Today, he received a message from that person telling him to restrain himself: “Zombies only have the greatest value when they’re raised to sixth, seventh, or even eighth rank. If you kill them at fifth rank, where are you going to find replacements?”
Ying Da forced himself to endure it.
But if he could not fight those free-range zombies, could he not beat his own subordinates?
After chasing away that subordinate, Ying Da summoned other subordinates who could take a beating and began nit-picking and abusing them in all kinds of ways. For a time, everyone dared to be angry but no one dared to speak.
Everyone in Qing City Base was an ability user, and they all lived in the same district.
They called themselves a base, but they had not built city walls or any defensive fortifications. They simply assigned people to specific locations and kept watch day and night.
In the past, second- and third-rank low-level ability users did this work. Although these ability users would already count as powerful high-rank ability users elsewhere, in the strange Qing City Base, they were merely ordinary bottom-rung ability users.
Now, many fourth-, fifth-, and even sixth-rank ability users were fighting to take over the lower-level watch duties, volunteering to stand guard on the outermost perimeter and letting others go to the inner, seemingly safer areas, all just to stay farther away from Ying Da.
Only those high-rank ability users who had caught Ying Da’s attention had no choice but to remain in the central area.
Xin Nuo was a fourth-rank ability user valued by Ying Da because she possessed a special purification ability.
Purification belonged to the healing category. It was a variant of healing. It could purify existing water and food, clean people, and remove dirt from various tools.
With her around, the foul-smelling water in the floodwaters could be purified and drunk, and many foods that had not spoiled too badly could be purified and eaten again. Her ability was extremely versatile when it came to meeting the base’s basic living needs.
However, her ability also had a drawback: it required more specialised knowledge.
It was like Pan Feizhou, the sports student from Butterfly Garden. He needed to study knowledge related to elements and combine elemental structures with what his ability perceived, only then could he extract the corresponding metals, or even separate and recombine certain metallic compounds into the materials he needed.
Xin Nuo’s ability required more knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics. She had to extract harmful microorganisms, trace harmful gases, and harmful impurities from water before she could truly purify it.
Yet so far, her purification work had relied only on instinct and common-sense operations. It was superficial and not thorough enough. If the work was done well, it was considered her duty. If it was not done well, Ying Da would beat her violently.
Previously, when the base’s water-type ability user had tried to flee, they had been caught and used as an example to warn the others, beaten to death in front of everyone. Now, as an important and essential member, Xin Nuo was monitored every day and did not dare to run.
Countless times, on nights when she was covered in wounds, she prayed that Ying Da would suddenly drop dead—preferably by her hand.
But in the end, she could only watch as Ying Da rapidly advanced from fifth rank to sixth, then to seventh.
The terrifying pressure belonging to a high-rank ability user made her hate him so much her teeth itched.
And that hatred reached its peak when Ying Da grew tired of women who relied on sex to exchange for resources and barely survive, then turned his attention to her.
Who knew what madness had taken him. After beating many of his subordinates, he ordered someone to tell her to clean herself up and wait for his “favour” that night.
Xin Nuo listened to the message, and her anger overwhelmed her fear. A tremendous hatred rushed to her head, making her decide immediately.
Since she could not escape no matter what, since her dignity would continue to be trampled, then she would use everything she had to drag him down to hell with her!
Even if a fourth-rank ability user facing a seventh-rank one was like throwing an egg against a rock, she would make him pay as heavy a price as possible.
Just as she had already decided to gather all her ability and, the moment she touched Ying Da, purify him like garbage, the messenger stopped her.
His head and body were covered in blood. Clearly, he too had just been beaten by Ying Da.
“We can only hide. Otherwise, even if we use everything we have, we’ll only dirty his hands. But a filthy thing like him is dirtier than any stain you could leave behind with your life. Your desperate strike won’t hurt him at all. I’ve already contacted some people. While he’s just finished venting and is playing cards, we run first!”
And so, that night, a huge disturbance broke out in Qing City Base.
Ying Da discovered that several of his capable subordinates had silently run away. Even the eyesight ability user who acted as the base’s surveillance had fled.
By the time he finished his card game and wanted to find subordinates and women, he could not find any of them.
For a time, the entire base descended into chaos because of Ying Da’s fury.
At this moment, Fu Erdie was approaching from the south, more than five hundred kilometres away from Qing City Base.
Because they had not frequently flown at high altitude, nor had they brought the whole massive Seventh Building with them, the group’s movements were relatively hidden.
Apart from people they happened to encounter on the road, they did not attract anyone’s attention.
