Over the next three days, they encountered no other dangers, aside from the occasional scattered members of the Biker Gang who showed up to deliver supplies.
It was unclear whether Elder Qi's Sequence 2 had become more powerful or there simply weren't many weird entities on the grasslands.
As Lin Yi drove each day, he kept training his mental power.
At night, he also went to see Lu Sheng to farm some affection points.
He had to admit, the skinning weird entity parasitizing Lu Sheng's body was practically a cheat.
No matter how much he farmed, there seemed to be no upper limit...
In three days, he had pushed his contribution straight up to 240.
"Bzzzt, bzzzt."
The sun was at its midday peak when Elder Qi's voice came over the radio.
"Everyone, weird entities are approaching from behind. We have to speed up."
"Okay."
"Copy."
The convoy had originally been crawling like a tortoise. Even with its sudden acceleration, it was only moving at a running pace.
After all, the wild grass on the plains was far too rampant, and large rocks occasionally lurked beneath it as obstacles.
Going too fast could easily lead to danger.
"Something's strange."
Elder Qi's voice came over the radio again. "That weird entity was approaching very quickly before, but once it got within a certain range, it started matching our speed."
"Could it have reached another weird entity's territory?" Xu Zhong asked.
"It shouldn't have. I haven't detected any others."
Elder Qi sounded puzzled, but barely had his voice faded before it rang out again. "No, change direction! Another powerful weird entity has appeared on our flank!"
The convoy sped up again.
The dangers seemed to have converged all at once.
The convoy, which had been moving steadily forward, began swerving left and right, darting every which way.
Lin Yi casually drew the supplies behind him into his hand, then tossed them back, an odd feeling stirring within him.
After a moment of silence, he switched on the radio. "Why do I feel like we're a flock of sheep being herded...?"
The moment Lin Yi said this, the radio fell silent.
The others clearly felt his idea made sense too.
Elder Qi's strained voice came through again. "There's nothing we can do. The auras of the weird entities chasing us are too powerful. Facing them head-on would mean certain death."
"This... is a death trap..."
Everyone fell silent again.
For a time, an eerie silence settled over the convoy.
"My Sequence 2 has a decoy ability. Give me a moment."
As Elder Qi finished speaking, the moving convoy seemed to ripple.
Immediately afterward, an identical convoy appeared beside them and drove off in another direction.
Is this the power of Sequence 2? Lin Yi marveled inwardly.
"While the decoy exists, our convoy will be temporarily concealed from the weird entities' perception. I'll see if I can lure them away."
Elder Qi's voice remained low.
Everyone looked toward the departing convoy.
Half an hour later...
Elder Qi sighed. "It's no use. My decoy was torn apart. It seems that if we refuse to be herded, they'll simply kill us outright."
Elder Qi sat on the bed in the apocalypse heavy truck.
He was tossing out the cane in his hand more and more frequently.
Every time, the direction the cane indicated was the very direction the weird entities were herding them.
That was also why he hadn't chosen to fight them to the death.
Something suddenly occurred to him.
The weird entities were exploiting his ability as a Guide!
Elder Qi instantly broke out in a cold sweat.
Their power wasn't the most terrifying thing about the weird entities.
The most terrifying thing was that an intelligent being had definitely emerged among them!
It was controlling the weird entities on the grasslands to herd the survivors!
Elder Qi took a deep breath and picked up the radio anyway.
"Based on my judgment, we now have only one way to survive."
His voice went out over the radio. No one answered; everyone waited for him to continue.
"An intelligent being has appeared among the weird entities. Judging by the current situation, that intelligent weird entity probably isn't very strong, and it is subject to certain rules."
"Our only way out now is to find that Intelligent Weird and kill it. Only then will we have a slim chance of survival!"
"I can sense a faint weird aura in the very direction they're herding us! If I'm right, that thing is the intelligent weird entity!"
Elder Qi's words brought a little warmth back to everyone's chilled hearts.
Lin Yi, too, marveled at how important a Guide was.
Without a Guide, he probably wouldn't even know how he had died.
"A desperate last stand, then?"
Lin Yi toyed with the Blood Dagger in one hand.
A grim, murderous air filled the convoy.
A night passed in their flight in the blink of an eye.
When the next day arrived, the sky remained gloomy, as though a black cloth had covered the entire sun.
"A graveyard!"
Someone cried out.
Everyone's attention turned ahead.
Amid the emerald grasslands, a graveyard had appeared, utterly out of place.
