The Old Driver cursed loudly. “Fuck!”
He slammed on the accelerator, and the minibus swerved sharply around the corner. Everyone inside was thrown around by the inertia, while Mu Shan was pressed almost flat against the window glass.
That was why she clearly saw them: the zombies with ashen faces, rolled-back eyes, and human flesh dripping from their mouths. They came charging toward them with claws outstretched!
That sedan was instantly engulfed by the oncoming zombies.
It was as if some switch had been flipped. Zombies poured endlessly out of the residential buildings on both sides of the road, a dense mass of living corpses and rotting flesh surging toward the minibus like a rising tide.
Wang Wei broke down and roared, “You fucking poked a zombie nest!”
“Faster, faster, faster!”
“Go!!!”
Ordinary zombies moved slowly on their own, but once they formed a ‘zombie tide,’ they broke physical limits and became a seething mass of unidentified matter with the speed and power of a tsunami.
The Old Driver gritted his teeth and floored the accelerator, driving the minibus like it was in a rally race.
Meanwhile, Cao Cheng in the passenger seat kept hurling bricks out the window. His supply seemed endless, and every throw hit true.
The Old Driver bellowed, “Which way is Building Materials City!!! ”
Mu Shan shouted back, “Northeast!!!”
【Player Feng Wei (Old Driver) used skill: Old Horse Knows the Way
The Old Driver can always find roads others cannot.
“No crashing into south walls without turning back.”】
This neighborhood was heavily damaged. Almost no section of road was intact, with streetlights bent and twisted across the middle of the street as if a world war had raged through. The sidewalks were lined with rows of scrapped vehicles.
Mu Shan felt something was off about certain spots, but the Old Driver was going too fast for her to grasp the flash of insight in her mind.
The minibus bulldozed straight through a landscaping strip, leaving two clear tread marks behind.
They were heading straight for a concrete wall.
“Fuck!!” The porter instinctively shielded his head with both hands.
Mu Shan closed her eyes too. The next instant came a thunderous “Boom—”
Amid earth-shaking vibrations, the minibus smashed through the concrete wall. Covered in debris and rubble, it burst into the narrow alley behind.
And behind that damn wall was, unbelievably, a perfectly serviceable road.
The Old Driver bit down on his cigarette and floored it. “Hold on tight!”
【Player Feng Wei (Old Driver) used skill: Road Hooligan
+30% speed and maneuverability for player-driven vehicles.
Comes with overtaking buff.
“Don’t provoke road rage.”】
He plowed through zombies with resounding thuds. The already blood-smeared windows were now layered with fresh, bright red blood. Eyeballs and strands of hair occasionally smeared across them, nearly blocking the view with gore.
Cao Cheng reached over to spray the windshield washer.
The vehicle had clearly been reinforced by the Old Driver; it held up fine despite the impacts.
The passengers inside, however, were tossed around until they were dizzy.
Just as it looked like they would shake off the zombie tide, the fortune teller clinging to his seat suddenly yelled.
“Watch out!!!”
A little girl in a red dress stood motionless in the center of the road ahead, her hair disheveled.
Faced with this sudden eerie apparition, the Old Driver didn’t dare hit her. He instinctively yanked the wheel hard. The minibus screeched with tire friction and pulled off an extreme drift into the roadside grass.
With a “Boom,” the front end slammed into a concrete barrier, and thick smoke billowed from under the hood.
They whipped their heads around. The little girl who had been standing there was gone.
Hackles raised, Shu Yongzhi pounded his seat in frustration. “Something’s off! Let’s go! Can’t you find a road?!”
The Old Driver slapped the steering wheel and cursed, “I can’t fucking drive into the zombie tide either!”
In mere seconds, the relentlessly pursuing zombie horde caught up. They rolled and swelled, growing larger and larger… until they rose like ocean waves, nearly blotting out the sun.
Everywhere they passed, small buildings were swept underneath, vehicles and sheds crushed flat into the muck.
On closer inspection, that pitch-black “wave” crawled with countless hands and twisted faces, writhing.
Corpses long dead gaped their mouths, roaring and craving flesh.
Mu Shan’s skin crawled with goosebumps. “Watch the rear!”
A few fast zombies had already closed in, slapping at the vehicle’s sides. She leaned out the window and hacked at them with her axe.
