"Ten?"

Song Xiaodao turned to look at Zhao Yin, pouting. "I'm still a kid. Can't I kill fewer?"

She stood there dragging her feet, scheming about how to kill just one zombie to satisfy Zhao Yin and call it done.

"There are no children in the apocalypse-only the living and the dead!"

"Without strength, you die. Those who survive are the strong!"

Zhao Yin's voice rose. "You're an Evolver now. You're already stronger than most survivors!"

"I'll give you one minute to kill your first zombie. If you can't do it, tonight you'll replace Little Monkey as the vanguard!"

Song Xiaodao's legs went weak. Her? The vanguard?

That was a death sentence.

She drew her Tang saber, forced herself to be brave, and moved her short legs toward the zombie horde currently tangled up with Little Monkey.

Song Xiaodao had planned to sneak up on one while it wasn't paying attention. But the moment she got close, that zombie abandoned its assault on Little Monkey and lunged straight at her.

Panicked, she flailed her Tang saber wildly.

Pfft!

The blade sheared through the zombie's shoulder at the root. But the creature didn't even flinch. Its remaining arm kept reaching for her.

It was already too late to react. Song Xiaodao fell backward onto her rear. "Zhao Yin, save me-!"

Zhao Yin had expected this. He stepped forward, kicked the one-armed zombie over, swung his blade, and took its head off. Then he pulled her up from the ground.

"When killing zombies, always go for the head. Swing hard-don't let the skull trap your blade. And never get scratched or bitten, or you'll become one of them." His tone was stern.

Song Xiaodao was still shaking. Her trembling body pressed against Zhao Yin as she choked out, "Can you not make me kill zombies? I... I can work for you instead."

"You'll work, and you'll kill zombies. I told you before-since you followed me, your life belongs to me. Try to leave, and I'll kill you myself."

Zhao Yin pushed her away and pointed at the zombies in the distance. "Go kill more. This is your only way out."

He had gone through all this in his previous life.

The first time most people faced zombies, they couldn't even lift their weapons. They just pissed themselves and got torn apart.

Song Xiaodao was still a child, but at least she hadn't wet herself.

Tears streamed down her face as she glared at Zhao Yin. The favorable impression she had just begun to form vanished completely.

By now, Little Monkey and Old Bull had reduced the nearby horde to just a few stragglers. Song Xiaodao didn't dare disobey. She gripped her Tang saber and charged forward.

One zombie roared and rushed at her. She swung her blade into its skull.

The strength of an F-rank Evolver was not something an ordinary zombie could withstand.

She had swung too hard. The zombie split clean in half. Black and green gore spilled across the ground along with its innards, accompanied by a foul stench.

By then, Old Bull and Little Monkey had finished off the rest. Song Xiaodao stood frozen, staring at the corpse she had killed.

Ever since the outbreak, zombies had been the most terrifying creatures in her world.

Later, when she saw Zhao Yin slaughter them effortlessly, she had thought him almost godlike.

She never imagined she could do it too.

Had she really killed that zombie herself?

It felt like a dream.

Suddenly, a warm hand rested on top of her head. Zhao Yin's voice came from beside her. "Well done."

A trace of warmth rose in Song Xiaodao's chest. She was still just a child, after all. She didn't hold grudges.

"Zhao Yin, shouldn't you think I'm useless?"

"What I said earlier was harsh, but you needed to hear it. People have to grow. Sometimes, if we don't push ourselves, how will we ever know what we're capable of?"

Zhao Yin ruffled her hair with one hand while the other rested behind his back. He tilted his head at a forty-five-degree angle and gazed up at the night sky, his stubbled jawline sharply defined.

At that moment, Song Xiaodao's eyes shone as she looked at him.

"I'm sorry, Zhao Yin. I was just too scared. I let you down."

Zhao Yin didn't respond. He simply ordered, "Get to work. Dig out all the Zombie Cores and bring them to me."

As he spoke, he bent down and cracked open the skull of a corpse at his feet. He pulled out an Unranked Zombie Core. Without bothering to wipe it clean, he crushed it and absorbed it on the spot.

Song Xiaodao quickly sheathed her Tang saber, drew her butterfly knife, and got back to her old trade.

"Old Bull, stomp open all the intact skulls! Monkey, you dig out the cores too!" Zhao Yin called out.

Even he, the master, was doing the dirty work himself. How could his two beasts just stand there watching? Did they have no sense of hierarchy?

The two beasts had just finished fighting. At his words, they quickly deactivated their abilities.

Little Monkey smashed a nearby skull with one swing of its club, then reached inside and pulled out the Zombie Core. Old Bull had no hands, but that didn't stop it from crushing heads underhoof for Song Xiaodao. She only had to extract the cores.

In just a few minutes, Zhao Yin absorbed one hundred and fifty-seven Unranked Zombie Cores, increasing his evolution progress by 0.0157 percent.

The group continued toward the Industrial Park. Everywhere they passed, corpses lay strewn across the ground.

All of Guangzhou City's F-rank zombies had been summoned to the Zombie King's side. This morning, Zhao Yin had slaughtered them outside the southern suburbs.

So along the way, they didn't encounter a single ranked zombie.

The group gradually drew close to the Industrial Park.

Among the ruins ahead, dozens of zombies appeared again. But these were different-they all lay motionless on the ground.

Their bodies were mangled and torn.

"Zhao Yin, are those zombies sleeping?" Song Xiaodao asked.

"Zombies don't sleep."

Zhao Yin frowned. These had clearly been killed by someone.

Just as he was wondering who would dare come here to hunt zombies, Little Monkey's voice sounded in his mind: "Master, Old Bull did this last night."

Zhao Yin understood at once. He ordered the two beasts and Song Xiaodao to crack open the skulls and extract the Zombie Cores.

They encountered several more groups of corpses Old Bull had left behind. Among them, they finally found an F-rank zombie with both its Star Crystal and Zombie Core still intact.

Zhao Yin cracked open the Star Crystal.

[Nongfu Spring...]

He smacked his lips and stored it in his Spatial Ring.

His evolution progress had now risen to 100/0.3215.

The zombies ahead grew denser. Occasionally, massive hordes of over a thousand appeared.

After several hours of intense fighting, both Little Monkey and Old Bull were panting heavily.

Zhao Yin had no choice but to let them rest. Once they recovered, they pressed on-but he no longer let them actively engage the zombies.

If they got surrounded by a massive horde here, even Old Bull and Little Monkey would die.

As they went deeper into the Industrial Park, the zombies grew more and more densely packed. Moving even an inch became difficult. Zhao Yin no longer dared make the slightest sound.

He asked Old Bull about it. The beast told him that ever since the Zombie King appeared, the zombies here had multiplied. It hadn't ventured this deep in a long time.

The Industrial Park wasn't large, but the Zombie King had summoned close to a hundred thousand zombies here. Even a D-rank mutated beast, if trapped in such an encirclement, would struggle to escape alive.

Mutated beasts were still flesh and blood. Once their energy ran out, the horde would bury them.

Deep inside the Industrial Park, zombies wandered everywhere, stretching out of sight. Densely packed, like a temple fair from before the apocalypse.

Zhao Yin and the others stopped beneath a broken sheet of insulating tile.

"Old Bull, how much farther?" Zhao Yin didn't dare speak aloud. He asked through their mental link.

"Once we get over that concrete pile ahead, we'll be there," Old Bull replied.