EOTWR Chapter 21
by VolareAi Wei and Xia Junchi went to their new house. After supporting each other for so long, they were suddenly separated, leaving only the two of them. Ai Wei still felt a little lonely.
But soon, his attention was drawn to his new house.
This house was located in a new residential complex in the south of the city. It was also built with adobe, but the houses here were much more spacious, and the furniture in the rooms was relatively complete.
In the distance, new houses were under construction.
It must be said that the leader of this safe zone was indeed very capable. In just over a month, the B City Safe Zone already had such a scene.
From tomorrow, he and Xia Junchi would go to training. Although there would be some danger in leaving the city for missions in the future, the prospect of strengthening his ability was more attractive to him.
The safe zone’s military camp was not far from the gate of the safe zone, covering a vast area, but because of the large number of soldiers, it still looked a bit crowded.
The two rested for a night, and went to report the next morning. As soon as they entered the gate, they saw more than a dozen teams of soldiers training on the square.
They were all wearing vests and shorts, training very hard. Some people were releasing their abilities while training, and some ability users were fighting each other. As a result, Ai Wei’s mental power could feel all kinds of ability fluctuations in the air.
After undergoing a physical examination and filling out several documents, they officially joined Lu Feng’s team.
Lu Feng’s team was a squad, previously with ten people. After Ai Wei and Xia Junchi joined, there were twelve. However, they still had to stay in the safe zone for training, at least for a period of time, before they could go on missions together.
Lu Feng’s team often went on missions, sometimes for several days at a time. Ai Wei had seen him on his first day of enlistment, and when he saw him again, it was already six days later.
Because of the different types of abilities, Ai Wei and Xia Junchi were assigned to different classes for training.
Ai Wei’s ability was mental power projection. There were twenty-eight mental ability users in the safe zone. Some of these twenty-eight mental ability users could create illusions, some could emit mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing], injuring the opponent’s mental domain, etc. Ai Wei really learned a lot from training with them.
His ability could not cause illusions, but after training, he could defend against the opponent’s mental attacks and not be drawn into illusions. There was also a cultivation method in the army to condense mental power into刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing]. After practicing for a period of time, he achieved some success and could condense his mental power into刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing].
After mental power was condensed into刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing], he could attack the enemy with mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing]. At this point, Ai Wei’s ability could be considered to have an offensive power.
Moreover, this mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing] could not be seen or touched. Unless the opponent’s ability level was much higher than his, or the opponent was also a mental ability user, they would not be able to detect his attack at all, making it impossible to defend against.
This made Ai Wei very happy. He originally thought that his ability could only be used as a detector, checking the surrounding movements and seeing the ability status of others, but without any substantial lethality. He did not expect that his ability could also hurt people. However, his mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing] was useless against ordinary zombies because ordinary zombies did not have mental power. It was somewhat effective against those zombies that had developed intelligence.
Compared to him, Xia Junchi received more and more comprehensive cultivation methods.
Xia Junchi was a fire ability user, so he naturally entered the fire ability user training class. At this time, the advantage of having a large number of people was evident. Fire ability was one of the most common abilities awakened by ability users. In the B City Safe Zone alone, there were more than 700 fire ability users, and there were tens of thousands of registered fire ability users in Hua [华] Country. Most of these fire ability users had joined the army, undergoing high-intensity training while fighting zombies and doing missions. With so many fire ability users cultivating together, sharing their cultivation experiences, and learning new things from others, they quickly developed a set of very precise and systematic cultivation methods.
Using this cultivation method, Xia Junchi’s ability improved several times faster. He not only avoided going astray during cultivation, but also developed many techniques that he had not used before.
For example, he used to only be able to release flames, but now he learned how to collect flames into his palm. He also learned how to restrain his ability at ordinary times so as not to waste it, how to enhance his ability more quickly and effectively, and how to recuperate after his ability was exhausted, etc.
The amount of training in the army was very large, but the effect was also significant. After a period of time, the progress of the two could be described as rapid.
They also did zombie hunting exercises.
Ai Wei had killed zombies at Youran Mountain Villa, so he was not as afraid of killing zombies as a newcomer. Xia Junchi also adapted well to killing zombies.
In addition to physical and ability training, they also had to learn various knowledge about zombies and mutated animals and plants, as well as attend the army’s political classes and watch various news. The schedule was full, and they could not spare any energy to do extra things.
