Chapter 168
Upon receiving the news that the investigation team had returned, the base’s top management immediately put away the work at hand and rushed to the meeting room as soon as possible. The huge conference room was quickly packed.
Gong Lixin waited for everyone to come in before looking towards the ten ability users. He spoke, “Go ahead.”
The leader of the team nodded, took out a memory card and inserted it into a computer. A video appeared on screen and the leader clicked play.
Wood ability users were good at integrating into the surrounding environment, earth ability users could drill into the ground and wind ability users could fly in the sky, making them the best candidates for investigative work. Moreover, these ten people were all scouts with rich experience. After diving into Wucheng, cameras were installed in the zombies’ settlements and the look of the situation inside could directly be seen from back in Ningcheng.
Although these zombies have evolved wisdom, they were not very intelligent. Even if their eyes fell on a camera, they would not recognize it, so the work of installing the cameras was actually not that difficult. It was harder to escape the pursuit of these zombies and bring the intelligence back safely. Fortunately, they did not disappoint Young Master Gong and successfully completed their task.
These cameras were wireless cameras with built-in batteries. They were found in electronic stores in Ningcheng and the pixel quality was good and bad. They had installed hundreds of them around Wucheng, making it so that the video files were quite large. Fortunately, on the way back, they sorted them out and picked out the valuable videos and put them together into a folder.
The video began to play and the meeting room quieted. The leader of the exploration team waited for the video to start broadcasting the key place before he began to explain, “From these videos, we can find that the low-level zombies belong to the floating population of Wucheng; coming and going from the city. Senior zombies generally move into the center of the city and will not leave so easily. Like this big man, as well as this one with jeans and this one with the black dress…” He pointed out some of them one by one with a pen. The ones mentioned were permanent population of Wucheng city and had a high status among the zombies.
Everyone looked at Gong Xiangyi with an unreadable look. This video verified Gong Xiangyi’s claim that there was a cla.s.s division among the zombies, so the zombie emperor from her predictions was also likely to be true.
The scout sensed everyone’s anxiety. He fast-forwarded the video and began to focus on certain points, “This fifth-level peak high-grade fire zombie is the highest ranking zombie in the fog city and the other zombies are very afraid of him. But,” He paused and continued to fast-forward the video, “Look here. Look at what’s riding on its back.”
Everyone fixed their eyes and stared at it closely. They saw a baby zombie with a big head and thin limbs riding around the fifth-level zombie’s neck. It was stuck to the back of the fifth-level zombie like a leech. The baby zombie’s head had reached unbelievable proportions and black blood vessels had spread around its thin scalp like crawling earthworms. Compared to its unusually large head, its body was extremely thin, like a skeleton with a thin layer of skin. Its eyes were the most special aspect. It was black and white and, distinct to babies, had an extremely innocent look, but it made it impossible to determine its grade and system.
“This is the zombie emperor.” Gong Xiangyi spoke slowly and her anxious heart finally settled down. This creature did not surpa.s.s what she saw and heard about from her last life.
The scout zoomed in and gave the baby zombie a close-up. He took out the sketch Gong Xiangyi gave him a month ago and spread it on the table. He said affirmatively, “According to what we saw, this zombie and other senior zombies have a master-slave relationship. Other senior zombies take orders from it and are responsible for protecting its safety. It is indeed a zombie emperor and its ability belong to the mind control department, exactly the same as Miss Gong’s prediction.”
Looking at the sketch on top of the desk that was almost the same as the image in the video, everyone was silent.
Gong Xiangyi knew that she was not qualified to speak, but she couldn’t help but say, “Actually, Wucheng is a corpse cultivation area. Wucheng did everything to cultivate this zombie and it has absorbed all the radiant energy from the surrounding environment and evolved to have unparalleled strength. That’s why the land, air and water in Wucheng is so clean. This zombie’s ability is to use its mental power to contract other zombies to become its va.s.sals. It has no combat ability itself. You see its huge head and then its weak body; it’s the best proof of that. As long as we kill it, the zombies contracted to it will also die. Believe me, this battle will be very difficult, but as long as we are fully prepared, we will definitely win.”
In her last life, the ability users of Country C paid a huge price to capture Wucheng. When they were about to be wiped out, a stray bullet inadvertently penetrated the emperor zombie hiding among the zombies and the senior zombies fell to the ground and died. Thus, the battle ended inexplicably. The mystery wasn’t solved until an ability user found this unique zombie among the corpses and dug out its skull to take out a transparent crystal nucleus the size of an adult male’s fist.
The level of zombies could be judged not only by the color of they eyes and their aura, but also by the size of their crystal nucleus. That zombie had such a huge crystal nucleus, then it was undoubtedly the zombie emperor.
Scientists had studied it for a few months and finally found that this crystal nucleus still kept on continually absorbing the radiation from the surrounding environment. It was precisely because of the existence of this crystal nucleus that Wucheng avoided radiation pollution. Until her death, the crystal nucleus was properly preserved in Wucheng and became the savior of the survivors of Country C as a whole.
