All Parties

Jiu De Mai wore a black tactical suit, peering at Lu Mingfei's location through infrared binoculars.

When Liu Miaomiao's shriek rang out and Lu Mingfei suddenly vanished, Jiu De Mai's eyes widened.

"Holy crap, Little White Rabbit disappeared!" she exclaimed to Su Enxi.

"What the hell!" Su Enxi, watching remotely, spat out her potato chips.

He had to go back immediately.

Lu Mingfei glanced at Liu Miaomiao; leaving her here might invite further danger, so he decided to take her back with him first.

Without waiting for Liu Miaomiao to speak, he hoisted her over his shoulder and activated Flash Step repeatedly, moving rapidly toward the perimeter of the campsite.

At a glance, he saw collapsed campfires and a chaotic crowd.

Humanoid Dead Servant were gathering in droves across the mountains and plains.

Strangely, most of the Dead Servant were merely roaring without launching an attack; they were simply encircling the people in the camp, as if waiting for some kind of order.

Only a handful were actually hunting.

Yet, even these few were enough to send the students fleeing in all directions, their cries for help and weeping constant.

Everyone was being chased like rats.

Zhao Menghua's arm had been clawed during his flight, and the wound was bleeding incessantly. If he hadn't reacted in time and ignored the pain to run away, he would have lost his life.

Chen Wenwen had been following Zhao Menghua the entire time, and by now, Zhao Menghua was crying so hard that snot and tears were streaming down his face.

Seeing Chen Wenwen still trailing him, he cursed, "Can you stop following me? If we split up, I might actually make it out, but having you by my side is just dragging me down!"

"But I'm so scared." Chen Wenwen's bean-sized tears flowed down continuously.

"It's all your fault! I shouldn't have listened to your suggestion to come to this godforsaken place!"

Zhao Menghua cursed through his tears. He had reached his limit with Chen Wenwen; her head was full of naive ideas, and he figured he must have been kicked in the head by a donkey to have ever been attracted to her "literary girl" persona.

As they were crying and bickering, a Dead Servant lunged from the side, tackling Zhao Menghua to the ground. Chen Wenwen stood nearby, frozen in terror.

Am I going to die? Like a flickering lantern, Zhao Menghua's life flashed before his eyes.

At that moment, Jiu De Mai had her sniper rifle aimed at the Dead Servant pinning Zhao Menghua, ready to fire at any second.

"Stop making me save people at the last second, you jerk!"

As Lu Mingfei's voice rang out, he grabbed the Dead Servant pinning Zhao Menghua by the neck, ripped it off him, and hurled it aside with force.

"Little White Rabbit is back, and he brought a little sister with him." Jiu De Mai pulled her eye away from the scope.

"He's always been good at the 'hero saves the beauty' routine," Su Enxi remarked remotely.

Setting down the carried Liu Miaomiao, Lu Mingfei said, "Hurry and stop the bleeding for Zhao Menghua, or he won't make it."

Chen Wenwen nodded through her tears, paralyzed by extreme fear.

"Lu Mingfei, be careful," Liu Miaomiao whispered.

There was no response.

Lu Mingfei drew his blade again and walked toward the Dead Servant he had thrown earlier.

The Dead Servant charged at him. Lu Mingfei gripped the hilt, unleashed a horizontal slash, and walked past it; the Dead Servant's upper and lower body were instantly severed.

Lu Mingfei used Flash Step again, arriving at the center of the camp.

Su Xiaoqiang was in the middle of the camp, her face pale, holding a torch. No monsters had reached her yet.

"Lu Mingfei, hurry up!" she shouted anxiously.

"It's fine now. I've already dealt with the monsters that were attacking randomly."

Lu Mingfei arrived at her side.

Seeing Lu Mingfei return, Su Xiaoqiang let out a sigh of relief.

"How is it now? What's the situation with the others?" Su Xiaoqiang asked.

"Everyone is mostly fine, except for Zhao Menghua, who is seriously injured. It's fortunate they haven't launched a large-scale attack yet, or I might not have been able to save so many people," Lu Mingfei replied.

But now, as Lu Mingfei watched the Dead Servant surrounding the camp gathering, he knew the all-out assault was not far off.

For such mindless monsters to form organized movements, something must be controlling them.

"Where is Chu Zihang now?" Jiu De Mai asked.

"After the students' cries started, Chu Zihang headed that way. He's almost there," Su Enxi replied.

How could there be people here!

In the distance, Chu Zihang had moved the moment he heard the cries.

He was running with the speed of a world-class sprinter, moving like a precision machine without pause, maintaining that pace for several minutes.

Soon, Chu Zihang saw the swarm of Dead Servant.

Chu Zihang's pupils constricted. Why were there so many Dead Servant? Just how much had this organization hidden!

"There is a group of civilians surrounded by a swarm of Dead Servant here. When will the Academy's reinforcements arrive? I need heavy firepower support," Chu Zihang asked into his headset.

"We have about half an hour left." The command team was speechless; they understood exactly what this timeframe meant—the people inside likely wouldn't survive until rescue arrived.

"Specialist Chu Zihang, this is no longer a situation a freshman can handle. Do not take action yet. We miscalculated, and we will bear the consequences."

Chu Zihang looked at the swarm of Dead Servant in the distance and fell silent. He remembered that rainy night and loathed his own cowardice back then; he would never run away again.

To save those civilians now, he had no choice but to force a path through.

Chu Zihang cut the comms, pulled Murasame from his tennis bag, and his golden pupils ignited like flames.

"The people from Kassel have arrived. The experiment can begin."

Perched in a tree not far from the campsite, a man in a white lab coat spoke into a walkie-talkie.

His organization had established a base in Cangmang Mountain specifically to research the evolution of Dragon. Their recent results were quite promising, so they had increased their volume of operations, never expecting this to draw outside investigation—let alone from Kassel.

Although the freshman Chu Zihang possessed strong counter-reconnaissance skills, this was his first mission after all. Under the organization's surveillance, they had discovered that Chu Zihang had already pinpointed the general location of their base.

Since they had been discovered by Kassel, they decided to abandon this base. It was convenient that some students were camping at the foot of the mountain; they could use them as test subjects to see how their organization's cultivated Dead Servant performed.

They would also lure this investigator over and kill him in the process.

Thus, he had brought most of the base's Dead Servant out with him. Under their conditioning, the Dead Servant would act silently at a single command.

Once this experiment was concluded, he could return. He couldn't wait to watch this show unfold.

An eerie whistling sound rang out, the swarm of Dead Servant began their new maneuver, and the experiment commenced.