There were many things to learn, but the situation outside did not allow them to continue training. Nearly a month had passed since the zombie outbreak. In these few months, Hua [华] Country had eliminated most of the zombies in the country and had also eliminated all harmful mutated animals and plants, but the entire Hua [华] Country was too large, and there were still many places where zombies had not been cleaned up. Even some mutated animals and plants evolved faster than humans. For example, in a certain place in the Northeast, a mutated tiger with a body length of 20 meters appeared. In a large forest in the south, a mutated Venus flytrap as tall as a two-story building appeared. These mutated animals and plants generally evolved faster than ability users, so some people naturally worried that if they continued to evolve at this rate, they would threaten the survival of mankind. In addition, the corpses and crystal nuclei of mutated animals and plants could provide energy for ability users, so many military and civilian ability user organizations outside the safe zone went to hunt mutated animals and plants.
These civilian ability user organizations did not enter the safe zone and established their own small bases, growing freely. Some of these people felt more comfortable outside and were unwilling to be restricted by the safe zone, while others, like the group Ai Wei had encountered in Sanhe Town before, gathered into a black and evil force and committed many crimes.
Ai Wei and Xia Junchi trained for half a month and were arranged to go out on a mission with Lu Feng’s team.
However, because they were newcomers, they did not have to exert too much effort this time. They could just treat it as an internship.
Their mission this time was to investigate a huge energy fluctuation in a small town two hours away from the safe zone.
The group put on protective clothing, put on gas masks, and set off in a car.
It was already autumn, so wearing protective clothing was not hot. However, because the protective clothing and gas masks were not breathable, Ai Wei still felt a little uncomfortable after wearing them for a while. However, after this period of training, his endurance had improved a lot, so he could bear it.
Thinking about it, they were lucky. It was already autumn, so wearing protective clothing did not feel hot. Many of the people riding with him had started wearing protective clothing to kill zombies at the beginning of the zombie outbreak. At that time, it was still summer, and wearing this non-breathable protective clothing was simply killing people.
Thinking of this, Ai Wei could not help but feel a sincere respect for these teammates.
Although Lu Feng’s ability team had only been established for more than a month, they had already cooperated very well. Who was the main attacker, who was the defender, who was the support, etc., all had specific positions.
Ai Wei and Xia Junchi only needed to follow behind them and listen to orders. Ai Wei also needed to release his mental power to observe the surrounding movements.
After this period of training, Ai Wei’s mental power had become much stronger. As long as he did not activate mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing], it was completely no problem to cover the surrounding area with mental power for a long time.
The main road had already been cleaned up, so the journey was smooth. Ai Wei’s mental power was always on, and he found many mutated animals and plants along the way. However, those mutated animals and plants were very weak, so they did not have to stop to clean them up.
After driving for half an hour, the car reached its destination.
This was an abandoned town. They did not enter the town, but stopped the car in a hidden place not far away, wanting to observe first.
Looking from a distance, they could not see a single person or zombie on the streets of the town. Not only were there no humans or zombies, but even mutated animals and plants were rarely seen.
Everything was quiet nearby, and they could not even hear the sounds of birds and insects. The glass of many shops along the street was broken, and they could see that the shops were in a mess, as if they had been looted violently.
“Why is it so quiet here?” A lively young team member said.
His name was Qi Fei, and he was a wind ability user.
Another water ability team member named Lu Ziwen activated a drone to fly into the town to investigate first.
Next to him, another plant ability team member named Zhou Yu was sitting in front of the computer, which was displaying images of the town taken by the Tianyan [天眼] (Sky Eye) system. However, the Tianyan [天眼] (Sky Eye) could not capture things blocked by the roof and other objects, so they needed a drone to explore.
Ai Wei also expanded his mental power range. Soon, he discovered a huge energy fluctuation two streets away from them.
Their mission this time was to investigate this huge energy fluctuation. After discovering it, he was immediately invigorated and focused his attention on that energy.
However, after figuring out what those things were, his whole body trembled, and his mental power quickly retracted.
Xia Junchi noticed that his whole body trembled and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Ai Wei’s face was a little pale. He pointed in the direction of the energy and said, “There’s a group of mutated gray rats over there, each as big as a dog…”
In fact, he had also discovered mutated rats on the street just now, but the shock of seeing one rat versus a group of mutated rats was completely different. When he discovered those dense dozens of rats gathered together, his scalp went numb.
