Chapter 84: Severed Body, Split Jaw p1
Six hours was more than enough for Lin Jiayao to scavenge the entire night.
But she didn’t intend to. She needed a few hours of sleep to recover her mental strength.
As she walked towards the extraction point, she used Bone Spike Lurker to scan the surroundings.
Although she wasn’t familiar with Xin City’s layout, she wouldn’t miss any nearby hospitals, pharmacies, or hardware stores.
Mask’s Bone Spike Lurker now had a 200-meter range and could simulate terrain within 100 meters. This must be Lv.4.
It would probably appear as an evolution option after she extracted.
Walking and searching, Lin Jiayao soon found a potential source of medical supplies.
According to Bone Spike Lurker, it was a clinic on the ground floor of a residential building, seemingly empty.
She decided to check it out. With her long, three-meter legs, she had to duck slightly to enter the small clinic.
“Click, click, click, click, click, click—”
The thin bone spikes extending from her split jaw clicked against any solid surface – walls, glass – creating a sound like thousands of insects crawling.
This was to enhance the feedback from Bone Spike Lurker, allowing her to detect any usable medical supplies without having to search manually.
But unfortunately, the clinic had been completely looted.
Compared to pharmacies, clinics usually stocked more commonly used medical items, so it wasn’t surprising that it had been picked clean.
Lin Jiayao left the clinic and continued towards the extraction point.
Even in smaller Chinese cities, hospitals and clinics were relatively common. If she kept walking, she would eventually find one.
But before finding a pharmacy or a hospital, she found a hardware store.
Compared to a pharmacy, the hardware store was less appealing.
Although most of the items had been taken, many small parts remained, mostly rusted.
Tools like hammers, pliers, and screwdrivers were gone.
But screws, nuts, and bolts were scattered everywhere. Lin Jiayao used her thin bone spikes to pick them up and put them in the safehouse.
She had expected them to take up four slots, but they stacked neatly into a single grid.
After some testing, she discovered each grid could hold ten nuts or bolts, so she filled the safehouse with the rusted parts.
She could always discard them later if she found something more valuable.
Filling the safehouse was a priority; it was her safety net.
Her warehouse was still mostly empty; she could fit many more things in it, anything, just in case she needed them later.
After filling the safehouse with nuts and bolts, Lin Jiayao started searching for a multi-tool with Bone Spike Lurker.
If she could find one, she would have all the materials for the Workbench.
Scanning the store, she didn’t find any.
But there were several sealed boxes in the storage room at the back; she couldn’t see through them with Bone Spike Lurker.
“Click, click, click—”
Walking towards the storage room, Lin Jiayao carefully retracted her bone spikes and squeezed through the doorway, which was easily large enough for a normal human.
Opening the torn cardboard boxes, she found several boxes of nuts and bolts.
Disappointed, she retracted her spikes, left the hardware store, and continued crawling through the night, increasing her speed.
Soon, she found an auto repair shop and, inside, a multi-tool.
She emptied a grid of nuts and bolts and placed the multi-tool inside.
Now she had all the materials for the Workbench.
She still had thirteen blood crystals in her warehouse, no need to worry about that for now. Even if she extracted now, it wouldn’t be a loss.
She could always log into An Xiaoxi and buy some cheap medical supplies to make up the 500g.
In the distance, she saw a bridge. The extraction point was on the other side.
Just as she was about to sprint towards it, her Bone Spike Lurker detected three strong heartbeats two hundred meters away.
Humans?
She looked up and saw a faint glint of light from a nearby building.
Bone Spike Lurker picked up the sound of a bullet being chambered.
No time to dodge.
“Click, click—”
Lin Jiayao’s jaw snapped upwards, the two halves, like a Venus flytrap, closing around her head, the bone spikes interlocking, forming a protective shield.
Since Bone Spike Lurker’s range was circular, if the enemy was on a high vantage point, they would be very close by the time she detected them.
Like the Armored zombies on the unfinished building.
A bullet shattered one of the bone spikes protecting her head and then ricocheted off her forehead.
Thanks to the bone spike’s deflection, the bullet hadn’t penetrated her skull.
Lin Jiayao immediately scuttled sideways towards a nearby store, smashing through the glass windows and entering.
Inside, she extended a bone spike, removed the bullet, and let her bones regenerate.
Were these… humans hunting mutated zombies?
There wasn’t a back exit. Going out would expose her to the sniper.
She hadn’t expected to encounter survivors at this time, and this was her first time being attacked by them during a login.
After all, she looked like a valuable, mutated zombie, worth a lot of blood crystals.
But Lin Jiayao remained calm, weighing her options.
