"Now!"
Yang Ao thrust out with his sword. Though he had no martial arts foundation, his aim was accurate and his hand steady. The blade pierced straight through the Jumping Zombie's crown.
The force of its leap even sent the Jumping Zombie's head further onto the sword.
With a shriek, it fell from the air.
White and yellow matter splattered across the wall, and nearly half its head was sliced away.
"Looks like the Jumping Zombie's body isn't all that tough."
As Shen Jin spoke, he smashed apart the stone beneath their feet with his pickaxe and quickly descended.
They absolutely couldn't fight an Iron Bucket Zombie in midair. That would be suicide.
"Whew—"
The Iron Bucket Zombie had arrived. Its heavy breathing came from directly east of them.
(∩ω)-*
Biubiubiu~
Shen Jin flicked his hands left and right, instantly surrounding them with a matchbox-like enclosure made of stone blocks.
"Hold this position and counterattack through the openings!"
Shen Jin did not choose to burrow away immediately. Instead, he decided to hold their ground and try a counterattack. Inside the stone matchbox, their safety was still assured.
Today, they would use their defensive position to take on an Iron Bucket Zombie!
He opened an opening, made several half-bricks on the spot, and filled it in.
This created an opening measuring 0.5 meters by 1 meter, allowing their swords to thrust in more effectively.
Bang!
Hearing the sound, the Iron Bucket Zombie charged over and began ramming the matchbox!
The stone blocks trembled and stone dust fell away, but because the matchbox was a single whole, attacks of this strength could not breach it in a short time.
"I'll open four holes. We'll stab the Iron Bucket Zombie!"
Shen Jin instantly opened holes on all four sides. The Zombie was frantically hammering at the stone blocks on the north side, apparently driven mad by the scent of humans inside.
As though eating them would allow it to evolve again.
"Stab!"
Their swords thrust out through the holes, piercing around ten centimeters into the Zombie's waist before getting stuck!
The Iron Bucket Zombie shook in pain. A tremendous force traveled down the iron swords, and both men immediately lost their grip.
The iron swords were flung into the empty space beside them.
They had lost their weapons.
Shen Jin's eyes flickered. Then he frowned and said, "This is bad. Ordinary humans don't have enough strength to hurt a power-type Evolved Zombie."
Yang Ao looked at the still-rampaging Zombie without fear. He knew Shen Jin could take him away at any time.
"I don't think we can win by brute force. We need another way—either strengthen our power or strengthen our weapons."
Shen Jin agreed. "Let's go! We can't leave the iron swords behind."
The Iron Bucket Zombie was not difficult to deal with. Shen Jin went underground, found the right position, dug a huge pit, and dropped it straight inside.
Then he retrieved both of their iron swords.
Below, the power-type Zombie roared madly, constantly clawing at the surrounding dirt and stone in a violent frenzy.
"Brother Jin, why don't we pour some gasoline down there and light it? Why bury it and wait for it to die on its own? Isn't that too slow?"
"It's hard for anything to burn that deep underground. There isn't enough oxygen."
Yang Ao understood at once. Completely sealed underground, with air coming in only from above, it would be difficult to get a fire going. It would probably go out by itself after burning for a while.
Even a stove at home needed an air vent underneath to keep the air circulating and prevent the fire from going out.
"Based on my previous experience, if it's trapped underground without sunlight or food, even an ordinary Zombie takes seven days to die completely. This big guy will probably last half a month."
That conflicted with Shen Jin's mission. The system required the enclosed territory to remain free of Zombies for three days. If this big guy refused to die, the mission could not be completed.
Shen Jin gritted his teeth, opened a pit beside it, descended to the same depth as the Iron Bucket Zombie, and broke through a spot one meter from its head, exposing the Zombie's head.
"Poke it!"
Yang Ao thrust his iron sword through the hole!
He withdrew the instant it touched, never giving the Zombie a chance to trap his weapon or grab it.
Even through the stone wall, Shen Jin could feel the pressure coming from the other side.
Shen Jin immediately sealed the opening again. Under their cowardly little stabs, even the Iron Bucket Zombie's head was not invincible, and it was cut with one scar after another.
