95: Chapter 95 Run!

The ground suddenly cracked open.

Right in the center of The Square, beneath everyone's feet.

The first crack was only a palm's width wide, located next to the bonfire, extending in all directions.

The second one, the third one.

The soil at the edges of the cracks overturned, and something was pushing up from below.

A finger reached out from the crack—ghastly pale, all five fingers intact, nails perfect, skin clean, with no bloodstains.

That hand pressed against the edge of the crack and exerted force.

A body flipped out from the underground, standing steadily on the flat ground. It opened its eyes, which were a greyish-green color, the same as the mist from before.

There were pupils, but they were devoid of light, very hollow.

"It's a zombie!" someone shouted.

It turned toward the person closest to it, a middle-aged man who had run out wearing pajamas.

Xu Wanning condensed an icicle, but she was too far away. "Run!"

When the zombie bit down, the man didn't even have time to scream. Blood splattered onto the remaining coals of the bonfire, making a very short sizzling sound. The dark red charcoal was soaked black by the blood, emitting wisps of smoke.

The Square exploded into chaos.

Screams and crying.

The crowd scattered and fled.

An endless stream of zombies crawled out from underground. Zombies emerged from every crack—one, two, ten, countless.

They flipped out from the underground, shook the soil off their bodies, opened their greyish-green eyes, and pounced on the nearest people.

"Go upstairs!" Lu Chengyue's voice cut through all the screaming. "Go upstairs!"

The zombies were all squeezing out from the open road, not inside the buildings.

No one listened. People in a panic couldn't comprehend instructions at all, only running blindly.

The Great Leader and his group rushed over, seeing the chaotic scene. "Nickname, what is going on?"

"I'm not sure. Zombies crawling out from underground never happened in my past life. It's possible that because we cleared all the zombies, it affected the normal progression, so that's why so many zombies have spawned again."

Xu Wanning was only speculating.

She shot an icicle into the head of the nearest zombie; there was obvious resistance. The level of this batch of zombies should be at least C-rank.

Xu Wanning took out a megaphone and shouted, "Everyone, pay attention! The zombies' body hardness has been enhanced, be careful! Normal people should try to evacuate, Ability Users stay!"

Lu Chengyue was three steps to her left. The first strike of his longsword got stuck in a zombie's skull, and he couldn't pull it out.

He let go, switched to using wind blades, and severed the zombie's left arm. The feeling was just as Ningning had said; the bones were more than a degree harder than before. "Full-body enhancement!"

The two moved in the same direction. Xu Wanning retreated half a step to the back left, and Lu Chengyue perfectly filled the gap at her front right.

Their backs were pressed together, helping each other clear out zombies that tried to sneak an attack.

Xu Wanning released her longsword, used the blade to pry open the zombie's jaw, and took the opportunity to stab into its eye socket.

A second zombie pounced over; she pulled out her blade and slashed horizontally across its cervical spine.

Lu Chengyue's movements were more brutal than hers, severing the shoulder along with the neck.

The battle in The Square was chaotic. A large number of Ability Users came out to kill zombies and help ordinary people relocate.

Xu Wanning kept killing, killing, and killing. Worried about exhausting her Supernatural ability, she coordinated cold weapons with her Supernatural ability. By the end, she had lost count of how many she had chopped down.

The hilt of the sword became increasingly slippery, with layer upon layer of sweat accumulating.

By the thirtieth one, her right arm began to ache, and by the fiftieth, her wrist started to tremble.

Lu Chengyue had changed his weapon for the third time: longsword, axe, machete.

The zombies' bodies were too hard, and the weapons were very prone to dulling.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a zombie on Xu Wanning's right side about to pounce, which she hadn't noticed.

Xu Wanning was in the middle of pulling out a sword stuck in the skull of another zombie.

Lu Chengyue took action.

Xu Wanning heard the sound of wind being broken and reflexively tilted her head. A machete stained with zombie blood flew past her ear, embedding itself into the eye socket of the zombie on her right.

The force penetrated the skull directly, and the zombie was pinned to the wall behind it, twitched once, and then stopped moving.

Xu Wanning reached out to pull the machete out and handed it to him. "Be careful."

How long the battle lasted, Xu Wanning couldn't remember.

She only remembered that when dawn broke, her arms had completely lost sensation, moving only mechanically—lift, stab, lift, stab. She had to grip the hilt with both hands just to pierce the zombies' skulls.

Beside her, Lu Chengyue was covered in zombie blood. The blood pooled on the ground, and the footprints left behind by survivors as they stepped through it looked terrifying.

Dawn had arrived.

The sun emerged from the horizon, and the greyish-green mist rapidly contracted as soon as the first ray of sunlight hit it, retreating back into the cracks, back to the places they had emerged from. The speed was extremely fast; in a few seconds, it had vanished completely.

But the zombies that had emerged from the cracks did not disappear. They were still there, dense and packed, filling every inch of open space in the base.

The sun rose completely, casting golden light onto The Square. The corpses in The Square were indistinguishable as human or zombie, piled layer upon layer. Blood pooled into several thin streams, flowing toward lower ground and eventually merging into the drainage ditch.

"Wuwuwu."

"Husband, husband, where are you?"

"Son, son! Wake up, don't leave Mom behind!"

Xu Wanning found the little girl who had given her something last night next to a pile of corpses. Only half of her body remained, still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

She crouched down and fished a candy out of the little girl's pocket. The candy wrapper had already been soaked through with blood, and the pink strawberry pattern had turned dark red.

She peeled open the wrapper, put the candy in her mouth, and slowly chewed it into pieces. The sweetness and the bloody taste mixed together.

The Ability Users stood in The Square for a long time, fearing that the zombies might suddenly launch an attack.

Xu Wanning chewed the candy in her mouth, swallowed it, folded the wrapper, and put it back in her pocket.

More and more people walked out from various buildings, silently bending down to separate the human corpses from the zombie ones.

The human corpses were moved to the west side, arranged in rows, waiting to be claimed.

The zombies were dragged to the other side and burned in a pile.

Some people cried, but most did not.

"Should we attack?" Zhou Ke walked over, his expression heavy.

Xu Wanning shook her head. She wasn't sure if attacking would trigger another frenzy from the zombies. At this moment, most of the Ability Users' Supernatural ability had been exhausted, and their physical strength was spent. There was no other way; they could only rest.

Xu Wanning and Lu Chengyue carried a corpse together. It was a middle-aged man; half of his face was gone, and the remaining eye was still open.

Xu Wanning looked away, unable to bear watching.

"Put it here." The two placed the corpse in an empty spot and turned to continue moving the next one.

Everyone was doing what they could. Many girls came out to help; those who couldn't move adults moved the children.