Wild blade crosses the netherworld, sweeping ten thousand hills!

The rat was as tall as a normal adult man, its black fur glossy and its eyes blood-red.

It stood upright and let out an incredibly piercing shriek!

"Squeeeak-!!!"

At once, all the rats began frantically piling together, one atop another, climbing toward the sky like stacking building blocks!

"A ladder to heaven"!

The towering piles of rats instantly rose past ten meters, then twenty... and kept climbing without pause!

Some rats lost their grip and fell from high up, but the instant they dropped, they spread their limbs. Thin membranes connected those limbs like glider wings, allowing them to glide through the air!

Someone in the convoy saw this and shouted:

"I get it! They're building up high so they can glide over and chase us!"

That shout instantly caught Cao Xianming's, Yang Yong's, and Wang Ying's attention.

Yang Yong vaulted straight onto the bus roof. With a turn of his hand, the Little Golden Flood Dragon Scissors appeared, green and yellow light swirling around them as they sheared toward one of the "giant pillars" of rats.

Wang Ying did the same, leaping onto the off-road vehicle's roof and drawing her long blade.

"Wild blade crosses the netherworld, sweeping ten thousand hills!"

Unlike Yang Yong, who attacked only one spot, Wang Ying shouted that imposing slogan and swung her blade-

A crescent of silvery-white blade light swept out, cutting across dozens of meters!

Every skyward pillar of climbing rats was severed at the waist by that blade light!

After cutting through the rat pillars, the blade energy continued unabated, sweeping toward an abandoned house in the distance.

There was a soft swish.

The house paused slightly, then its upper half slowly slid down and crashed to the ground with a rumble, sending dust flying.

Good grief!

This was Yang Yong's first time seeing Wang Ying unleash her full strength up close.

Her title as the "convoy's strongest fighter" really was well deserved.

Yang Yong suddenly thought of the "jade leg bone" on the bus.

If they used it to strengthen Wang Ying's blade, wouldn't her fighting strength rise another level?

Just thinking about it excited him.

After all, the stronger Wang Ying was, the safer the whole convoy would be.

The convoy raced down the road, soon exceeding a hundred kilometers per hour.

The rats pursued relentlessly, but the distance between them still gradually widened.

Far behind them, they could still hear the giant rat's furious roars.

"Whew..."

Sitting on the bus roof, Yang Yong let out a long breath.

On the roof of the off-road vehicle ahead, Wang Ying was in much the same state. She sheathed her blade, her expression grave.

She hadn't expected rats to have begun mutating in some ordinary mountain village either.

Normally, there shouldn't have been any species of gliding rat in the south.

Yet those little rats had actually evolved membranes.

And that rat as tall as a person... it was clearly the product of super-evolution.

In the future, there would probably be more and more strange plants and animals like these.

Even Wang Ying felt a sense of urgency.

If they didn't advance their Sequence soon, these mutated creatures would quickly leave them behind, turning them into utter weaklings.

Cao Xianming's reaction differed from Yang Yong's and Wang Ying's.

Sitting in the off-road vehicle, he stared at the invisible "Data Model" in his hand, which was constantly analyzing the rat swarm's various parameters.

Soon, a conclusion appeared: the giant rat's evolution was incomplete, and it currently possessed only two abilities.

The first was the terrifying strength granted by its enormous size; the second was its piercing shriek, capable of rupturing eardrums.

As for commanding the swarm... that was an innate talent it possessed after gaining hierarchical dominance within its colony.

Cao Xianming studied the analysis results with keen interest.

His data ability could evolve in two ways:

The first was through frequent use. The more deductions he performed, the faster his ability evolved;

The second was through collecting more data. The richer his data samples, the faster it evolved.

This time, he had obtained detailed data on another colony spawned by the apocalypse.

For him, this was another step toward accumulating what he needed to advance to Sequence Three.

The convoy raced on without stopping, covering more than a hundred kilometers.

For the first twenty kilometers, the rats kept pursuing relentlessly, but eventually, they were finally shaken off completely.

Still, Cao Xianming cautiously made the convoy travel far enough before signaling for it to stop.

Next, the convoy urgently needed to solve its fuel problem.

After fleeing blindly all this way, they had no idea where they had ended up.

Cao Xianming got out and surveyed their surroundings:

The distant mountains, the terrain, the sun's position... he fed all this data into his "Data Model."

The Data Model began calculating at high speed, running thousands upon thousands of iterations in an instant.

Just as everyone thought the calculations would take a long time, Cao Xianming suddenly turned, climbed back into the vehicle, and picked up the megaphone:

"Head east! There's a place not far ahead where we can find fuel!"

The convoy set off again.

He had said it wasn't far, but the journey was certainly long.

Who knew how Cao Xianming had calculated it? The convoy originally followed a national highway, then turned onto an expressway before plunging onto dilapidated country roads. Then they crossed mountains and wound around bend after bend... the route took all sorts of strange turns.

Only when the sky was darkening and night was about to fall did the convoy spot a major crash site in the distance.

Many vehicles lay overturned there: off-road vehicles, buses, sedans... every kind of vehicle was there.

Among them, a conspicuous tanker truck had actually remained upright, standing steadily amid the wreckage.

From the look of things, its driver had probably seen trouble coming and slowed down and braked in advance.

Soon, the convoy arrived at the crash site.

This time, for once, Old Cao actually got out of the off-road vehicle first.

Yang Yong almost wanted to make a snide remark:

This guy never does anything without something to gain. If he's willing to get out himself, he must have already calculated that there's no danger here.

Soon, Lao Zhang, the convoy manager, sent people over to inspect the tanker truck.

They quickly returned, looking excited. "Uncle Zhang! There's fuel in that tanker! A whole tankful!"

Wonderful!

Hearing this, not only Lao Zhang but even Yang Yong felt a surge of excitement.

There were so many vehicles here, and fuel too.

He might as well get himself one in a bit and fill it with gasoline. Then he could drive himself instead of "living under someone else's roof" on the bus.

Pleased with his plan, Yang Yong immediately rushed down to inspect the vehicles parked by the roadside.

Some of the survivors had the same idea and hurried out as well.

Yang Yong soon picked out a tiny "chopped-pepper fish head" car, only to find it had no key.

He might have transmigrated, but that movie trick of starting a car by pulling out two wires and touching them together... he didn't know how to do that.

He had no choice but to give up and inspect the next one.

A big Mercedes. No key either.

Then the next one...

He checked seven or eight vehicles in a row, but none had keys.

Just as he was about to give up, he approached a red farm truck.

It was the kind with two rows of seats in front and a cargo bed behind.

Yang Yong spotted its key at a glance. It was actually still in the ignition!

There were assorted tools in the cargo bed, and even a few empty fuel drums.

Yang Yong went straight over, tried the key, and gave it a turn.