Riding

Gobi Desert dust had settled over the road. With no vehicles having passed for a long time, it had turned somewhat gray and hazy. Tao Yu's footsteps left clear prints in it.

Following the road toward the city, he spotted several withered zombies in the middle of the street.

They wandered along at an exceedingly slow pace.

"They've gone seven months without eating and they can still move? What version are these?"

He slung his Assault Rifle over his back and pressed his left hand against the MP5-shaped grip at his waist, while his right already held his kukri.

As he drew closer, one of the gaunt zombies seemed to notice him. It sniffed the air and headed his way.

"By smell?"

Tao Yu raised an eyebrow, then casually tapped the abandoned sedan beside him with his kukri, making a clang.

The next moment, the nearby zombies all surged toward him. They moved faster than an ordinary person walking, but slower than a jog.

Swish!

His blade flashed down, cleanly decapitating the first zombie to approach. Tao Yu moved among the others with the ease of a leisurely stroll, dispatching them all in one smooth flurry.

The Five Forms Fist Technique wasn't just a training method. Some of its combat movements and techniques were practical even when used separately.

And there was no need to insist on fighting barehanded. He already had Basic Weaponry Refinement lv2. Once he got the force behind his strikes right, everything came together naturally.

A flick of his wrist was enough to put his full strength behind each blow, leaving him completely in control.

The blood was half-congealed, so there wasn't much of it.

Tao Yu looked down at his kukri. Though he had taken their heads off, the blade had only picked up a few inconspicuous nicks. It seemed their bones were more brittle than ordinary bones.

Perhaps they had weathered away, or the virus had weakened them.

Tao Yu walked over to a zombie corpse and crouched down to wait for its Wish Power to gather.

"Teeth again. And molars, at that..."

He tapped the ground with the tip of his blade, feeling a little helpless. This was practically like getting a wisdom tooth pulled.

He slapped the flat of the blade against the zombie's jaw and sent a faint pulse of force through it. Its remaining teeth fell out, and he picked out the Wish Power tooth. He did the same with the other corpses and absorbed what he found.

Not bad. Less than one unit of Wish Power, and all of it was minor scraps of chaotic information. Not a hint of a skill.

"Confirmed. It's not worth wasting time pulling teeth."

Tao Yu sniffed. Perhaps because they were nearly dried out, they smelled better than he'd expected, apart from the stench that burst from the half-congealed blood when he cut them down.

After being tempered by the Outer City's awful conditions, he could adapt to this easily enough.

At the start, he had faced things like giant pythons and xenomorphs. Now that he had grown stronger, a few straggling zombies were indeed no threat.

"But there aren't many of them outside the city. Things inside are probably a bit of a mess."

The most troublesome thing about zombies was their numbers!

A clanging sound reached him. Inside an abandoned pickup, a zombie wearing a seat belt seemed to be trying to get out in response to the noise outside. It was just as gaunt as the others and clearly couldn't break free.

Tao Yu had no interest in dealing with it, so he continued down the road. Earlier, from higher ground near the grassland, he had spotted an overturned motorcycle farther ahead.

Given the road conditions, two wheels would be more convenient.

A few steps later, he reached the heavy motorcycle lying on its side and lifted it upright. He didn't recognize the brand; its logo was unfamiliar, but the word 'Kawasaki' was printed below it. He tried starting it, and it fired up.

He checked the fuel gauge. The tank was still more than half full, which should be enough.

Tao Yu wasn't into motorcycles, but he had ridden ordinary ones before. With his current physical abilities, it was easy to get used to this one.

After a little practice, he twisted the throttle and sped off.

The motorcycle's roar drew the attention of the nearby zombies. But by the time they reacted, Tao Yu was already weaving through the abandoned cars and racing toward the city.

"It's a bit loud. An electric bike would be better, but this thing's got real power..."

Tao Yu could see why young people liked showing off on motorcycles. Once the speed picked up, it really was thrilling.

His body had already surpassed human limits, yet even so, this machine could easily leave him behind if he ran at full speed. All it took was a twist of the throttle.

What surprised Tao Yu was that a skill Light Ball appeared as he wove through traffic, nearing the city.

Motorcycle Riding lv1: The ability to ride motorcycles.

What struck Tao Yu as odd was that even this free auxiliary skill cost a hundred units of Wish Power to upgrade.

He had only three hundred Wish Power left after buying the Qi Replenishing Pill, but he went ahead and upgraded it anyway.