The graveyard stood on pitch-black soil, without a blade of grass growing on it.
At a glance, it stretched on and on, with at least ten thousand gravestones.
At its very center, three enormous gravestones stood out.
The gravestone in the middle had even been stained a glaring scarlet.
A single glance sent a chill down their backs.
Though not a single weird entity could be seen in the graveyard, Lin Yi felt every hair on his body stand on end.
"Is this where they've been herding us?"
Xu Zhong's voice came over the radio.
The gaps between the gravestones were wide enough for vehicles to pass.
Yet the convoy went no farther.
"Elder Qi, what do we do?"
Li Yong's voice rang out.
"The weird entities chasing us have stopped. We need to find the Intelligent Weird hiding in the graveyard as quickly as possible."
"As long as we can kill it, we'll have a chance of escaping!"
Elder Qi's voice was subdued.
"All right."
No one hesitated much. Having survived danger time and again, the survivors all understood that hesitation meant death.
"Clack, clack, clack."
The ground inside the graveyard was uneven, and the vehicles jolted constantly as they drove through it.
Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!
Suddenly, fierce gunfire erupted.
"Ah!"
"Fuck! Have you bastards lost your minds?!"
In an instant, furious roars and screams rang out among the crowd.
Lin Yi's apocalypse ironclad car also took several bullets, but they failed to penetrate its defenses.
Lin Yi turned to look, and his expression immediately changed.
At some point, every survivor riding a motorcycle had acquired a shotgun formed from black mist.
Their eyes were vacant, as though they were being controlled and had lost consciousness.
They began indiscriminately sweeping their fire across every survivor vehicle.
Some survivors failed to react in time and died on the spot.
Bang, bang, bang!
Gunshots rang out nonstop, and cars went out of control, crashing into gravestones.
Rat-tat-tat!
The convoy reacted at the same time.
The apocalypse heavy truck's machine gun opened fire, aiming at these former members of the convoy.
No one blamed Elder Qi for being cold-blooded.
In this situation, if they didn't fight back, they would be the ones to die.
All the survivors hid behind cover, waiting through the barrage of machine-gun fire.
"Clack, clack-clack-clack."
Another strange sound rang out.
Lin Yi immediately pinpointed the graves beneath the gravestones.
The graves churned, and weird entities clad in armor and wielding black longswords crawled out!
Their pupils glowed an eerie green as they locked onto the nearest living things and began attacking.
"Sequence, Divine Fist!"
"Hehehe, want to play a game together?!"
Sequence Transcendents rushed out of the convoy one after another, immediately charging at the weird entities.
"Clack, clack-clack-clack..."
The graves around Lin Yi were dug open as well, and an identical weird entity broke through the soil.
"Da Sha!"
Lin Yi bellowed.
Without the slightest hesitation, Da Sha gripped the Rolling Pin and hammered it into the weird entity.
"No, something's wrong."
Lin Yi stared intently at the weird entities that kept appearing.
In an instant, he broke out in a cold sweat.
"Elder Qi! Elder Qi, stop firing!"
Lin Yi shouted frantically into the radio. "It's a Rule-Bound Ghost! Cease fire!"
"Hiss..."
The machine gun stopped pouring out fire.
Elder Qi's grave voice came through. "What did you find?!"
Everyone understood that Rule-Bound Ghosts were the most unsolvable kind of weird entity!
Other weird entities could be killed by Sequence Transcendents.
But with Rule-Bound Ghosts, they could only leave by breaking the rules!
"The number of weird entities emerging from the graves matches the number of our dead!"
"Every time you shoot and kill a survivor who's lost their mind, another weird entity crawls out of a grave!"
"Have you noticed that the graves break open at random locations?!"
The moment Lin Yi said this, everyone realized it.
Everyone listening to the radio instinctively looked toward the three largest gravestones.
All of them broke out in a cold sweat.
If Lin Yi hadn't warned them.
If they hadn't stopped firing in time.
If one of the weird entities beneath those three enormous gravestones had actually been chosen at random, they would probably all have died here!
"Lin Yi, you did very well."
Elder Qi took a deep breath. He finally understood why the Intelligent Weird had herded them here!
The Intelligent Weird wanted to use the rules to resurrect the great horrors beneath the three gravestones in the middle!
Bang, bang, bang!
The motorcycle riders who hadn't died were still shooting.
This time, Elder Qi didn't choose to shoot them dead.
Instead, he ordered his men to aim for their arms and render them unable to fight.
