20: Chapter 20 National Power

On the other side, Mo Yufei's operations were extremely meticulous, relying on his wide-range psychic sense to clearly control the entire scene.

For every zombie he controlled, as soon as it gathered a small pile of crystal cores, he immediately ordered them to disperse, moving in twos and threes, never clustering together, and quietly retreating deep into the intricate alleys of the Urban Village.

They completely avoided the open plaza, eliminating the risk of being collectively locked onto by high-altitude drones.

Utilizing walls and the ruins of buildings as cover, the zombies moved stealthily, showing no signs of abnormality at all.

Meanwhile, Mo Yufei was inside the Urban Village, moving between the shadows.

The zombies delivered the collected crystal cores to hidden spots, where the crystal cores were continuously absorbed by the system, and he watched as the energy bar gradually filled up.

Just as the last crystal core sank into his palm, a deafening roar suddenly tore through the sky!

The sound was sharp yet heavy, moving from far to near, instantly drowning out all other strange noises in the ruins, and even the gravel on the ground trembled slightly from the vibration.

Mo Yufei looked up abruptly, his pupils contracting suddenly.

A silver-gray fighter jet was skimming low over the ruins, its sleek lines sharp, the weapons mounted under its wings clearly visible, appearing extremely oppressive in the gray sky.

The fighter jet was flying at an extremely high speed, its airflow kicking up clouds of dust. Mo Yufei's heart tightened, and he instinctively curled his body, hiding behind a half-collapsed concrete wall beside him.

He was now a special zombie that retained his rationality, with no living human aura on his body; ordinary thermal imaging and life detection equipment could not capture his presence at all.

Mo Yufei did not know that it was precisely because he lacked the characteristics of a living person that the command headquarters issued a direct attack order.

"It's just a routine patrol fighter; it couldn't possibly have discovered me."

Mo Yufei thought to himself with certainty, his tense nerves relaxing slightly. He kept his eyes fixed on the fighter jet, calculating that after it flew away, he would continue to search for more crystal cores.

But the next second, a sudden change occurred!

The fighter jet paused slightly, and a missile trailing white exhaust suddenly detached from its wing, whistling toward his hiding spot like an arrow of death with a piercing sound that tore through the air!

The missile's flight trajectory was incredibly precise, without the slightest deviation; the target was undoubtedly him!

At this moment, he suddenly realized that the tentacles of the state apparatus had precisely locked onto his tracks in the short time he had been collecting crystal cores, with a speed that left him no time to react.

Mo Yufei felt no resentment; instead, a surge of indescribable shock welled up within him. He instinctively exclaimed, "The country is truly powerful! This missile is really big!"

Before this exclamation had even faded, an intensely blinding white light suddenly exploded, instantly engulfing the small building where he was hiding. The extreme brightness was blinding, followed immediately by a deafening, earth-shattering explosion!

The reinforced concrete building collapsed with a roar, and the room he was in was completely shattered by the missile's power; the walls and floor instantly turned into debris filling the sky, while heat waves and shockwaves frantically tore at everything around.

Mo Yufei didn't even have time to form a final thought of escape before his body was completely engulfed by the violent power of the explosion.

The moment his consciousness cleared again, he suddenly discovered that he was floating in mid-air, having once again turned into that ethereal spirit body.

Mo Yufei looked down and saw that the ground was a mess; amidst the rubble and debris lay the scattered, fragmented remains of his original body, with flesh and broken bones mixed into the smoke and dust, a gruesome sight.

Looking at this completely shattered body, Mo Yufei's spirit body trembled slightly, and he pulled a bitter smile at the corner of his mouth, muttering helplessly to himself, "Well, that's great, now I can't even put it back together."

Looking at the fragmented remains of his body covering the ground, Mo Yufei's spirit body felt no panic at all; on the contrary, he was unusually calm.

Previously, he had been obsessed with maintaining this mutated zombie body, not because he was attached to the flesh, but because in a purely spirit state, he could not collect crystal cores at all, and the plan to upgrade the secret realm would be out of the question.

But now, things were different; even if he were separated from his physical body, he could rely on his powerful Mental Energy to easily control the ordinary zombies around him for his own use, letting the zombies search and collect crystal cores for him.

More importantly, in his soul state, he had completely transcended the realm of physical attacks; missiles, firearms, explosions... all human thermal weapons could no longer harm him in the slightest.

The ethereal spirit body hovered above the ruins, and a vast, unparalleled wave of Mental Energy suddenly erupted from around him. With him as the center, it swept out frantically like a tsunami, instantly covering more than half of the fallen city!

This absolute psychic pressure, carrying an extreme coldness and brook-no-resistance quality, enveloped the entire city like an invisible canopy from above.

It passed through walls, floors, and streets without any obstruction, diffusing into every dark corner and precisely locking onto every wandering zombie in the city.

There was not a single roar, not a shred of struggle, and not the slightest instinctive resistance.

The movements of the zombies wandering aimlessly through the streets and alleys froze in unison, and their turbid, dead eyes suddenly turned in the same direction.

The originally scattered and disorderly horde of corpses was instantly and firmly controlled by the same will, like puppets that had been given a unified command.

In high-rise buildings, zombies on the dozen-plus floors ignored the height, directly grabbing window sills and balcony edges; their limbs stiff but without hesitation, they jumped towards the direction commanded in their minds.

With Mo Yufei as the center, black shadows continuously fell from the windowsills of high-rise buildings in the city, with dull thuds echoing one after another.

The zombies of half the city moved in perfect unison, densely gathering into a pitch-black, surging tide of corpses, moving forward in a grand, sweeping motion toward the same direction like a tide; the entire city fell into complete silence under this dead pressure.

The zombies, with their stiff gaits and ignoring obstacles along the way, followed the direction guided by the Mental Energy and rushed frantically toward Tianzhu District.

That place was originally an original ecological forest park and wildlife sanctuary in the near suburbs of the city. The terrain was a natural basin shape, high on all sides and low in the middle, with very few residential areas. It was already a rare open area in The Apocalypse, making it an excellent place to gather zombies.

Mo Yufei's spirit body hung quietly high in the sky, coldly controlling this massive torrent of zombies. His Mental Energy firmly locked onto the boundaries of the basin terrain, doing his best to ensure that every zombie was precisely driven into this area.

Inside the fighter jet circling at low altitude, the monitoring instruments suddenly erupted with piercing alarms, and the screen was filled with dense abnormal signals.

The zombies were gathering frantically toward Tianzhu District at an astonishing speed. This picture of the collective migration of zombies, which defied common sense, made the operator on the fighter jet's face change drastically in an instant.

In the command room, the lights flickered, and the atmosphere was so heavy it felt as if it had frozen.

"The horde of corpses has left the city!"

The operations staff officer pointed to the edge of the sand table, his voice urgent, "The horde of corpses is entering the no-man's-land. There are no human life signals in the area, no survivors, and it meets the conditions for a large-scale strike!"

"Suspected unknown energy is actively guiding the horde of corpses to gather; requesting to execute a covering missile strike!"

The Commander stared at the big screen, his eyes resolute, without the slightest hesitation: "Approved! Immediately mobilize the entire regional missile formation to implement a saturated covering strike!"

"Received! The full-region missile launch order has been issued! Coordinates locked on the suburban corpse gathering area!"

The moment the order was issued, countless points of cold light suddenly lit up in the distant sky.

Dozens of missile launch bases ignited simultaneously, and one surface-to-surface missile after another, trailing long white exhaust flames, tore through the dark sky, densely packed like a migrating swarm of locusts, whistling toward Tianzhu District, covering the sky and earth.