Chapter 45 - 5 more!

Chapter 45: 5 more!

Bai Li stood there for a second after the last zombie fell, looking down at the three bodies scattered on the stairs. Their heads were already separated cleanly, the dark blood spreading slowly across the concrete in ugly wet patches. The smell was still hanging in the air too, that rotten, sour, mixed with iron kind of stench that made the stairwell feel even tighter than before. She stared at them with a calm expression, but her mind was already moving ahead. Level one zombies were already enough to make ordinary people collapse into panic like paper in water. They were slow, yes, but that did not make them harmless at all. In fact, in the early stage, that was probably the worst part. People would see them moving badly, think there was still time, then freeze the moment they got too close. And once fear took over, it became over. Bai Li could already picture how the next few days would go. Streets full of people running in the wrong direction, apartments locked from the inside, screams spreading from one building to another, and then the city slowly losing control piece by piece. If these weak first stage zombies could already cause this much trouble, then the higher level ones later on would probably be a whole different kind of nightmare. Level two, level three, maybe even higher than that. She didn’t even want to imagine what kind of mess they would become once they started evolving properly. The phrase survival of the fittest suddenly felt less like a phrase and more like a rule carved straight into this world. Bai Li let that thought settle in her mind for a moment, then exhaled softly and kept going down without lingering. There was no point standing around. She needed movement, kills, experience, crystal cores, and a real feel for how this body fought in actual combat. Thinking about it was useless now. Doing it was the only thing that mattered.

By the time she reached the fourth floor, the corridor opened up in front of her and she immediately saw movement ahead. Five zombies were wandering around in the long hallway, each one in a different state of decay, each one moving with the same broken, half dead kind of rhythm that made them look more like damaged machines than living people. One had part of its face torn off, leaving teeth and bone visible underneath. Another had a huge dark bite mark across the side of its neck. A third dragged one foot behind it and kept bumping into the wall while turning in slow circles like it had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing. The other two were no better, their clothes soaked with old blood, their arms hanging in weird positions, their heads jerking toward any small sound that moved through the air. Bai Li looked at them and felt something strange and sharp rise inside her chest. It was not fear. It was not pity either. It was more like excitement, the kind that came when someone finally got to test something they had been preparing for. She had already killed a few, but now there were more targets, more chances to get used to the weapon, more chances to see how far her reaction speed and strength could actually go in a real fight. She gripped Whisperfang a little more firmly and started walking toward them with complete calm on her face, almost like she was just taking a stroll instead of walking toward five bloodthirsty corpses that wanted to tear her apart.

...