The tide of corpses surged toward him with an overwhelming force, hemming Xia Leng in on all sides in the middle of the road.
With the ferocious, flood-like assault of the living corpses, it would take less than five seconds for them to completely engulf him in a sea of decay!
Yet Xia Leng remained calm, despite the overwhelming stench of rot and the deafening roars filling his senses.
If an ordinary person were surrounded by such a terrifying scene, they would probably go mad with fright—or even die of it.
But Xia Leng was different. He wasn't an ordinary person. In fact, he wasn't even human anymore.
He had been sent to an orphanage in the height of summer. The boy's personality was so cold that people felt the temperature around them drop the moment he appeared, so they had named him Xia Leng.
And ever since merging with the Blacklight Virus, his already cold and solitary nature had grown even more distant from that of normal humans.
All human emotions were gradually being stripped from his mind, fear included.
As Xia Leng watched the zombies closing in, his thoughts remained clear. His gaze swept over the surrounding terrain like a calculator, rapidly assessing it.
If there was no way forward on the ground, then he would go up!
Just as several zombies at the front sprang into the air, about to pounce on him,
Xia Leng suddenly bent his knees and leaped nearly five meters straight up. His hands caught hold of a rusted streetlight pole overhead, and the zombies below lunged past him!
But these living corpses could climb walls just as easily, so he had to remain on high alert at every moment!
After climbing up, Xia Leng pushed off again, using the streetlight pole as a foothold to leap onto a shop sign several meters away. Less than a second after he jumped off, the tide of corpses swept in and toppled the pole he had just stood on.
Aaargh!!!
The living corpses watched Xia Leng dart across a continuous row of billboards like Tarzan, each step landing securely on the next sign as he raced toward the exit.
They put their own "parkour skills" to use, climbing the walls and digging their sharp claws into the concrete. They pursued Xia Leng relentlessly, moving as easily as if they were on flat ground.
During a brief lull in his sprint, Xia Leng glanced back at the clingy horde of zombies. A surge of revulsion rose in him, along with an irresistible urge to devour those delicious creatures in a single bite.
But reason still held sway. He wasn't about to test his body against the might of that enormous horde.
As Xia Leng sped along the densely packed billboards, several zombies suddenly smashed through the windows of a high-rise ahead and landed on the signs, trying to cut him off.
Two of the mutated zombies spat long, barbed tongues straight at him, hoping to slow him down.
But Xia Leng didn't slow. He kept charging forward as he drew a sharp dagger from his waist and slashed ahead at blinding speed!
Crack!
A flash of cold light swept past, and the two tongues lashing toward him were sliced cleanly in half midair, spraying thick green blood!
By the time the two mutated zombies reacted, Xia Leng's powerful legs had already landed on their exposed brains. As they screamed, he leaped over them and cleared their blockade!
After a desperate sprint between life and death, he was now less than fifty meters from the exit, where sunlight poured in!
The intense ultraviolet rays, so unpleasant and damaging to the skin, looked to Xia Leng like a warm shaft of sunlight streaming down from above!
As expected, the exit was also packed with zombies. They waited for his arrival, their hunger filling the air above the entire street with their howls!
He was now trapped from both ends, and the closer he got to the exit, the fewer billboards there were to step on. In the end, he would have no choice but to drop to the ground and collide head-on with the horde blocking his way!
When he was about zero meters from the zombies ahead, Xia Leng suddenly pulled out the Peace Gun, which still had four bullets, and started firing into the air!
The gunshots were completely drowned out by the zombies' roars.
As Xia Leng fired the last bullet in the gun, the empty casing ejected from the chamber and fell to the ground.
Boom!!
Suddenly, a tremendous crash erupted above the zombies ahead!
The zombies instinctively looked up, only to see a massive object hurtling down at them...
Crash!!
A huge underwear billboard, nearly half as wide as the street, crushed a large swath of zombies and opened up a path!
Xia Leng hadn't been firing randomly into the air. He had been aiming at the four metal cables holding the billboard in place!
The drastic, unpredictable changes in temperature between day and night had rusted the cables until they were riddled with holes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have snapped so easily.
Most remarkable of all, Xia Leng had maintained his high speed while taking aim and firing. Not a single shot had missed; all four bullets had hit their targets, one for each cable...
Even an Apocalypse Hunter with second-tier enhanced eyesight would have been humbled by his accuracy while sprinting like that.
Having shot down the billboard and opened a path, Xia Leng immediately jumped from a height of ten meters straight to the ground, then charged toward the gap in the horde created by the falling sign!
Aaargh!!!
At the sight of him, the living corpses grew even more frenzied, swarming toward the opening in a desperate attempt to stop the brazen human who had been coming and going freely through their territory!
But the closer Xia Leng got to the exit, the less he held back. He poured all his strength into his legs, and his speed surged once more!
Even the zombies' ferocious attacks paled beside his speed!
On closer inspection, every time Xia Leng's foot struck the ground, it left a deep shoeprint in the concrete, with a wisp of dark red vapor quickly evaporating above it.
The Blacklight Virus was enhancing his speed!
Boom!!
Several zombies that had climbed onto the billboard were clawing at the air. The moment they faced the man charging toward them at top speed, they couldn't even react before the powerful impact of his acceleration sent them flying. Their brittle bones shattered into several pieces!
The others that tried to surround Xia Leng were too late. All they could do was watch as his shadow flashed past like a gust of wind!
At last, in the final moment of his legs' explosive burst of strength, Xia Leng planted his foot on the iron frame at the edge of the billboard and pushed off again!
He leaped more than ten meters in a single bound, and the iron frame he had just stepped on buckled under the tremendous force!
With thousands upon thousands of living corpses surrounding and pursuing him, he had successfully escaped the Street of the Living Dead!
Standing in the safety of the sunlight, Xia Leng watched the living corpses snarl furiously at him from the edge of the shadows.
His expression remained as cold as ever, and even his breathing was steady, as if everything that had just happened had been nothing more than a stroll through the horde.
"Don't worry. I'll be back."
Then Xia Leng strode forward without looking back, calmly walking away as the living corpses roared and shook the earth behind him.
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