Chen Ye, I'm begging you

Compared with the long-legged girl and Iron Lion, Chen Ye, who belonged to a support sequence, barely stood out in the convoy.

Nana belonged to the sword immortal sequence and wandered around the convoy every day with a longsword on her back.

Just moments ago, she had even cleaved a house in two with a single slash.

In the survivors' eyes, this long-legged girl was Superman.

Then there was the hulking Iron Lion. His towering frame alone, over two meters tall, exerted an overwhelming pressure.

And the mysterious, unfathomable Captain Chu, Chu Che, clearly had some real abilities.

Only Chen Ye, a newly awakened sequence transcendent, seemed no different from the other survivors.

If they had an instrument that could identify sequences, they would have discovered that Chen Ye's mechanic sequence was fake.

Yet this seemingly unremarkable support sequence had now become the other survivors' lifeline.

Ordinary survivors facing corpse puppets were like three-year-old children facing burly grown men.

The steel pipes and baseball bats in the survivors' hands were useless against the corpse puppets.

Firearms were strictly controlled weapons. Ordinary people had no way to get their hands on them.

After the apocalypse, weapons like guns became even rarer.

Even with guns and ammunition, the damage they could inflict on supernatural horrors was very limited.

Only the crossbow in Chen Ye's hands, with its bolts soaked in black dog blood, could have any effect on the corpse puppets.

But Chen Ye had been utterly ruthless earlier, using Old Lady Zhao as a shield without the slightest hesitation.

That had given some of them pause.

Now the famous actress Zhou Lan had been knocked down by a corpse puppet. She might be the next to die.

Facing the corpse puppet's ghastly, inhuman face, Zhou Lan felt every hair on her body stand on end.

She desperately held it back with the stick in her hands.

"Xiao Xiao!"

Zhou Lan couldn't help screaming.

Seeing her sister pinned down by a corpse puppet, Zhou Xiaoxiao panicked and shouted to Chen Ye for help.

"Chen Ye, save my sister!"

Chen Ye raised his hand and fired a bolt.

The bolt lodged in a corpse puppet's head, sending up a puff of white smoke.

The corpse puppet howled and backed away.

Chen Ye looked at Zhou Lan and Zhou Xiaoxiao without any change in his expression. His hands kept moving as he swiftly drew another bolt, cocked the crossbow, and fired.

He drove back another corpse puppet that was about to pounce.

Seeing that Chen Ye really was leaving them to die, Zhou Xiaoxiao's eyes flashed with sorrow and resentment.

But she couldn't worry about that now. She grabbed her stick and ran over to help.

Corpse puppets had a very limited range of abilities. Their strength and agility were only comparable to those of an ordinary, strong adult man.

Carried by the willow branches, they seemed capable of flight.

And ordinary attacks had little effect on them.

An ordinary adult man was no match for even a single corpse puppet.

There were also vast numbers of them, with several hundred beneath the Big Willow Tree.

Once one corpse puppet latched onto a target, it quickly drew the others into a swarm.

They were much harder to deal with than ordinary supernatural horrors.

Fortunately, Iron Lion and Nana had drawn most of the Big Willow Tree's attention. That was the only reason Chen Ye and the other survivors on its outskirts had held out this long.

It wasn't that Chen Ye and the others didn't want to escape the Big Willow Tree's reach.

There was simply no escape.

The Big Willow Tree's branches seemed capable of stretching endlessly. The entire village was its battlefield.

Hearing her sister's cries for help, Zhou Xiaoxiao hurried over and used her wooden stick to shove away the corpse puppet pinning her sister down.

She had only just pulled her sister to her feet when she discovered, to her despair, that several corpse puppets had already gathered around them.

Even dealing with one corpse puppet had strained the sisters to their limits.

Now there were several surrounding them.

Those cloudy eyes stared at the sisters, and many of the faces were painfully familiar.

The threat of death gripped their hearts.

Were she and her sister... going to die here today?

The sisters stood back to back, each holding a sharpened steel pipe.

Such simple weapons might pose a threat to ordinary people.

Against corpse puppets, however, they were completely useless.

Zhou Lan gripped her steel pipe, her legs trembling.

Four or five vicious-looking corpse puppets surrounded the sisters.

More corpse puppets were heading their way from farther off.

Cloudy eyes, gaping mouths, rotting bodies, and waves of foul decay assailed them.

Zhou Xiaoxiao could even see maggots writhing on the corpse puppets' skin.

These corpse puppets still had human forms, but nothing human remained inside them.

"Xiaoxiao, when you get the chance, run first. As long as you reach Chen Ye, you'll be much safer, even if he doesn't want to save you!"

Zhou Lan gritted her teeth as she instructed her sister.

Zhou Xiaoxiao clenched her jaw. "Zhou Lan, what the hell are you talking about? Even if I die, I won't beg Chen Ye!"

She clenched her teeth so hard that a trace of blood seeped from her lips. Sweat soaked a strand of long hair across her forehead, leaving her looking utterly bedraggled.

Even as she said it, Zhou Xiaoxiao felt a little uncertain.

"Aaaah!"

A scream rang out as a corpse puppet leaped onto the back of a male survivor trying to flee, opened its mouth wide, and bit into the back of his neck.

Blood streamed through the air as the man was carried deep into the Big Willow Tree's canopy.

The tragedy unfolded only four or five meters from the sisters.

According to the man himself, he had been a senior executive at a publicly listed company before the apocalypse. He had even tried courting Zhou Lan for a time.

Neither sister had expected him to die right before their eyes like this.

Zhou Xiaoxiao's pupils trembled wildly, and tears spilled into her beautiful, wide eyes.

They were tears of fear.

Death had unfolded right before her.

Zhou Xiaoxiao looked at Chen Ye nearby.

"Chen Ye!"

Zhou Xiaoxiao cried out, unwilling to give in.

For the first time, a trace of pleading entered her voice.

That was exceptionally rare for the always-stubborn Zhou Xiaoxiao.

Since the apocalypse began, Zhou Xiaoxiao had never begged anyone.

But now... she and her sister Zhou Lan were trapped in a hopeless situation.

Chen Ye wasn't doing particularly well himself.

Fortunately, he had stockpiled enough bolts soaked in black dog blood beforehand to barely hold out.

Although the black dog blood bolts couldn't kill the corpse puppets, they could at least drive them back.

System notifications flashed before Chen Ye's eyes, but he couldn't be bothered to count them now.

All he could do was hope Nana and Iron Lion would hurry.

Otherwise, he wouldn't last much longer either.

As for the other survivors, Chen Ye didn't care about them at all.

Suddenly, he heard his name.

Chen Ye paused briefly, then saw four or five corpse puppets surrounding the Zhou sisters.

The steel pipes in the Zhou sisters' hands were like children's toys against these corpse puppets.

In just a few seconds, the sisters would be torn to pieces.

Both Zhou sisters looked at him with pleading, pitiful eyes.

They were like puppies in the freezing wind, begging their owner for help with their eyes.

When they saw Chen Ye turn toward them, they reacted.

Hope lit up the sisters' eyes.

At that moment, Zhou Xiaoxiao's wide eyes brimmed with tears, endless regret mingling with hope. "I'm begging you! Chen Ye! Save us!"

One moment, she had been saying she would die before begging anyone.

The next, she really was about to die, with death so close at hand.

The change had come so quickly that even Zhou Xiaoxiao hadn't expected it.