Zombie

Outside Yang City, at a certain cemetery.

Night was deepening, and the cemetery was silent.

Leading his horse, Zhang Ming arrived alone at the entrance and headed toward a corner of the cemetery according to the location his father had described.

In that corner stood an utterly unremarkable gravestone, lonely and alone.

The gravestone was brand-new, with only a little ash before it.

"Old Steward, Old Steward... in the end, we were still the ones who collected your body and buried you."

"Your son and daughter-in-law truly are no good at all."

Old Steward's work for the Zhang Family over the years had not been particularly good, but neither had it been particularly bad.

He had been steady and proper.

It was only when it came to family that he had spoiled his son far too much.

Zhang Ming had spoken up to remind him before, but it had clearly done no good.

"Perhaps the moment you refused to listen to me back then, the ending was already set?"

With a soft sigh, he took spirit money from the saddlebag behind him.

Zhang Ming crouched down and was just about to light the spirit money to burn it for Old Steward beneath the earth.

Then several footprints, lightly stained with dirt, caught his attention.

"These footprints..."

His gaze followed the trail of footprints toward the grave behind the gravestone.

"Damn it, what's going on?"

The strange footprints led to the grave. Zhang Ming had initially thought some blind fool of a thief had come to rob it.

But after drawing closer and looking down from above, Zhang Ming saw clearly.

This was not grave robbing at all. It was body snatching.

At that moment, a large hole had been broken into the coffin in the grave, and the corpse that should have been lying inside had vanished without a trace.

"Body snatching? Who would steal a body? What use is stealing a body?"

If it had been grave robbing, Zhang Ming could at least understand it somewhat.

Wasn't it simply for money?

But body snatching was completely beyond him.

"Could some strange martial art require corpses?"

He did not know.

But Zhang Ming hurriedly checked the surrounding graves to see whether "they" were still there.

"They are. They're all here."

"Only Old Steward's grave was robbed!"

It was utterly baffling; he could not make head or tail of it.

Suddenly.

Zhang Ming's eyes widened as he realized something.

"Wait... could it have been a ghost?"

Zhang Ming remembered that some books recorded how Demons, Monsters, Ghosts, and Oddities truly existed in this world, with countless accounts of gods and ghosts.

A "fresh corpse" breaking out of its coffin after burial was one such "common" occurrence.

"Calm down, calm down, calm down."

Zhang Ming had always been clever and rarely became emotionally agitated.

Yet the first time he truly realized that ghosts might be right beside him, he still could not stop his heart from pounding faster.

"Suppose, suppose, suppose my guess is right. Suppose it really was a Corpse Transformation."

"By all logic, Old Steward would surely seek out his own son for revenge first."

"Wait." Zhang Ming's eyes widened. "It might not be his son!"

"Old Steward doted on his son to the bone. Even at the very last moment before his death, he might not have hated his son at all, but instead..."

His gaze traveled to the towering walls of Yang City in the distance.

Zhang Ming forced out several words.

"The Zhang Family!"

"Quick, quick! Strong Crossbows ready! Strong Crossbows ready!"

Several armored soldiers gripped the strong crossbows in their hands nervously. Though their hearts trembled with fear, they still gritted their teeth and swiftly fired at the eerie figure not far away.

Whoosh, whoosh—

The bolts from the strong crossbows shot like lightning, striking the figure in an instant.

Yet the figure merely swayed slightly, completely ignoring the crossbow bolts deeply embedded in its body.

Roar—

It opened its blood-filled maw. Its roar boomed like thunder, carrying a dense stench of blood and decay as it lunged fiercely at the armored soldiers.

"Damn it, what kind of monster is this?"

Strong crossbows capable of piercing iron armor could not kill it.

The monster possessed immense strength, tough skin, terrifying speed—and on top of that, a horrifying, rotten body reeking of blood.

It was, in every sense of the word, a zombie from a storybook.

"Zombie! Zombie! It's a zombie! Go find Black Dog Blood and Glutinous Rice!"

Someone came to his senses, and the somewhat superstitious armored soldiers screamed in terror.