But others do not have this memory unlike Gong Xiangyi, so they were still debating. There were too many zombies in Wucheng and there were also many strong people above fifth-level. If they really went to war, once the situation changed and exceeded Gong Xiangyi’s description of the worst-case scenario, what was waiting for them was to perish.
“Since it’s an emperor zombie, the strength is definitely more than the contractee. Is there an accurate way to kill it?” Gong Lixin spoke slowly as he looked at Gong Xiangyi.
Gong Xiangyi felt dumb and her expression gradually became somber. After a while, she shook her head and said, “I’m not sure.” It was all based on luck that they were able to kill that zombie in her last life. No one knew its true ability. It was all speculated by a group of scientists afterwards.
Gong Lixin nodded and stopped talking. The meeting room fell silent once again. This decision was too difficult to make. They needed time to think things through carefully.
At this time, a guard knocked on the door and handed over some information to Gong Lixin. Gong Lixin quickly read through ten lines at a glance and pa.s.sed it around so that everyone took their turn to read it. After reading the information, the already somber atmosphere in the meeting room became even more heavy.
“I didn’t expect that before we could even start, they started the war first.” He Jin sighed and threw the information onto the table.
Yes, the zombies from the foggy city had recently started frequent attacks on some of the major bases. The s.p.a.ce of time between the attacks during this span of a month have been getting shorter and shorter and the attacks were getting stronger and stronger as the cooperation between the zombies were becoming for tacit. It was believed that in the near future, the other side would definitely launch a ma.s.sive zombie tide, turning all the humans on the Northeast Plain into food for their stomachs.
Ningcheng had the natural barrier of king kong vines which luckily, made it so that they escaped from zombie attacks, but as time pa.s.sed by, the level of zombie would keep on improving. It was inevitable that they would break through this natural barrier. And when that happened, the other humans would have already perished making it so that no reinforcement could be found. Given the current situation, a war between humans and zombies was inevitable.
Only those who were still hesitant were still debating secretly at this time. Gong Lixin, who had always been decisive, had already made a decision. He pointed to the computer and said in a grave voice, “Pa.s.s the video on to the other bases for them to see. Also prepare a detailed information about the zombie emperor and send it over as well. Tell them that I would like to fight against Wucheng and ask them if they would like to partic.i.p.ate. If they want, tell them to come to Pu’an County to discuss strategy. Also, tell them that those who do not take part in the battle will not have their share of Wucheng’s Pure Land in the future, so they should not come to us to ask for food with shameless faces.”
This remark was both intimidating and tempting. If the message was sent by other bases, those arrogant base chiefs would not take the other seriously. But if the person saying these words was Young Master Gong, they had to consider it seriously.
Facts have proved that Young Master Gong’s appeal was huge. On the third day after the data was sent, base leaders came to Pu’an County. After a week, the leaders of the bases of County C had gathered together. Of course, this does not include Liaocheng.
Today, Liaocheng was ruled by Bai Hong. Bai Hong was originally Song Haoxuan’s mistress. Her strength was only slightly inferior to that of Song Haoxuan and Zheng Chaohe, so she was very powerful in Liaocheng. But even if she had some skills, she would not be able to save Liaocheng’s downfall. Song Haoxuan’s dictorial rule was unpopular. Upon his death, many master ability users in the base left one after another. The slaves who were persecuted to the extreme all began to riot over and over again. Coupled with the loss of ability of her younger brother, even if she had three heads and six arms, Bai Hong would still be too busy.
These were just civil strife. When Pu’an country began to sell the oral disinfectant to the outside world, benefiting the whole of County C, Liaocheng, which had formed a bond of hatred with Ningcheng, began to be squeezed and suppressed by various forces. Under the pressure of internal and external troubles, Liaocheng, which was glorious in the past, had become dilapidated in just a month and its declining trend was irreversible.
There were too many people who wanted a piece of this big pie known as Wucheng. If Liaocheng didn’t come, everyone would be happy. The meeting was held for five consecutive days and all bases finally decided to join forces to attack Wucheng.
There was the top ability user Young Master Gong who was part of the battle, coupled with the detailed battle plan formulated by senior military personnel such as Father Gong and Song Haoran, everyone was full of confidence and their fighting spirit was high.
Dense bunkers and turrets rose up outside the city of fog, gradually forming a siege around the city. There were trenches in all directions that connected into one large piece and was used for spying. Of course, even if the trenches weren’t installed and zombies approached, they wouldn’t have known what these humans were doing.
If zombies possessed military knowledge, it was estimated that a large-scale offensive would have already been organized and humanity would be attacked first. But it was a pity that their wisdom had not yet developed to such heights, so they let these strategies by the humans be prepared bit by bit right under their eyes without bothering to stop them.
In three months, the battlefield of human beings had been set up and all artillery was aimed at the fog city. The attack would be launched only after the leader of the battle commanded it.