Motorcycle Riding lv1: Improves your adaptability to mounts. The moment you take hold of the reins of any mount, you'll understand how to ride it. You can communicate intuitively with tamed animal mounts.

At the same time, Tao Yu felt a change in the motorcycle beneath him. Controlling it felt as easy as moving his own limbs, as if it were an extension of his body.

As long as a maneuver didn't violate the laws of physics, he seemed able to make the motorcycle do it!

What the heck? This was way beyond Motorcycle Riding.

That hundred Wish Power had been well spent.

As Tao Yu's thoughts shifted, the skill's name changed too, becoming simply Riding.

"Woohoo!"

He let out a strange cry and lifted the front wheel, balancing on the rear as he enjoyed the thrill of being a daredevil.

Then, relying on his excellent physical abilities, he forcibly hauled the motorcycle up and tried riding over the cars.

It handled remarkably smoothly.

The abandoned cars on the road seemed to turn into little mounds in his path, and every now and then he rode up one just for fun.

He really did need to get himself a mount...

Tao Yu even considered riding back and trying to catch a xenomorph on the grassland to see if it could serve as one.

But although he was strong enough to have surpassed human limits, and the xenomorph looked rather slender, Wish Power Creatures were naturally far stronger than humans. Killing one was easy, but capturing one alive by force seemed beyond him.

Besides, xenomorphs usually traveled in groups. He also didn't have enough Wish Power to recover with, so he decided not to take the risk for now. He could save up more as a safety net and think about it later...

"It'd be best to find a horse or something and see if Riding can help me develop a taming skill."

Though Tao Yu had been having fun with his new toy, he wasn't foolish enough to charge straight into the city.

If a horde surrounded him, even he would have to use Shadow Meld to escape. If the horde was big enough, he might not even have the stamina to get away.

"These zombies are poor and disgusting. I'd better go around them instead of wasting my time."

Tao Yu had gotten the novelty out of his system, so he slowed down, and the engine's roar quieted.

Even so, after riding the motorcycle up onto the roof of a pickup like a stuntman, he saw zombies in the city slowly moving toward him. The earlier noise had clearly traveled far enough to rouse them.

The horde was a vast, dark mass.

"It's such a pain to pick up the teeth. Burning them would be pretty good, though."

Tao Yu watched the horde coldly. With his keen eyesight, he also spotted someone peeking from behind the curtains of a building at the end of the street.

If someone was watching, they were probably either a human or a newly emerged intelligent zombie.

The only question was whether they were an Awakened or an original inhabitant of this world fragment.

"I still need a newspaper, or to find an original inhabitant and ask them."

If he could get enough information from the locals about the early stages of the outbreak, he could probably confirm whether this was Resident Evil.

If it wasn't, then an ordinary zombie world really was pretty barren...

Tao Yu parked the motorcycle haphazardly on top of the pickup, pulled out the key, then jumped off the road and headed diagonally toward the city.

"There aren't any notable landmarks, so this probably isn't a famous city. And it's been seven months, so it shouldn't have been bombed."

In a zombie world, the greatest risk might well be the whole "sterilization" business.

But for now, this world seemed safe enough to set aside.

The horde slowly followed the road toward the source of the noise. Tao Yu went around it and couldn't even be bothered to hack down the few straggling zombies along the way. Even a little wear was still wear on his blade; it was easier to take a few steps around them.

"If an ordinary person ends up here on Awakening Day, the risk isn't exactly low. Given how wide the deployment area is, there could easily be some unlucky soul."

There were giant pythons in the rainforest, and now there were xenomorphs too, but both were relatively sparse. If a newcomer on Awakening Day was dropped into a city full of zombies, it wouldn't be a friendly place to spend fifteen days.

On the other hand, this place would be relatively safe for a second visit—second only to the new world where all you had to worry about was keeping warm.

Tao Yu went around a zombie and casually tripped it up, making the gaunt thing fall flat on its face. All sorts of thoughts ran through his mind.

There were definitely plenty of Awakened in this world, and given how the location information was described, some might have entered this city too.

Tao Yu had spent more than half a month learning skills before coming back. Some especially driven people, or those dropped here on Awakening Day, might already have started exploring farther in.

But given the abilities of the average Outer City resident, entering this city full of zombies would at most let them protect themselves, map the area, and scavenge supplies. It would be difficult to make any major difference.

Ordinary Outer City residents aside, even Tao Yu would struggle to change much. There were simply too many zombies.

His explosive power was excellent for taking out a target, but his stamina was indeed a weakness.

As for how many Inner City residents would be interested in the rewards here... that was anyone's guess.