Chapter 163
Warning: Cliff
After detaining several base leaders, He Jin went back. His original intention was not to wait for Gong Lixin to settle the score before leaving the county. After all, it’s not like it would be too late to handle it afterwards. Their large base would still be there and they couldn’t run away. The main purpose of making them stay behind was to let them help guard the town in case Gong Lixin met a zombie tide again before they left the border. An ability user’s promotion time was inaccurate; sometimes it was fast and took 30-40 minutes, sometimes it was slow and took 30-40 hours. But Song Haoran and He Jin knew that Gong Lixin was actually practicing martial arts and this rule could not be applied to him, so they were well prepared for any surprises.
After several base leaders returned to their farmyard, they also figured out the other’s plan and blamed He Jin for being so black that he even wanted to use them as cannon fodder! However, no one could predict whether a zombie tide will come. If it did come, they would all have to fight against them. If the zombies didn’t come, they would have to show their good side so that Ningcheng’s people could see their sincerity as they tried their best to remedy the situation. Liaocheng had collapsed and Ningcheng’s momentum was unstoppable. When they fought against Ningcheng, they felt the difference between an egg and a stone. People might have spent their life as a loyal soldier, but a single pharmaceutic sanction was enough for them to stand against them.
The leaders had figured things out themselves. Several leaders automatically took over the defensive work outside of town. They directed the earth ability users to build a high stone wall around the town, put all the arms they brought over to the walls. In case they encountered a low-leveled zombie tide, the dense wall of ammunition could resist against them for a while without using up too much of their fighting power.
Song Haoran came to check the situation after they arranged the defensive line and asked Li Dongsheng to distribute three bottles of blue potion to each of them to replenish their strength at any time. This generous approach immediately dispelled the dissatisfaction of these people. Some of them saw Gong Lixin handing over the crystal nucleus of Zheng Chaohe to Li Dongsheng before entering the small farmyard. His selfless mind made them admired the young leader. Undoubtedly, life was quite good under Gong Lixin’s rule. Many people had the idea of surrendering to Ningcheng and only few thought otherwise.
After the defensive line at the edge of the town was laid out, Song Haoran was still not satisfied enough. He frowned and stood on the wall as he thought. He wanted to plant king kong vines outside the wall, but as a result, their allies would also be attacked without them doing anything.
Luo Dahai cleaned the thorns and vines entangled around the cars and trucks and a.s.signed several people to drive them into town. After a few laps outside the towering stone wall, he leaned out the window and called Sun Tiantian in a loud voice. When it came to exterminating zombies, no one was more experienced than their group.
When Sun Tiantian arrived, the two whispered amongst each other for a while and then, immediately divided the work as they cooperated. In the same way as before, Sun Tiantian turned all the cement ground outside the stone wall into dirt. She stomped her feet and the soil immediately transformed the ground into a ten-meter-wide and ten-meter-deep circular hole. The town stood at the center of the moat with a quaint stone wall as protection. It almost looked like a majestic old castle and there was no trace of the earlier rustic atmosphere.
The onlookers on the top of the wall were all stunned. They sighed that Ningcheng had hidden dragons and crouching tigers that had unfathomable strength. A little girl in her early twenties had such strength and the other earth ability users found her actions quite inspiring After a few steps, the ground behind her foot changed. With the simply action of stomping her foot, she could crack the earth and create landslides; such thoughts and imaginations was comparable to the power of G.o.ds.
They had thought that they had to squat down when applying their ability: put their palms to the ground to get more direct contact. Using their abilities like that made it so that, without the cover of their comrades, they could only curl up in the middle of their team and be protected by others. They had all felt inferior and ashamed at the mere thought, but when they saw Sun Tiantian’s actions, it moved their hearts. They thought about getting a better understanding of their ability after they went back and to improve their own moves.
The trench was ready. Luo Dahai as well as Li Dongsheng, Gu Nan, Ma Jun and others that followed behind, took a small cloth bag and evenly spread the seeds of mutant plant into the trench. Seeing their movements, all ability users on the stone wall were covered in cold sweat. A base leader approached Song Haoran and asked cautiously, “Major Song, they, are they planning to plant king kong vines?”
The people of Ningcheng loved to grow their king kong vines and this horrifying hobby was known to all of Country C’s people.
“It’s not king kong vine. The seeds are blue, so it should be bone vine that’s being planted.” Song Haoran raised his brows and sighed as he watched the members of the team that really liked to use the pit kill technique. However, the impression after the act really left a bad taste in the mouth.
Everyone on the wall heard him and their pale faces didn’t recover an ounce of colour, but turned blue instead. Bone vine – among the ten most horrifying mutant plants, it was ranked second, only after the king kong vine. What’s wrong with these people from Ningcheng? These people are abnormal! If there was a list of top ten most brutal races, Ningcheng’s people would definitely rank first! Everyone had the same thought.
The lush blue and green vines bloomed in the trench and looked as beautiful as a dream, but people on the wall didn’t have any intention of watching the show and simply stepped back.
Sun Tiantian, Luo Dahai and the others ran up onto the wall and leaned over to see the blue fruits grow bigger and more abundant and the green vines had lost the energy to climb up the wall. They nodded and expressed their satisfaction.
