Chapter 39 – Second Level Zombies

Nie Yi still remembered Qi Jingchen’s appearance in their last life.

At that time, Qi Jingchen’s body didn’t have much meat; he was truly the same as a skeleton. And he was this way because the flesh on his body had been cut away.

The first time he had seen Qi Jingchen’s appearance, he couldn’t help feeling distressed. Later, when he learned of Qi Jingchen’s bitter experience, he hated those who had hurt Qi Jingchen to their bones.

Yet, he was also one of those who had harmed Qi Jingchen. In the beginning, when that small-scaled secure base had used the so-called panacea to exchange for materials and recruit ability users, he had been determined to obtain the ‘panacea’. Later, when his ability rioted and he nearly lost his life, Qi Jingchen had also used his blood to save him.

“We’re all ability users, we can leave with you!” While Nie Yi was silent, one of the four people standing suddenly spoke up.

They were three men and a woman. The one speaking was a man who looked like the leader, his face filled with the joy of being rescued.

“What have you done?” Zhang Zihai coldly asked as Qi Yaoyao and the people behind him had already become unable to resist throwing up.

He had killed many zombies and seen many people bitten and scratched by zombies, devoured clean, but he had never seen such a disgusting thing as this.

No matter what, zombies had already lost their minds; moreover, their nature made them regard humans as food. But before his eyes… These people were cannibals!

“We just wanted to survive.” The man who had spoken was startled, his face revealing helplessness. “We didn’t have a choice either. Furthermore, if it weren’t for these people, we wouldn’t have been trapped here either. If it wasn’t for us, these people would’ve died long ago.”

When he had finished speaking, his three companions had the appearance of ‘that’s right’, but the three people tied up didn’t have any reaction.

“You’ve eaten human meat?” Nie Yi abruptly asked.

“In this world, hasn’t it already become man eat man?” The woman from that group of three said.

“Since you’ve all regarded yourself as the same as zombies… Then…” Nie Yi put down Qi Jingchen, snatched the metal rod in Zhang Zihai’s hands, then rushed towards the four of them.

The metal rod in his hands ruthlessly slashed downwards. Before the first person could react, his head had already been smashed open. This sight had frightened everyone, while one of the companions of the one killed suddenly threw a fireball at Nie Yi. But the fireball turned towards that man instead, and ultimately landed on his face…

Not a moment later, all four of these people had died.

“Bring those three, let’s go,” Nie Yi said. As he spoke, he threw multiple water balls towards himself until he was washed clean, then picked Qi Jingchen again, and in passing, cleaned Qi Jingchen’s shoes.

With Nie Yi leading, they left the kitchen. After walking a certain distance, he suddenly stopped then threw a fireball backwards.

Kitchens in hotels usually had cans of gas, and the fireball Nie Yi threw out just happened to land on those cans of gas…

When they walked out of the entrance of the hotel, they heard explosions resounding from behind.

This would undoubtedly lead to a fire, but looking at the frightening number of zombies surrounding it, it made them feel that it wasn’t too bad to just burn all of this…

They ended up selecting a small neighbourhood nearby to rest.

Most likely because the residents in this neighbourhood had run away in the first moments of the apocalypse, there were very few zombies. They stayed in a clean house they found. Only then did they have the time to take a good look at the three people they had saved.

This group of three had two women and a man, all very young. Their bodies all had many wounds and bruises. Previously, they had expressions of befuddlement, as if they paid no mind to everything around them. Now, it seemed that they were a little better, especially one of the women who seemed a little older than the rest. With an abrupt “Wah”, she started crying. Her entire person finally had some liveliness.

Shao Zhenglan and Qi Yaoyao took a few cans of congee, opened the lid of one and gave her the can. “Eat something.”

That person began to eat mechanically, fiercely stuffing spoonfuls of congee into her mouth. Crying as she ate, when she finished eating, her mood was finally better. “Thank youk2026;”

“No need for thanks. How are you guys?” Shao Zhenglan asked. Sometimes, talking about matters would make one feel much better.

That person was startled, then finally explained everything that had happened while crying.

This woman was a teacher, while the other two, the young boy and girl by her side, who were still in a daze, were her students.

During summer vacation, B City had an English competition, so she brought some of her students to participate and stayed in another hotel.

When the apocalypse had just begun, the military had come around to rescue people, so they followed them. However, because most of them didn’t have cars, they ended up almost cramming every single car to the brim, overloading them.

