Capítulo 20: Stolen Prey
Editor: Hitesh_
The flesh of superpowered human beings was sweet and tasty, and the energy contained in their crystal nuclei was pure, unlike the zombie nuclei which had too many impurities.
Just like zombies, humans sought zombie nuclei as well. The most profitable job in the bases at that time was zombie-hunting indeed.
Lin Qiao didn't think that this level-three zombie would actually be quite weak. Although this fight was simple and violent, it was over quickly.
The energy contained in the zombie nucleus soothed her entire body but failed to quench her hunger. She still wanted to eat.
'I want meat! Meat! Meat!'
While roaring in her head, she took a simple glance at the intelligent zombie, then turned and left.
...
The sky was already brightening, and the surrounding area was becoming clearer. She couldn't see a lot of colors, but she could still sense the change in the light. After finishing off this intelligent zombie which had shown up out of the blue, Lin Qiao turned around and continued moving forward, in search for a drivable car.
Not long after she had left, a few people showed up and surrounded the dead intelligent zombie, their faces filled with surprise and confusion.
"Is it dead? How come?" Liu Hongshi said in amazement as he stared at the corpse on the ground. The other two didn't respond, only observing the dead zombie with somber expressions.
Lin Yong took a look at the zombie, then pointed at its head which had been cut open and said, "It was killed by another intelligent zombie. The edge of the wound on its head is rough, clearly created by bare hands. Only intelligent zombies at level-three or above can cause damage like this."
Liang Caiyan frowned slightly and nodded.
Liu Hongshi's face was a little dark as he stared at the dead zombie and said, "We've been chasing it for so long, only for it to be killed by another zombie! Our efforts have been wasted!"
Lin Yong's face was also dark with anger, but he didn't say a word.
"This should be the only level-three zombie in this area. Has some newcomer seized its territory?" Liang Caiyan asked with confusion.
Every high-level zombie was territorial. A level-three zombie would find an ownerless area, occupy it, and claim it as its own territory. If another level-three zombie wanted to live in this area permanently, it would need to drive the original level-three zombie away.
The weak had always been prey for the strong, and this was the most primitive law applicable in this world.
The strong would live while the weak would die.
Hence, if two high-level zombies fought over a territory, the weaker one would always die unless it ran fast enough. Thus, if the newcomer was a higher-level zombie, the original territory owner would flee right away without any doubt!
"This zombie wasn't wounded by a superpower because there was no trace of it left in the surroundings. Its enemy wasn't a superpowered zombie but a level-three one just like it. However, that other zombie managed to cut its head so neatly, which is quite strange," said Lin Yong.
The other two looked around them. As Lin Yong had said, there was no damage done to the surrounding area by any superpower, and there was no other wound on this intelligent zombie's body either. This zombie was killed with one clean move! A level-three zombie without any superpower couldn't possibly achieve this.
Besides, this dead zombie was just a breath away from becoming a level-four zombie. Among all level-three zombies, it was already close to level-four, just lacking in a superpower. It shouldn't possibly have been killed by a same-level intelligent zombie so easily!
"Could it be a level-four zombie with super strength?" Liang Caiyan thought of this possibility and said hesitantly.
Lin Yong nodded with a serious look.
Liu Hongshi sounded shocked as he said, "What? Level-four? We've been in this area for so long with no hint of a level-four zombie showing up! Could it be wrong?"
Liang Caiyan glanced at him and said, "Do you think a level-three intelligent zombie could kill it so easily and neatly? Even if a level-three zombie could kill it, a great and long fight would be inevitable! But look around you, no any trace of a fight at all! Does it look like a big fight happened here?"
Liu Hongshi had no answer to this.
She was right. What kind of level-three zombie could kill a nearly level-four zombie so easily and quickly?
However, he wasn't about to give up as he said, "Then, what should we do now? Go after that level-four zombie?"
As soon as he said this, the faces of the other two immediately darkened!
They had had their sights locked on this zombie and had chased it for a month already, but it fell into another zombie's hands in the end!
This result was so unacceptable that they felt like vomiting blood!
However, they were no match for level-four zombies with their current powers. They were all superpowered—two at level-three and one at level-four. However, when facing zombies of this level, they were all defenseless.
Human beings didn't have the high speed and great strength of zombies. In addition to their speed and strength, zombies had beast-like instincts. Therefore, a high-level zombie could defeat three average superpowered human beings easily at one time!
...
