Chapter 141: Encounter
In Wan Xing’s field of view, a mini Yu Yue avatar appeared at the edge of the smart glasses and kept flashing, indicating the other’s presence.
She completely sealed the reagent in her hand before returning to her normal appearance and lifting her head.
Looking at Yu Yue, who had a cautious appearance, she subconsciously thought of her mother who ran the orphanage. Although their personalities were completely different, both had a quality that made people feel comfortable, just like a quilt that had been thoroughly sun-dried, soft and warm.
Wan Xing asked warmly, “Is there something wrong?”
Yu Yue was startled awake and looked at the test tube in her hand with some fear.
“Is this the thing that attracted that snake back then?”
Wan Xing shook her head. “This attracts zombies.”
After chatting briefly, Yu Yue walked toward the back and saw Jiang Rong charging the engine in Carriage Number 4.
Since Su Huan was not on the train, the energy supply task was handed over to her.
Huang Hai was incubating newly laid eggs. From what he said, the eggs seemed to have some mutations.
His daughter was tinkering with those mechanical skeletons in Carriage Number 19.
Everyone had something to do.
But it was completely different from when Su Huan was there; everyone felt like something was weighing on their hearts.
Stuffy.
……
The battle outside the train was still continuing. Although it was in full swing, it seemed to have fallen into a strange balance.
The armored train boldly repaired the railway track in the encirclement.
Metal bullet rain was melted into molten iron and poured into the large pit to harden the road surface. Streams of metal flew out from the buildings on both sides, turning into metal sleepers, which were stronger and more durable than ballast or wooden sleepers, with higher load-bearing capacity.
The corrected steel rail rumbled back into place, fused seamlessly with the metal ground.
This time, even cannonballs could not shake it!
On the newly repaired railway track, the armored train once again drilled forward aggressively, pushing the sandbag-like small mountain at the front of the train forward at a turtle’s pace.
Every now and then, there was a huge bang.
The interception lock snapped and rebounded.
The cannon fire and bullets from both sides were no longer enemies but more like cheering him on.
The Steel Council seemed to have no means to deal with the train.
Li Tao had thought the same an hour ago, but now he had long discarded those messy, discouraging thoughts. Looking at the track engineering vehicle in front of him, four or five large engineering vehicles, and several cannons, Li Tao was filled with immense shock.
These were not rocket launchers or anti-aircraft machine guns, but genuine 85mm direct-fire cannons that could penetrate 150mm of armor within 1000m.
Although the model was an old antique, no one could ignore its power!
Even that armored train rampaging on the tracks would be nothing more than a lamb to the slaughter under the caliber of these cannons!
Before the apocalypse, he had tried every means but failed to obtain even one real cannon, not even one that had been retired for decades.
He never expected his uncle to quietly acquire them, along with these several mining engineering vehicles, each with tires over four meters high.
Each one weighed over three hundred tons. Even in front of the train, they could be called steel behemoths!
Various parameters flashed quickly in his eyes. Li Tao recalled his uncle’s teachings, adjusted his glasses, and covered the glow in his eyes.
But his tone still contained hidden doubt. “Uncle, you prepared this long ago?”
Li Wangchuan stood calmly by the window, looking at the superweapons crouching in the rain curtain downstairs. “From the first time you encountered the armored train, I had already sent people to start collecting engineering vehicles.”
Li Tao was stunned. “Uncle, how did you know they would…”
“I didn’t know!” Li Wangchuan unfastened the buckle on his wrist. “I only knew that an unknown force that could potentially threaten my plan had appeared in Yi Jin. That was enough for me to make extra preparations. Never hand the initiative to others.”
A gleam gradually appeared in Li Tao’s eyes. Since he had made this preparation long ago, pretending in the office that he had prepared nothing was for the directors to see. The armored train was never his uncle’s target from the start. He wanted to use this incident to completely reclaim the discourse power from the directors!
Even his own failed interception might be part of the plan!
Thinking along these lines, Li Tao suddenly understood everything and couldn’t help but say resentfully, “I thought I was the person you trusted most, but you even kicked your own nephew into the pit.”
A smile finally appeared on Li Wangchuan’s face. His nephew had been close to him since childhood, and most importantly, he was smart, so he had always kept him by his side to train.
He said leisurely, “What kind of pit is this? You sat in the helicopter the whole time without even touching the ground. Director Zhang lost twenty people and was directly eliminated, but you came back without any trouble. Do you know why?”
“Because I have an uncle who’s an executive director.”
Uncle and nephew looked at each other and smiled.