This was originally fine, but when the zombies they encountered on the road grew in number, to the extent that the military had no way of protecting them…

The car they rode and a few others fell at the very end, and two of them accidentally ran into zombies and broke down while the other cars also had problems… Fortunately, they had four ability users so they managed to escape, then fourteen people hid in that previous hotel, even picking the kitchen.

A hotel’s kitchen had a lot of drinking water, so there was enough water, but people had already plundered the foodstuff, so there wasn’t much left. With so many people, they feared that they would finish all the food before two days passed… Naturally, those four ability users were discontent, expressing that only they could eat the food.

The two sides clashed, then the two who stood up to argue with the ability users were killed…

The matter fell to a standstill for a time, but the food was soon gone…

When they were starving on their last breaths, they heard those ability users speaking— Those ability users truly couldn’t bear it anymore, and had planned to eat human meat…

They really did eat it, and even forced those still living to eat, clearly treating them as grain reserves.

Actually, at first, a couple of the ability users had rejected it, unable to adapt when they ate, but they told each other things like “We just want to survive”, “In the past ages, there were many cases of eating human meat”, and so on. And after multiple iterations, it was like they had brainwashed themselves into thinking that eating human flesh wasn’t a big deal.

After they finished eating one corpse, they killed the first person, then a second, a third…

The three of them were left, partly because the two students were young, and partly because this female teacher was somewhat good-looking.

The teacher spoke disjointedly, and later even began to sob silently, but it was already enough for these people to know the entire situation.

Honestly, this matter really wasn’t rare.

In ancient times, there were matters such as eating their children during barren years. For such a matter to happen during the apocalypse was even more common… but this still wasn’t something everyone could accept.

“How could they do this…” Qi Yaoyao softly said. Even if she was hungry, she definitely wouldn’t do something like this and would rather starve to death.

“A bunch of brutes!” Zhang Zihai said. Those brutes actually wanted to join them… Truly laughable!

Nie Yi had continued to be silent. After he held Qi Jingchen and sat for a long while, he abruptly stood up and brought Qi Jingchen into the bedroom.

Originally, the room’s atmosphere had been extremely heavy. But after Nie Yi did this, everyone was stunned.

At this time, Nie Yi was still in the mood to do night activities?

Nie Yi, who had been believed to have gone to do night activities, yet in reality never had once done ‘night activities’, entered the room and only looked at Qi Jingchen. “In the future, don’t hurt yourself anymore, okay?”

“What?” Qi Jingchen asked in response.

“I don’t want you to kiss me anymore,” Nie Yi said, then hugged Qi Jingchen tightly.

Nie Yi’s heart rate was very fast, and both his hands were trembling… Qi Jingchen felt a little at a loss.

In the beginning, he truly had given up all hope. That sort of suffering was harder to deal with than even directly killing him. But as time passed, he actually didn’t think so anymore.

The last two times he ‘kissed’ Nie Yi, he had just thought that Nie Yi needed it and just did it. He didn’t feel uncomfortable at all, but Nie Yi evidently didn’t think so…

With great difficulty, Qi Jingchen didn’t avoid Nie Yi’s overly tight hug, instead obediently laying in Nie Yi’s embrace through the night.

The next day, Nie Yi took his team and killed many zombies, found many supplies, and simultaneously saved a few people. However, these people he saved were the same as yesterday’s, who made people sick. After saving a child, something happened that had made even them somewhat moved.

They had heard an elderly crying out, and after rushing up, they discovered that there were only an elderly lady and a two or three-year-old toddler in the apartment.

The elderly lady wasn’t young and had no way of escaping while carrying a child. Fortunately, she was used to cooking at home so there was stored food at home, and she liked to make many dumplings, buns and so on in the refrigerator, so she could survive with the child.

But now, she wasn’t really well. Not only was her entire body so thin her skin was drooping, but she had also fallen sick.

When Nie Yi and his team entered, she kept kneeling and kowtowing, begging them to take care of the child. She then stuffed the household register certificate into the child’s bosom for the child to have a chance to look for its parents, then wanted to jump down from the window.

She felt that an elderly lady like her was probably just dead weight, and just wanted to die…

Of course, Nie Yi and the others couldn’t just watch her die. A good number of people they had saved didn’t have much mobility, so adding another elderly lady wasn’t much trouble. However, later, when they went to take supplies, they needed someone to guard the truck.

