doctor to a place where no one else could hear them speak. Under Xiao Ziran’s puzzled gaze, he quietly stuffed a handful of crystal cores into his hands.
These crystal cores were their accumulated stock from the past two months. Li Nan had already processed them and helped them evolve them. Before they set out, Quan Xiaoyu had given each of them a handful as a backup.
They had not expected them to come in handy so quickly.
“What is this?” Xiao Ziran asked in a low voice, his eyes widening.
Of course, he knew that Chu Tian’s secretive manner meant that he had something to tell him that could not be overheard by others.
Chu Tian leaned close to Xiao Ziran’s ear and, in an extremely low voice, briefly explained to the Doctor how to use crystal cores and what significance using crystal cores had.
Just a few words were enough to make the Doctor’s eyes widen in astonishment.
There was actually something like this?
Immediately afterward, Xiao Ziran thought of another question.
“What else do you know? Just how many things are you four hiding from me?”
He really did not know Chu Tian and the other three well enough. In the past, he had thought that it did not matter.
It was only today that he discovered how little he actually knew about these four people!
Just how many secrets were they still hiding?
From today onward, this question seemed to have suddenly become rather important.
“Why do you care so much? Our secrets are still our secrets. Besides, we’re not going to harm you! Instead of wasting time asking me, you might as well take this secret and do some business with Captain Ouyang. You’re much better at that than I am,” Chu Tian said.
Indeed, once the people on their side began needing crystal cores, it would naturally become impossible to keep them hidden from the others.
Rather than having them discover the secret later, it would be better to make a deal now and exchange them for something useful.
Xiao Ziran’s mind moved extremely quickly.
The moment Chu Tian finished speaking, he immediately grasped the essence of what he meant. He waved his hand and hurried off to find Ouyang Jing.
The battle ahead was still fierce, but the zombies had already been reduced by more than half.
At this point, the others also unleashed their abilities: ice-type, two fire-type, earth-type, and lightning-type.
All six people were actually ability users.
But it was obvious that the strongest among them was still that plant-type ability user.
They continued fighting until things had more or less settled down.
Then the door of the off-road vehicle opened once again, and a person slowly stepped out.
Fuck!
There was actually another person!
Ouyang Jing and Xiao Ziran were startled at the same time.
Earlier, they had assumed that those six people were everyone inside. For a moment, they had actually overlooked the vehicle itself.
The person who got out of the vehicle moved slowly and appeared extremely elegant.
The distance was too great to see his features clearly, but they could see that his hair was meticulously groomed. He wore a fashionable outfit that would have looked stylish even before the apocalypse.
With both hands in his pockets, he strolled leisurely around behind the six people.
He was even wearing sunglasses, and his shoes looked spotless.
From such a great distance, everyone on this side could still feel that unmistakable aura of someone desperately trying to look cool!
Author’s Note:
Thank you to all the little angels who quietly subscribed!
Thank you to all the little angels who subscribed and still came to leave comments!
And thank you to all the little angels who gave this silly author nutritional fluids!
(The silly author is terrible with technology. I only figured out how to check the nutritional fluids today…)