Sure enough, just as Lin Yi had expected, once no one else died, no more weird entities emerged from the graves.
At this sight, everyone let out a deep sigh of relief.
"All right, let's deal with the trouble in front of us first."
Elder Qi's voice came over the radio, naturally referring to the weirds emerging from the graves.
Nearly twenty weirds had emerged by now.
The squad had only six Sequence Transcendence fighters capable of combat.
Zhao Xing used a mental shock to control one of the weirds.
The weird began indiscriminately attacking its nearby companions.
It tied down two weirds at once.
Clown, meanwhile, could only hold off one.
With so many weirds, Da Sha faced an encirclement of three on his own.
Xu Zhong also faced two weirds alone.
Divine Fist Da Hu was simply getting beaten up amid the weirds.
The convoy was being completely overwhelmed.
Lin Yi had no intention of standing by and watching.
After explaining the situation with the graves, he began circling around Da Sha with the Blood Blade in hand, occasionally slashing an armored weird.
Although he could substitute a death, he could not use it under the current circumstances.
Every time he substituted a death, another weird would revive inside a grave.
So he fought extremely cautiously.
He could not land a killing blow at all.
But this was when the Blood Dagger's bleeding effect came into play.
Once he cut a weird, black mist would continuously seep from its body.
Its combat strength would gradually weaken as well.
As Lin Yi moved around, he also kept an eye out for the Intelligent Weird's location.
He had not forgotten the convoy's objective in entering the Graveyard.
Only by killing that thing could they stop the other weirds from pursuing them.
Lin Yi seized an opening.
Squelch.
The blood-colored blade plunged hard into the weird's neck. With a sideways wrench, its head flew high into the air.
Like a deflating ball, the weird turned into a cloud of black mist and dispersed into the Graveyard...
Just as Lin Yi breathed a sigh of relief.
The black mist darted into a grave.
Before long, the weird walked out of the grave again.
"What the fuck? It can do that?"
Lin Yi's heart jolted.
Was this the power of a Rule-Bound Ghost?
Undying and indestructible!
Thank goodness. Thank goodness we figured out the rules beforehand.
Otherwise, if something truly terrifying appeared...
We probably wouldn't even know how we died.
"Elder Qi, these weirds can't be killed at all! Can you sense where the Intelligent Weird is?"
Lin Yi leaned against a car door and shouted into the radio.
"The Intelligent Weird is hiding near the three enormous tombstones." Elder Qi's voice was urgent too. He had also realized something was wrong.
"Okay, have them hold the weirds off. I'll find a way to kill the Intelligent Weird."
Gritting his teeth, Lin Yi dodged and weaved as he charged toward the enormous tombstones.
Once he left the battlefield, there were no longer any weirds nearby threatening him.
Instead, Lin Yi became the one having the easiest time.
The thought of running away alone even flashed through his mind.
But he quickly snuffed it out.
Without a Guide, being alone would only mean the difference between dying sooner or later.
"Looks like one of us has to die today, Intelligent Weird."
Lin Yi sighed and quickened his steps.
There was no sign of the Intelligent Weird anywhere in sight.
That could only mean the cunning thing could either turn invisible.
Or it was hiding inside one of the burial mounds.
But now that he had its approximate location.
He had a way to drag that beast out!
The Intelligent Weird seemed to sense the threat Lin Yi posed.
The surrounding mist suddenly churned.
Thick black fog shrouded the entire graveyard in an instant.
At the sight, Lin Yi felt pleased rather than alarmed.
The appearance of the black fog meant the Intelligent Weird was afraid.
With no means of attacking, it could only desperately hide itself!
Bang, bang, bang.
Bang, bang, bang.
Suddenly, continuous gunfire rang out from behind him again.
"Roar!"
It was accompanied by the roar of motorcycle engines and the Biker Gang's howls.
"Fuck."
Through the black fog, Lin Yi could vaguely make out what was happening behind him, and his heart jolted.
That damned Intelligent Weird!
New Biker Gang members emerged from the black fog one after another.
It was actually using the Biker Gang to shoot the motorcycle survivors who had lost the ability to resist.
Lin Yi's sense of foreboding grew stronger.
He quickened his steps even further.
Just then.
Thud, thud, thud.
The sounds of things breaking through the earth rang out continuously.
Even though they appeared at random, a full three armored weirds emerged right beside him.
"You bastard, this won't end until one of us is dead!"
Lin Yi glared viciously at the three tombstones.
Before you continue