Seeing his pale face, Xia Junchi suddenly realized that he might be afraid of rats.
If it were just the two of them, he would have wanted to tease Ai Wei. However, there were other people in the car, and to avoid others laughing at him after knowing that Ai Wei was afraid of rats, Xia Junchi decided to pat him on the shoulder to comfort him.
Zhou Yu had also monitored the nearby images with the computer at this time. When everyone looked at the computer, they saw a group of very large rats appearing on the computer screen.
Some small gray rats were quite cute, but obviously, this group of gray rats was not very good-looking.
Especially when this group of gray rats was magnified hundreds of times, their sharp, long, and terrifying faces, coupled with their long, numbing tails, looked very scary.
“Damn! These rats are really becoming精 (jīng) [精, spirit, essence]! Look at the electric cars next to them, they’re almost not as tall as them,” Qi Fei said.
“Captain, should we go and kill these rats first?” Xie Ning, who was relatively silent, asked Lu Feng.
He was the shadow ability user who had contributed to killing the ability wolf. He could control the target by manipulating shadows. If the target’s shadow overlapped with his shadow, even if it was only a little bit, he could control the target through the shadow. Lu Feng looked at Zhou Yu and Ai Wei and asked, “Can you find out how many mutated rats there are?”
Zhou Yu then adjusted the image to another street, and then, at the corner of that street, he discovered several more mutated rats.
Adjusting the image to other blocks, they still only saw mutated rats.
He could not help but frown, zoomed in on the image, and used thermal detection. “The situation is a bit wrong. Why are there only gray rats on the street? Moreover, these gray rats don’t seem to be too many on the surface, but look at this one, and this one…” He pointed to a large rat on the computer screen and said, “These two rats have very big bellies. I suspect they are pregnant.”
Hearing this, Qi Fei showed an indescribable expression and said, “What’s wrong with being pregnant? Do you still want to show mercy to pregnant rats?”
Zhou Yu glanced at him, his eyes also somewhat indescribable, and said, “Rats have a strong reproductive ability. A female rat can give birth to a dozen pups in one litter and can give birth every three weeks. If these unborn pups all survive, how many will there be?”
Qi Fei then calculated in his mind. Although his math grades were not very good, he still had basic arithmetic skills. After a while, he showed a look of horror.
“No way? These rats won’t all mutate. Even if they all mutate, they may not all survive,” he frowned and said.
Xie Ning frowned even tighter than him and said, “There are no other animals on the street. Could it be because that energy is related to the mutated rats?”
Hearing this, everyone had a bad feeling in their hearts.
Ai Wei released his mental power again. His mental power entered the streets and alleys, extending into the shops and residences along the street, not even letting go of the trash cans along the road. Then, he discovered that in many places that people could not see, there were countless mutated rats hidden.
In many hidden corners, he also found some rat holes, and one or two rats would come in and out of those rat holes from time to time.
These mutated rats had eaten all the edible things here. As far as his mental power could reach, he could not find any edible things or living things. Some mutated rats had even begun to devour their own kind.
He also found many places scattered with bloody rags. He suspected that those clothes had once been worn on people…
And there was not a single person in this town, not even a zombie… Thinking of this, he could not help but want to vomit.
Seeing his bad complexion, Xia Junchi quickly grabbed his hand and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Ai Wei swallowed the feeling of wanting to vomit and said with a pale face, “There are too many mutated rats here, not only on the ground, but also many rat holes underground. They have eaten all the living things. I suspect they have even eaten the zombies…”
Hearing him say this, everyone looked at each other and their faces became very solemn.
It seemed that the problem in this town could not be solved by their dozen or so people.
“Did you see what the body of that huge energy is?” Lu Feng asked.
Ai Wei shook his head. That huge energy was still very far away from them. Just now, his mental power had not reached that side before he was frightened back by the mutated rat group.
Thinking of this, he could not help but feel a little embarrassed. “I’ll try again,” he said.
Saying that, he released his mental power again.
This time, when his mental power touched those mutated rats, he resisted the fear and continued to let his mental power move towards the direction where the energy was getting stronger and stronger.
When his mental power extended to a distance of more than a thousand meters, he finally felt that huge energy.
And that huge energy was buried underground.
Thinking of this, he could not help but swallow. Because he thought of those rat holes hidden in hidden corners, and those that were frequently entered and exited by mutated rats.
The energy was underground, so could it be hidden in the rat holes?
