Refuge

This was already Lu Bai's fifth day in this world.

Everywhere he looked, thick, tangled trees crowded together. Most of them weren't even straight, their branches crooked and twisted.

At his feet was a narrow, one-person-wide path of yellow dirt. More accurately, it barely qualified as a path at all; it would be better described as a passage worn down by the occasional passerby.

It was a textbook example of a desolate wilderness.

The afternoon sunlight filtered through the branches and fell on withered, rotting stumps. The sight wasn't pleasant; instead, it stirred a restless irritation in him.

As for why Lu Bai had come here, it all went back to the location information released an hour ago.

Until now, he'd been relying on the location information to find the deathmatchers. It wasn't very efficient, but he had no better option.

However, in the latest few rounds of location information, he'd noticed something rather strange.

Quite a few deathmatchers seemed to be gathering at a particular place.

If he hadn't been keeping an eye on the location information, he might have overlooked it.

It was strange.

What was drawing the deathmatchers there?

Once he'd reached that conclusion, there was nothing more to say.

Even if there was nothing there, just seeing the more than thirty red dots already gathered in the area was enough to make Lu Bai want to check it out.

The problem was, he didn't know the city at all, and he'd forgotten to take a map from the Department Store.

So he followed the principle that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points and headed directly toward the area.

Who would've thought that the farther he got from the city, the more desolate it became? He hadn't even seen an urban-rural fringe.

"Looks like there are still five or six kilometers as the crow flies. Is it behind this mountain?"

Lu Bai looked up at the mountain before him and pursed his somewhat dry lips.

On flat ground, five or six kilometers wouldn't have been a problem for Lu Bai at full speed. Even fifty or sixty kilometers wouldn't have been much of an issue.

But mountain trails were different.

Anyone who'd hiked through the mountains knew that even a short distance like this could take a whole day to cover.

And that wasn't even accounting for the risk of slipping and falling along the way. That could be fatal.

Fortunately, Lu Bai's physical condition was no longer ordinary. If he picked up the pace, he should make it there before nightfall.

Of course, walking along roads this sparsely traveled had its advantages. At least he didn't have to worry about a Zombie suddenly rushing out at him.

Lu Bai continued along the narrow path, deeper into the mountains. The surroundings grew ever quieter and more desolate.

When he finally reached the mountaintop, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

In fact, once he reached the summit, he didn't even need to climb higher for a better view. Anyone with working eyes could tell what sort of place had attracted so many deathmatchers.

Nestled in the valley between two mountains stood a sprawling military base.

Calling it a fortress wouldn't have been an exaggeration.

A road extended from the base's main gate, and a tunnel bored through the mountain, connecting the base to the outside world.

Soldiers in full combat gear stood guard in every watchtower surrounding the base.

Dozens of soldiers guarded the tightly shut gates.

In front of them, at least a thousand civilians were lined up, waiting to be checked. It seemed they had to be confirmed uninfected before they'd be allowed into the military base.

The base's training grounds were covered with row upon row of military tents.

From above, the sight was quite impressive.

Every so often, vehicles emerged from the tunnel. They seemed to be carrying survivors who'd escaped from the city.

Lu Bai was a little stunned. Only after seeing this did he vaguely recall hearing something about it on the radio.

[Residents in the surrounding areas, please make your way to the suburban shelters as soon as possible, while ensuring your own safety...]

It was just that the zombie movies he'd watched in his previous life had influenced him, so he hadn't taken the announcement seriously.

So you really could take shelter here.

"You can't let stereotypes get the better of you."

This sort of development was actually what one would expect.

Movies and TV shows needed to emphasize the apocalyptic atmosphere to highlight how hard the protagonists had to struggle to survive. Reality didn't need to do that.

The truth was, once the military got through the initial chaos, even if only one or two hundred soldiers remained, clearing out a city of several hundred thousand people wouldn't be all that difficult.

Ever since the Maxim gun made its debut, the traditional mass charge had lost its meaning.

Television and video games downplayed the lethality of firearms, and the human body was more fragile than most people imagined.

A 7.62 mm bullet inflicted far more damage to the human body than necessary to kill.

When it hit someone, it left a hole at the entry point, then tore an exit wound larger than a fist as it passed through.

It was no exaggeration to say that no known carbon-based organism, dinosaurs included, could take a 7.62 mm round without suffering any damage.

Standard heavy machine guns fired bullets in two calibers: 12.7 mm and 14.5 mm. For human beings, they were essentially body-splitters.

Zombies—even Zombies as absurdly powerful as the ones Lu Bai had encountered—were still carbon-based organisms.

The military might actually find it easier to face a zombie horde than an equal number of humans.

After all, Zombies wouldn't turn around and run away.

Still, this situation wasn't exactly good news for Lu Bai.

He stood on the mountaintop and watched for a while. By his rough estimate, there were probably tens of thousands of people at the military base already.

Throw a few dozen deathmatchers in there, and they wouldn't even make a ripple.

Most importantly, even if Lu Bai identified the deathmatchers among them, it wouldn't be easy to attack them openly.

But he'd come all this way...

He rubbed his temples, feeling a little frustrated. After hesitating for a moment, he still followed the path down the mountain toward the military base.

"Stop!"

On the wall, a soldier in camouflage raised his gun and aimed at Lu Bai.

The wall along the side of the military base was a full ten meters tall. Made of reinforced concrete, it was clearly sturdy.

After giving Lu Bai a quick look and seeing no obvious wounds, the soldier pointed his gun toward the gate. "Go line up for inspection."

"Okay."

Lu Bai nodded obediently. He'd originally planned to climb over the wall and go straight in.

Even a place this remote has guards. Looks like the base has more personnel than I expected. With security this tight, I doubt any deathmatchers would dare kill anyone in here. In a way, this counts as a safe zone, doesn't it?

As he pondered this, Lu Bai blended into the crowd.

There were still more than a thousand civilians lined up outside the gate, waiting to be checked. His joining them wouldn't stand out.

Two rows of makeshift inspection stations, put together with tents, split the waiting crowd into two lines.

With order needing to be maintained every so often, the lines were moving at a pace that could hardly be called fast.

Lu Bai looked around. The people around him didn't look to be in good spirits, and quite a few even had bloodstains on their clothes.

It couldn't have been easy for them to make it here alive.