The porter was on the other side. He bashed in a zombie’s skull with his steel rod and bellowed, “Can we get moving faster—!”
By now, the zombie horde’s fingers scratched incessantly at the bodywork with screeching sounds, as if the minibus was about to be swallowed whole.
The Old Driver kept trying to restart the engine, sweat pouring down his face.
“Pa—”
The fortune teller flung open a window, kicked away a zombie trying to climb in, and vaulted onto the roof. Mu Shan heard the metal roof denting under his footsteps.
He drew a long sword from his backpack. “Fuck your ancestors, This Poor Daoist will end you all!”
As his words fell, a dazzling sword light shot skyward, cleaving a gap through the pitch-black horde.
Seizing those two seconds of respite, the minibus finally roared back to life.
The Old Driver floored it, and the vehicle shot forward with a howl.
A few stubborn zombies clinging to the windows were shaken off as speed built.
The people inside breathed a slight sigh of relief.
In the chaos, they’d lost track of Building Materials City. The Old Driver fled for his life, but no matter which way he turned, zombies kept swarming from all directions. No one knew where they were coming from.
Sometimes from seemingly empty residential buildings, sometimes from dark market stalls.
The fortune teller was still on the roof. The porter hung out the window looking back and roared, “Fuck, they won’t let up!”
Mu Shan wiped the blood from her face and saw fresh batches of zombies surging from the buildings on both sides of the road.
They blanketed the sky, everywhere.
She had only been in the game for five days and had never seen so many zombies. It was as if half the city’s population had converged here…
The minibus barely carved a bloody path through the corpse pile.
At last, Mu Shan pinpointed that eerie sense of wrongness.
“They seem to be predicting our route!”
The zombies from the buildings on both sides swarmed out before the minibus even reached the neighborhood.
Vehicles that looked like traffic accident victims were parked neatly in rows along the road, as if deliberately cleared.
Despite the Old Driver desperately hunting for new routes, zombies always lay in ambush roadside.
The minibus’s front was caked in blood, and one side mirror was gone.
The waves of zombies behind pressed on relentlessly, densely packed. Her peashooter or axe stood no chance of breaking them.
If the vehicle got caught, they were done for.
“How much gas left!” Shu Yongzhi yelled from the roof, his sword light flashing around nonstop.
Silence fell inside the minibus.
This scavenging run was hundreds of times more dangerous than imagined. It started with the worst possible hand—a straight to hell.
The Old Driver spat out his cigarette and gnashed his teeth. “What are you all standing around for? Think of something!”
Cao Cheng in the passenger seat removed his face mask, revealing pale lips.
He stammered, “All zombies are dead people, and dead people don’t move, so I deduce—all zombies won’t move!”
Mu Shan froze.
The system’s reply was ice-cold.
【Logic does not hold, reasoning failed】
Cao Cheng looked defeated and smacked his forehead hard.
The minibus weaved crookedly down a narrow alley, with high-rises on both sides. Zombies occasionally smashed through glass windows and leapt down, crashing to the ground in splatters with dull thuds.
Those close roars filled their ears, and despair began to grip everyone’s hearts.
A piercing “Screech—” and the vehicle suddenly slowed sharply.
The Old Driver shouted back, “Something’s caught in the rear wheel!”
The porter rushed to the back window. Amid the splattering mud-like blood and limbs, the rear tire spun uselessly on the ground. In the black smoke, mangled zombies clutched the vehicle like iron chains.
He roared and leaned out, smashing with his steel rod over and over, eyes bloodshot. “I’ll fight you all to the death!”
In the chaos, blood and flesh flew.
The fortune teller’s sword arm had gone numb. He cut down the endless pouncing zombies, bathed in blood, and broke down. “Too many!!!”
The minibus dragged the zombie pile forward with difficulty.
The Old Driver had the pedal to the floor. Tires spewed thick black smoke, and the engine groaned in exhaustion.
The nearby “mountain” of zombies piled higher and higher, like the foreground of an oil painting.
Mu Shan looked up. In that moment, time seemed to freeze.
Amid the street full of zombies, she spotted a small-statured one.
It didn’t pounce but stood at the roadside.
As the minibus turned, Mu Shan’s subconscious told her that zombie was important. She narrowed her eyes and peered into the distance. Finally, she saw a line of small text above its head.
【One Dwarf Zombie (summoned by player [Collector])】
The next instant, she froze in place.