Hell on Earth

Su Huan turned to Qi Xiaoba and handed him the steel plate. "Try to see if you can control this piece of metal."

Xiao Ba focused on the palm-sized steel plate. After a long while, it slowly lifted into the air and, as if squeezed by a pair of giant hands, took the shape of a ball.

Bang!

The steel ball dropped onto the table. Qi Xiaoba shook his head. "This kind of metal is already hard to control. It takes me four or five times as much energy as ordinary metal, as if it's mixed with a lot of impurities."

Su Huan pondered. Qi Xiaoba's words confirmed one of his suspicions.

In his previous life, there had been no difference between Master Ba controlling first-tier Light Armor and ordinary metal, at least as far as he could tell.

But by then, Master Ba had already become a second-tier Evolutionist.

He was a well-known figure among the drifters in the Acid Rain Zone.

Perhaps one of the conditions for Metal Affinity to advance into its higher-tier ability, Metal Control, was to consume these new materials.

If that was the case...

If they built the train's armor out of new materials, wild metal Manipulators wouldn't be able to budge it anytime soon.

Still, he wasn't sure whether the big companies had Manipulators with high-tier skills like Xiao Ba's.

That was what had puzzled him all along.

The apocalypse had only begun four years ago. Why did these factions already have fifth-tier Evolutionists?

And they'd even developed all sorts of complementary career systems.

Even if they had access to abundant manpower and resources, the world had changed. Could they really have accomplished so much in just four years?

Evolution was a mad process. Was scientific research just as crazy?

While Su Huan was talking, Yu Yue served her daughter a bowl of wontons.

Looking at her mother's flushed cheeks, Yu Jing asked, slightly puzzled, "Mom, what's wrong?"

Yu Yue glanced furtively at Su Huan, then awkwardly stuck out the tip of her rosy tongue. "I tried something spicy, and my tongue still hurts."

Yu Jing said helplessly, "If you can't eat spicy food, don't try it. Sit and eat. I'll get some water."

As her daughter stood and headed for the kitchen, terror flashed across Yu Yue's face.

She hurriedly stopped her. "No, no, I'll get it myself."

Her daughter was clever and good with her hands, but for some reason, she had an explosive talent for cooking. Even when she made something cold, the pots and pans clattered like festive firecrackers on New Year's.

Yu Jing hesitated, but eventually sat back down.

A little while later, Liang Kuan returned as well.

Su Huan explained their next steps.

First, complete the first phase of the Armed Train.

Second, collect as many electronic devices as possible to lay the groundwork for installing surveillance throughout the train and for future modifications.

"From here on, you need to be ready for the real apocalypse."

"The apocalypse? Isn't this already it?" Yu Jing asked, puzzled.

Su Huan's lips curled up. "This?"

"It's only just begun."

08:20.

The Armed Train left the outskirts of the Water Plant and quietly headed toward Mojiang City, a city of seven million people.

Because it was carrying a large amount of steel plates and water purifiers, the train moved very slowly at first.

After an unknown amount of time, a heavy panting sound came from the tracks outside the Water Plant. A mutated pig, a full three meters long, emerged from the bushes, its massive, muscular body like a small hill.

Its dark red mane stood on end like steel needles. Its tusks curved outward into bone blades, and its hooves had turned metallic. Each step made the sleepers and gravel beneath it creak.

If Su Huan had been there, he would have recognized it as a first-tier Evolutionary Beast: a Gluttonous Pig.

It was much stronger than a Blood Hound, but not nearly as ferocious.

Most of its day was spent foraging.

The Gluttonous Pig twitched its nostrils, pried open an instant noodle cup with its tusks, and licked up the leftovers, rumbling contentedly in its throat.

The greasy smell masked the faint noise from the joint in the tracks behind it.

Several pale bone spikes shot through the air.

Crack!

The Gluttonous Pig reacted quickly. It kicked off with its hind legs, and its huge, heavy body sprang nimbly into the air. Its metal hooves struck the bone spikes with a dull thud.

But one spike slipped past and pierced about ten centimeters into its rump.

Before the Gluttonous Pig could cry out in pain, a bone whip came lashing through the air and wrapped around its body.

With a hard yank, its mane snapped and large cracks appeared across its hide. Blood trickled down.

The Gluttonous Pig was thoroughly enraged. Its little eyes turned bloodred as it glared at its attacker. It dug in with all four legs and charged like a runaway tank.

Boom!

After the impact, a three-meter-tall figure stood before the Gluttonous Pig. It had no neck; its head was sunken into its chest, and only a pair of black-red eyes glimmered faintly.

One arm was the bone whip wrapped around the pig. The other was plunged into its eye socket.

"Hrgh..."

The towering figure let out an indistinct sound, then swung itself onto the pig's back. Numerous bone spikes sprang from its knee joints, spinning like a meat grinder as they burrowed into the pig's belly.

The Gluttonous Pig howled in agony as flesh and blood sprayed from its waist, but it couldn't struggle free.

The towering figure hunched over the exposed flesh. Its shoulders spread slightly, revealing a black human head within.

It opened its sharp teeth and bit hungrily into the flesh.

An hour later, much of the flesh on the ground had been evaporated by the heat, leaving a substance like blood fat that gradually darkened in color.

Only then did the towering humanoid zombie lift its head from the mound of flesh.

Its black face was streaked with scarlet blood. It stared at the railway stretching into the distance, its eyes seemingly regaining a trace of clarity.

"Hrgh... train... bastard!"

The elevated tracks rang with an incessant creaking and groaning.

Under some mysterious force, the twisted rails straightened.

The Armed Train rolled forward slowly. Apart from Liang Kuan, who was driving, the others stood on the second-floor observation car, looking down over the once-prosperous city.

Hundreds upon hundreds of cars were piled across the streets. Some had been burned down to nothing but charred, skeletal frames. Some held struggling zombies, while others contained survivors who hadn't escaped in time.

They were trapped in the middle of the wreckage, utterly desperate.

To the right of the tracks, a derailed train pierced through three office buildings in a twisted, parabolic arc.

Its front end had plunged into the concrete load-bearing wall on the twenty-seventh floor of the Central Tower. Its sixteen carriages looked like the bones of a serpent forged from steel, while shards of the glass curtain wall, peeled away like scales, reflected countless points of phosphorescent light in the midday sun.

The glass curtain walls of the skyscrapers on either side had been shaken to pieces, leaving hole after black hole.

In the daylight, white Corpse Cocoons could be seen clearly inside.

The distorted, curled silhouettes of human figures within throbbed violently.

Countless ordinary zombies wandered among them. Hearing the train, they hurried toward the windows, and when the glass shattered, they tumbled to the ground like dumplings from a pot, piling up into a mountain of corpses.

But no one aboard the train looked happy.

Even the passengers in the cars behind them wore expressions of indescribable shock and oppression.