Avoid Its Edge?

"You're dead!"

The man in sunglasses crawled out of the car and collapsed on the ground, giving up on getting back to his feet.

In any case, there was no way he could escape now.

He sneered. "If we die, don't think you'll live either. No first-tier transcendent can handle more than a dozen zombies. You've only just awakened..."

Chen Fan frowned.

The man in sunglasses was right. His Ten Thousand Souls Banner was only a low-grade artifact, and killing a first-tier monster would take at least two or three strikes.

But...

Avoid its edge?

Chen Fan sneered.

Behind him, the Ten Thousand Souls Banner stirred without wind, and several streams of black energy burst from it.

One of them attacked Sister Liangzi first, as she lay on the ground, half-dead.

With that sweep, Sister Liangzi's soul could resist no longer and was drawn fully into the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

Sister Liangzi's ghost rose and sank on the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, wailing miserably from her fat face.

Chen Fan immediately sent her out to hold off the zombies.

Over there, several streams of black energy and Xiao Lin, who had gone ahead of them, had reached the zombie horde.

Xiao Lin pounced on a zombie, which fell to the ground at once. Its soul was converted and joined the ghost army.

Chen Fan, sensing this from a distance, was delighted.

It was an unexpected gain.

Zombies were monsters with inherently weak souls. They were human bodies transformed by a viral infection, and only their bodies had been strengthened to the level of first-tier monsters.

Their souls remained at the level of ordinary people.

And the Ten Thousand Souls Banner needed only one sweep to take an ordinary person's soul.

Once Chen Fan realized this, all the pressure on him vanished.

With a wave of his hand, several streams of yin energy surged forth.

In an instant, all dozen-plus zombies had their souls taken and fell to the ground.

"How is that possible?"

The man in sunglasses watched from the other side, horrified.

When he looked at Chen Fan again, he was deeply wary.

What terrifying transcendent power had he awakened to be so powerful?

Meeting the man's gaze, Chen Fan bared a sinister grin.

The man in sunglasses shuddered and turned his head.

He saw Sister Liangzi's enormous ghost charging at him with a strange laugh.

"Jie jie jie..."

"Ah!! No!"

After several screams, the souls of the man in sunglasses and the sullen man were also devoured by the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

Now, more than a dozen ghosts churned across the banner's surface. It had begun to take shape.

Of them, the ghosts of the man in sunglasses, the sullen man, and Sister Liangzi were visibly more solid and powerful, floating on the upper half of the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

The dozen or so other ghosts, including Xiao Lin and the zombie souls, rose and sank below.

First-tier transcendents' ghosts were stronger after all.

With these three first-tier ghosts, Chen Fan felt much safer.

Now, even if he encountered a genuine first-tier eerie entity rather than a fake first-tier like the zombies, he would not be afraid.

He then looked around at the three transcendent corpses and the dozen-plus zombie corpses.

After some thought, he first used the artifact refinement furnace to refine one of the zombie corpses.

[Refined a first-tier monster corpse. Obtained 100 points of Origin Artifact Materials]

Earlier, the severed limb of that second-tier monster had yielded 100 points of Origin Artifact Materials.

Now, a whole first-tier monster corpse had yielded only 100 points as well.

It seemed the difference in value between second-tier and first-tier monsters was considerable.

After considering it for a moment, he refined ten zombie corpses into 1,000 points of Origin Artifact Materials.

Then he summoned six black coffins and placed the remaining three zombie corpses and the three transcendent corpses inside.

After collecting the six corpses, Chen Fan sensed that all six were first-tier corpses. Under these circumstances, converting them into first-tier iron-armored zombies would take only two hours.

Chen Fan was delighted once more.

Iron-armored zombies had extremely hard skin that ordinary weapons could not damage, and they were considerably stronger than the likes of ordinary zombies.

Before long, his strength would grow again.

Chen Fan then looked at the cars belonging to the man in sunglasses and the sullen man.

He prepared to search them and see what supplies they had gathered.

He did not plan to keep the damaged car.

Now that he had dealt with the three people from the convoy, he was in charge of the whole convoy. With so many good cars in it, could he not take his pick?

Chen Fan stepped forward, but after only two steps, he suddenly felt dizzy.

What was going on?

Chen Fan was shocked.

He patted his head, but the dizziness would not go away, and he could not clear his head.

It felt like staying up for three nights straight, jerking off ten times on the third night, and still having to attend math class the next day.