In the rat holes where mutated rats came in and out, there were naturally mutated rats. Could it be that in this rat hole, there was a mutated rat that was several times larger than other mutated rats?
Thinking of this, he felt another numbness on his scalp.
But this was just his wild thought. He still needed to investigate to find out whether that huge energy was a giant mutated rat.
So, he withdrew his wild thoughts, held his breath, and began to search for rat holes in the vicinity. Soon, he found a rat hole in the sewer of a supermarket that was several times larger than the rat hole he had just seen.
He hesitated for a moment, then extended his mental power into the rat hole to explore the situation inside.
The rat hole was very wide and deep. From time to time, one or two mutated rats would carry food in and come out empty-handed, as if they were delivering food to some creature deep in the cave.
Thinking of this, Ai Wei’s mental power extension could not help but pause. He always felt that something more terrible was hidden in the depths of this cave.
But he did not stop exploring and continued to explore deeper into the cave.
When his mental power penetrated to a depth of about twenty meters underground, he finally touched that huge energy.
As expected, that huge energy was indeed emitted from a giant mutated rat.
Even when lying down, the giant mutated rat was as tall as a person. Including its head and tail, it was more than ten meters long. It was no wonder that such a huge rat could emit such a powerful energy fluctuation.
It was gnawing on the corpse of a prey. Ai Wei felt the shape of the prey’s corpse and found that it was actually a mutated cat more than two meters long.
Judging from its size, it should have been a relatively powerful mutated cat. After all, at Youran Mountain Villa, the ability wolf that made Ai Wei and his group helpless was only more than two meters long. Moreover, felines were superior to canines in terms of agility, speed, and strength. In other words, this mutated cat was probably much stronger than the previous ability wolf. But even the mutated cat was killed by this giant mutated rat, so it could be seen that this giant mutated rat was even more terrifying.
In addition to this giant mutated rat, there were several corpses of mutated dogs and mutated cats in the rat hole. It seemed that the reason why there were no living creatures in this town was because they were killed by this mutated rat’s rat group.
After figuring out the situation in the rat hole, Ai Wei withdrew his mental power.
“At 10 o’clock, more than a thousand meters away, there is a giant rat’s nest in an underground rat hole.” Ai Wei said what he had just seen, and then said, “We have just entered the town. There are not many mutated rats we have seen. If we go one more street inside, the shops and residences on both sides of the street will be full of mutated rats.”
Hearing him say this, everyone could not help but feel a chill down their spines.
“Captain, what should we do?” Qi Fei asked.
The strength of their team was not weak. They were one of the best in the A City Safe Zone. If there was only that giant mutated rat, they could try to fight, but this town actually hid so many mutated rats, which was far beyond their ability.
At this moment, Ai Wei’s mental power suddenly sensed that a mutated rat appeared not far from them. The mutated rat peeked its head and looked over here for a while, then turned around and ran towards the town.
Ai Wei suddenly had a bad feeling in his heart and quickly said, “A mutated rat has discovered us. It is probably going back to call its companions.”
As soon as he said this, the people in the car could not help but change their expressions.
They were all people who had experienced danger many times and had a strong sense of prevention. At this time, Lu Feng immediately made a decision and said to the driver, “Quickly back up and leave here!”
Although the person driving in the front was a little confused, he quickly executed the order.
They could not bring the mutated rat group to the safe zone. After backing up, they drove in another direction.
However, the car did not drive far before everyone saw a dense group of mutated rats emerging from the town and running towards them quickly.
These mutated rats were very fast, no less than the military truck they were riding in. Because since the past few months, the things that could be eaten in the town had been eaten by them, so they could not find much to eat and could only go hungry.
At this time, they finally saw prey appear, and each of them rushed over desperately, as if they were crazy from hunger.
Seeing the dense rat group, Ai Wei only felt his scalp numb, his back tingling, and his whole body about to stop working. The others in the car had already picked up their weapons and began to attack the mutated rats that were catching up.
Lu Feng shot through the head of a mutated rat that pounced on the car. The mutated rat fell down and was quickly submerged in the surging mutated rat group.
Qin Mu, who was relatively silent, set up a machine gun and swept the mutated rat group.
“Damn! How many are there!” Qi Fei said while shooting.
The others were also busy dealing with the mutated rats. For a time, the back of the entire car was full of gunfire, mixed with various ability attacks.
