Travelers of All Heavens Hunted Down

"Maybe we should find somewhere with high walls and heavy doors, like this church, lock ourselves in, and wait for the military to rescue us."

Unable to stand the flirting between the pair any longer, Jill voiced her opinion.

The female reporter nodded. That was what she thought too.

Alice poured cold water on their hopes. "No military is coming. Even if someone does come, it'll definitely be Umbrella Corporation. They know the virus has completely spiraled out of control, so at sunrise this morning, Raccoon City will be completely cleansed."

Jill took a hard drag from her cigarette. The smoke she exhaled slowly rose like a mushroom cloud. "Completely cleansed... what does that mean?"

"I know this one," Xiao Miao cut in. "A high-precision tactical nuclear weapon. Capitalists love them—efficient, clean, pollution-free, and best of all, no one will know. Raccoon City has a nuclear power plant, right? A nuclear leak would be the perfect excuse."

"Yes. So we'd better leave Raccoon City before sunrise."

Alice looked at Xiao Miao as she spoke. "Can you still use that ability of yours?"

Xiao Miao shook his head. "No. I can't feel anything at all. Honestly, I don't even know how I used it before."

Alice nodded in understanding. "Our top priority now is finding a way across the walls surrounding Raccoon City."

Umbrella Corporation had encircled the entire city with steel walls dozens of meters high. Black Gate Bridge was the only remaining main route in or out. God knew how they had managed it.

Otherwise, leaving the city would not have been so troublesome. In a country where nearly three hundred million people owned cars and 92 percent of households had one, getting out of town would only be a matter of how much gas they had to burn.

Suddenly, Alice and Xiao Miao both sprang to their feet, drew their guns, and went on alert.

Jill reacted a little slower than the two of them. She stood up and drew her gun two seconds later, asking, "What is it?"

Honestly, if not for Alice and Xiao Miao's reaction, she would not have noticed anything wrong at all.

Xiao Miao frowned. "There's a sound upstairs."

Alice nodded. "Let's check it out together."

"Okay."

The four of them carefully made their way to the church's second floor and discovered that the strange noise was coming from the end of the corridor.

Alice took the lead while Xiao Miao guarded the rear. They passed through the pitch-black hallway and found two corpses.

One was a priest, the other an office worker. The two bodies lay together, with a revolver beside them.

More than half of both bodies had been eaten away. A female zombie was crouched over the priest's body, feasting greedily.

Bang!

Xiao Miao blew the female zombie's head apart with one shot, then gave both the priest and the office worker a shot to the head to prevent them from getting back up.

The noise Alice and Xiao Miao had heard was not the sound of the female zombie feeding. The group continued onward and reached an ornate bedroom, where a photograph of the priest holding a Bible hung on the wall.

The priest's bedroom was ridiculously lavish!

The strange sound came from beside the bed. An old-fashioned telephone was ringing brightly.

Everyone exchanged glances. Alice stepped forward to answer it and pressed the speakerphone button.

"Good God, what are you afraid of? Do you think the phone is going to jump up and shoot you?" a man complained through the speaker.

"Hard to say," Xiao Miao thought. What if that phone had come into contact with the AllSpark?

Alice frowned. "Who are you?"

"I am Dr. Charles Ashford. More importantly, I can get all four of you out of the city! But first, you need to do something for me. Are you ready to make a deal?"

Knowing the plot well, Xiao Miao immediately understood. He glanced at the surveillance camera on the ceiling—God knew why the priest had installed one in his bedroom—then strode to the phone. "Dr. Ashford, you want us to rescue your daughter?"

Dr. Ashford froze on the other end of the line. The confident expression vanished from his face. "How did you know?"

As he asked, Dr. Ashford switched to a split screen and began looking up Xiao Miao's information.

How did I know? Of course, because I watched the original movie!

Xiao Miao complained inwardly while spinning a lie aloud. "It's simple. You should be looking up my information right now. As you can see, I'm a reporter. I know you work for Umbrella Corporation, and that you have a daughter. For you to contact us this way at a time like this, something must have happened to your daughter. Am I right?"

"To be honest, you don't look like a reporter at all." Dr. Ashford took a deep breath. "We need to talk properly. There's more advanced communication equipment in the room next to yours. Let's use that."

With that, Dr. Ashford hung up. Xiao Miao had thrown off the rhythm of the conversation, and he needed to calm down, organize his words, and find a way to regain the upper hand.

Inside the priest's bedroom, Xiao Miao and the others stared at one another.

More advanced communication equipment?

Where would a church get advanced communication equipment?

Though they were full of questions, they still followed Dr. Ashford's instructions and headed for the next room.

The adjacent room was locked. Xiao Miao found a key on the priest, but after opening the first door, they found another security door inside.

So they began looking for another key. In the end, Xiao Miao had a sudden idea and searched through the Bibles, finding the key inside a hollowed-out Bible.

After opening the security door, they found an even more luxuriously decorated... bedroom?

Beside the silk bed sat a gynecological examination chair. Several hooks hung from the ceiling, though no one knew what they were for.

On the other side of the room were several tables piled with strange little toys that would need censoring, along with a computer and a high-end camera already set up.

"Wow." The female reporter understood immediately. "That priest had some wild tastes. He even livestreamed this stuff?"

Xiao Miao kept a straight face and defended the priest. "What do you know? He was doing cyber preaching."

They turned on the computer and easily reached the desktop. To their surprise, the priest had not set a password.

Perhaps he had never expected this little room of his to be exposed.

A call request appeared on the computer. Xiao Miao clicked to accept it, and Dr. Ashford's balding head appeared on the screen.

Before Xiao Miao could speak, Dr. Ashford seized the initiative. "You may not understand your current situation. Take a look at this first."

Dr. Ashford pressed a button, and the image immediately switched to surveillance footage from somewhere on the streets of Raccoon City.

In the footage, a fully armed special forces squad advanced through the streets and surrounded a single person from all directions.

The person under attack was no ordinary individual either. He possessed immense strength and could lift a sedan with brute force alone, then hurl it at the special forces.

After losing five team members, the special forces successfully brought the target down with tranquilizer guns, loaded him onto a plane, and flew away.

The footage switched again, this time to indoor surveillance. Someone who could control fire used gas to trigger an explosion and successfully escaped the special forces' pursuit.

The footage changed more than a dozen times, all showing special forces capturing people. Some operations succeeded and others failed, but successful captures were more common.

Dr. Ashford's face reappeared, his tone grave. "Major Cain and the military are capturing a certain type of special individual—you people!"

His gaze settled on Xiao Miao and Alice. "Without my help, you'll eventually become the military's lab rats and end up back on an operating table. So make a deal with me. Help me rescue my daughter, and I'll guide you out of the city."