Rallying

The inside of the dark green military tent was covered in blood.

Beneath the camp lamp hanging from the tent roof, several pools of blood reflected the light.

Wu Ya, who was closest, had a few drops of splattered blood on her face. She stood frozen in place, as if turned to stone.

Tian Wang's round body shook like a quail, and his pants were gradually growing damp.

The whole scene had an absurd, bizarre, postmodern feel to it.

Lu Bai turned around and picked up a blanket, wiping the blood off the Eight-Sided Han Sword.

That little motion of bending over was enough to make Wu Ya and Ke Jiangni both retreat half a step without thinking.

It couldn't be helped. They'd seen plenty of bloodied, mangled Zombies while fleeing for their lives along the way.

But killing people and killing Zombies, though they didn't look all that different, felt completely different to anyone watching.

Besides, Guo Mi had traveled with them for a while. Seeing someone they knew die right in front of them was a pretty big shock.

Ke Jiangni steadied herself. "Um... what do we do now?"

Her nerves were so taut that her voice sounded a little distorted, but it was still clear she was asking what to do with Guo Mi's body.

Even though trouble had broken out in various parts of the evacuation site, their area, District 7, was still safe for now.

The military had arrived with heavy weapons. Under normal circumstances, one heavy machine gun could seal off a passage completely.

Even the most frenzied Zombie horde would be reduced to chunks of flesh against a steel wall of 12.7-millimeter bullets.

The chaos would gradually subside, which meant that order still remained.

"It's fine."

Lu Bai put away the Eight-Sided Han Sword and returned to his usual kind smile. "We just have to leave this tent. No one saw us, anyway..."

Before he could finish, someone lifted the tent flap again.

The young man who stepped inside was so pale he looked ill, but when people saw him, it was hard to focus on his delicate features.

What drew the eye more was the aura he exuded, a profound sense of fragility, like a towering jade mountain on the verge of collapse.

He lifted the flap and stood at the tent entrance, taking in the entire scene inside.

"Looks like I came at a bad time."

The young man struggled to get out the short sentence.

It was like being caught by a stranger in the middle of cleaning up a murder scene. Everyone present except Lu Bai felt their hearts race, even though they weren't the ones who had killed anyone.

Lu Bai, however, was calm. After a moment's thought, he said, "No. You came at exactly the right time."

"What?" Ke Jiangni looked back at Lu Bai, unable to make sense of what he meant.

Clang—

The Eight-Sided Han Sword came out again, its tip pointed straight at the pale young man in the tent entrance.

Lu Bai sternly rebuked him. "Tell me, why did you kill someone? How dare you!"

Ke Jiangni: "..."

Wu Ya: "..."

Xiao Xueyin: "..."

Perhaps Lu Bai's brazen lie had irritated him. A faint flush appeared on Xiao Xueyin's pale, almost sickly face.

"You don't have to do that. I'm not here for you. The person I wanted to find was her."

Xiao Xueyin pointed at the corpse behind Lu Bai, cut in two. Then he added, "Too bad I'm too late. In that case, getting you to join us is also a..."

The word "good" had yet to leave his mouth when Lu Bai moved.

The Eight-Sided Han Sword thrust straight at him. Xiao Xueyin bent aside and dodged it.

Lu Bai was surprised by how quickly he reacted. He immediately lifted his right knee and drove it toward Xiao Xueyin, who hadn't yet straightened up.

But that attack also failed.

At some point, Xiao Xueyin had crossed his hands in front of him.

Thud!

The dull impact made everyone's teeth ache.

Xiao Xueyin's feet left the ground, and he flipped backward twice in midair. It looked showy, but in fact, he was dispersing the force of Lu Bai's knee strike as much as possible.

The noise of the collision immediately caught the attention of nearby residents. Quite a few people started looking over.

Realizing this, Lu Bai stopped attacking.

Another reason he stopped was that his opponent wasn't as weak as he looked.

After all, apart from not activating [Blood Rage], Lu Bai hadn't held back during either of his two attacks.

"I can forgive you for attacking me. I can tell you're skilled."

Xiao Xueyin rolled his arm. "So I'll ask you one last time: do you want to join us?"

Us?

Lu Bai noticed the word he'd used and silently put away the Eight-Sided Han Sword. "If I join, what do I have to do?"

"Same as you just did. Kill the other deathmatchers."

A young man with brightly dyed, spiky hair suddenly jumped down from the top of a tent. Before he spoke, Lu Bai hadn't even realized anyone was up there.

Behind Xiao Xueyin, a man and a woman stepped out of the crowd. Lu Bai shifted his gaze from the spiky-haired young man to them.

The young man in the gray hooded sweatshirt pushed back his hood and shrugged casually. "Don't look at me. I got dragged into this at the last minute too."

"That's right. Our team already has four people. With you, we'll have five."

Xiao Xueyin seemed fairly sincere.

Or perhaps it was the effect of his unique aura. No matter what he said, he seemed unusually convincing.

"Hey, hey! I haven't agreed yet, have I? Weren't we supposed to find a pretty big sister for our last teammate?"

The speaker was a girl with several lip piercings. Even beneath her heavy makeup, it was clear she was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen.

"The pretty big sister is already dead." Xiao Xueyin placated her with a simple explanation.

Liu Yue stuck out her tongue to lick her lip piercings and looked at Lu Bai sideways, without a hint of courtesy. "Hey, I like bad boys. Just how bad are you?"

Lu Bai fell silent for a moment. "I have multiple organ failure."

That left everyone else there speechless.

"Hahahaha!"

Liu Yue laughed so hard she doubled over, with no trace of a lady's grace. "I'm dying! All right, he's in. I like that kind of guy."

The spiky-haired youth and the Hoodie Man exchanged glances, increasingly convinced this group had no future.

"So does that mean I'm in? No need to align on the granularity or anything?" Lu Bai raised an eyebrow.

Xiao Xueyin let out a long breath.

"Anyway, I guess we've more or less reached an agreement, right?"

With that, he openly revealed one of the abilities he possessed.

[Silver of the Elite Group: All other team members, excluding the user, gain a twenty percent increase in physical attributes. Maximum team size: five.]