Ai Wei had been stunned by the surging mutated rat group just now. He had never seen such a large enemy group. Although he had killed many zombies before, to be honest, the zombies’ martial strength was not high, and the number was not large. It did not take much effort for him to kill them, only the psychological pressure was relatively high. But this mutated rat group was different. This mutated rat group not only looked terrible, but also had a large number, and each of them was extremely fast and had strong attack power, almost forcing them to his near front, which was simply extremely terrible.
However, he could be regarded as a person who had experienced storms after all. He was only sluggish for a moment. Seeing that the people around him were killing mutated rats, he came back to his senses and shot a mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing] at a mutated rat that was close to him.
The mutated rat screamed and disappeared into the rushing rat group.
Ai Wei then went to刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing] other mutated rats, one after another, mercilessly, without stopping for a moment. The muscles all over his body were tense to the extreme, his eyes could not see anything else, his eyes were full of the terrible rat faces of the mutated rats, and there was only one thought in his mind, which was to kill these mutated rats. Until the mutated rat group moved away from them, his mental power was still chasing the mutated rats in the distance to刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing] their brains.
“Ai Wei, that’s enough, the rats are gone!” Xia Junchi saw that his face was pale and he was still staring at the direction of the mutated rat group, and called him in his ear.
Ai Wei kept using mental刺 (cì) [刺, a sharp object used for piercing]. At this time, his mental power was almost exhausted, and he could not hear any sound in his ears. Seeing Xia Junchi’s anxious face in front of him, he vaguely returned to his senses.
He then noticed that there were no mutated rats in his field of vision. Their car was driving smoothly on the road, and the surrounding companions were looking at him with a somewhat awed expression.
Then, his eyes went black, and he did not know anything.
When he was conscious again, he heard a voice saying, “It’s not a big problem, it’s just excessive consumption of ability. You can rest for a while.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Xia Junchi’s voice said.
Ai Wei felt weak all over, with a very tired feeling. This fatigue was not physical, but mental, making him unable to muster any energy.
He opened his eyes with some effort and saw the white ceiling above his head. Then, he looked towards the place where the sound was coming from and saw Xia Junchi sending a doctor in a white coat out the door.
When Xia Junchi turned back and saw that he was awake, he immediately showed a surprised expression, came to his bed, and asked, “How are you feeling now? Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere?”
Ai Wei shook his head and said, “I don’t feel uncomfortable anywhere, I just feel very tired, but I don’t want to sleep.”
Just saying this made him feel like he had used a lot of strength.
Hearing this, Xia Junchi showed a smile and said, “You have slept for a day and a night, so you naturally can’t sleep anymore. I’ll get you something to eat. You should be hungry too.”
After being reminded by him, Ai Wei realized that he did seem to be very hungry, so he nodded.
Xia Junchi took a bag of small bread from the bedside table and told him to eat this first, then went out. About twenty minutes later, he packed a bowl of shredded pork noodles, two bananas, and a box of milk for him.
Ai Wei smelled the fragrance of the shredded pork noodles and immediately had an appetite. He looked at him expectantly as he put the shredded pork noodles in a plastic bag into a large bowl, and then picked up his chopsticks and ate.
Maybe it was because he was really hungry, or maybe it was for other reasons, he felt that this bowl of shredded pork noodles was simply delicious. After eating all the noodles, meat, and vegetables in the bowl, he even drank the soup.
Seeing him eating so deliciously, Xia Junchi could not help but smile.
After Ai Wei finished eating the noodles, he ate the two bananas and drank the box of milk. Looking at Xia Junchi’s gentle and caring face in front of him, he felt that he had come alive again.
He touched his somewhat full stomach, but he still felt a little unsatisfied in his heart.
His eyes rolled, and he pitifully pounced on Xia Junchi and said, “My soul has been traumatized and needs comfort…”
Xia Junchi hugged his waist and patted him on the back, feeling distressed.
At that time, the mutated rat group had caught up with their car, and several mutated rats had jumped into the car. Ai Wei’s face was pale, his eyes were full of horror, but he was frantically launching ability attacks at the mutated rat group. After the mutated rat group retreated, Ai Wei was still in a violent state. He called him several times before he came back to his senses.
After coming back to his senses, he fainted.
However, in that critical situation, if it were not for Ai Wei’s sudden outbreak, they would not have been able to escape so quickly. I am afraid that even if they finally got rid of the mutated rat group, someone would have been injured or even killed in this crisis.