Avoiding them would be a waste of time; she would have to detour through another street to reach the bridge.
Mask didn’t have a gun, and she didn’t want to climb dozens of floors to confront them.
Even if she won, they probably wouldn’t have as many blood crystals as a mutated zombie, and she didn’t need their supplies.
Fighting them was a waste of time.
The gunshots had attracted Biters and Lurkers, but the humans hadn’t fired again.
It seemed they were planning to wait until daylight, when the zombies dispersed, to collect the blood crystals.
A group of specialized nighttime zombie hunters, possibly even with an Awakened among them.
She had no time to waste; she needed to extract and… sleep.
Lin Jiayao waited inside the store, just outside the sniper’s line of sight, until a few Biters, attracted by the gunfire, wandered past.
Any zombie passing the store, whether Biter or Lurker, was dragged inside by a bone spike.
They growled but couldn’t resist.
Meanwhile, on the rooftop, the humans weren’t as calm.
“Did you misfire, Mei?” a young man asked, chewing on something, looking through binoculars.
Beside him, a young woman, about 20 years old, lay prone at the edge of the roof.
A hole had been made in the wall for her to aim through. A middle-aged man, also with binoculars, stood to her right.
And at each corner of the building, three or four people were busy: a sniper and two or three spotters.
They seemed to be from the same camp.
Lin Jiayao’s Bone Spike Lurker had only detected the closest team. If she could have sensed the entire group, she would have been glad she’d chosen to avoid them.
The wind on the rooftop was strong. The young woman, aiming her rifle, didn’t hear her brother’s muffled question.
“Strange… I’m sure I hit it… Uncle Bai, you saw it too, right?”
She looked at the middle-aged man.
Even without lights, the moonlight was bright enough for them to see what was happening below.
“You definitely hit it,” Uncle Bai nodded. “It seems… it knew where we were and hid…”
He hesitated as he said “hid.”
They had encountered bone-type zombies with long-range detection before, even Armored ones.
But even those, upon sensing their heartbeats, would charge towards the building, trigger the mines they had planted, and then wait to be shot.
But this strange bone-type zombie, the moment it sensed them, had defended itself and then… hidden?
Unheard of.
“Boom—”
An explosion from another street, likely a larger zombie like an Armored one stepping on a mine, made them focus.
The explosion would attract more zombies; they had to prioritize the mutated ones.
Usually, after a mutated zombie died, other zombies would gather to feed, easy targets.
This was tedious work, requiring them to take turns manning the rifles, practically all night, until dawn.
“Whirr—”
“Lights on—”
Shortly after the explosion, a sound like a tractor starting, and then the searchlights surrounding the building lit up, illuminating the area.
“An Armored one is coming, get ready. Brother, keep an eye on that hiding zombie. Uncle Bai.”
“Mm, wait for it to step on a mine,” Uncle Bai replied calmly.
The three held their breath, watching the Armored zombie lumber towards the building.
Once it got within a hundred meters, it would enter the minefield. They waited for the explosions.
But just as they were watching the Armored zombie intently, it suddenly stopped.
“What’s happening?” the young man, called Brother, frowned and adjusted the focus on his binoculars.
He had been watching the strange, mutated zombie’s movements, ready to report its location to his sister the moment it reappeared.
That zombie was so pale, and its large, jellyfish-like form was unforgettable; he wouldn’t mistake it.
But just now, a heavily armored Armored zombie had entered his field of vision, seemingly heading towards them.
And then, within his observation range, it had stopped.
He quickly adjusted the focus on his binoculars and froze, forgetting to chew his tobacco.
What… the hell…?
Through the magnified lens, he saw several thin, white bone spikes extending from the clothing store he had been watching, piercing the Armored zombie and dragging it inside.
Soon, not just the Armored zombie, but also several Biters and Lurkers, attracted by the explosion, were also impaled and dragged into the store.
The young man, his mouth agape, looked at Uncle Bai, who was also staring at him, wide-eyed.
They both looked at the young woman, who had sat up and was now looking at them.
“Holy shit… what was that…?” the young man finally mumbled, breaking the silence.
After so many years, he’d never seen anything like it, a zombie running away, dragging other zombies with it.
A sense of foreboding washed over him.
“Boss! Boss!” The young woman didn’t wait; she stood up and shouted towards the center of the rooftop.
This situation was beyond their comprehension; they needed the Boss’s experience.
Their well-traveled Boss, who had migrated from another province, must have seen something like this before.
“What’s going on?” a shirtless man, his muscular body clad only in a thin jacket, stood up from a beach chair in the center of the rooftop and walked towards them.
