Tier-One Zombies

"Pick up the speed!" Su Huan's voice, bolstered by the sedative, pierced the darkness.

Liang Kuan gripped the control lever, the veins standing out on the back of his hand. The dashboard's glow cast shifting shadows across his sweat-drenched nose.

The train began to charge toward the zombie horde with ferocious force.

The wheels groaned and screeched. Their clatter mingled with the zombies' frenzied howls, filling the cab and gnawing at everyone's nerves.

The zombies blocking the front of the train were like clay. The plow scooped them up and pushed them against the ram, then shoved them aside. Blood splattered across the reinforced glass like a torrential downpour.

The horde piled up on both sides of the train. One grotesque, terrifying face after another pressed greedily against the windows, staring fixedly at the people inside.

Yu Yue clutched her daughter's arm, trembling so hard she didn't even dare look up.

Wan Xing bit her lower lip and stared at the track ahead.

Su Huan showed no reaction to anything happening around him. He focused on one thing alone: converting the Pan-Energy inside him into high-voltage electricity to power the train.

"Bang!"

The train jolted violently, and at last it began to pick up speed. The heaps of zombies piled up along both sides suddenly collapsed, falling away behind them.

A chorus of relieved breaths rose inside the carriage.

But Su Huan's expression remained unchanged as he stared fixedly at the track ahead.

A massive foot came down on the rails. Rolls of flesh spilled over its sides, reaching all the way to the sleepers.

The figure slowly turned around. Two powerful pectoral muscles bulged like slabs of granite, above an enormous belly that nearly hung down to his thighs. At two and a half meters tall, he stood only a little shorter than the locomotive.

A metal component torn from a piece of construction equipment dragged behind him, clanging against the ground.

He loomed there like a small mountain, his black-and-red eyes studying the oncoming locomotive with keen interest.

He made no move to dodge. His mouth stretched almost from ear to ear.

That terrifying grin left the people in the cab speechless once more.

"What... is that thing?" Wan Xing asked, her voice trembling.

"A Tier-One zombie. The Butcher." Su Huan's voice held not a trace of emotion, as hard and cold as stone.

"Liang Kuan, hit him."

"Understood!"

Liang Kuan gritted his teeth and pushed the speed to its limit.

Su Huan pulled ten Pan-Energy Crystals from his pocket and clenched them in both hands. A hint of madness flickered in his eyes.

If he remembered correctly, upgrading Pan-Energy Conversion from Lv1 to Lv2 required exactly ten Corpse Embryo-grade Pan-Energy Crystals.

At Lv2, Pan-Energy Conversion reached twenty percent efficiency, instantly doubling the energy he could output!

No matter how strong the Butcher was, he was still just flesh, muscle, and bone nurtured by Pan-Energy.

Su Huan refused to believe it.

A train hurtling at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour, with armor over thirty millimeters thick and a reinforced ram—there was no way it couldn't kill that bastard!

The Pan-Energy Crystals in his palms dissolved at a visible rate. He could clearly feel streams of cold energy creeping up along his spine before bursting apart at the medulla into countless tiny energy particles.

His dormant genes began to unwind and recombine.

--An evolutionary blueprint unique to the "Energy Provider" took shape.

Lv1 Pan-Energy Conversion --> Lv2 Pan-Energy Conversion.

In an instant, Su Huan felt something that had held him back shatter with a crash. The familiar sense of ease he had once known began to return.

His steely gaze pierced the bloodstained glass and met the crimson eyes of the giant zombie.

Neither side gave an inch!

The train, still accelerating, shuddered again. Its speed surged wildly as it crushed the horde and roared toward the Butcher!

With a furious howl, the Butcher raised his arm and swung the metal component he was dragging down at the locomotive.

"BOOM—"

Seen from above, the moment the small giant collided with the Steel Dragon, his iron-gray skin, muscle, and fat were compressed against the locomotive like a ball. In an instant, they reached their limit and burst apart, spraying the train's front with bone fragments and gore.

The deafening crash of metal on metal left Su Huan momentarily stunned. It took him a second to remember that he was still on the train.

The train beneath his feet kept roaring forward. Its clattering wheels sounded like the triumphant beat of a war drum.

Lighthearted and exhilarating!

Su Huan couldn't help grinning from ear to ear.

No carbon-based life-form could withstand the impact of tens of thousands of tons of steel. Any zombie standing in his way would be crushed beneath the Steel Dragon under his feet!

The passengers in the rear carriages were the first to wake.

The steel plates only extended as far as the tenth carriage, so they had been treated to the horde's faces pressed against the windows to wake them up.

The zombies had pounded on the green carriages, making them clang and bang.

Only after the train accelerated and left those ordinary zombies behind did the passengers in the rear recover from their despair. One by one, they knelt on the floor, praising the Lord and the gods and Buddhas above, while cursing the train conductor with the vilest insults.

As for the train's head-on collision with the Butcher, to these passengers it had been no more than a minor jolt.

By the time the vibrations reached the rear carriages, they were nowhere near as frightening as the earlier roar of the ten-thousand-strong horde.

The carriage was pitch-black, and the sounds of various objects crashing together blended into a single racket.

The tattooed man Little Ghost was crouched on a seat, swearing furiously. "That bastard Su only welded steel plates onto the tenth carriage and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves."

"He only cares about himself. He doesn't give a damn whether we live or die. We risk our necks collecting supplies for him every damn day, while he sits in an air-conditioned carriage, eating good food and playing with women. He still treats me like a dog. Fuck him..."

"Rip—"

A sharp sound was swallowed by another jolt.

A sharp claw quietly pierced his side, slipped between his ribs, and went straight through his heart.

Little Ghost's eyes widened. He opened his mouth, but blood kept pouring out.

Across from him, Brother Dog wore a grim expression, unaware that Little Ghost was already dead.

He assumed the other man had run out of steam and needed to catch his breath.

The train sped quietly through the night at seventy kilometers per hour.

Large patches of dark-red blood stained the black iron plates. Here and there, careless zombies had left body parts behind, wedged in the gaps of the anti-blast mesh or caught on the steel plates' bump strips.

Yet somehow, they only added to the Armed Train's blood-and-iron aura. It looked like a hardened steel veteran fresh off the battlefield.

Su Huan's composed voice rang out inside the carriage.

"Liang Kuan, check all the train's functions. Yu Yue, inspect every part of the locomotive. Check whether the anti-blast mesh is damaged or any of the reinforced glass is cracked."

"Yu Jing, inspect the dining car. Wan Xing, check the observation car, and take a look at the second level while you're at it. See if anything's clinging to the roof."

The person from before had mentioned a whole nest of Corpse Cocoons, but only one Butcher had stood in their way just now.

Perhaps other Tier-One zombies were following behind.

The Butcher was a strength-type, but zombies could evolve in many other ways. Some could even catch up with the train.

Su Huan casually picked up a phone from the rack in the dining car.

He fed it a little power to turn it on, then used the faint glow of the lock screen to carefully inspect every nook and cranny of the carriage.

As far as he could remember, there weren't any zombies that could penetrate twelve-millimeter steel plates.

But caution had become a habit.