Counteroffensive

The morning mist slowly dissipated along the lake's surface. As Lu Heng stepped onto the boardwalk and left the Lakeside Base, the wooden planks beneath his feet were still damp from the night.

He didn't plan to go far; he just wanted to patrol the surrounding area one more time. There were two streets he hadn't finished walking the previous two days, so today was the perfect opportunity to make up for it.

He knew the way from the lakeside to the city very well, walking through half an abandoned pedestrian street and climbing over collapsed guardrails.

Something's not right. Something's really wrong today.

Lu Heng stopped at the street corner.

The pedestrian street was deserted. The pavement was cracked, and waist-high weeds grew in the cracks. When the wind blew, the grass blades rustled as they swept across the ground. An overturned bus lay across the middle of the road, its doors wide open, and the inside was pitch black.

There are no Zombie.

Not a single one.

He stood still and listened for a while.

There were no roars, no shuffling sounds of footsteps, no dull thuds of bones hitting metal. The wind swept in from the depths of the streets, carrying dust and scraps of paper, rolling from one end of the street to the other, unimpeded.

It's too quiet.

This kind of quiet isn't the usual "nobody here" quiet. The city can be quiet sometimes, but that quiet always has an underlying noise—a distant roar from some alley, the sound of something being knocked over, the unconscious howls of Zombie. As long as that underlying noise is there, the world is alive.

The background noise is gone today. The whole city sounds like it's been choked, unable to make a sound.

Lu Heng drew the knife from behind his back, held it in his hand, and walked into the street.

He walked slowly, stopping for a few seconds against the wall at each intersection to listen before continuing. Several storefronts along the street had their doors half-open; he glanced inside as he passed—dark, empty, shelves overturned, no shadows, no breathing.

At the first intersection, there was none.

At the second intersection, there was none.

Lu Heng slowed his pace.

The disappearance of scattered Zombie can only mean one thing—they were cleared out by something, or they simply left on their own. Either way, it's not a good thing.

He turned onto the second street and sped up.

Two hours.

Lu Heng walked through most of the city he was in charge of and familiar with. He went through the main roads, back streets, alleys, two small residential areas, an abandoned farmers' market, and even peeked into the entrance of the underground parking garage.

Nothing was gained.

Not a single Zombie was found.

He stood at the escalator entrance on the second floor of the farmers' market, leaning on the railing, catching his breath. There was a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, not from exhaustion, but from the tension that had been building for two hours straight.

The more I can't find it, the heavier my heart feels.

Scattered Zombie have no intelligence and their activity range is fixed, so they cannot migrate in groups. If it were just his area that was empty, it could be said to be a coincidence—but now he has searched most of the city and hasn't seen a single lone zombie.

The Global Region disappeared.

This phenomenon of this scale could not have occurred naturally. Something must have taken away all the scattered Zombie in the city.

Lu Heng closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his gaze darkened.

He took out his Wristband and opened the chat channel.

The channel was quieter than usual, with only a few people online and their avatars lit up. He typed a line of text and sent it.

[Lu Heng: Are there still any scattered Zombie in your area?]

It's not a question; it's a statement.

Less than ten seconds after the message was sent, replies started popping up one after another.

[Wang Haoyu:??? How did you know, boss? I don't have a single one left! I was shocked when I went out today, the whole street was empty.]

[Li Na: Me too! Those dogs that are usually impossible to shoo away at the zoo entrance are all gone today. I've been looking for them for half an hour.]

[Zhao Haifeng:... Me too. Yesterday there were three or four of them wandering around downstairs, but this morning I peered out the window for an hour and didn't see a single one.]

[Sun Lei: Holy crap, now that you mention it, it seems like I'm gone too.]

Lu Heng read through each item one by one, his finger pausing on the screen for two seconds.

Everyone is synchronized.

All the scattered Zombie in everyone's area vanished at the same time.

He closed the channel and didn't reply. The Wristband screen went dark, reflecting his own face, which was expressionless.

In the Survival World, the Insect Plague and decay have just begun; leaves are turning yellow and riddled with insect holes—the prelude to the natural disaster has only just begun. Meanwhile, in this parallel Adventure World, the bizarre phenomenon of the Global Region Zombie disappearing soon follows.

Two worlds, at the same time, simultaneously experience massive disasters.

Lu Heng frowned inwardly.

As he was thinking, a muffled thud suddenly came from afar.

Lu Heng tensed up, his knife already held horizontally in front of him.

After a muffled thud came a second and a third, one after another, echoing several kilometers away. The sound was dulled by the buildings, but it was still clear what it was—artillery fire. Heavy artillery. Interspersed among them were dense strafing sounds, the rhythm of heavy machine guns, short bursts, three-round bursts, the firepower discipline only a well-organized unit could maintain.

Lu Heng's pupils narrowed slightly.

gunfire?

How can a modern military in this world still retain its organizational structure and combat capability?

Having been in this city for so long, the only living people he had seen were those few in the Wristband; the rest were all Zombie and ruins. He had always assumed that the official forces of this world had long since collapsed, leaving only scattered soldiers, each waiting to die.

Judging from the firepower density, it's not.

Without hesitation, Lu Heng suppressed his surprise, identified the direction of the sound, and rushed over at full speed.

On the edge of the city, the view suddenly opens up.

Lu Heng lay on the edge of the roof of a six-story building, half of his body leaning over the wall, binoculars in front of his eyes, looking towards the source of the sound.

He caught his breath after just one glance.

At the edge of the horizon, where the city meets the countryside, a dark mass appears, moving.

A horde of zombies.

It wasn't a small gathering of dozens or hundreds of zombies; it was a truly massive horde. Countless Zombie were crammed together, like a pot of boiling asphalt, churning and pushing, all surging in the same direction. They were no longer scattered and wandering aimlessly—they were all gathered in a group, with a clear objective.

Their target was a standard militarized building base.

High walls, watchtowers, barbed wire, sandbag fortifications, heavy machine guns mounted at the four corners of the wall, and figures in camouflage running back and forth on the top of the wall. Gunshots and explosions came continuously from that direction, flashes of light appeared, and the defenders held on desperately, relying on the firepower of the fortifications, frantically clearing away the Zombie that rushed up the wall.

The horde of corpses surged forward relentlessly, piling up one after another. When the ones in front fell, the ones behind stepped on the corpses and continued to climb, until a pile of corpses two or three meters high had already formed at the base of the wall.

Lu Heng lay motionless on the rooftop, holding the binoculars up for a long time.

The scattered Zombie disappeared from the Global Region in order to band together and besiege the city.

The world's armies, which had been dormant for a long time, suddenly engaged in frontal warfare on such a large scale.

He stared at the war-torn military base, his nerves completely on edge.

Could it be that the human military in this world has officially launched a full-scale counter-offensive?