As he reached Car Five, Su Huan suddenly stopped and looked up at the ceiling.
Then he continued forward. The motor hummed inside the dim storage car.
Qi Xiaoba emerged from the darkness.
When he saw Su Huan, he gave a slight shake of his head to signal that there was no danger.
Suddenly, hurried footsteps sounded behind them. Su Huan turned around. Wan Xing was hurrying toward them, her face tense.
"There are zombies on the roof!"
Su Huan and Wan Xing both looked up. There were two sounds in all: Wan Xing's footsteps as she ran inside the car, and something scraping across the roof.
That thing had heard them and followed.
But for a long while, nothing happened.
Su Huan stepped beside the window and yanked the curtain open.
"Clang!"
A long, sharp claw shot toward the window, punching a clean hole through the tempered glass. The entire pane instantly shattered around it, turning into a mass of white fragments that barely held their shape.
The tip of the claw was so thick that it had become wedged in the blast-proof mesh!
Su Huan cursed inwardly. There went another perfectly good window.
That was harder to fix than a hole in a steel plate!
Still, the claw told him what he was dealing with. Once he had a clear idea, he swiftly moved to the front.
A deformed humanoid zombie clung to the window. Both its hands had transformed into three sharp claws, each nearly half as long as its body.
It was thin as a stick, but its rib cage protruded dramatically, bulging beneath its armpits like wings. A row of densely packed eyes lined the gaps between the ribs—nine on each side, eighteen in total.
At that moment, every one of them stared greedily at Su Huan.
Su Huan rested a hand on the metal window frame and sneered. "You didn't buy a ticket, but you still think you can force your way aboard?!"
Crackling arcs of electricity immediately danced across the zombie's body.
The zombie let out a pained growl.
Su Huan didn't need to say a word.
Countless steel spikes shot out from the train's outer plating, piercing the zombie viciously.
"First-tier zombie, Night Demon. High attack, low defense. Lock it to the car and deal with it tomorrow," Su Huan said coldly.
Qi Xiaoba's eyes seemed to turn into steel beads as he stared impassively at the zombie outside.
One steel cable after another sprang from the train, tightening around the Night Demon and pinning it to the train as it tried to pull itself free of the spikes.
Only then did Su Huan stop the flow of high-voltage electricity.
With the paralysis gone, the Night Demon could do nothing but howl even louder. It had no chance to struggle free.
No matter how it swung its claws, all it could do was send showers of sparks flying off the steel plating.
Twelve millimeters of steel, plus another three millimeters of armor—if even a second-tier Night Demon couldn't chew through that, this one had no chance!
As its life force ebbed away, the Night Demon gradually lost its ability to struggle. The crimson drained from its eyes, leaving them a dead black.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye.
Wan Xing froze in place. Only after she realized the danger had passed did she come over.
"I was just trying to warn you..."
"It's fine."
Su Huan shook his head.
If it couldn't sneak up on them, it could attack head-on instead. As long as the Night Demon couldn't break through the car's armor, the two of them would eventually kill it.
"Any trouble at the rear?" Su Huan asked, turning to Qi Xiaoba.
"There was a bit of commotion at first, but it's been quiet since," Qi Xiaoba replied.
As they spoke, Yu Jing and her daughter came over too.
"Liang Kuan said one of the headlights is broken, but everything else is working. The windows are intact, though there's damage to a window on Car Three. It looks like something tried to break in, but got caught in the blast-proof mesh," Yu Jing reported.
Su Huan nodded, somewhat relieved.
It seemed the work they'd put in these past few days hadn't been wasted.
But the cars farther ahead had steel plating and blast-proof mesh. So that meant...
Everyone thought of the same question and, in unison, turned to look at Car Seven.
Qi Xiaoba reached out, and several locks clicked open one after another.
They entered the inter-car passage. It was quiet inside, with only the clatter of the wheels breaking the silence.
Through the glass, they could hear a commotion in the car opposite them.
"There's a monster!"
"The people in the rear must all be dead."
"Shut up! Keep it down. I'm going to find Boss Su!"
"What good will finding Boss Su do? Keep your voices down. Don't draw the monster over here..."
Su Huan lightly rested a hand on Qi Xiaoba's shoulder. Qi Xiaoba immediately unlocked the door to Car Seven.
At the sound, several workers looked over and shouted in alarm.
"The... the door! The door's open!"
"What the hell are you yelling about? Go get Gao Zhe," Su Huan said, picking at his ear.
Hearing his voice, a few workers nearby finally reacted. "Boss Su! It's Boss Su!"
"Boss Su, there's a monster in the rear!"
"Everyone, shut up!" a deep voice roared. Wang He pushed his way out of the crowd.
Su Huan waved him off and got straight to the point. "What's going on back there? Why all the screaming?"
"A monster got into Car Ten. It killed a few zombies. The people farther back may all have been killed!"
Wang He tried to sound calm, but his voice trembled.
Su Huan frowned, not budging an inch. "Go get Gao Zhe."
"I'm right here. What do you want?" a clear voice called from the crowd.
The workers glanced around, then made a narrow path.
It was too dark inside the car. Even with Su Huan's excellent eyesight, he could barely make out a silhouette.
But he didn't need to see clearly. "Go kill that Night Demon and bring me its corpse. I'll give you a permanent train ticket."
Gao Zhe's gaze flickered. Su Huan clearly knew quite a lot.
"This is your train. Why don't you go? I have a three-month ticket. That's enough for me."
Su Huan sneered inwardly. You want me to go over there so you can hit me from behind?
You think I've never seen that trick before?
Only an idiot would walk into a trap and let himself get surrounded!
Su Huan's tone was laced with detached mockery. "You can choose not to go. The monster's coming this way anyway. Where else are you going to run?"
"Xiao Ba, lock the door. Let them take their time deciding."
With that, he ignored the anxious clamor of the workers behind him and returned to the storage room with Qi Xiaoba and the others.
"Should I really lock it?"
Qi Xiaoba asked.
"Of course."
Su Huan turned on the night light in the storage room. He saw the boy sitting there, a faint look of reluctance on his face.
That look told him the boy's bleeding heart had gotten the better of him again.
He'd have to talk some sense into him.
Su Huan said calmly, "You want to say there are lots of innocent people back there?"
Qi Xiaoba nodded.
"But there are also plenty of people with ill intentions."
Su Huan crouched down until his eyes were level with Qi Xiaoba's. He spoke slowly and deliberately. "But before you can protect anyone else, you have to make sure you're safe."
"There are two ways to keep them from dying right now. One is for us to deal with the Night Demon ourselves, but then we'd have to face attacks from the people with ill intentions."
"The other is to force those people to deal with the Night Demon themselves. That way, we stay safe while still protecting most of the people."
"So, which will you choose?"
Before you continue