On the third day, Nie Yi brought everyone to return.

The teacher had already slowly regained her energy and her two students seemed to have become much better. Even though the elderly lady was old, she carried her child so as to avoid troubling them. The other few they had saved also obediently stayed on the side. Therefore, on their return trip, they didn’t encounter much trouble.

But that didn’t mean there definitely wasn’t any trouble.

When they had driven halfway there, they suddenly heard violent gunfire resound before them. Seeing the situation, they were even using bombs!

“Nie shao, let’s go ahead for a look?” Zhang Zihai asked. After these three days, he actually seemed much steadier.

“Let’s go.” Nie Yi nodded. Seeing the situation over there, it must be that the people from the secure area had met trouble. At this time, there was no reason for them to watch impassively.

The truck made a turn, then they spotted many military jeeps. These cars were all in tatters, most of the soldiers in a terrible state. At a glance, it was obvious that they were in a bad situation.

“I’ll block them, you guys hurry up and go!” Someone yelled. However, the surrounding zombies were increasing, unexpectedly making it impossible for the cars to make a rapid escape.

“Damn! There are no more explosives!” Someone else yelled.

“There’s a car!” Right at this time, those people discovered Nie Yi’s car. However, they didn’t call for help, instead saying, “Run away! Run!”

Seeing his comrades, how could Zhang Zihai and the rest run away? They raised their guns and fired away. After Shao Zhenglan jumped to the ground. She immediately used her ability to help them block off a few zombies with an earthen wall, lightening their pressure.

“There’s ability users!” They were evidently surprised, but quickly continued, “We ran into a strange zombie; it can spray out black fog to attract surrounding zombies. If we are sprayed by that black fog a few times, we’ll even turn into zombies. Hurry up and leave, return to the base and report this matter!”

When the person yelling finished speaking, he paused then added, “Also, General Li’s son is here; can you bring Li shao back? We’ll help you stop the zombies.”

As they spoke, they battled with the zombies. Just at this time, the ability users from Nie Yi’s side had already gotten off the truck and began to help out.

Nie Yi had initially been standing on the truck, using his gun and fire ability to carry out long-distance attacks. Upon hearing that person’s words, his expression changed.

A zombie that sprayed out black fog? Level two zombie?

Just like how human ability users were separated into levels, zombies were also separated into levels. Those zombies they had faced in the past were all level one zombies. However, if this zombie could spray black fog, it meant it had upgraded and become a level two zombie.

The black fog that level two zombies sprayed out was all over the world during the later stages of the apocalypse; furthermore, if a regular person breathed in too much of this, they would become zombies.

Of course, ability users had a certain immunity towards this. Generally, ability users wouldn’t turn into zombies if they were given a minor injury by level one zombies. When they encountered the black mist spouted by level two zombies, they also wouldn’t turn into zombies. However, if they were directly injured by a level two zombie, then they would still turn into a zombie.

Nie Yi remembered that level two zombies hadn’t appeared during this time in his last life. How could there be one now?

Is it that the appearance of level two zombies had appeared ahead of time, or had he not noticed this in his last life?

No matter what the situation was, Nie Yi knew that he must now go take a look.

Qi Jingchen already didn’t want to live; if the evolution of zombies really had sped up… Then what reason did he have for Qi Jingchen to continue living, to make a stand against this world?

Those damned zombies!

The level two zombies’ black fog was disastrous to humans, but it was extremely attractive to ordinary zombies. Moreover, it would make them very excited, their movements nimbler.

Because of this, this unit ended up in this situation. As long as they looked at the large number of zombies wearing the same clothes as them, it was enough to show how many comrades they’d lost.

Nie Yi used one arm to firmly carry Qi Jingchen, while the other didn’t use fireballs; instead, he threw out a fire dragon that repelled all the surrounding zombies.

His face was cold, but his pace was steady. The zombies around him all quickly had their heads roasted.

After walking for a while, Nie Yi saw three zombies spraying black fog. Those three zombies were indeed level two zombies.

Nie Yi’s expression shifted as the fire dragon in his hands became bigger. Right at this time, those three zombies spraying black fog looked over and actually retreated subconsciously.

In the military jeep, a youth in his twenties had been watching the situation outside. Nie Yi, who could still leisurely stroll in the zombie pile attracted his full attention.

Baobao Notes

An extra ko-fi chapter here! Thanks to Mo and Maddy (who actually donated for something else, but I’ll add your name here anyways)