"Did I... overexert myself?"

All Chen Fan felt was exhaustion, overwhelming exhaustion.

He guessed that using transcendent powers required mental energy.

He had just fought battle after battle, so he must have overused his powers.

After all, he was only a first-tier transcendent.

At that moment, he gained an insight and began controlling the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and the Endless Black Coffin.

Just now, he had sensed that the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and the Endless Black Coffin could also perform refinement.

Not on anything else, but on the ghosts and corpses inside them.

Chen Fan chose to refine ten zombie ghosts and the sullen man's corpse.

Turning them into zombies would take time, but refining them could be done quickly.

In just a moment, Chen Fan had two pea-sized pearls in his hand.

One was a Soul Pearl, a deep blue bead surrounded by drifting specks of soul light.

The other was a Blood Pearl, blood-red and surrounded by a haze of blood qi.

Zombie ghosts were equivalent to ordinary human souls, and it took ten to produce one Soul Pearl.

The sullen man's corpse was first-tier, so a single corpse could produce one Blood Pearl.

Chen Fan pressed the Soul Pearl against the center of his brow. It immediately turned into the purest mental energy and replenished his mind.

His previously muddled consciousness cleared in an instant, and he could also feel his mental energy slowly increasing. Clearly, some of the Soul Pearl's power remained and was strengthening his mind.

The Blood Pearl, on the other hand, had to be swallowed.

Chen Fan swallowed it in one gulp.

The exhaustion from his long journey to survive vanished instantly, and he felt his body fill with strength again.

He could also feel his physical strength slowly increasing.

Chen Fan's eyes lit up. Didn't that mean that, as long as he found a way to obtain enough Soul Pearls and Blood Pearls in the future, he could increase his own strength too?

At this rate, reaching the second tier would not take long.

However, when he sensed the two artifacts, he quickly discovered that Soul Pearls and Blood Pearls could strengthen not only him, but ghosts and zombies directly as well.

To make the ghosts and zombies stronger, he would also have to feed them Soul Pearls and Blood Pearls.

Seen this way, the demand for both kinds of pearls was enormous.

He could not use them carelessly in the future.

Putting those matters aside for now, Chen Fan went over to inspect the two men's cars.

The back seats and trunks were packed with supplies.

Rice, flour, bread, dried noodles...

There was everything from staple foods to snacks, liquor, drinks, and cigarettes.

There were even clothes, bedding, and hardware tools.

They had crammed anything they could find into their cars.

Apart from the supplies, there was no one else in the cars.

That was somewhat strange. Chen Fan remembered that these transcendents knew how to enjoy themselves. They would each find one or two assistants to wait on them, and they did not even want to drive.

Yet these two did not even have drivers.

But Chen Fan soon remembered that they had been chased by zombies when they arrived. He figured the people with them had been left behind to feed the zombies.

Never mind all that. What mattered was taking the supplies away.

He really could not carry all of them with just his two hands.

He had no choice but to put the man in sunglasses' supplies, along with his own pig leg and baijiu, into the sullen man's car.

The man in sunglasses had driven a sedan, while the sullen man's SUV had a little more room.

Besides, the sedan had hit a wall, while the SUV had only rear-ended it and was less damaged.

Chen Fan then got into the car and drove toward the edge of the village.

He knew how to drive too. He had not spent all three months of the apocalypse riding a little yellow bike.

He had driven before, but he had later run out of gas, gone through several life-and-death crises, and exhausted his supplies. Only then had he been reduced to starting over on a little yellow bike.

Life was full of ups and downs like that.

Before, his life had been up and down and down and down and down and down.

But things were different now. He had awakened transcendent powers, and his abilities were incredibly strong.

From now on, his life would go up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up!

The agreed two and a half hours were almost up. Chen Fan would be in charge of the convoy from now on, but he did not intend to break this rule.

Unless something unexpected happened, the convoy usually spent two and a half hours scavenging whenever it stopped.

They had to have a reason for doing that.

Right... why did they have a time limit?

As Chen Fan drove toward the edge of the village, his expression suddenly turned ugly.

He realized that the convoy must previously have had a way to predict danger.

When to stop and scavenge or rest, and when to set off and move on.

Which direction to go, which routes would lead to eerie entities, and which were safe.

The convoy had had a way to determine all that before, but he did not know it, and more importantly, he could not do it himself.

Wasn't he screwed...?