It turned out that the words Chu Tian had deliberately told everyone before they set out were not without reason.
When they had driven about four or five kilometers, they encountered a massive crowd of people fleeing in panic.
These people all lived near the northern part of the city. Compared with the southern city gate and the inner city, this area had not yet suffered much interference.
What had sent everyone running in terror was the commotion coming from the inner city, along with some people who had escaped from there.
Among the fleeing crowds, some people had cars, but most were on foot. They surged forward in a frenzy, fleeing in the opposite direction from Chu Tian and the others.
The convoy was quickly scattered by the flow of people.
Xiao Ziran’s vehicle had the advantage of being near the front and had already driven through. Some of the others also displayed impressive driving skills, weaving left and right through the crowd.
But Chu Tian’s four-person vehicle, bringing up the rear, was firmly trapped behind them, unable to move.
“Abandon the car! Xiaoyu, take care of Xiao Nan. Xiao Nan, keep an eye on the two little ones! Xiao Bai, stay close to me. Try not to get separated by the crowd. If we do get separated, meet at the mall as agreed!”
After being stuck for a while, Chu Tian decisively decided that they would abandon the car and continue on foot.
The mall was less than three kilometers away. Walking was still better than sitting here completely unable to move.
When the four of them finally squeezed their way out of the densest part of the crowd, they had barely begun to feel relieved that they had not been separated when the people at the very back of the fleeing crowd suddenly began screaming and wailing.
“Rat swarm!”
Chu Tian shouted.
Familiar mental fluctuations surged toward them from ahead, spreading over a huge area.
Without a second thought, Chu Tian immediately released a mental barrier in front of them.
This was a new skill he had comprehended while fighting the zombie dogs earlier.
There were many branches within mental-type abilities. Even mental-type ability users with the same general classification could be stronger or weaker in different branches because of their individual attributes.
For example, Chu Tian specialized in mental attacks, so he was comparatively weaker in control. As for the mental barrier, it was a newly developed skill, so it might be even weaker than his mental control.
Take Yu Ning, for example. She possessed extremely powerful mental control, but was weaker in mental attacks.
The three mental-type zombie dogs from earlier were another example. Their powerful mental barriers made them the main defenders of the group, but they had no offensive abilities.
Otherwise, three zombie dogs capable of mental attacks would not have been so easy to defeat.
The moment Chu Tian finished speaking, Xiaoyu and Xiaoning also charged forward.
It was an instinctive, highly sensitive reaction specifically toward their natural enemy.
Quan Xiaoyu turned around and handed the Li Nan he had been carrying on his back to Bai Mingxi. With a flash of movement, he also charged toward the rat swarm alongside Xiaoyu and Xiaoning.
People were still fleeing along the road, only to be swiftly swallowed up by the rat swarm.
Clearly, these were the same rats that had been outside the city wall earlier. They had entered the inner city through the sewers.
Now that they saw Quan Xiaoyu and the two little creatures appear together, it was truly a case of enemies meeting with their eyes blazing red.
Their keen sense of smell immediately picked up that familiar scent coming from their enemies.
Without a word, the moment the two sides met, they immediately began slaughtering one another.
With Chu Tian’s mental barrier in front of them, the rats pounced at Quan Xiaoyu and the two little creatures, only to be stopped by an invisible force.
That brief opening was enough for another one-sided massacre.
But this very massacre awakened their ferocity.
They even abandoned their pursuit of the other humans and all surged toward Quan Xiaoyu’s group.
With the rudimentary intelligence they had developed, perhaps the first word they had learned was hatred.
“Don’t get caught up fighting! Run!”
Chu Tian could feel his mental barrier growing weaker and weaker.
So the four people and two beasts fought as they ran.
The rat swarm, meanwhile, seemed to have gone mad. They had locked onto the group and kept throwing themselves at them.
Fortunately, this was nowhere near the scale of the swarm they had encountered outside the city. The rats were now spread throughout the entire city, and this was only a portion of them.
But without the high-ground advantage they had possessed before, once Chu Tian’s mental barrier completely shattered, the four of them immediately found themselves in a desperate situation.
“Xiaoyu, take them into the space!”
Chu Tian shouted.
He had been trapped at the rear by the rat swarm and could not reach Quan Xiaoyu for the moment.
Bai Mingxi was now with Li Nan, the two of them hiding inside a protective circle created by Xiaoyu and Xiaoning. They were both holding pistols and firing at the rat swarm, and there was still some distance between them and Quan Xiaoyu, who was fighting at the very front.
Hearing Chu Tian’s words, Quan Xiaoyu immediately turned around, preparing to fight his way toward Li Nan and the others.
However—
it was too late!
A black shadow swooped down from the sky, its claws heading straight for Quan Xiaoyu’s head.
Quan Xiaoyu had no choice but to stop and raise his blade to defend himself.
Then the sound of wings flapping filled the surroundings.
Countless black figures came plunging straight down from the sky!