Squelch!
The iron sword sank in completely, and the Iron Bucket Zombie whipped its head around like mad!
Yellow-green fluid splattered across the wall, and drops of brain matter landed on Yang Ao's helmet.
Shen Jin hurriedly pulled his helmet down a little farther.
"That's all virus! Be careful. If you get infected, I'll bury you together with it!"
"..."
Before long, the Zombie let out a roar and collapsed.
"Go take the blood crystal from its brain."
After opening a hole above it, Yang Ao worried that the Zombie might not be completely dead. He inserted his iron sword through the wound in its head and stirred it around a few times.
"Sure enough, I hit a blood crystal!" Yang Ao felt his sword strike something it could not cut through.
Comparing it with the one Sun Can had given him, Shen Jin found that the Iron Bucket Zombie's blood crystal was slightly larger, with more crimson gas inside.
"Let's go."
If a Zombie's head remained intact, within a few days the virus would repair and reproduce itself, allowing it to revive.
That was why Shen Jin had written in the Apocalypse Rulebook: Rule Ten: If a Zombie is not completely dead, kill it and reduce it to ash.
But if a Zombie was buried, without energy to obtain, it would die before long.
The two carefully climbed back to the surface, worried that the earlier roars of the two Zombies might have drawn even more Zombies over.
Fortunately, the surface was farmland. Only around ten Zombies were swaying toward them.
They were all ordinary Zombies covered in green moss.
"Go on. Deal with them!"
"Hehe, even a power-type Zombie died under my sword. These ordinary Zombies are nothing!"
Yang Ao's spirits soared, and then... he was chased around by three Zombies.
"Holy shit, Brother Jin, save me! Give me some long-range support!"
Well, Yang Ao was essentially just an ordinary young man with slightly better physical fitness.
Once he had overcome his fear of Zombies, a grown man with a weapon was fully capable of killing one Zombie.
But three at once!
The difficulty multiplied. That required strength, skill, and experience.
Clearly, Yang Ao had not reached that level yet.
"Hehe, who was saying ordinary Zombies were nothing? You're already like this with just three?"
Shen Jin raised himself in place and stood atop a high platform, tossing down clumps of dirt to create obstacles and separate the Zombies.
It was like playing a tower defense game. He used dirt blocks to force the Zombies along a complicated route, then had Yang Ao, a human-shaped turret, kill them one by one.
"Ding~ Level up?"
Shen Jin looked at Yang Ao and could not help making the sound aloud.
Yang Ao was drenched in sweat. "Hey! Do you really think we're playing tower defense? My arms are killing me—I don't have any strength left!"
Killing more than ten Zombies in a row was an enormous test of Yang Ao's stamina!
Shen Jin climbed higher and looked around, discovering that no more Zombies were coming over.
"Looks like that commotion just now already attracted all the Zombies in this area."
Yang Ao sat on a protruding mound of dirt, took off his helmet, set it aside, and drank water while gasping for breath.
"Gulp gulp gulp—cough cough! Gulp gulp gulp."
Since Shen Jin had served as the overall commander of this battle, he was tired, but he still went down to clean up the battlefield.
Wearing gloves, he removed a slightly smaller blood crystal from the head of the Jumping Zombie that had died first.
Digging pits, dragging corpses, pouring gasoline, lighting fires.
A complete one-stop cremation service.
After finishing up, the two rested briefly atop the six-meter-tall wall and ate something to replenish their energy.
"Keep going?"
"Damn it!"
For the rest of the day, aside from a few scattered Zombies, they encountered no more Mutated Zombies and successfully enclosed a territory of one thousand square meters.
"Crazy Dave's Backyard" mission completed!
From the sky, a six-meter-tall stone wall enclosed a roughly square space of over one thousand square meters.
Shen Jin's villa stood at the far western edge of the wall.
"The exhausting day is finally over. I'm so tired. I just want to sleep properly."
"How about, after dinner... we play Duck Duck Goose?"
"Uh, play my ass!"
Before you continue