Li Wangchuan gradually restrained his emotions and looked at the dozen or so bulletproof vehicles that had stopped downstairs, one after another. He said faintly, “Learn to appropriately hand the initiative to others.”
“Uh, that’s not what you said in the previous sentence.”
Li Wangchuan didn’t care. “I needed to, so I changed it.”
Li Tao looked at his uncle, who discarded his own words like farts, dumbfounded, but also somewhat enlightened.
“Go make preparations. Don’t be too hasty; let the prey go a bit deeper.”
“To what extent?”
“When all three defense lines are breached.”
Li Tao nodded. Just as he was about to go out, his uncle’s secretary walked in. Her black professional skirt suit outlined stunning curves. Whether her hairstyle or clothing, there was no disorder, carrying a sharp invasive aura.
The two nodded and passed each other.
Li Tao paused and turned back.
He only heard the secretary say, “Three minutes ago, someone broke through the defense line in the southeast direction and entered Changli County.”
……
As the initiator of the war, the great shit-stirring train conductor was now sitting in an off-road vehicle that had bypassed half the county town.
Gale and rain tore at his long hair flying out the car window. Su Huan lazily leaned on the car window, looking at the overwhelming roar from the distant battle, his gaze like a calm lake, unruffled.
Let the train attract attention from the front, then he would lead people to quickly infiltrate the county town and find Lin Jin.
That was his combat objective.
Of course, if there was a chance to get some extra benefits from his old employer, he wouldn’t be polite.
Before leaving, he had clearly explained the combat objective to Liang Kuan and the others: make a big commotion, and if it felt wrong, turn the tail into the front and run.
The main force against the Steel Council had never been the armored train, but the zombie horde suppressed in the county town.
As long as this balance was broken, they would have plenty to busy themselves with.
When they rushed in, they had already seen several waves of zombie hordes sprinting toward the battlefield.
“Found it?”
Su Huan’s body returned to inside the vehicle and asked faintly.
The girl named Xiao Hezi on the back seat opened her eyes and shook her head solemnly.
Su Huan turned his head to look at Goat, whose forehead was covered in cold sweat, eyeballs like covered with a thin film, without any brightness. Feeling Su Huan’s gaze, “I’m also looking, but there’s no burning trace like you described.”
“Drive to the most dangerous place.”
“What?”
Goat was stunned.
Su Huan pinched his chin, looking at the chaotic streets ahead. “Drive to the place you think is the most dangerous.”
Goat gritted his teeth, yanked the steering wheel hard, and began charging toward the nearest zombie horde.
Su Huan grabbed the electromagnetic sniper rifle with his left hand, directly opened the car door on the high-speed moving vehicle, acid rain poured in and was spread out by cold blue electric arcs.
He grabbed the car frame with one hand and flipped onto the off-road vehicle.
The exoskeleton suction cups under his feet firmly locked his body to the roof.
……
One kilometer away, two disheveled figures fled frantically. Creepy hissing came from the buildings on both sides. Iron-blue figures climbed on them using all four limbs, revealing eighteen scarlet compound eyes under their armpits during movement, locking dead onto the two below.
“Bang!”
A Tier 1 jumper leaped onto the street in front of the two.
Behind, a zombie dragged a small electric scooter, its fat face full of bloodthirsty grins. Ordinary zombies surged from both sides.
“I’ll handle the back!” The scout gritted his teeth, loaded the last grenade, and fired backward.
With a boom, the zombie horde was blasted open a gap, stumps and severed limbs crashing into the buildings on both sides.
But more zombies surged up.
At a glance, the entire street was densely packed with zombies.
The scout began shooting, the lone muzzle blooming flames in the rain curtain, taking down zombies charging one by one. The crisp sound of the muzzle gradually became dull in the rain curtain, and the scout’s heart step by step fell into despair.
Zombies rioted in the residential community, a large number of Tier 1 zombies rushing out at once. The squad was caught off guard and fought an encounter battle.
Including the captain, three died on the spot. At the critical moment, it was this recruit behind him who saved him.
Thinking of this, the scout subconsciously looked back.
Suddenly, he felt a wave of heat surge past his ear. A ball of flame with a long tail flew by, landing without a earth-shattering explosion, like willow catkins falling on the zombies ahead, then beginning to burn in the acid rain.
Everything was silent, without any sound, but the flame burned at an astonishing speed.
From landing to engulfing the whole body, it took only about three seconds. The dozen or so zombies ahead contaminated by the flame were roasted into charred corpses!