On the other side, Lin Qiao found quite a few cars abandoned by the roadside, but couldn't start any of them even after trying many times. She struggled for quite a while but failed to find even one drivable car.
She couldn't help but feel a little frustrated as she found no food or car.
Suddenly, she thought of the rabbit in her space.
Right! She needed to see if the rabbit had died from poisoning after eating the mutant strawberry!
At the thought of this, she immediately entered her space.
She looked around as soon as she entered her space, but couldn't see Wu Yueling. She then located the child by using her sense of smell, after which, she walked into the thick grass.
She didn't go to Wu Yueling though, and instead went to find the rabbit.
In fact, she didn't need to use her sense of smell at all, because she somehow had a foresight like a sixth sense in her space, and it was especially potent.
She had a sense of where Wu Yueling was, and she confirmed it by sniffing. She also had a faint sense of the rabbit and the few baby mice which hadn't opened their eyes yet. The sense of the baby mice was exceptionally weak, and she would have missed it if she wasn't seeking it specifically.
The few baby mice were tenacious. They had been left here for so long, but hadn't starved to death.
Lin Qiao thought that she might just eat these few furless little things to satiate her hunger if she couldn't find any other food.
She walked to the rabbit quietly and saw that it was burrowing, as she had expected.
It didn't die! That meant that the strawberries were edible!
Lin Qiao happily looked at the hunched rabbit digging vigorously with its pair of forepaws. She could tell for sure that this rabbit had created more than one burrow.
The rabbit was so focused on its digging that it hadn't felt the presence of the zombie behind it.
Lin Qiao observed it for a while and stopped worrying. Then, she stood up and walked over to Wu Yueling.
Wu Yueling was sleeping right by the lake, curled up in a clearing by the edge of the grass, having wrapped herself in the blanket.
A faint smile appeared on Lin Qiao's stiff face as she saw that the little grass toys that she had made scattered around the kid. However, she couldn't see how eerie that smile would be for any other person who happened to look at her.
She took another glance at Wu Yueling, then turned around and flashed out of her space. As soon as she reappeared where she had disappeared from outside, she began running swiftly toward the strawberry field.
Capítulo 21: The Current Situation in the Apocalyptic World
Editor: Hitesh_
She didn't know that the intelligent zombie she had just killed was being hunted by others. Neither did she know that she had snatched away the prey of those hunters. The only thing she did know was that the level-three zombie's nucleus seemed useless to her.
She felt content while absorbing the energy, but nothing other than that. She couldn't understand why high-level zombies liked to collect zombie nuclei.
Thinking all that, she ran toward the strawberry field which wasn't far away. Her speed had increased so much that she was now running as fast as a gust of wind.
Moreover, she was the only zombie who dared to run so undisguisedly on a broad road.
Daytime had arrived again by now. The other zombies were all moving slowly while she was running like the wind. By running at such a speed, she was clearly telling the others that a high-level zombie existed in this area, wasn't she? After all, all the other high-level zombies now had crisis awareness. They hid themselves because they feared being hunted and rounded up by human beings.
However, Lin Qiao didn't care about any of this because she had yet to fully and deeply realize the fact that she was a zombie even at that moment. Besides, she tended to be simple-minded sometimes, and wouldn't over-think an issue.
It was due to precisely this reason that she was soon targeted.
"Eh? Damn! Come on! A high-level zombie!" Among the members of a small freely-formed zombie hunting squad who had been resting on the third floor of a building, a man had been sitting by the window and looking down onto the road. At that moment, he saw a figure rush past, leaving clouds of smoke and dust behind it.
Its speed was that of someone driving a sports car!
The man sitting at the window glanced down but failed to see Lin Qiao's appearance clearly, just her back as she disappeared within a blink.
He leaped up immediately.
In the post-apocalyptic world, people would normally come out of bases in groups. They would either join freely formed zombie hunting groups or would become parts of the zombie hunting squads attached to the regular army. Absolutely no human dared to take any action alone, not even high-level superpowered people.
A superpowered human being would get exhausted at some point, no matter how powerful he or she was. However, zombies were everywhere, crowding toward every living human being they found. They were slow, but a mass of zombies could still overpower and kill superpowered human beings. After all, when zombies detected the scent of living human beings, they would fearlessly rush up again and again with no other sense than the desire to feed, just like a wolf pack eyeing fresh meat.
"Where?" The other zombie hunters immediately rushed over to the man at the window on hearing him exclaim 'high-level zombie'. They stuck their heads out of the window to look outside, but saw nothing.
