Corpse Snake

Underground Parking Lot.

There was no electricity, and the entrance to the parking lot was pitch-black.

Sunlight drew a clear boundary between the entrance and the shadows.

Lin An walked at the front, with the fully armed Zhang Tie behind him.

"Clang—clang—"

Rhythmic metallic banging echoed from inside the parking lot.

The sound was distant and muffled.

The passage shrouded in darkness looked like the entrance to hell.

"Team Leader Lin, did you hear that?"

Zhang Tie wore two oversized, heavy padded coats and the largest welding helmet he could find.

He was already a big man, so finding protective gear he could still use after transforming was not easy.

He staggered as he walked, looking remarkably like his transformed self.

"I feel like something isn't right."

"When I escaped earlier, I saw that this place was crawling with Zombies."

He asked Lin An cautiously, lowering his voice with a grave expression.

Only a few wrecked cars were parked on the slope at the entrance to the parking lot, yet there were no Zombies in sight.

In theory, only a few days had passed since the apocalypse began. As an underground entrance near a hospital, this place should have been packed with Zombies.

Yet the Zombies had vanished within a day.

That made no sense.

Lin An remained calm and nodded.

When something abnormal happened, there was always a reason behind it.

The two of them had originally planned to fight their way from the parking lot into the hospital.

"You don't need to lower your voice. You can use Team Voice Chat."

"Be careful. Something may have changed last night."

Lin An said this through Team Channel.

He remembered the sharp wail that had sounded late last night.

Zhang Tie froze, then gave an awkward laugh.

"I'm still not used to it."

His voice was extremely loud through Team Voice Chat.

Too loud.

Lin An helplessly glanced at Zhang Tie.

"Let's go."

The two advanced cautiously, their footsteps echoing.

They slowly made their way down the slope, and countless wrecked, overturned cars came into view.

Quite a few dried bloodstains covered the windows.

Handprints covered the car bodies, apparently left by the owners struggling before they died.

A rough count put the number at more than two hundred.

The strange thing was that not a single corpse could be seen.

"Clang—clang."

The eerie banging did not stop, but Lin An still could not locate its source.

He only vaguely felt that the sound seemed to be coming from another level below.

They passed through the passage completely blocked by cars.

"Team Leader Lin! There are drag marks here."

Zhang Tie pointed at the ground nearby. A dark red bloodstain three meters wide stretched all the way to the second level of the parking lot.

The vehicles beside the bloodstain had been overturned. Faintly, one could make out a five-meter-wide empty strip.

"I see it. There's one on the left too."

Another blood trail "walked" across the roof of a crushed SUV.

Lin An's expression turned grave. These two blood trails could not have been caused by a single corpse.

His powerful Mental Strength rapidly reconstructed the scene that might have occurred.

One or perhaps two enormous monsters had dragged a large number of corpses down to the second underground level.

As the monster on the left dragged them, it had crushed a midsize SUV beneath one foot.

The monster was at least five meters wide—or perhaps the pile of corpses being dragged was five meters wide.

Was it a Mutant?

Lin An was puzzled.

That shouldn't be. In his previous life, he had never heard of a Mutant appearing at the hospital.

"Team Leader Lin, what should we do now?"

Zhang Tie felt somewhat uneasy. He kept feeling that something in the darkness was watching him.

It was cold and chilling.

Although his will-perception ability was not as strong as Lin An's, his beastification talent gave him an animal instinct.

"Ignore it for now."

"We'll go straight up through the elevator shaft."

The parking lot had a Freight Elevator that led directly to the Emergency Center.

There was no electricity, but they could climb up through the elevator shaft.

"All right."

Their footsteps echoed.

They walked through the darkness in utter silence.

A heavy damp smell mingled with the stench of blood.

"Team Leader Lin, this is it."

Zhang Tie stopped leading the way and pointed toward a patch of darkness nearby.

Both of them were awakened, so they only needed a faint amount of light to see through the darkness as if it were daylight.

The metal sign marked Freight Elevator was somewhat mottled, and the elevator doors were tightly shut.

They were covered in countless bloody handprints.

"Let's get in fir—"

"Hiss!"

A sharp, hoarse sound rang out in the silence.

"Bang!"

Reacting on instinct, Zhang Tie subconsciously kicked at the shadow lunging from the darkness.

The shadow burst apart into a mass of fragments.

"Fuck, what the hell is that?"

Zhang Tie was startled. He turned to look at the pile of minced flesh on the ground.

It was a human head without any limbs.

A bare, ghastly white spine extended from the head like a tail.

Zhang Tie's expression turned ugly.

It was disgusting.

Lin An looked over as well and examined it carefully.

His gaze grew serious.

"This is a Corpse Snake."

"Usually, an infected person becomes one after having their body devoured by a large number of Zombies just before death."

"Because the Zombie Virus in its body is so concentrated, the spine becomes greatly strengthened."

"With their limbs gone, these monsters pull themselves free from the flesh and use their spines to move like snakes."

Lin An picked up the long spine from the ground and shook off the portions of skull still attached after the kick had blown the head apart.

He casually swung it twice. The spine cracked through the air like a long whip.

"This thing makes a decent weapon."

"It's highly durable and flexible."

Ignoring Zhang Tie's pale face, Lin An handed him the spine.

"Take it. You don't have a weapon."

"The Fire Axe has terrible durability. This is better."

In the early stages of the Doomsday Game, when Players had not obtained weapons or equipment,

the Corpse Snake Spine was highly sought after by Players and could be called the best weapon of the early game.

"Team Leader Lin..."

Zhang Tie looked miserable. The man nearly 1.9 meters tall could not help taking several steps back.

"This thing... is too disgusting."

He was not a coward, but the apocalypse had only begun two days ago.

In his first thirty-odd years of life, the most gruesome thing he had ever seen was no more than a street brawl.

For a while, he could not accept this level of gore.

Lin An frowned.

"Take it. Get used to it as soon as possible."

"There will be plenty more of this in the future."

"Can disgust help you survive?"

Zhang Tie froze slightly, then gritted his teeth and accepted the Corpse Snake Spine.

For some reason, Lin An was clearly younger than him.

Yet Zhang Tie always felt that Lin An had experienced many things, and his words inspired absolute trust.

"Boom!"

Lin An kicked the tightly closed elevator doors, and the tremendous sound echoed.

The metal doors caved inward, leaving a narrow gap.

"Pull it open."

Lin An held the Nepal Curved Blade in a reverse grip with his right hand and took up the optimal combat stance.

The Emergency Center was directly above the elevator shaft, and there could very well be a large number of Zombies inside it.

"Creaaak."

The metal warped.

Zhang Tie's face flushed red, but he could not pull the doors open for a moment.

He seemed to realize something, and his pupils contracted.

With his current strength, prying open the elevator doors with his bare hands should have been effortless.

Unless—

There were countless "things" inside the elevator pressing against the doors.

Strength Burst!

Lin An realized it too.

Golden spiritual energy surged into his body, and Lin An unleashed his full strength.

He gave a low shout and helped Zhang Tie pull the elevator doors apart with his left hand.

"Roar!"

As if they had been disturbed, countless Zombie snarls rose in an unbroken wave.

Inside the elevator shaft, uncountable Zombies were packed together like tightly sealed cans, completely blocking the shaft.

The doors opened, and the Zombies surged out like a broken dam.