Chapter Thirty-Six: Wild Flight
Construction Zone 1125.
The machines roared.
It was hard to imagine that in just one short day, a pit over thirty meters deep had already been dug.
At this moment, all the workers and young soldiers who had come to help had stopped what they were doing, their curious gazes fixed on the pitch-black stone tablet revealed in the depths of the pit.
“What’s going on? Why is there a stone tablet here?”
“That’s strange. Who would bury something like this here?”
“It can’t have been buried. Who would dig a pit thirty meters deep just to bury this stone? Who has that much free time?”
“Is that the character for ‘corpse’… This stone tablet feels sinister, pitch black and without any reflection—what material is this?”
“Don’t touch anything. I’ll go take a look.” One particularly bold worker, ignoring the others’ warnings, walked over in curiosity and touched the stone tablet.
It felt icy cold to the touch, yet somehow sticky.
But when the worker lifted his hand, he was stunned to find his palm stained a deep red!
It looked exactly like blood!
He stared in shock at the stone tablet, and only now did he finally see it clearly.
“This isn’t a stone tablet at all!”
“It’s blood!”
That slab was actually a mass of thick, dried blood, coagulated together!
As if sensing the presence of the living, the tablet began to tremble, and the inscribed character started to writhe.
“Ah!!”
The braver worker, seeing this, let out a terrified scream and scrambled out of the pit using both hands and feet. “Run! Everyone run! Something’s wrong here…”
Suddenly, the sky darkened.
The scorching summer wind ceased at once. For a moment, all was silent.
Then.
The once-hot wind instantly became as biting as the coldest winter.
The ground trembled.
From the stone tablet, a gigantic greenish-blue hand shot out and seized the man by his back!
A sharp, blade-like claw pierced straight through the man’s flesh, blood gushing forth!
The man’s terrified eyes bulged wide. “Help… help me…”
A beastly roar.
A massive, green-blue figure emerged from the stone tablet.
It stood five meters tall!
Its face was a rotting, twisted mask with protruding fangs, like a demon from hell itself!
“The aura of life.” The hulking figure, holding the man as easily as one might a chick, brought him close and greedily inhaled, “I need… your nourishment.”
He took a deep breath.
The human in his grasp seemed to have his very essence sucked away in an instant. His face turned ghastly pale, and he could no longer move, the only sign of life being the feeble twitching of his limbs.
His eyes became vacant, his mouth agape as if to scream, but no sound came out.
This horrifying scene left everyone around frozen in shock, their minds blank, forgetting even to be afraid.
It was simply—
Unbelievable!
The man standing in the pit looked up at the stunned faces above, his decaying visage splitting into a chilling smile. “Thank you for awakening me.”
“You all…”
“Will be my nourishment!”
He roared.
A grayish-blue aura spread out from his body, sweeping upward!
Enveloped by this aura, the monstrous being leaped from the thirty-meter pit in a single, terrifying bound, arcing through the air before crashing heavily onto the ground.
A cloud of dust billowed up.
Behind him, the middle-aged man whose essence he had drained slowly rose to his feet in the pit. His eyes were now entirely gray-blue, devoid of all color.
His movements became strange and unnatural; he seemed more like a puppet on a string than a living man—clumsy but immensely strong.
He roared and sprang up, following the towering figure out of the deep pit.
A zombie!
As for the gigantic man—
He was the Corpse King, Jiang Chen.
A deathly gray aura swirled around him.
“Offer your lives to me.”
“Follow me.”
“I will grant you immortality.”
The man spread his arms wide, and the gray-blue aura writhed like venomous snakes, sweeping toward the workers and soldiers.
The newly created zombie, too, charged at those nearby, shrieking.
Only now did the workers and young soldiers finally come to their senses.
“What… what is that thing?”
“A zombie? Is that a zombie?”
“Run! There are ghosts here!”
The crowd screamed and fled, but behind them, the gray-blue aura surged like a tidal wave, swallowing figures one after another.
The moment any of them touched the aura, their vitality was instantly drained away. Wisps of departed souls could be seen drawn into the mouth of the rotting giant, his body growing ever stronger.
Those whose energy was drained collapsed instantly, their once-supple skin shriveling like bark, their bodies and eyes turning that same gray-blue, falling lifeless to the ground.
But—
It wasn’t long before they would rise again in those twisted, unnatural postures, wreathed in grayish mist, charging at the panicked, fleeing crowd.
A young soldier, only recently enlisted and sent to this site, ran in terror, but the gray-blue mist was about to engulf him.
He turned and caught sight of a zombie rushing at him, howling.
Yet suddenly, a smile broke across his youthful face, a trace of resolve appearing in his clear eyes.
“Uncle, live well!” he shouted, grabbing the shoulder of the older man running beside him.
“You…” The older man was stunned, but saw the young face break into a radiant smile. “I’m a soldier!”
With those words.
The young soldier summoned all his strength and shoved the older man forward.
Turning, he faced the oncoming zombie.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice trembling as he looked at the worker he’d just been chatting with earlier, “I couldn’t protect you.”
“But—”
“I can’t let you hurt anyone else!”
He clenched his fists, trembling.
There was fear in his eyes.
For, after all, he was human. Any person, faced with such horror, would be afraid.
Soldiers are human too!
Flesh and blood.
They feel fear, they shed tears.
But in his eyes, there was something more—a steadfast resolve. “But I can’t let you hurt anyone else!”
“I am a soldier!!!”
Facing the onrushing wave of gray-blue mist and scores of ravening zombies, the young man’s tears flowed uncontrollably, but his trembling fists slowly steadied and tightened.
He began to run.
Toward the tide of corpses and the deathly aura sweeping toward him, he ran!
Alone, he charged headlong into the horde, roaring and howling as they came.
No.
He was not alone!
Behind him, one after another, young faces set with grim determination, forcing down their trembling, followed him into the charge!