Come Daybreak

Nangong Rui (vi)

Feng Xinya wordlessly pulled his sword from the Level 1 zombies' skulls that he'd impaled in a straight line; swinging the blood and brain juices from the blade horizontally, followed by a vertical arc before sheathing it in its holster at his waist.

"Thank you, General."

Chen Jing, the tall and slightly lanky, red-headed telepath, let out an exhausted yet relieved breath as he gratefully thanked the man who both he and Wen Zheng, the group's medic, quickly realized cherished his words as if they were made of gold. Not that they believed Sima Lei to put much worth to gold.

As expected, Feng Xinya did not bother to reply as he carved through the holes in the corpses' heads in search for the crystal nuclei within.

As one of the two people that were given all of the Level 1 nuclei to absorb, Chen Jing did not hesitate to help Xinya dig out the crystals from the other carcasses laying around. There were enough bodies to pile up into a small mountain, as they were in the middle of a relatively large intersection of a wide urban street in Z City. After a grueling half day's worth of time, the group of four had finally finished destroying another army of zombies that had gathered in the area.

They had been out for two days without having returned to the base, driving the armored car they were initially provided with. Gas was a simple matter, as they could run it on their own at gas stations free of cost. Food and water were easily taken from abandoned apartments and supermarkets.

The group had collected over 2000 Level 1 crystal nuclei, about 500 Level 2s, 102 Level 3s, and 2 Level 4s from only the past two days. The number was still rising since they were hunting nonstop in the most populous city in Z Country, formerly creeping at around 25 million people.

Despite the large spoils, the number they killed in proportion to the total number of existing and potential zombies in Z City alone was inconsequential.

On the fifth day since the fall, a fifth of the 25 million people of Z City were presumed to have either gone missing, truly died, or still sleeping. The streets were teeming with the undead that numbered at least twice that proportion, which was why Feng Xinya and Huang Jin split the workload every other hour between solo-hunting within the premises of Chen Jing's telepathy and watching over the two members who were less-skilled in combat.

At the moment, Huang Jin was out hunting alone. Feng Xinya had no qualms in allowing the man to run wild since both he and Chen Jing could detect any stronger zombies in the vicinity.

Speaking of higher-leveled zombies, the 2 Level 4 nuclei were not particularly difficult to obtain. As they previously strode into a relatively less-populated part of the city, they found themselves in the territory of an army of zombies led by the two Level 4s. One of them seemed to have possessed both command-type and speed-type abilities, as opposed to the other purely strength-type who was positively influenced by the commander.

Sima Lei's character was one where although he was ambitious and strict with his men and himself, he would never abandon them to die even if he could rid them of their enemies by doing so. He felt that if he had to do such a disgraceful thing, then he was simply not worthy of moving up in the ranks—no, he would not even be able to proudly declare his status as a Major General.

This was one of the main reasons he chose not to follow the other military families despite their generously extended olive branches. In addition to his arrogance, Sima Lei was aware that their beliefs were clearly unaligned, and there would only be unfavorable outcomes for both parties if he was to be promoted under their nurturing.

With this character setting in mind, Feng Xinya couldn't simply leave the medic and the telepath to be eaten by the swarm of over 1500 Level 1s and 2s, as well as an additional 50 Level 3 zombies controlled by the commander. However, he also had to take care of the leader and the additional powerful Level 4 zombie if they wanted to get out of the sticky situation without any major casualties.