Time pa.s.sed bit by bit. The orange sunset sunk down the hill, the blue sky was gradually engulfed by darkness and slowly, one or two faint stars flickered into the night, making for a lonely appearance. Gong Lixin’s small garden courtyard was still quiet with no sign of movement.
From the initial tension to the later anxiety to the current calmness, people waiting in the town had been gradually enveloped in a certain kind of unspeakable tacit understanding from their original reluctance to cooperate. Although Ningcheng’s people were xenophobic, their style and behaviour were very low-key and was far better than the arrogant and self-important Liaocheng’s people. Moreover, if you thought about it carefully, the people of Ningcheng had plans to release oral disinfectants at first. Their effect was similar to that of their anti-zombie drug, but they were too greedy and incurred the following disaster.
In the final a.n.a.lysis, they were all bewitched by Liaocheng’s people and turned into guns to be used by Liaocheng’s people to deal with Ningcheng! The front and rear defenses all thought the same way and several base leaders were filled with resentment towards Liaocheng’s head. After going back, their relationship with Liaocheng would be broken!
Near midnight, Jin Shanghui who was squatting on the roof of the courtyard suddenly opened his dark golden, vertical eyes. His pupils glowed green in the night and looked like those of a wolf. Jumping from the roof to outside of the courtyard wall, he stood straight on top of the wall and roared. Dou Heng, with a weary face, rushed towards the town entrance.
Song Haoran took Sun Tiantian and Luo Dahai to the wall. Earth and wood ability users have low attack power, but when it came to defending a city, no one had a better advantage over them, and the one who cultivated these advantages first now quietly stayed inside a small courtyard and knew nothing about the current situation.
Hearing Jin Shanghui’s clear roar, the three of them immediately tightened their nerves and ran to the wall to check the situation.
“Attention, there are zombies approaching!” Song Haoran shouted loudly. Jin Shanghui’s strength was the strongest among them and his five senses were also the best. His warning should not be wrong.
Everyone quickly rallied and stood in accordance with Song Haoran’s pre-arranged offensive and defensive positions. Sure enough, not long afterwards, flashes of light began to appear in the dark night. That was not a star nor was it ghost fire, but the beastly vertical eyes of zombies. Looking at the density of the light, there was suddenly thousands of them.
The crowd guarding the wall gulped as they felt a tingling of fear down their spine.
Jin Shanghui finally ran to the top of the wall and, without a word, he threw countless sharp blades with cold lights from his hands. Painful roars of zombies rang outside the wall. It was obvious that some zombies with lower levels were injured. After all, it was an attack launched by a fifth-level zombie and few zombies could resist it.
With Jin Shanghui taking the lead, everyone came back to themselves and threw long-range attacks desperately over the wall while others fired with their machine guns. The originally silent town suddenly boiled over and the sky was rendered bright with various abilities flying all over.
With these colourful lights, Song Haoran looked down the wall.
Densely packed low-level zombies rushed to the front, filling the deep pits with bone vines. The odor and hissing sound of corroded flesh was horrifying to watch. The higher-level zombies rushed up from behind. They stepped on their corpses and climbed up the wall, but all of them were knocked down by rocks called up by earth ability users, turning them into fertilizers for the bone vines.
The zombies rushed forward and as they did so, the higher the level of the zombies became. Moreover, there were obviously several fifth-level zombies from different departments acting as leaders. The combined long-range attacks and melee combat to organize this zombie siege. It caused a lot of trouble for the defenders of the city. Several fourth-level zombies successfully climbed the stone wall and created a gap in the first line of defense.
Fortunately, the people of Liaocheng, who had been watching with cold eyes, weren’t stupid. When they say that the situation was critical, they immediately ran up to reinforced them against the zombies.
Looking at this defensive war, the expression on Song Haoran’s face became more and more tense. He raised his hand and shot a fireball into the air, throwing over the wall. The fifth-level fire system zombies outside the wall wasn’t weak. It also summoned its own fireball to attack. This was to fight fire with fire.
Water ability users and ice ability users quickly created water curtains and ice covers above their heads to protect everyone from the flash fires. Song Haoran threw another attack before hiding under the ice cover made by Xiao Sun Jie with a dark face.
These zombies understood strategy and cooperation. They were completely different from their original chaotic attack pattern. This showed that the wisdom of the zombies had been greatly improved, not too mention what would happen in the long run. Just looking at Jin Shanghui’s increasingly humanized behaviour was the best evidence.
The current battle was a war in the truest sense. Humans and zombies have gone out of the narrow scope of hunter and hunted and became truly equal enemies. Song Haoran had a hunch that the war between humans and zombies had only just begun!
However, the battle situation was getting worse and he could no longer think too deeply about what to do. He could only concentrate on dealing with the zombies that were constantly rushing up. The ten-meter-deep trench beneath the wall had long been filled with zombies and formed a hill. Without even needing to climb the wall, they stepped on the piles of zombie corpses and attacked the town. The fifth-level zombies, who seemed to be the leaders, did not stop their attacks either. They looked up and shouted loudly, as if calling for more companions.
Seeing the dense crowd of zombies at the bottom of the wall, the people fighting gradually became overwhelmed. After more than three hours of fighting, there was only the last bottle of blue potion left in their hands and some people had already drunk it before continuing to attack. Feelings of despair and panic spread in everyone’s hearts and everyone’s will became more and more depressed.