Infected Zone

Vanessa slapped a hand over her head, and her grip on Li Wei's hand loosened. She hadn't expected her best friend to show up at this moment.

Just as she wanted to say something, a wailing alarm that drowned out every other sound blared overhead.

A red indicator light flashed incessantly. The drone bearing the Blackwatch logo was eye-catching, and the noise it made was loud enough as well.

Anyone with a phone who had watched the news instantly went pale. Almost everyone knew what these drones were used for.

They were used to detect infected individuals or people carrying the virus who had yet to mutate!

As the alarm went off, the crowd screamed and scattered, quickly moving away from the drone's range. Vanessa and the glasses-wearing girl who had just run out both wanted to flee with the crowd. Vanessa even tried to pull Li Wei along, but she couldn't move him.

When she turned back, she saw the drone hovering directly above them, its sensor aimed at Li Wei. That meant Li Wei was the virus carrier!

Her face went pale at once. She let go and stared at the hands that had touched Li Wei, her face filled with terror.

He's a virus carrier! I touched him! He... he!

"Aaaahhh!"

Overwhelmed by her own horrifying thoughts, Vanessa collapsed backward onto the ground and let out a terrified scream.

Li Wei looked up at the drone. The news had only reported yesterday that these things could detect the virus, yet they had already been deployed so quickly.

Everyone around him had already moved away. Li Wei stopped hiding, bent his body, and leaped. Before everyone's disbelieving eyes, he soared onto the face of a building more than ten meters away, sprinting across its outer wall as if it were level ground. Before long, he reached the rooftop.

Blackwatch soldiers and armed SWAT officers who had received the drone's signal sprang into action. Armed helicopters circling above Manhattan rapidly headed for the signal's source and spotted Li Wei moving swiftly between the buildings.

The helicopter's cannons and weapons locked onto the fleeing Li Wei and opened fire over the empty rooftops. Cannon shells kept streaking past him, striking the city's concrete and kicking up clouds of dust.

Dodging the cannon fire, Li Wei leaped from the rooftop. The cells within his body compressed once more, blasting out a burst of air. After ripples of distortion appeared in the air, his entire body shot forward as though struck by a massive hammer.

Then he spread his limbs and glided through the air. The pressure generated within his body could not let him fly, but it allowed him to keep gliding toward distant buildings.

Rogers held a cup of coffee. After working for a while, he felt somewhat tired, so he walked over to the window, intending to look down from the hundred-meter-high building at the bustling traffic below and soothe his weary middle-aged heart.

"A high-paying job really is nice..."

With that sigh, he tilted his head back and took a deep slurp of fragrant coffee. The moment he lowered his cup, a huge foot suddenly appeared against the glass before him.

Bang!

"Ah!"

The huge foot stomped onto the tempered glass, leaving deep cracks across it. Then it vanished. Rogers let out a terrified scream and collapsed onto the floor. His coffee spilled onto his pants, scalding him and making him howl in pain.

Li Wei sprinted along the office building's wall while the pursuing helicopters stopped firing. Opening fire now would definitely result in civilian deaths inside the building.

The protest would only grow more intense. The spokesperson was already trying to redirect domestic hatred, but things were not going well.

The infected had physical bodies. Anyone with eyes could tell those things were dangerous, and everyone feared them. So the citizens had made up their minds—they would keep protesting until the infected were dealt with.

This time, it would not be easy to brush things aside...

The information was relayed to headquarters. The protestors were forcibly dispersed, and the roads were sealed off.

Li Wei darted and weaved between buildings at tremendous speed. From time to time, he looked back and clearly saw Blackwatch soldiers charging through the city in police armored vehicles, their target being him.

Although this was the first time he had been pursued with such fanfare, all he had to do was reach the Infected Zone. Those detection drones would become useless there. He could find a chance to slip out again at night. It was no big deal.

This had to count as five-star treatment, right?

While dodging the sweeping fire of the helicopter cannons, Li Wei kept looking back as more and more pursuers closed in on him.

Those Blackwatch soldiers were like hyenas that had caught the scent of meat, relentlessly chasing Li Wei. Helicopters approached from every direction.

The moment Li Wei officially entered the Infected Zone, the helicopters' long-warmed-up cannons instantly opened fire. Countless bullets and missiles came at him from every direction. There were hardly any survivors in the Infected Zone, so Blackwatch's hyenas could squander their ammunition as they pleased.

Even if only a small portion of the dense firepower struck him, those large-caliber cannon shells could still inflict tremendous damage.

While gliding through the air, Li Wei watched helplessly as his left arm was blown clean off by a large-caliber bullet and fell toward the ground below.

Several shambling infected saw the arm falling from the sky and caught the sweet scent in the air belonging to a high-level viral individual. Their pace quickened, and they howled as they charged toward the severed hand on the ground.

Viral lifeforms attracted and devoured one another. High-level individuals wanted to devour even higher-level individuals. It was their instinct: devour, grow stronger.

Li Wei was not a special individual like A-God. He was an independent viral system split off from the DX-1118 virus. The individuals created by the virus within his body possessed obedience and could be controlled by him.

He had tested it on the few thugs who had lent him their house three days ago. The process had not been pretty, but once those thugs became infected with the Redlight Virus, they were completely obedient and could be ordered around by him.

Infected individuals infected by the Blacklight Virus did not have that function...

Hovering in midair, Li Wei adjusted the gas compression within his cells. Facing the ground, he frantically drove the pressure inside his body, a thin layer of airflow swirling around his surface as he plunged downward and unleashed a devastating skill from the game—Bullet Dive.

His body accelerated to a speed the naked eye could barely perceive. In less than half a second, he crashed down from a height of over a hundred meters.

Under the immense compressed-air impact, the ground instantly formed a one-meter-deep depression six or seven meters across. The shockwave blasted away everything nearby that was not fixed to the ground.

Several shambling infected were sent floating into the air. Before they could fall back down, several blood-red, twisted tendrils pierced through them. After lingering in the air for half a second, the tendrils rapidly retracted and returned to Li Wei's body.

The infected pierced by the tendrils were assimilated and absorbed by him, becoming fuel to strengthen him and contributing 0.2% energy to the Key.

This was a more precise version of A-God's ultimate move, a skill he had created in advance through foresight. Several tendrils shot from his body to precisely pierce enemies, then pulled them back for assimilation and absorption.

Tendrils of a Thousand consumed too much biomass. Even A-God had only created it after devouring an uncountable number of lives, and each use depleted part of his vitality.

If Li Wei used the real Tendrils of a Thousand to destroy everything right now, he might need to consume over a hundred infected just to recover.

Everyone was an adult. They needed to clearly understand what the law of conservation of energy meant.

Even prototypes had to follow science!