After a full day and night of Cultivation, aided by a Demon Core, Luo Yunxi was eager for a fight. Gripping her iron rod, she charged toward the monsters.
He Ping and his group took a deep breath. They glanced at the cold, stern man and his companions with a hint of apprehension, but since they had the numerical advantage, more than half of them broke off to join the fray.
With the cover provided by countless wrecked cars, clearing them out went smoothly. Before long, the road was piled high with monster corpses.
The four men moved with disciplined coordination, killing monsters while simultaneously clearing the corpses that blocked the middle of the road. Thick, foul-smelling smoke soon filled the air.
Chaoyang wrinkled his brow. "So crude. Hey, little lady, why aren't you getting in on the slaughter?"
Feng Moxi shrugged. "I'm too weak to even truss a chicken. It's best if I don't get in their way." Despite her words, her Divine Sense never left Luo Yunxi.
At the same time, she was communicating with Little Shadow, trying to see if it could directly extract the Demon Cores from the monster corpses while remaining in her space.
"Pfft. You've got to be joking." 'Wasn't she the one who fought me yesterday? No, who was it that used such vicious methods and fought me to a standstill? Why are all women, young and old, so good at putting on an act!'
He leaned lazily against a car, pulled out a pistol, and took aim at a monster. Just as he was about to fire, Feng Moxi was horrified. The monsters in the distance were packed together; one wrong move and they would all swarm over.
'Is this guy seriously not afraid that a gunshot will bring every monster in town down on our heads?'
"What do you think you're doing?" She took a step forward and lashed out with a kick to Chaoyang's wrist. Caught by surprise, he watched his pistol tumble end over end through the air.
It landed squarely in her hand. Without a hint of courtesy, Feng Moxi casually put it away.
The smile on Chaoyang's face never faded. He just shrugged nonchalantly and chuckled. "What's with the tension? I was just aiming for fun. I'm not an idiot. What would I do if we got swarmed by monsters?"
"Like hell I do." 'For all I know, his brain just short-circuited again, and he's about to get our whole group killed.'
"Besides..." Chaoyang continued to tease, "Aren't you the one who's 'too weak to even truss a chicken'?"
Feng Moxi shrugged innocently. "I am." 'She was discovering that the only way to deal with a scoundrel was to be even more unreasonable,' she thought. 'Like she was the only one who could play dumb.'
The group's combined combat strength was impressive. Before long, they had crossed the small bridge and pushed onto the town's main street.
"VROOOM, VROOOOM~~~!"
Just then, the frantic roar of an engine sounded from behind. A motorcycle was speeding directly toward them.
Before they could even react, it shot past them, continuing straight ahead with no sign of slowing down. The man and woman on it were both screaming, their mouths wide open in terror.
The situation was already out of control.
The bike couldn't stop. It plunged headfirst into the teeming hordes of monsters.
The motorcycle was immediately overturned by the swarm. The monsters descended as one, surrounding the two fallen riders and beginning to tear them apart.
The thick stench of blood filled the air.
"Holy shit, they're crazier than I am," Chaoyang had just remarked.
Suddenly, the roar of another engine came from behind them. Everyone turned to see a pickup truck, its windows rolled down, with four punk-looking youths sticking their heads out.
Their hair was dyed red, orange, yellow, and green.
They all wore the smirks of hooligans.
Upon seeing the carnage ahead, they all roared with laughter. Some even started whooping and whistling sharply.
It was obvious now: the pair on the motorcycle had been fleeing from them and had lost control.
Just as the truck passed the end of the bridge, it screeched into a sharp turn. A blond youth in the truck raised a pistol and fired a few shots into the monster horde. "BANG, BANG BANG!" Then the truck whipped around.
It sped off again, provoking a huge swathe of monsters to turn and give chase.
"Fuck! They're asking to die." Even Chaoyang lost his cool. As if by magic, he produced another pistol and fired at the speeding truck.
His four men raised their guns as well.
But it was clearly too late.
"A bunch of lunatics." Feng Moxi shot a furious glare at Chaoyang's group, then grabbed Luo Yunxi, and the two of them instinctively turned and ran.
"You're getting off easy," Chaoyang muttered, then roared, "Run!"
The rest of the group bolted back across the bridge, retreating toward their vehicles.
They had been clearing the monsters so cautiously before, luring over one group at a time, eliminating it, and then slowly advancing, terrified of alerting the distant hordes and getting surrounded.
But now, the loud roar of the motorcycle and the actions of those troublemakers had drawn the attention of all the agitated monsters. After finishing off the two idiots on the bike, the horde swarmed after them.
More than a week had passed since the Apocalypse began, and the low-level monsters had gradually gotten faster, their speed now close to that of a normal human. The smell of blood only further inflamed their bloodlust.
As a result, their pursuit was terrifyingly fast.
Two members of He Ping's team reacted a fraction too slow. They quickly fell behind and were tackled by the pursuing monsters.
They were instantly swallowed by the tide of monsters, and the sounds of a fresh feeding frenzy erupted behind the fleeing survivors.
Everyone sprinted to their parked vehicles. Without daring to waste even half a second, they frantically started the engines and sped away.
Even so, the road ahead was already filling up with monsters again. They plowed through a countless number of them before finally breaking out of the encirclement.
Feng Moxi watched the relentlessly pursuing monsters in the rearview mirror and couldn't help but shake her head. 'This is going to be a long journey,' she thought. 'Getting past White Poplar Town seems all but impossible now.'
"Xiao Xi... bah! What kind of stupid names do you two have? I can't even tell who I'm talking to. Why were you glaring at me just now?" Chaoyang said, feeling the chill from Feng Moxi's stare.
He instinctively shifted his gaze to Luo Yunxi, who was glaring at him just as fiercely.
"It's because of reckless people like you that this path has become so difficult!"
Chaoyang rubbed his nose, still grinning. 'Truth was, they had caused a huge commotion back then because they were in a rush to leave after a mission. Who could have expected the Apocalypse to start in such a bizarre way?'
'And this town turned out to be the only way out.'
'The bridge connecting Binhai directly to the national highway had collapsed, and the river was dozens of meters wide. Unless you could fly...'
'...there was no way to cross.'
'There was no path of retreat back toward Binhai, and the monsters in this town were endless, seemingly growing stronger by the day.'
"Those two morons were probably being hunted, desperate to break out," Chaoyang mused aloud. "Never thought... never thought this town would have already turned into a monster paradise. And those four punks... they'd better hope I never see them again."
"There is another path," a cold, crisp voice suddenly cut in.
Feng Moxi looked at the cold, stern man in surprise. It was the first time he had spoken since she'd met him.
Chaoyang chimed in, asking, "What path?"
"Over the mountain, past the side of the residence."