When they reached the third floor, Quan Xiaoyu grabbed Chu Tian and stopped him from going any farther upstairs.
Chu Tian stopped and looked at him.
Quan Xiaoyu explained, “From the rooftop, I can only jump down by myself. With you, the third floor is about the limit.”
This building stood by itself, with no neighboring buildings. To guard against unexpected situations, if they were ever trapped inside, they could only escape by jumping out the windows. There were no other buildings in front, behind, or on either side that they could use as a foothold. If Quan Xiaoyu jumped from the fourth or fifth floor while carrying Chu Tian, landing safely would be difficult.
The two had fought together for more than two months, so their understanding of each other went without saying. Chu Tian quickly understood what he meant.
The third floor consisted of three or four rooms arranged neatly in a row. They casually opened one, went inside, and locked the door.
It was a very ordinary room, about twenty square meters. It was empty, with neither people nor zombies inside.
Neither of them dared to relax at a time like this. Even though the door was locked from the outside, Chu Tian still stayed beside it, paying attention to any movement outside.
Quan Xiaoyu immediately went to the window to observe what was happening outside.
Only after looking did he finally understand why those two vehicles had been willing to recklessly honk their horns instead of slowing down.
It turned out that a huge wave of zombies was following them too!
“They’re being chased by zombies too. A lot of them—Level One and Level Two mixed together,” Quan Xiaoyu told Chu Tian.
Chu Tian quickly came over and glanced outside. The group of zombies chasing the two of them was moving faster, and they were now less than five hundred meters away. The zombies chasing the other two vehicles were still more than a thousand meters away.
The people in those vehicles all appeared to be ability users, and they were not slow when running for their lives. They were only a little over a hundred meters away from the building.
“Looks like they should make it inside in time,” Chu Tian said without much emotion.
“But what I’m worried about is that even if we hide here, this place might not be able to hold them back. There are simply too many.” Quan Xiaoyu was somewhat anxious.
There were so many Level Two zombies that they were practically comparable to a zombie horde.
In his previous life, it was not as though he had never faced one, but back then, they had had many people, and there had been many ability users as well.
Even then, they had only won after an arduous battle and heavy sacrifices.
Now there were only the two of them, along with a few ability users who did not look particularly reliable.
Trying to break through the encirclement of so many zombies would be incredibly difficult.
Sensing Quan Xiaoyu’s anxiety, Chu Tian walked over, put an arm around his shoulders, and squeezed his arm firmly with his fingers.
“We’ll give it everything we’ve got and see what happens. Fortunately, we didn’t let Xiao Bai and Xiaonan come with us today.”
Faced with this situation, Chu Tian had little confidence either. He was already prepared to fight to the death.
The warmth from Chu Tian’s palm helped calm some of Quan Xiaoyu’s anxiety.
He suddenly thought of his space.
Actually, he had not entered his space for a very long time. He had only been secretly putting some of the supplies he collected inside, and had never really had a chance to take them out and use them.
Later, he was often together with Chu Tian and Bai Mingxi, leaving him little time alone. Before he knew it, he had stopped going into the space to check on it altogether.
In this situation, what he was considering was no longer whether or not he would expose his secret.
What he was worried about was whether he could bring Chu Tian inside!
After all, he had never tried bringing anyone other than himself into it.
He had not even brought a living creature inside before.
He only knew that an ordinary ability user’s space could not accommodate living creatures.
That was what worried him most.
So unless it was absolutely necessary, he did not want to use the space.
What if he went inside, but Chu Tian could not?
What if Chu Tian could enter, but something went wrong?
Either outcome would be extremely difficult to bear.
“They’re inside.”
Chu Tian looked outside as he spoke. He was referring to the people from the two vehicles.
The group of mercenaries had indeed arrived first. Including the speed-type ability user who had waited at the door, there were five of them, all dressed uniformly in black.
However, these people were rather interesting. Even after their entire group had arrived, they did not lock the door. It seemed they were still waiting for the other group.
At this point, both Quan Xiaoyu and Chu Tian could clearly see who the other five were.
It was Jia Lunxu, Wen Tong, the healing ability user, and two others whom Quan Xiaoyu did not recognize. In any case, they were not people from Lei Shi’s team in his previous life.
The current Chu Tian was also a late-stage Level Two mental-type ability user.
Actually, Chu Tian had reached the late stage of Level Two quite some time ago, but he had been unable to break through for a long time.
He was anxious about it and had tried many different methods under Quan Xiaoyu’s advice, but none of them had worked.
In the end, he could only give up on forcing a breakthrough and let nature take its course.
Quan Xiaoyu also could not figure out what was causing Chu Tian’s bottleneck. He had already made Chu Tian try every method of breaking through a bottleneck that he knew from his previous life, but none of them had been useful.
Although Level Two ability users still had the advantage of level suppression against Level Two zombies, there were simply too many of them.
Quan Xiaoyu pushed open the window and began preparing for battle.
His fire ability was no longer a secret to Chu Tian. Two months of fighting in the wilderness had also been enough for him to raise his ability to Level Two.
Quan Xiaoyu silently calculated the distance of the zombies.
The moment they entered his attack range, he would throw out a fireball.
Meanwhile, Chu Tian had already entered a state of control.