They took two steps before weakly collapsing to the ground, shattered charred remains scattering everywhere.
Even after seeing it several times, the scout couldn’t help but be dazed.
“Run!”
Lin Jin shouted at him and continued running forward.
The scout quickly followed. Passing the street corner, he saw that the Tier 1 jumper had already become a charred corpse.
He didn’t even know when Lin Jin had done it.
A trace of hope surged in his eyes.
Suddenly, a night demon pounced from the adjacent building. The scout only had time to shout once, then saw the air around Lin Jin twist instantly, water vapor rising, an orange-yellow flame igniting, surging and repelling the night demon’s claws.
“Right side!”
The scout quickly observed, raised his muzzle, and unloaded a burst at the night demon.
Lin Jin also took the opportunity to escape.
The two ducked into an alley on the right, with high-rises on both sides and various storefronts below—convenience stores, coarse grain shops, hardware stores, braised meat shops, all available. There were some scattered zombies inside, but all ordinary zombies, posing no hindrance to the two evolvers.
But when they rushed around a corner, both froze in place.
Over a dozen blood hounds were gnawing on something in a mutton soup shop, their faces covered in blood. Hearing the sound, they all lifted their heads and sniffed suspiciously.
Then their scarlet gazes locked onto the two simultaneously.
The lead blood hound stepped forward, its dark red muscle texture exposed in the acid rain, shaking its body violently.
Clearly, it didn’t like this environment.
But that didn’t mean it would let go of the gourmet food delivered to its mouth.
At that moment, frantic corpse roars came from behind. The blood hound discovered someone trying to steal food and immediately roared madly.
They charged out of the mutton soup shop straight at the two, like streaks of blood-colored arcs.
The violent zombie army from behind also surged forward, trapping the two in the alley.
Flexible night demons on the walls, zombies and blood hounds on the ground, various evolved zombies glaring from both sides……
Dog barks and corpse roars instantly mixed into a chaos.
The three sides fought together—some for the meat, some as that meat.
The flames burned more fiercely in the rain, even showing signs of billowing back.
The surrounding zombies became the best firefighters, charging into the flames fearlessly, one after another.
The scout hugged a blood hound and detonated a bomb, tearing a gap in the tight encirclement.
He stumbled and fled into the roadside mutton soup shop.
Unexpectedly, he saw a familiar person.
The servant soldier comrade who said he had to go home and left him the destiny-changing crystal before leaving.
Only now he was lying gutted on the ground.
His hand still tightly clutching that old-fashioned rifle.
Lin Jin was silent for a moment.
He could feel the power in his body was running low. Using his last strength to burn the corpse on the ground to ashes, he found a slightly cleaner chair to sit on, looking at the predators frantically surging in from outside the door. There was no fear in his eyes, just a quiet sigh.
“Who doesn’t have family……”
He let the remaining flames begin burning his own body. Sharp pain instantly climbed up his arm, a scorching more unbearable than knife cuts. The keratin layer gradually cracked, flesh and blood analyzed of moisture in the blazing flames, gradually drying and splitting.
For some reason, although the flames burned zombies so quickly, they were much slower on himself, only now reaching his shoulders.
Could he not even achieve self-immolation?
The pain twisted his expression, time becoming extremely slow at this moment.
Even the deformed bloody maw of the blood hound at the door became extremely clear. He even had time to see the flesh on its fangs.
‘Didn’t expect I’d end up feeding the dogs after all……’
Lin Jin thought hazily.
Suddenly, a blue light beam abruptly passed in front of him, tearing the entire world into cold tones.
The ferocious blood hound was torn into upper and lower halves like paper.
Lin Jin was stunned. It felt like something cracked open in his heart, a trickle flowing out, then turning into a surging river!
Uncontainable ecstasy appeared on his face.
Something inside his body seemed to break open; the flames that had been harming him converged.
Countless things in the air surged toward his body.
He raised his hand, and towering flames shot skyward!
Echoing the successive cold blue light beams in front of him.
Lin Jin walked out of the mutton soup shop with a trace of apprehension and confusion on his face, then witnessed an unforgettable scene in his life.
At the other end of the street, a crazy off-road vehicle was rampaging, even seeming to jump.
No matter how the off-road vehicle crashed, a figure in a black shirt stood on the roof like a nail, holding a sniper rifle. Behind the sniper scope, the corner of his mouth curved up slightly. Another cold blue light bloomed from his muzzle, like the whip of the heavenly emperor, tearing a gap in the rain curtain.
(Lin Jin)
(Su Huan)