The birds had arrived!
They attacked not only the humans, but the rat swarm as well!
Faced with such powerful natural predators, the rat swarm finally stopped pursuing the humans.
They too began fleeing in all directions.
But the four people and two beasts had been caught completely off guard, and the black shadows swooping down from above quickly swallowed them up.
The Abandoned Mall
Xiao Ziran, who had escaped the crowd early, was the first to reach the planned meeting point.
He directed the people who had arrived first to conduct a simple sweep of the surrounding area and the inside of the building.
Everyone then quickly occupied the place, set up some defenses, and quietly waited for the companions who had yet to arrive.
Strangely enough, although the entire city, both inside and outside, was already filled with screams and chaos, and even the more secluded places had suffered some attacks, this place was remarkably quiet.
They had not discovered anything dangerous either.
Although Xiao Ziran instinctively sensed a trace of unease, he still decided to establish their base here.
Twenty minutes later, everyone gradually arrived.
But when they took stock, three vehicles were missing.
One belonged to Chu Tian’s group of four.
Another belonged to Lin Ziqiang and Xiaoming. Three girls from their team who had no abilities at all were also in that vehicle.
The last belonged to two members of Ouyang Jing’s original team—a couple.
“I’ll go look for them. Brother Ouyang, stay here with everyone. Unless something unusual happens, don’t come outside.”
Xiao Ziran gritted his teeth and made his decision.
“No! You’re more suited to leading the team than I am. I’ll go!”
Ouyang Jing refused immediately.
Xiao Ziran frowned.
He had not expected Ouyang Jing to fight him for this thankless job at a time like this.
Before he could say anything else, Old Wu spoke from nearby.
“You two leaders, stop arguing. I don’t think either of you is going anywhere.”
Only then did the two men notice a distant black wave writhing toward them.
The familiar sight immediately made Xiao Ziran recognize it.
“Fuck! Those bastards from outside the city wall—they’ve gotten into the city too!”
He cursed before immediately issuing an order.
“Everyone get inside the mall! Lock all the doors and windows. Be careful of every passage inside the building. Don’t let those bastards get into the sewers and come up from below.”
Although they were now as large as cats, their innate instincts absolutely could not be ignored.
The moment he finished speaking, a dark cloud suddenly swooped down from the sky.
But its target was the rat swarm!
“What is that?” someone asked in shock.
“Birds! They’re birds!” someone else shouted.
“What are they doing?”
Ouyang Jing stared at the birds and rats, which had started tearing into each other before they even had a chance to attack the humans.
“Hunting and fighting,” Xiao Ziran said coldly. “When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman profits. Unfortunately, we’re not the fisherman. We’re their common prey. Get inside!”
With that, he was the first to enter the mall.
He did not say it aloud, but there was a trace of grief in his heart.
Looking at the overwhelming scene outside, and thinking of the three groups who had not returned, he feared that…
In a building just one kilometer from the mall, Lin Ziqiang and Xiao Ming held hands as they pressed their backs firmly against a security door that had already been battered by the giant rats.
The rats’ claws pierced through the steel plate and into their bodies.
They gritted their teeth and did not make a sound.
There was only one reason.
Three girls from their team were hiding inside the small bathroom of the room.
“Old Lin! Open the door! Open the door!”
Ma Jingjing desperately pounded on the sturdy wooden door and shouted anxiously from inside the bathroom.
Earlier, the two men had hidden the girls in there and locked the door from the outside specifically to prevent them from disobeying and running out.
“Jingjing, listen to me.”
Another claw pierced Lin Ziqiang’s back.
This balding man, who had once been humiliated and abused like a dog, now endured the tearing pain with sheer force of will.
“Jingjing, you have to live. You absolutely have to survive. This is all I can do for you.”
“Lu Jie, you’re the calmest one. Look after Jingjing. All of you have to survive.”
Lin Ziqiang continued, “That new girl was bitten by those rats, but they aren’t zombie rats. I don’t know whether that girl will mutate. I remember Young Master Quan once said that if someone is bitten by a mutated beast, they might awaken an ability. You all have guns. If that girl mutates, shoot her and kill her. If she awakens an ability, then maybe you really can survive.”
His voice grew weaker and weaker.
The wounds on his back became more numerous and deeper.
When Lin Ziqiang mentioned Quan Xiaoyu, Xiao Ming, the man who had been silently enduring the pain of the claws piercing his back, finally spoke as well.
“If… if there’s still a chance, please pass a message to Young Master Quan for me! I owe him an apology. I’ve always owed him one!”
In truth, he had never forgotten what happened at the park.
It was the first—and only—time in his entire life that he had done something against his conscience.
“Old Lin—”
As Ma Jingjing screamed his name, the two men outside the door gradually fell silent…
On the road, a Jeep sat with its windows shattered and blood covering the interior.
Between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat were two skeletons, their heads resting against each other as they remained locked in a tight embrace.
As though nothing in this world could ever separate them again…