He wore pink children’s sunglasses, shorts, a cigar in his mouth, and a megaphone in his hand; the “lights on” command had come from him.
He looked more like he was on vacation than hunting zombies.
Taking the binoculars from the young man, he flipped up the sunglasses, revealing his eyes.
Those children’s sunglasses were surprisingly functional.
He looked through the binoculars, towards where the laser pointer had been aimed.
“Huh?”
He quickly saw the Armored zombie being dragged into the store and the other zombies being pulled into the blind spot by the bone spikes.
Even the Armored zombie couldn’t resist.
Definitely a big one.
He lowered the binoculars, turned, raised the megaphone, and addressed the other hunting teams on the rooftop. “Everyone, hold your fire! Don’t waste your bullets, come over here!”
“We have a big one!”
Hearing his call, the others quickly gathered, setting up their rifles on the wall.
Some even brought stools; it was a matter of personal preference.
They were familiar with this procedure. Something similar had happened a year ago.
A seven-meter-tall Armored zombie, its body covered in layers of car doors and metal plates, barely even flinching when it stepped on a mine.
They had gathered all their snipers then, ignoring other targets, focusing solely on that one Armored zombie.
Such large Armored zombies were slow but incredibly durable.
A single sniper round would barely penetrate its skull. Even with seven or eight snipers firing headshots, they couldn’t do much damage.
And when the zombie finally reacted, raising its arms to protect its head, even the sniper rifles were useless.
They had to bring out their trusty Type 85 heavy machine gun and fire dozens of armor-piercing, incendiary rounds to finally penetrate its armor and destroy its head.
Learning from that experience, spotters were already heading downstairs to retrieve the heavy machine gun.
“We got eleven blood crystals last time… this one should be worth at least eight or nine,” the man in sunglasses said, his voice filled with excitement.
Eight or nine blood crystals in one night was a huge haul for a hunting team.
Enough to pay them to climb down dozens of floors to retrieve the crystals from the corpse and then return to the camp for a few days of rest, no longer having to sleep on this rooftop.
Everyone, their eyes glued to their scopes and binoculars, waited for the zombie to reappear.
The sound of distant explosions, mines being triggered, was ignored – the zombies that triggered the mines couldn’t climb up to the rooftop anyway; they would just wander around on the ground floor.
“Holy shit, what’s it doing?”
To their surprise, the area in the blind spot seemed to be… overflowing.
Several Biters were now dangling from the bone spikes, pulled towards the store, and the hooks, seemingly insatiable, continued to drag in more zombies, even though there wasn’t enough space.
“Boss, machine gunner in position on the 20th floor,” a voice crackled from the walkie-talkie clipped to his shorts.
There was an open-air restaurant on the 20th floor of this building, another good vantage point, the other being the rooftop.
Heavy machine guns weren’t as accurate at long range as sniper rifles, so they were usually positioned closer to the target.
“Good job! Wait for my command!”
He tossed the walkie-talkie to a waiting subordinate and raised his binoculars again.
“Boss! It’s moving!”
“Shut up! Shut up! This is important! I’m not blind!” He snapped at the excited spotter, a grin spreading across his face.
In the monotonous drudgery of zombie hunting, an exciting, risk-free event like this was a welcome adrenaline rush.
Thrilling! Anticipation!
They could see the dangling zombies being pushed outwards. He raised the megaphone, ready to give the order to fire.
But as the creature in the blind spot emerged, everyone fell silent.
What… the hell… is that?
A five-meter-tall Armored zombie, standing like a monolith, its body covered in a grotesque mass of dangling zombies, their necks impaled by bone spikes, like gruesome puppets.
Layers upon layers of zombies, draped over the Armored zombie.
From a distance, it looked like a giant, dark, pulsating human brain perched atop the Armored zombie.
Or, if you had to compare it to a more familiar object, a giant head of… broccoli.
A writhing, pulsating broccoli made of zombies.
And the Armored zombie’s own head was completely obscured.
Its arms, raised like a zombie’s, were covered in bone spikes, each spike connected to a zombie’s neck.
As if it were leading a hundred zombie “dogs” on leashes.
And then, to everyone’s astonishment, the dangling zombies suddenly turned…
And ran?!
“Holy shit! Fire! Fire! Don’t let it escape!”
“Bang! Bang!”
“Bang—”
“Bang—”
A volley of sniper fire, but the bullets only grazed the outer layer of zombies, not even penetrating.
Hearing the gunshots, the heavy machine gun on the 20th floor opened fire, a loud “rat-tat-tat,” but the distance was too great, the bullets missing as the giant zombie turned a corner and disappeared.
The man in sunglasses, his mouth still open, megaphone in hand, stared blankly at the empty street.
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