"We can't let the zombie hurt us! We can't let the zombie hurt us, or we'll turn into zombies too!"

"Shut up! Street rumors can't be trusted!"

Wang Song, captain of the household guards, shouted sharply, stopping everyone from letting their imaginations run wild.

"Go, go, go! Are we, with so many people, afraid of one man? So what if it's a zombie? Zombies were once people too—there's nothing to fear!"

"The Zhang Family has supported us for years and shown us kindness as heavy as a mountain. Today is the day we repay that kindness."

"Kill!"

"Kill, kill, kill! Boss is right—the Zhang Family has treated us well."

"Even if something happens to us, our wives and children will surely be provided for!"

For a moment, everyone's Momentum surged. Swept up by the atmosphere, they all drove the fear from their hearts.

Some held strong crossbows, some brandished great sabers, and some raised shields as they charged, all rushing together at the zombie that had appeared out of nowhere.

Roar—

The zombie's roar thundered through their ears. It moved with astonishing speed, actually beating the armored soldiers to the attack.

Boom—

With a raised hand, its terrifying brute force sent an armored soldier holding a shield flying several meters. He crashed heavily onto the ground.

The zombie shifted its body slightly.

With the force of a single collision, even a martial artist clad in iron armor could not withstand it in the slightest. He was hurled several meters away, smashing through a wall, his fate unknown.

"Damn it! Die, you beast!"

Wang Song, captain of the household guards, had been the fastest to switch to the weakened version of the Mighty Bull Cultivation Method. His cultivation was the deepest, and his strength surpassed everyone else's.

Seeing that things were going wrong, he let out a furious roar.

Wang Song raised his great saber and charged at the zombie.

Slash—

The great saber cut across the zombie's skin. Flesh rolled apart, exposing stark white bone beneath.

If it had been an ordinary person, such a wound would surely have hindered their movements and left them gravely injured, ready to be slaughtered by anyone.

But a monster was a monster. A zombie was a zombie.

This level of injury was nothing more than that.

It could not even slow the movement of its body in the slightest.

Boom—

The zombie reacted. It raised its hand, needing no tricks at all—only pure strength and speed.

One slap sent Wang Song flying several meters away. He smashed through a wall, dust billowing everywhere.

Pfft—

Wang Song spat out blood, despair filling his heart.

He knew that after switching to the Mighty Bull Cultivation Method, when he pushed his Vital Energy to its explosive limit, he possessed nearly ten thousand pounds of brute force. Even against an ordinary Postnatal Martial Artist from Yang City in the past, he might not have been unable to fight.

Yet before this zombie monster, his attack had merely torn its skin and flesh.

But a single strike from the zombie monster had shifted his internal organs and sent his blood flowing backward.

"Damn it. It's over, it's over. The Zhang Family is finished."

Despair rose in Wang Song's heart. He felt that his time of death had come.

The zombie monster was not human. It seemed to possess some instinctive intuition of a wild beast.

Instinctively, it sensed that among them, Wang Song—the one who had cut it with his saber—posed the greatest threat.

Roar—

The zombie roared and charged straight at Wang Song, who lay fallen on the ground.

The cold gleam of its five bluish-black nails flashed in every direction, as if it would tear Wang Song into eight pieces the next instant.

Suddenly.

"Vile beast!"

Whoosh—

From an immense distance away, a spear shot over like lightning.

Bang! The spear tore through the air and struck the zombie monster in an instant.

The sharp spearhead pierced through the zombie's body in the blink of an eye, its tremendous momentum nailing it to a wall more than ten meters away.

Roar, roar, roar—

Its body pierced through and itself nailed to the wall, the zombie struggled and roared, yet its savage ferocity did not diminish in the slightest.

After only a few moments, the zombie actually pulled the spear straight out of its own body.

With a clang, it tossed it onto the ground.

Shaking its body, the zombie hissed and roared, charging at the group once more.

It was as though it had not suffered any attack at all, as though the one whose body had been pierced and whose chest had been left with a hole was not the zombie!

"Young Master, Young Master, run! This zombie possesses immense strength and thick hide—it cannot be fought head-on!"