Earth Ghost

Black pus sprayed everywhere.

The tumor in the gaunt hand bounced up and down.

Its left hand pointed toward the train, slowly following its direction, while its right hand stretched behind it. Bent over, it had to roll its eyes upward to see the train clearly.

With a whoosh, its backward-bending arm flung the lump of flesh in its hand.

"Bang!"

The tumor struck the train, and a spray of brown-green pus burst out, covering all the side windows.

Bubbles began popping across the surrounding metal armor.

But at the corrosion rate of a first-tier Earth Ghost, even a week might not be enough to eat through a 15 mm steel plate.

Besides, the armor around the front of the train was more than 27 mm thick.

The worst thing about these creatures was how disgusting they were. Their pus not only corroded things but also marked them with a signal.

To humans, it smelled foul. To zombies, it was like a signal flare.

"Hey, look what I found here—delicious food! Come and eat!"

It could draw a small horde of zombies from within a radius of several dozen meters.

The best solution was to quickly hose it off with a water gun or sprinkle on some dry powder to neutralize it.

In his past life, the zombie he'd dealt with most often was this first-tier Earth Ghost. To others, these ranged attackers were revolting, but his profession back then had been Electromagnetic User.

He could accelerate small objects like steel pellets or coins to supersonic speeds.

Against fragile Earth Ghosts, he could take them out with a single hit.

But that didn't mean he never missed.

Remembering some unpleasant experiences, Su Huan's face darkened. "Ignore it. When Xiao Ba gets here, just kill it!"

They hadn't developed specific professions yet, so he couldn't precisely manipulate electromagnetic force.

But he still remembered some useful tricks, so Su Huan fired high-temperature energy directly, minimizing the need to manipulate the medium.

The downside was that it consumed a lot of energy and had a short range.

Soon, a large wave of zombies surged into view. At their head was a first-tier Butcher, dragging the long-dead corpse of a first-tier Skull Crusher as a weapon.

Two tiny eyes on its mountain of a body blazed with pure malice.

"Do zombies kill each other?"

Ever since he'd smashed one to pieces last time, Liang Kuan had stopped fearing these all-bark-and-no-bite evolved zombies.

After all, he was driving a Steel Dragon weighing several thousand tons.

Even if a real dragon crawled out of the water, it would have to give way to an Armed Train charging straight at it.

"Butchers look for weapons. If there aren't any suitable ones nearby when they emerge from their cocoons, they'll grab another zombie. This poor bastard just happened to be within reach."

Su Huan glanced at the Skull Crusher with a strange look. It had bulging, powerful muscles, and its hands were hammers the size of watermelons.

It had once been a ferocious zombie, but now its head was smashed in, and its upper body had been ground down to a mass of flesh.

If he remembered right, there'd been a Legendary Butcher in his past life that coveted the Skull Crusher's twin hammers. At every stage, it would fight a Skull Crusher of the same tier and use it as a weapon.

Could this be that very one?

"Su, are we going to fight?"

Qi Xiaoba's clear voice came from behind. The boy seemed to have recovered his fighting spirit.

Coming back to himself, Su Huan nodded and said solemnly, "Liang Kuan, get ready to charge through. Stop once you've killed the Butcher at the front. Xiao Ba, clear out that annoying Earth Ghost on the wall. Remember to hit it in the back."

"Understood!"

The moment Liang Kuan shoved the lever all the way down, the entire train seemed to become a roaring steel beast.

Qi Xiaoba looked at the Earth Ghost chasing the train along the fence. His pupils were completely suffused with the sheen of liquid metal.

Su Huan took a deep breath and gripped the remaining first-tier Pan-Energy Crystal. The Tungsten Steel Ram hummed and trembled as azure-blue arcs of electricity poured into it.

"Don't speed up! There's a train on the tracks five hundred meters ahead!"

Yu Yue's voice rang clearly in everyone's ears from the second-floor observation deck.

Su Huan frowned and stopped feeding energy into the engine. "Can we stop in five hundred meters?"

"No problem!" Liang Kuan answered in a muffled voice.

As the wheels crushed the ordinary zombies at the front of the horde, the sound was like hundreds upon hundreds of rotten tomatoes bursting at once.

Dark red blood splattered in a fan across the 15 mm composite armor. The anti-explosion mesh was instantly covered in broken organs. Half a zombie's head caught on the edge of the observation window, its hollow eye sockets frozen in a greedy, savage glare—the first detail in this bloody tableau.

At the instant the Butcher swung the Skull Crusher's corpse at the front of the train—

"Bzzzt—"

Tens of thousands of volts surged through the ram and into the Butcher, scorching its massive body until it smoked.

The blow left it stunned, and then the ram plunged viciously into it.

Bright yellow fat splattered along the tracks.

The zombie horde, over a hundred strong, parted like a wave of grain before a steel plow. Limbs traced arcs through the air, and the blood mist kicked up by the ram refracted sunlight into a rainbow.

"Bang!"

Another disgusting tumor slammed into the front window. This time, mixed with the Butcher's blood and the Earth Ghost's pus, it completely obscured the view ahead.

The Armed Train gave a piercing whine and began to brake.

Qi Xiaoba reached out and made a grasping motion. One of the anti-explosion meshes on the side suddenly flew out and expanded into a gigantic metal net, scooping up the Earth Ghost.

The metal wires rapidly tightened, shredding the hunched figure into a heap of minced flesh.

"Screee—"

The train finally came to a stop, but without a live map to check against, Su Huan had no idea how far they were from Mojiang City's South Station.

"Whirr..."

The lights in the cab came on, and the air conditioning kicked into high gear.

Su Huan frowned at the filthy mess coating the windows and gave his orders. "Xiao Ba, finish off that Butcher. Ignore the ordinary zombies. Old Liang, come with me."

He headed toward the dining car and happened to see Yu Jing and her daughter coming down.

Su Huan spoke up. "Yu Jing, you're in charge of connecting the dining car's water tank to the front of the train today. Hook up a high-pressure water gun so we can wash the windows whenever we need to."

"Okay."

Yu Jing froze for a moment, then looked at the chunks of flesh hanging from the anti-explosion mesh on both sides and nodded.

When they reached Carriage No. 2, Wan Xing was sitting beside a huge table. In addition to the carriage lights, several especially large desk lamps shone down on the table in the middle.

The river crab Su Huan had brought back the other day sat on the table.

Wan Xing was carefully prying off its shell with a dagger made from a Night Demon's claw.

Seeing Su Huan and Liang Kuan approach, she asked in confusion, "Are we going on a mission?"

Su Huan shook his head. "Not you. Keep gathering materials. Have you extracted the Pan-Energy Crystal from this river crab?"

"Mm." Wan Xing nodded toward a first-tier Pan-Energy Crystal beside the table.

Su Huan's face lit up.

Counting this one, they had already obtained three first-tier Pan-Energy Crystals. Two more, and he could upgrade "Pan-Energy Conversion" from lv2 to lv3.

As it happened, there was still a Butcher and an Earth Ghost outside the train.