16: Chapter 16 Spiritual Form

In an instant, Mo Yufei felt his entire head explode with a buzz. The world spun, and a wave of intense dizziness rushed to his brain, making him subconsciously think he was truly going to die this time.

He froze in place, dazed for a moment. The expected agonizing pain did not come. Aside from a bit of numbness and dizziness, his body was completely fine.

He instantly realized that his Soul Talent was completely unaffected by fatal wounds from ordinary firearms; even if his physical body died, his soul would be unharmed.

But right now, the other party had numbers and guns. Fighting them head-on would only create unnecessary complications.

Mo Yufei let his body go limp, falling straight forward onto the ground. He lay motionless, completely pretending to be a zombie that had been shot in the head and killed.

The group stood there looking at each other, their faces showing a trace of strangeness.

That shot just now had clearly hit this "zombie's" head with precision.

Under normal circumstances, it should have collapsed immediately like its peers. Yet, this fellow here had actually frozen for a moment after a bullet pierced its head before falling flat onto the ground.

"Could it have evolved? Become an even more terrifying zombie?" one of them said.

Their hearts skipped a beat, and their vigilance instantly peaked. However, seeing the motionless corpse on the ground remain unresponsive for a long time, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

Their attention was quickly drawn to the scene deeper in the warehouse, where neatly stacked vehicle modification equipment and several brand-new heavy-duty RVs stood!

"Holy crap! We're rich!"

A low, pleasantly surprised cry from one of them broke the silence. Their eyes instantly flared with greed. Ignoring the "corpse" on the ground, they dashed toward the office area Mo Yufei had previously searched.

Soon, they found the ring of keys Mo Yufei had left behind. Mo Yufei hadn't planned on taking all the keys anyway, so he had casually set them aside to leave for whoever was destined to find them. He hadn't expected this "destined person" to shoot him right off the bat.

Soon, the roar of the RV engines gradually faded into the distance until they completely disappeared at the end of the street, leaving the surroundings in dead silence once more.

The fingers of the "corpse" that had been lying flat and motionless on the ground suddenly twitched slightly.

Mo Yufei slowly opened his eyes. There was no zombie-like cloudiness in them, only a conscious, cold clarity.

Propping himself up against the ground, he tried to climb up, but the moment he exerted force, his entire being floated light as a feather into the air instead of lifting his physical body as expected.

Mo Yufei froze in shock. Looking down, his physical body was still lying on the cold concrete floor, slumped there completely lifeless.

Looking down at his hands again, they were transparent to the point of being illusory. When his fingertips passed through the air, there was no sensation of touching anything solid. A faint, translucent halo enveloped his entire body—he was completely in a spirit form!

Mo Yufei checked his status panel.

Name: Mo Yufei

Status: Deceased (Currently in Spirit Form)

Stats (Changes with current status)

Strength: 0

Constitution: 0

Speed: 11

Spirit: 20 (No need to divide focus to control a host; Spirit increased)

Endurance: 0

"Soul state..."

Mo Yufei's heart shook violently, and he instantly realized what had happened. That headshot just now had truly killed his zombie body, causing his spirit to completely detach from his physical form. He was currently floating in midair as a soul!

He tried waving his hands, and his spirit form mirrored the movement, but he could not touch his physical body on the ground, nor could he feel any weight. Everything around him had become illusory, and his once-sharp five senses were reduced to faint perceptions.

Looking at his motionless physical body below, and then at his own floating spirit, Mo Yufei was completely stunned, an unprecedented wave of shock surging in his heart.

Mo Yufei focused his mind, trying to pull his spirit back into his physical shell, gradually merging into this body labeled as "Deceased" on his panel.

Tensing his mind to control the body, his fingertips first twitched slightly. Then, propping himself up against the ground, he struggled to lift his body and actually managed to stand up, albeit shakily.

Once Mo Yufei stood firm, feeling the sluggish but tangible sense of control over his body, his tense mind finally relaxed a little.

If he remained in a drifting soul state forever, how could he hunt zombies and scavenge crystal cores to upgrade his mystic realm?

Without lingering any longer, Mo Yufei adjusted to his body's sluggishness, maintained his previous calm and cold posture, and strode toward the depths of the city.

His cold gaze swept across the surrounding abandoned streets. His steps were steady and purposeful as he searched for useful supplies in The Apocalypse while keeping a sharp eye out for nearby zombies, looking for targets containing crystal cores as he advanced step by step through the dead city.

Days passed like this in lonely searching and traveling, and in the blink of an eye, over twenty days had gone by.

During this time, Mo Yufei traversed the ruined city streets and suburban roads, always maintaining a low profile. Although he had worked hard to find crystal cores, he had only collected 89 of them so far.

Most of them were collected only in the past few days. During the collection process, he had run into quite a few scattered survivors and had also encountered military rescue teams a few times.

He never took the initiative to approach any crowd, choosing instead to stay far away to avoid getting dragged into unnecessary conflicts.

Additionally, Mo Yufei had also thought about scavenging leftovers. He had visited sites where humans hunted zombies and found that some zombie heads had already been cracked open, which meant people had likely discovered crystal cores as well.

Therefore, Mo Yufei was even more afraid to approach human settlements, fearing that if he, an anomaly, were discovered, he would surely be beaten to death for his crystal core.

A change quietly arrived on the tenth day.

Mo Yufei witnessed with his own eyes a survivor who, when besieged by zombies, suddenly unleashed blinding lightning from his palm, blasting the zombies in front of him into scorched earth in a single strike. Thus, Ability Users emerged.

From then on, more and more humans awakened abilities. All kinds of abilities—fire, frost, strength, speed—emerged one after another. Correspondingly, however, the zombies also began a terrifying evolution.

Mutated zombies with faster speeds and stronger defenses appeared one after another. Ordinary gun bullets could only leave shallow marks on them, completely losing their effectiveness. The difficulty of surviving The Apocalypse suddenly skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, Mo Yufei's Portable Space had long been packed to the brim after days of frantic scavenging.

The essential survival supplies he had scavenged early on, such as medicine, food, seeds, fuel, and home appliances, filled more than half of the space.

Later on, he gradually collected many small animals that had survived The Apocalypse and still maintained their normal forms. Wild rabbits, pheasants, and wild pigeons were all taken into his space.

When passing by a large aquaculture base, seeing the ponds full of lively fish fry, Mo Yufei did not hesitate to put all kinds of freshwater fish fry into his space. These fish fry took up a huge portion of the space's capacity. Combined with the flock of chickens and ducks he had collected along the way, the little remaining room in the space was completely taken up.

It wasn't until Mo Yufei passed by a construction site and saw an intact excavator parked there that his face lit up with joy. He had to get it.

He immediately tried to store it, but the space was already saturated and could not fit it at all.

Mo Yufei immediately cleared out his space, discarding all the useless and replaceable junk and tools inside. Only after freeing up the last bit of space did he manage to squeeze the excavator in.