"Fuck, don't you dare leave! I haven't finished asking you questions yet."
Seeing the mechanical voice shut down automatically after it finished speaking, Zhao Tianlei couldn't help cursing aloud. That thing had rattled off such a huge pile of information all at once that there was no way Zhao Tianlei could remember it all. He had originally wanted to ask a few more questions, but the thing had already run off. Who knew what it was so afraid of that it always left in such a hurry?
What Zhao Tianlei most wanted to ask was this: it kept saying that humanity's hope had been entrusted to him, which meant he was supposed to save humanity. Or perhaps save those survivors. But how exactly was he supposed to save them, and how far did he have to go for it to count as saving them? When the apocalypse had first erupted, Zhao Tianlei had been carrying nothing but two broken chair legs as weapons after smashing a dormitory chair apart alongside his roommate Wu Bin. Facing those bloodthirsty zombies, Zhao Tianlei had felt utterly lonely and helpless.
After finally obtaining a fire axe, Zhao Tianlei had at least gained a little confidence. Yet when he thought back to the journey to the sports field to rescue people, facing that horde of zombies still made him break out in a cold sweat. He had risked his life to save those students, only for them to hide inside the library. When he went there and tried to get them to open the door, they had refused. At the time, Zhao Tianlei had nearly wanted to kill someone. To get food, he had also taken a tremendous risk.
In the end, the library had failed to withstand the zombies' assault, and a large number of zombies had smashed through the doors. Zhao Tianlei had been scratched and bitten by zombies while buying Ye Sitong, Shen Xinyu, and Wu Bin time. Despondent, he had injected himself with the Virus Evolution Fluid. The excruciating pain after the injection was something Zhao Tianlei would never forget. At the time, the pain had made him feel that being bitten to death by zombies would have been far more comfortable.
"Second Class Soldier. Sounds like I'm still just a little soldier. I'm going to activate slaughter mode and level up to become a general as soon as possible. But just how powerful is this evolver, anyway? All those figures sound pretty dubious. Could they be fake?"
After saying that, Zhao Tianlei stood up and picked up the fire axe beside him. He suddenly discovered that the fire axe, which had felt rather heavy when he had carried it before, now felt no different from a kitchen knife in his hand. Delighted, Zhao Tianlei hurriedly brought the axe down against the ground. It smashed out a small pit and sent a tiny spark flying, yet his hands felt no recoil whatsoever.
Seeing the result, Zhao Tianlei couldn't help grinning. He knew that his strength had truly increased. Clenching his fists, he walked toward the water tank nearby. The tank had been installed on some of the school's teaching buildings to store water. Normally, it would collect rainwater, which would then pass through the water purification system and flow directly into the pipes to supply the students. Looking at the enormous tank, Zhao Tianlei couldn't help throwing a punch at it. A small dent the size of a fist immediately appeared on its surface.
Staring at his handiwork, Zhao Tianlei was stunned. Aside from doing manual labor, he had never really exercised much. He knew his own strength very well. Because he had been afraid of hurting his hand, he hadn't even used his full strength in that punch. Yet he had still dented the water tank. If he used all his strength, who knew what would happen?
"Hahaha, I'm awesome now! You used to bully me at school all the time, but from now on, anyone who bullies me is going to pay. I'll beat their teeth all over the ground!"
Zhao Tianlei immediately burst out laughing, but after laughing, he suddenly froze. The world had already become an apocalyptic wasteland, and the school no longer existed. Things would never return to how they had been before. Where would there even be any students left to bully him? Even though he had escaped the way he used to be bullied, Zhao Tianlei still couldn't feel happy. After all, the world had become an apocalypse, and this wasn't the life he wanted.
"Sigh, what should I do next?"
Holding the fire axe, Zhao Tianlei stood there without knowing what to do. After thinking it over, he decided to go down first and enter the library to see if there were any surviving students. Since that fellow in his mind kept saying that he was humanity's hope, he would first look for any students who had survived at the school. Having made up his mind, Zhao Tianlei walked toward the place where he had climbed up and carefully climbed down the pipe.
"Report, Doctor. We have detected Lifeform No. 0 again. We didn't expect him to still be alive. According to the scan feedback, No. 0 evidently injected himself with the Virus Evolution Fluid when he was on the verge of death. He has now successfully become an evolver. He even surpassed Third Class Soldier and advanced directly to Second Class Soldier. Strength index: 18. Agility: 16. Defense: 17. Recovery ability: 8. Storage Space has also expanded to three cubic meters."
After hearing her subordinate's report, the female Dr. Zhao immediately said excitedly, "What? Really? That's wonderful! We Chinese finally have hope!"
Afterward, Dr. Zhao said seriously to the person again, "Keep a close watch on No. 0's every movement and every piece of data. Also, now that No. 0 has begun evolving, we must closely monitor the zombie population as well. After the apocalypse erupted, more than half of the several billion people around the globe became zombies within a single day. As time went on, the human population rapidly declined while the number of zombies continued to increase. Judging by these figures, the speed at which zombies evolve is clearly far greater than the speed at which human evolvers evolve."
"Especially certain special creatures. After being infected by the Biochemical Virus, their evolution grants them incredibly powerful abilities. Even against human evolvers, they might not necessarily be killed. We must closely monitor all these developments, analyze the data in time, and send it to the evolver. Otherwise, if the evolver dies, our hope will be extinguished as well."
"Yes, Dr. Zhao. We'll do everything we can to keep the evolver and those mutated zombies under surveillance."
The No. 0 these mysterious people were discussing was clearly Zhao Tianlei himself. However, all of this seemed extremely mysterious. Zhao Tianlei, the person involved, knew nothing about it and would never have imagined that an ordinary, obscure man like himself had attracted the attention of these mysterious people. Perhaps Zhao Tianlei still didn't know that he wasn't the only one capable of becoming an evolver. The zombies could evolve too—or, more accurately, they could mutate.
The abilities they gained after mutating far exceeded those of human evolvers. It could be said that mutated zombies were the mortal enemies of human evolvers. Of course, human evolvers were also the mortal enemies of those mutated zombies. In the future, humanity had painstakingly built survivor bases to defend against attacks from ordinary zombies. Yet because of those mutated zombies, the human survivor bases suffered devastating destruction, ultimately collapsing entirely. It could be said that those mutated zombies were humanity's nightmare.
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