The wheels rolled over the road with a dull rumble.
Every vehicle was accelerating, every heart pounding wildly.
Partway there, Qi Peiliang suddenly remembered something.
"Captain Cao, didn't they say the Nine Great Elders wouldn't appear until seven days from now, unless a zombie siege brought them out early?"
"Isn't this a zombie siege right now?"
"Why is the Core Area still sealed off?"
The radio fell silent for several seconds.
Everyone was waiting for the answer.
Then Cao Xianming's voice rang out.
His voice was calm, but every word seemed forced through gritted teeth.
"I asked around."
"Only a full-scale zombie siege will alert the Nine Great Elders and make them leave the Core Area early."
"And right now, the only place the zombies are attacking..."
"Is this part of the Outer City we're in. The Thirty-Sixth District of the Third Ring."
His words faded.
The radio fell into deathly silence again.
But this silence was different from before.
The earlier silence had been despair.
This time, something was burning within it.
Eighty-one outer districts in all.
Only this one was under attack.
This was no longer a coincidence.
They were clearly the targets.
A conspiracy.
A blatant conspiracy.
Only the elders knew when Mechanical City would jump into the thunderclouds.
Only the elders knew how to open the Light Gate and let the zombies in.
Only the elders had the ability to access the Outer City's defense systems.
Without someone helping from within, given the combat strength of Mechanical City's robots, they would never have been wiped out so quickly.
Everyone cursed furiously in their hearts.
They had thought far too well of the Third Elder.
They had never imagined that man would be so utterly unscrupulous.
To destroy the Survival Convoy, he had fed an entire outer