Qin Luo had just decided that the puffed-up little zombie was pretty cute too, the kind that made you want to poke her. Then he saw the post Bai Shu showed him, and his brows instantly knitted.
"That looks so disgusting."
Xu Duoduo suddenly reached up and patted Qin Luo's head. Thinking she was deliberately messing with him because she was angry, he pulled her hand off his head and held it. "Quit it, I'm reading a post. Huh, this thing can actually level up by devouring things?"
But as she looked at the distant woods through the right-hand window, an enormous snake body reared up. Only then did Xu Duoduo realize the creature wasn't faceless. Its human face was mixed into its snake head, making it as disgusting as could be.
Her sanity plummeted.
She picked up her whistle and blew one short blast, then patted Qin Luo again. At last, she got both their attention, and they turned to look at her together.
Xu Duoduo pointed out the window, her body almost rigid with fright.
This world was too bizarre.
Qin Luo and Bai Shu turned to look and spotted a Mutant Snake-Man wriggling like an earthworm in the woods not far from their lane. Now and then, he raised his snake head to look ahead before continuing to squirm. The worst part was that when he moved, the tip of his tail stuck up-and it was still a pair of legs...
Both men fell silent.
Finally, Bai Shu let out a "Fuck!" and said, "How is he so huge?!"
Qin Luo scrunched up his face. "That's seriously disgusting."
He genuinely couldn't stand the sight.
Xu Duoduo struggled to record a video on her tablet, then forwarded it to Bai Shu so he could post it. She really didn't want to look at that thing for another second.
Neither Wang Weihu nor Chen Xiaofei had noticed the creature, which showed how stealthily he moved. Only when Chen Xiaofei heard the commotion in the back and asked about it did they learn that a Mutant Snake-Man had just appeared at their three o'clock.
Both of them got goosebumps. Soft-bodied reptiles like that were the most revolting things.
Still, disgusting or not,
they weren't afraid of him.
The Mutant Snake-Man seemed to be traveling too and didn't come over to bother them.
The two sides simply passed each other at a distance.
"He's headed toward City C, and so are we, so there's a greater chance we'll run into him again. According to the official post, a snake's weak point is seven inches behind its head, and the same goes for this thing. Aside from that spot, there's also his head."
After Bai Shu finished, everyone acknowledged the information, but nobody was in a good mood.
A little farther ahead, the vehicle entered a curtain of rain. The gloom over there made it seem like another world. Though there was no sun on this side, at least it was dry, while the other side looked like hell, a place that never saw daylight.
But they still had to go.
Almost the instant they entered the area, rain came hammering down from every direction.
Even Wang Weihu frowned. "Visibility's less than half a meter!"
He switched on the hazard lights.
Qin Luo could only tell him to slow down. "The clouds here still aren't clearing. Nothing we can do about it. Drive slowly for now and see how it goes. If we can't manage, we'll find somewhere to stop for a while."
"Understood," Wang Weihu replied.
Chen Xiaofei went on full alert too, helping watch the road around the vehicle.
The rain was loud even inside the car. If their off-road vehicle hadn't been so heavy and sturdy, the downpour might have rocked it back and forth.
Xu Duoduo looked up at the roof, then pressed close to the window to peer outside. Even with her eyes wide open, she couldn't see clearly. Suddenly, something slapped against the window with a smack, startling her so badly that she jerked backward.
Only then did she see that it was a Mutant Frog, as big as a human head. It clung tightly to the window, its tongue covered in spikes that stabbed at the glass with a squealing scrape.
The little zombie was angry. She wanted to kill the thing that had startled her. Since becoming a zombie, Xu Duoduo had grown a little childish, and all she wanted was payback.
But the rain outside was so heavy that she couldn't open the window. All she could do was glare at the frog, cheeks puffed up.
Chen Xiaofei complained that it was blocking his view too. "Why's this frog so big? Even rain this heavy can't knock it off!"
Bai Shu checked the information. "This thing's afraid of fire. It's a Low-Level Mutant Frog, a brainless creature with no mutant core. It isn't poisonous, but it eats meat and lashes at people with its tongue! Those spikes can scrape off a whole chunk of flesh."
Chen Xiaofei shuddered, disgust written all over his face. "Just hearing that makes my flesh hurt."
Xu Duoduo stared at it for a while, her mind full of the facts that it feared fire and could lash at people. If they let it keep clinging there, it could ambush them when they got out later.
So before anyone could react, she grabbed insecticide and a lighter, swiftly opened the window, and ignited the spray the very second the Mutant Frog tried to leap inside. With a whoosh, the flames scorched the frog black. It fell beneath the car with a smack, then the rear tire crushed it, scattering its remains across the ground...
From opening the window to spraying fire and shutting it again, Xu Duoduo took less than three seconds.
The flames had knocked the Mutant Frog off, but rain had soaked the back seat too.
Xu Duoduo had been drenched as well. Her hair was wet, her clothes were wet, and she had become a bedraggled little zombie. She froze, utterly stunned.
The three up front were dumbfounded too.
Wang Weihu flicked a quick glance at the rearview mirror and was so shocked by what he saw that his mouth fell open.
Seeing everyone fall silent, then looking at the soaking back seat, Xu Duoduo suddenly felt like a child who had done something wrong. Her mouth crumpled, and she wanted to cry.
But zombies had no tears.
They didn't give her a chance to cry anyway. The instant her mouth crumpled, Qin Luo called out, "Hey, no, no, don't cry! What's there to cry about? You did great, really!"
He clambered straight into the back seat, picked Xu Duoduo up, and moved her to a cleaner spot on the left. Then he grabbed the half-soaked blanket and wiped the seat.
Bai Shu and Chen Xiaofei immediately snapped out of it too and began praising her.
"Yes, exactly!! Little Class Monitor, you did great! I couldn't see the road behind us on that side with that thing there! Nice kill! Great job!"
"Right! Those were some moves! Just what we'd expect from a little zombie with a 1.5 speed multiplier!!"
"Exactly! Who else has a teammate who reacts that fast? She took it out just like that! It's all this rain's fault. It's raining way too hard!"
As the two of them played off each other, Wang Weihu couldn't help saying, "Well, actually, we could've also..."
Chen Xiaofei immediately interrupted him. "Ahahaha, kids need encouragement! What are you doing, Old Wang? Honestly, Little Class Monitor did a great job!"
He winked and made faces at Wang Weihu. Xu Duoduo's report had come out last night. Her intelligence was unstable now: sometimes she had the mental capacity of an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old, and sometimes she regressed to that of a seven- or eight-year-old. Why pick on a little kid?
Besides, it wasn't a big deal.
It really was better to deal with the Mutant Frog sooner rather than later. Who knew whether it might suddenly mutate again the next second?
Watching them scramble to comfort her, Xu Duoduo froze again and never got around to crying.
After a flurry of work, Qin Luo finally wiped the seat clean, though it was still damp. He turned and pulled a towel from behind him, draping it over her head. "Dry yourself off, then change into some dry clothes. Do you have a curtain in your storage space? Take one out, and the two of us will shield you."
Bai Shu took a piece of green cloth out of his Storage Space Card. "This'll work. We can each hold one side."
Before you continue