He manipulated two Level Two zombies, making them frantically bite and kill the Level One zombies behind them.
They could only rely on this level suppression to reduce the number of zombies first.
However, just as the zombies were about to enter Quan Xiaoyu’s attack range, he saw a scene that was painfully familiar to him.
Wen Tong, who was running at the very back, fell when he was less than a hundred meters from the zombies.
The healing-type boy running in front of him instinctively reached out to pull him up, only to be yanked down as well.
That sudden tug actually caused the boy to flip over and tumble directly behind Wen Tong.
Only then did Wen Tong manage to get back up. As he ran forward, he shouted for help.
Jia Lunxu and the other two ability users immediately turned back to help.
As expected, Jia Lunxu was the first to rush toward Wen Tong.
However, he did not seem to have given up on the boy either. After pulling Wen Tong back up, he still intended to go forward and rescue the boy.
But the boy seemed to have been injured when he fell. He could not get back up for quite some time, while the zombies were already right in front of him.
Jia Lunxu released his earth-type ability in an attempt to stop the zombies from advancing.
However, it only blocked them for a little over ten seconds before the earthen wall’s defense completely collapsed.
The boy still had not gotten up.
Jia Lunxu did not dare approach any closer. If he went any nearer, he would not be able to escape either.
So, in the end, he decisively turned around, abandoned the boy, and ran toward the building.
The boy raised his hand in despair, but his companions ignored him.
That scene deeply wounded Quan Xiaoyu.
It was as though the tragedy from his previous life were playing out all over again.
His heart was filled with anger and pity for his former self.
Now, that pity had transformed into sympathy for the boy.
So, in that instant, the fireball in Quan Xiaoyu’s hand shot out.
It exploded in the middle of the zombies like a small grenade.
Immediately afterward, fireballs came flying one after another, trailing heavy tongues of flame. The mass of zombies erupted in a burst of fire, like a fireworks display, sparks flying in every direction.
This entire wave of attacks was concentrated behind the boy, buying him time.
The boy finally managed to stand up and began hobbling forward.
Quan Xiaoyu could tell that his right foot seemed to be injured.
Without hesitation, relying on his own speed and strength, Quan Xiaoyu jumped directly out of the window, his katana already drawn.
Very quickly, Quan Xiaoyu reached the boy.
Before the boy even had time to be surprised, Quan Xiaoyu grabbed him and pulled him up, dragging him as he rapidly ran back toward the first floor of the building.
Quan Xiaoyu handed the boy over to his companions, who had just arrived inside the building, then directly jumped back up to the third floor from outside.
The entire process took only one minute.
The moment he returned to the third floor, he saw Chu Tian lying painfully off to one side.
Quan Xiaoyu was shocked.
Chu Tian had clearly been fine just moments ago, and he knew Chu Tian’s abilities. Controlling several Level Two zombies should not have left him in a state like this.
For the moment, he could not worry about anything else. He hurriedly pulled Chu Tian into his arms.
At this moment, Chu Tian’s eyes were tightly shut, and large beads of sweat were rolling down from his forehead.
This was clearly the appearance of someone engaged in a battle using mental power.
Mental power?
Was it a human?
Or a zombie?
Quan Xiaoyu was filled with uncertainty, but at this moment, there was nothing he could do to help.
It turned out that when Quan Xiaoyu had just unleashed his fireballs, Chu Tian had noticed that his fire ability had leveled up.
It seemed to have happened in that very instant.
He did not know what Quan Xiaoyu had experienced in that moment. He had not even had time to congratulate him when a sharp pain suddenly struck Chu Tian’s head.
He immediately understood.
Someone was attacking him.
So Chu Tian quickly gathered his mind and fought against this force with everything he had.
That was why he had not even had time to stop Quan Xiaoyu when he jumped out the window to rescue the boy.
The mental power attacking him was extremely powerful and pure. It even seemed to carry a deep hatred toward humanity.
Chu Tian judged that this might not be human mental power.
Under the assault of this mental force, he found himself completely unable to fight back and could only struggle desperately to resist.
But even while resisting, he still managed to separate out a sliver of his mental power and follow this force, searching for its source.
Chu Tian’s condition looked extremely grim, while outside, the zombies were already less than a hundred meters from the building.
The ten people who had arrived later had also established defensive positions on the second and fourth floors, launching attacks from there.
There were earth, fire, and ice abilities—and there was even a wood-type ability user.
Together, they launched attacks against the zombie horde.
Quan Xiaoyu also put Chu Tian down and stood on the third floor, throwing out a string of fireballs at the zombie horde like bombs.
Only then did he close the window tightly and pick Chu Tian up again.
Those ability users were not particularly high-level. The strongest among them were only Level Two—a Level Two earth-type ability user and a Level Two ice-type ability user.
Everyone else was a Level One ability user.
Facing such a massive number of Level Two zombies, they very likely would not be able to hold this place.
So Quan Xiaoyu decided to help Chu Tian first and leave the outside to those people to resist.
If they truly could not hold out in the end, he would have no choice but to use his last resort—
His space.
Having made up his mind, Quan Xiaoyu carried Chu Tian and took something out of his space.
Something he had forgotten for a very long time, and had only just remembered!