As for those they did encounter, Fu Erdie first observed them from a distance through her vision ability. Only after preliminarily judging that they were not bad people, not foolish, and not weak people barely surviving, did she approach.
They asked these people for information. After travelling on and off for one or two months, they finally discovered some useful clues.
First, in this vast south-eastern region, there were many ability zombies. And as the apocalypse continued, more and more ordinary zombies were evolving abilities.
Because of that, when these ability users had enough strength, they acted like Fu Erdie. They did not blindly hide in one place, but instead chose to strike out and harvest ability zombies as much as possible to strengthen themselves.
“But for some reason, the ability zombies level up much faster than we do,” that person said. “We’ve already worked very hard to find crystals and upgrade, but we still can’t compare to those powerful ability zombies. I know of fourteen zombie kings that were originally the same level as us. But by the time we upgraded to fourth rank, they had already reached sixth.”
At this point, the person could not help worrying. “If there are many zombie kings that level up this quickly, sooner or later, we’ll become like ordinary survivors, or even first- and second-rank ability users. We won’t dare to go out anymore. We’ll only be able to find somewhere to hide and avoid attracting zombies’ attention.”
Fu Erdie took out the map, exchanged information with the people they met on the road, and marked the known locations of the zombie kings they mentioned.
From Jian City to Qing City, it was clear that most zombie kings had divided up territories with some unspoken understanding. Each zombie occupied a portion of land and ordered the zombies in its area to move freely or gather in a certain direction.
Fu Erdie compared the information about the zombie kings with the seventh-rank zombie she had encountered earlier, and felt faintly alarmed.
The intelligence of these zombies seemed completely equal to that of normal humans.
They had human intelligence, but also retained the instinct to “hunt” and the beast-like tendency to mark territory. They were like leaders of packs of hyenas, leading groups and taking a series of offensive or evasive actions because of various triggers. Based on their currently known movements, they were all heading northwest.
The seventh-rank fire-type zombie king that Seventh Building had encountered should have been the fastest one, the one at the very front.
But Fu Erdie found it very strange.
That fire-type seventh-rank zombie king clearly knew some basic information about Butterfly Garden. That was why it had not recklessly charged in. Instead, it had repeatedly tested Fu Erdie’s group’s attack methods and behavioural patterns, waiting until Fu Erdie returned to C City before making its move.
Zombie kings had intelligence and could think, but that did not mean they would naturally know how to capture ability users and force information out of them through torture.
It was like how ordinary people might know the rules of chess, but when they actually played, they would still be completely lost and disorganised. They had to study, adapt, and even be taught before they could develop basic ways to handle a situation or person.
That was the first strange point.
The second was that after the zombie king gained intelligence, there was no need for it to clash head-on when it knew Fu Erdie was powerful.
Since they could choose not to clear out the survivors in the cities one by one, but instead wanted to go where there were more people to eat, why would they clash directly with such an obviously powerful group like Fu Erdie’s?
Were they trying to stop them from continuing downstream along the Li River?
But that made even less sense. Zombie kings could not possibly have any spirit of unity or friendship, sacrificing themselves to protect the forces of other zombie kings. That simply did not exist.
No matter how she looked at it, that fire-type zombie king seemed to have been guided, or even controlled, by someone, which led it to make that decision.
Fu Erdie looked at the map, pondered for a moment, and shifted her gaze to Qing City.
After the apocalypse, there had been eight large bases in the country. Qing City Base was one of them.
However, no information had come out of it since a year ago.
Fu Erdie lightly tapped the Qing City marker on the map and decided to head there.
Their current location was halfway up a mountain, a large part of which had been buried.
Fu Erdie released the dandelions and zucchini to deal with the zombies that occasionally gathered around. Meanwhile, she and Sang Wenhao used discarded metal nearby to create a three-bedroom, two-bathroom structure on the spot.
Fu Erdie and Sang Wenhao shared one room. Cen Xiyang had one room. Han Zhi had one room.
As for the bathrooms, the two girls used one, and the two boys used the other.
They skilfully lit a fire to heat water, washed and cleaned themselves, then handed the used water to the zucchini so it could absorb the dirt. The purified water was placed back into the space to be used for the next bath.
Just as everyone was proceeding step by step and thought they could rest after washing up, they suddenly felt a gust of cold air coming through the window.
The temperature had dropped.
It was now the end of May.
In early June of the first year of the apocalypse, the apocalypse had just begun.
At that time, the temperature had quickly risen from the twenties to the thirties, followed by a long period of forty- to fifty-degree heat.
But now, at the same time of year, Fu Erdie felt the temperature around her and had a bad premonition.
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