Xi Qing

A black sedan drove steadily out of town. The road was cluttered with wrecked vehicles of all kinds, and every so often, a few monsters appeared between them.

Two young women sat in the sedan. One of them was the daughter from the father-daughter pair that had been attacked in the supermarket earlier.

But there was no sign of anyone else in the car.

The daughter covered her face and sobbed uncontrollably.

The other woman looked to be in her early twenties. Her hair was gathered into a pointed bun, with a lock hanging down from it while the rest fell loose around her shoulders. She gave off an indescribable air about her. Now, she kept her eyes fixed on the road, constantly steering around the wreckage and any monsters that appeared.

The corners of her mouth were slightly raised, as if she were smiling, but the sorrow in her eyes was plain to see.

"What's happened has happened, and we're still in danger. Now isn't the time to cry. Be ready to abandon the car and run at any moment."

"Don't let your father's final effort go to waste."

"By the way, I'm Xi Qing. What's your name?"

"Su Mo. I know I shouldn't be crying right now, but I really can't help it." Su Mo kept wiping away her tears, her voice trembling.

Xi Qing sighed softly. "It'll take about two more hours to reach the Xingyan Group base. I can't be sure this whole route is safe, and I don't know what condition the base is in now either. But according to the information I got, there's a decent chance they've survived."

Su Mo continued wiping her tears, but she had straightened up and was looking ahead now. Her eyes were bloodshot as she spoke haltingly. "What if they've been overrun too? What do we do then? I don't think this car has enough gas to get us to the county seat, and we don't know whether the gas stations along the way are safe."

Xi Qing gave a bitter smile. "If that happens, we'll have to grit our teeth and drive to a gas station to refuel. We'll find a way to lure the monsters away."

"Like when you rescued me? Using one phone to call another?"

Xi Qing smiled. "That's just one option. We'll have to decide what to do based on the situation at the time."

Su Mo wiped her tears on her clothes and tried to sound brave. "All right, let's set that aside for now. But how did you know the Xingyan Group might have survived? We had police in our town, and they had guns, but they still didn't make it."

"My mom works for the county department in charge of businesses, so she knows a little about all the major companies there."

"Xingyan had been gathering supplies for the past few days and building defensive structures like walls. It's the place around here most likely to hold off those monsters."

"Actually, most of the major companies made some preparations. It's just a matter of how much they did."

"If we could, I'd definitely consider going to the county seat first. They must be better prepared. But now we'll have to settle for the next best thing: head to Xingyan, regroup, and then set out for the county seat."

Su Mo listened to Xi Qing's explanation and nodded repeatedly. "I hope everything goes smoothly."

Several hours earlier, after receiving the alarm, Lin Chenxing and the others hurried to the monitoring room at the Xingyan Group base. They watched the beast horde gathering and prowling outside the northern wall, their hearts filled with worry.

After contacting the county, they learned that nowhere was safe. The entire country—and even the whole world—had fallen into chaos. Every place was struggling to look after itself, so there was no chance anyone could spare people to come to their rescue.

Quite a few towns and villages had already fallen completely, with only a handful of survivors left, hiding in places where they were unlikely to be discovered.

But hiding could only work for so long. Dogs, pigs, and other animals already had sharp senses of smell. After mutating, some dogs and pigs had become even more sensitive. In just a few days, the people in hiding would probably be found one by one.

"This won't work. Our walls can probably only hold off monsters mutated from animals that weren't naturally strong to begin with. We don't know if there are any bears, but there are definitely wild boars. A few charges from them and the wall will probably collapse. We can't just sit here and wait to die," He Qishun said with a frown.

Gao Zheng gave a firm nod. "We've trained over the past few days, and we've also used our production line to make some simple explosives. Hand them out and have everyone throw them outside the north wall. They aren't very powerful, but we should kill as many as we can."

"Also, hand out the knives and axes we sharpened earlier. Be ready in case the beast horde breaks in."

Li Yueqi immediately took out his phone, made a call, and relayed the orders.

About ten minutes later, the beast horde outside the northern wall had grown to more than eighty, including over a dozen birds.

All the monsters had blood-red eyes that stood out clearly even in the darkness. It was as if some force held them in check: even animals that were natural enemies didn't fight one another.

A sudden BANG sent a burst of flames up among the beasts, scattering dust in every direction. The horde began to panic, and several monsters that had been itching to charge rushed forward and slammed into the wall.

But as the explosives continued to go off one after another, the beast horde began to suffer casualties. The monsters attacking the wall lost the will to keep ramming it, and many others began charging around wildly, causing even more casualties among their own ranks.

Then a wolf howled in the distance. As if they had received an order, all the monsters stopped their frantic movements and turned back toward the base's wall, charging at it like mad.

The wall shuddered under their repeated blows. Hairline cracks appeared across it, too small to notice unless one looked closely.

Inside the wall, everyone began hurling explosives outside even more desperately, hoping to inflict heavier losses on the beast horde.

They succeeded in causing damage. Aside from a few monsters that had just arrived, the horde outside the wall had dwindled from more than eighty to just over thirty by the time the wall was on the verge of collapse.

When larger cracks appeared in the wall, all the able-bodied workers rushed to the northern perimeter to prepare for the beast horde's charge once it gave way. Only a handful of employees and directors remained in the monitoring room, while some personnel stayed behind to guard the other walls.

Gao Zheng and Lin Chenxing had also made it outside the wall by then. They stood among the crowd, holding the weapons they used for practice and waiting.

Realizing the wall could no longer hold, Gao Zheng raised the long saber in his hand and shouted, "The beast horde is about to break through our wall and storm our shelter! Our families are behind us. To give them a chance to live, we must grip our weapons tight and keep those monsters here, even if it costs us our lives!"

"Kill them all!"

No one knew who had shouted it first, but the crowd began to repeat the words again and again, their spirits soaring.

"Kill them all! Kill them all! Kill them all!!!"