The young man who saw Lin Qiao shoved the others out of the way, then supported his body with his arms and directly leaped down from the window on the third floor.
"Cut the crap! It'll be gone if we don't chase!" Huang Xiao leaped down from the window, nimbly rolled forward on the ground, then swiftly jumped back up and started chasing after Lin Qiao.
"Huang Xiao!" Seeing him rush out, Xie Dong shouted out, his brow knitted in a frown.
After Huang Xiao jumped out of the window, the others all stepped back and then swarmed to the second floor. The few agile ones directly leaped down from the second floor, while the two slower ones rushed down to the first floor and exited the building the last. Like wolves that had sighted meat, the group of people followed Huang Xiao, running in Lin Qiao's direction.
Xie Dong followed behind these people. His face was expressionless except for his knitted brows, which indicated his anger.
The bases were no longer running short of food by now as some people with botanical superpowers had been able to plant and grow fruits and vegetables. With that, every base had already planted large amounts of crops. The apocalyptic world soil couldn't be compared with that in the old world, but it was good enough to keep people from dying of hunger.
The resources from the old world had greatly depleted because of the consumption in the past few years. By this time, rice and flour could only be afforded by high-level base leaders. The ordinary survivors would get nothing more than a hard, steamed bread that tasted like chaff, and a small bottle of water per day.
Accommodations were also graded. Survivors without superpowers or strong backgrounds had no other choice but to live in big tents. A big tent would accommodate tens of people, and sometimes over a hundred. Consequently, they would be very crowded, dirty, and messy. Only superpowered people and administrators could afford to live in single rooms or other relatively luxurious accommodations in the buildings inside the bases.
After the apocalyptic era had begun, the weather had changed significantly. The daytime was scorching hot while the nighttime was icy cold. The difference in temperature between day and night was dramatic. During the daytime, the temperature varied from forty to fifty degrees, but during the night, it would drop to about ten degrees. People wouldn't be frozen to death, but would still feel awfully cold.
The people who wanted decent food would have to accept missions and venture out of the bases. Only when they brought back valuable things would they be able to trade these items for better food and accommodation. And of course, high-level zombie nuclei were very precious.
Currently, there was no minimum requirement of numbers for the people who dared to leave the bases. The base administrators didn't care about these things. They would give permission for leaving to one single person or a hundred-men group, as long as people signed in and out. In particular, the people returning to the bases had to pass strict inspections, in case they brought the virus back to the bases.
Most of the people who ventured out were hunting zombies for their nuclei. Zombie nuclei could strengthen the crystal nuclei of human beings, which were also called superpower nuclei. Therefore, strong superpowered human beings were the main force of defense against zombies. In order to grow stronger, these superpowered people would all go out to hunt high-level zombies or purchase zombie nuclei from other people at the bases.
Among the group of people chasing after Lin Qiao at the moment, Huang Xiao was a peak-level-three superpowered human being, and the Captain, Xie Dong, was at level-four. All the others were merely cannon fodder at levels one and two.
That was the way things worked in the post-apocalyptic world. The weak people depended on the strong for survival, while the strong recruited underlings as expendable cannon fodder to shield themselves and save their own strength.
Huang Xiao was the Deputy Captain of this temporary squad. In terms of power, his level-three wind superpower made him the second strongest in the squad.
The main strength of the squad was Xie Dong, who had level-four fire power. He was in the special forces before the apocalyptic era began, so it was fairly reasonable for him to be the Captain of this squad. He had a well-featured face and a commanding military presence, which made him appear very serious and unapproachable. As he was outstandingly capable, he was the one making decisions for the squad most of the time, and the others had been simply following him. They could choose not to follow him, but he wouldn't bother to protect them in that case, as he didn't have to be responsible for the lives of those who were disobedient to him.
However, one person didn't think this way.
Huang Xiao activated his wind power after leaping down from the third floor ahead of the others, then immediately chased Lin Qiao to a long distance away. At that time, it was already too late for Xie Dong to call his name from behind, so he could only follow behind his squad while restraining his anger.
The nuclei of high-level zombies were especially precious, but one would be foolish to disregard their fighting ability and wisdom.
In the post-apocalyptic world, it took great efforts and a long time for zombies to upgrade. Therefore, high-level zombies were pretty rare.
A level-three zombie nucleus could be exchanged for a bagful of white flour, while a level-four zombie nucleus could be traded for a bagful of rice, five top-quality quilts, and a few sets of clean clothes. That was why many people desperately wanted to take out high-level zombies in order to secure these commodities.
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