Chapter 95
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Chapter 95: The Wave
Through simple conversations along the way, El had gained a basic understanding of the current situation.
After a brief discussion among the three people, they decided to go all out and burn the batch of nutritional paste that couldn’t be transported in time.
The mycelium was indeed resilient, but it hadn’t yet reached the point of withstanding flames of several hundred degrees.
However, the situation changed faster than they had anticipated.
As their footsteps gradually slowed, they came to a halt in the center of the courtyard.
"The atmosphere feels off."
"Obviously!"
"Isn’t that your subordinate?"
"I told you I’m not the public leader."
"Is that why they look like they want to devour you?"
"Hard to say."
"Crash!"
The sharp sound of shattering glass rang out as Li Rui, his face covered in blood, appeared halfway through the second-floor window.
He shouted at El, who had reached the center of the courtyard,
"Boss, get out of here! Something’s wrong!"
In the next moment, his lower body seemed to be struck by an overwhelming force, and he was flung out of the window.
His body spun perfectly in the air, completing one and a half rotations before his head hit the ground with a dull thud.
Staring at the corpse with its head twisted at an impossible angle, even Zhuang Mian, who had witnessed her fair share of intense scenes recently, gulped nervously.
"What is this…?"
"The nominal leader of Ashes," El replied calmly.
Ji Yongxing’s brow furrowed slightly. As a researcher who valued human life, he disliked El’s cold and indifferent attitude toward life.
Yet his observational skills told him that there was something unusual about the corpse.
At that moment, another head emerged from the second-floor window—a human with blood-red eyes and dark green drool dripping from his mouth.
When he appeared at the window, everyone in the courtyard instinctively turned their gaze toward him.
But unlike the hostility they directed at Ji Yongxing and the others, their eyes now held a mix of fear and excitement as they looked toward the second floor.
The drooling man bellowed,
"By the will of the Lord, kill those who cannot hear His voice!"
"Roar!"
His words seemed to ignite the most primal rage within the crowd, and at his command, the people around began to close in on El and the others.
Unlike traditional zombies or undead creatures, they clearly retained some level of judgment; they simply couldn’t control their bodies and were determined to teach the three a lesson.
At that moment, the corpse on the ground, its head twisted down to the waistband, suddenly jolted like a carp leaping out of water. Then, with a sound of bones grinding, its neck slowly rotated back to a normal position.
Li Rui gradually got up from the ground and rushed to El’s side as if he had found a savior.
"Boss, are these two… reinforcements?"
El sighed almost imperceptibly, considering his abilities and those of the two beside him, and said half-jokingly, half-seriously:
"Given the current situation, you should be the strongest among the four of us."
Li Rui’s expression of joy immediately froze on his face.
Seeing the sudden change in his expression, El chuckled and said:
"You’ve seen my abilities; I’m not much of a fighter—only a guaranteed kill option.
"As for these two…"
Zhuang Mian and Ji Yongxing, who had been prepared, had already drawn their pistols from their holsters.
"Not much different from mine."
Joy returned to Li Rui’s face, but he quickly understood El’s meaning—
Those were their people, and most likely they had been controlled. Although they were just unemployed individuals, they were still an important part of Ashes.
This bit of humanity had to be acknowledged.
So, the task of pushing back his former subordinates and breaking through with a few people fell to Li Rui.
However, this job turned out to be much simpler than he had thought.
Following the training of enforcers, Zhuang Mian first fired a warning shot into the sky as the crowd closed in.
The sharp, piercing sound seemed to awaken the most fragile parts of those people’s hearts.
Perhaps because the mycelium’s control over their bodies wasn’t complete, after the gunfire, those individuals stood still, confused.
Seeing this, Li Rui quickly used his special skills, fending off a few before leaving the courtyard with El and the others.
The drooling Observer on the second floor, however, was not upset by this; with a mere gesture, he directed those partially controlled humans to rush toward the storage room of the nutritional paste.
Similar events were occurring at dozens of locations in the outer city. The gang members, who often went hungry, were the main customers of the nutritional paste production lines.
Though their methods varied, they would always use their preferred channels to obtain enough food supplies.
More and more people were being controlled by the mycelium.
More and more individuals acted as relays for the great consciousness’s murmurs.
More and more people were influenced and began to eat the nutritional paste.
A wave made up of humans began.
As for those who ate very little or preferred insect products, they fell into extreme panic in this apocalyptic scene.
Some hid in their homes, enduring the noise that echoed from all directions inside their heads.
Others stepped outside, instinctively running toward what they remembered as the safest place, which was the inner city.
Meanwhile, those who were completely controlled slowly gathered toward the walls of the outer city.
They planned to coordinate with the beast tide outside. Today, right here, they would completely conquer the outer city, which housed eighty percent of the human population!
In the outer city, as they watched the scattered residents flee, El and the three others were making their final efforts.
Zhuang Mian was contacting her teammates, urging them to destroy all available nutritional paste before this strange mental plague spread to their location.
Ji Yongxing was reaching out to Zhou Zhuo. Through his recent experience, he thought of a theory related to extraordinary beasts in the files—
The biological field.
If this guess was correct, then humanity’s demise might come earlier than he had suspected.
If the human population decreased significantly in a short time, the biological fields belonging to the extraordinary beasts and mycelium could directly interfere with those humans who had not yet been infected.
In that case, everything would become irretrievable.
—
On the walls of the inner city, Team 25 of Fresnel welcomed an unexpected visitor in their designated area.
"Hello, I’m ‘Weightlessness,’ and I have an order for Fresnel’s team."
After confirming the different events facing the inner and outer cities, many superhero teams received new assignments.
These teams were mostly better at dealing with extraordinary beasts rather than humans, including the heavily armed and precise Team 25.
The order was quickly read, and everyone learned about the beast tide that came once every ten years.
"But… how are we supposed to get to the walls of the outer city?"
Wang Xiao looked at the chubby man with his hands raised in confusion. Although he could modify himself, he couldn’t grow wings.
The chubby man smiled at Wang Xiao and repeated,
"My code name is—Weightlessness."
