(a)

The head of the mutant wild dog that pounced on him rolled to the side like a kicked night pot, along with its corpse. Li Weiyong slammed his arm, shook off the blood from his sword, and pulled the reins hard, urging the horse to run faster. This person jumped directly over the mutated creatures that surrounded him, and rushed towards the direction of the city center.

Li Weiyong was anxious at this time, but he did not lose his mind, so he understood that he must move forward as soon as possible, and he must not fall in love. By the light of the flames raging through the streets, he could see that further down in the town, more monsters had smelled him and were swarming towards it. Looking back, the monsters who had just "greeted" him at the city gate were still in hot pursuit. At this time, if he takes a step slower and is surrounded by such a front and back, he will end up single-handedly.

The dead are not qualified to protect anyone, nor to take revenge on anyone.

So he can't die yet, and he can't die until he sees his family.

"Driving...... Ahem...... Drive!"

The smoke was inhaled into his lungs, and he choked on a violent cough. It was this cloud of black smoke mixed with debris that blinded the eyes of men and horses for a moment, preventing them from seeing under their feet—unfortunately, there happened to be a pile of wagon wreckage, piled up to half a man's height.

So, with a mix of feet, the horse stumbled on his front hooves, and a few stumbles that made him feel lucky, and finally lost his center of gravity completely, and fell heavily towards the solid bluestone road.

"Suffer!"

Li Weiyong's eyes widened, looking at the ground that was getting closer and closer, and there was only one word in his mind. And the image captured inadvertently from the corner of his eye reminds him: You are in trouble.

The mutated monsters were rapidly approaching in all directions, like vultures that smelled rancidity. At this time, Li Weiyong fell into a rut, and half of his body was crushed under the horse, and he couldn't climb out alive.

Just as he tried with all his might, trying to remove the broken leg from his body, reality gave him a slap in the face and told him:

Don't try hard.

You're done.

The pressure on the lower half of his body was a little heavier, and Li Weiyong seemed to hear the wail of his big leg bones. He understood that this meant, that something had climbed onto the horse's body.

Soon, he saw "that thing" clearly. Judging by its stubby, fat limbs, it should have been a pig "when it was alive", but now, it looks like a large, pink worm. The muscles on its body writhed as it wriggled, and it looked like a dense cluster of maggots, and it also had an earthworm face, do you know what an earthworm's face looks like?

If you don't know, you can go and watch those shoddy B-grade monster horror movies from the seventies and eighties of the last century, and maybe you can get some good references.

Anyway, now, this thing is lying on the poor horse. Li Weiyong always felt that he was looking down at him lying on the ground without moving, and then he realized that this guy had no eyes. In that case, he might still have a chance......

"Shhh

No, there is no chance.

It opened its mouth, which was as ugly as a row of excretal organs, and out of it came a large tube of flesh stained with slime fluid, and the inside of the tube was full of hard thorns with a metallic sheen - all of its teeth. It used this, the "mouthpart", to bite the horse's neck. The horse naturally erupted in an end-of-life screech, but that didn't make much sense, and it quickly fell silent.

The monster seemed to be sucking its blood and gnawing at its flesh, its thick mouthparts obscuring Levion's vision, preventing him from seeing what it was doing. Still, he's pretty pretty sure that whatever it's doing, it's pretty happy with what it's doing at the moment.

The smell of blood irritated the hunger of the surrounding monsters, driving them to hurry up. Li Weiyong smelled the stench coming out of the monster's mouth, and at the same time thought of his own end, so he slowly closed his eyes. At least, when death came, he didn't want to see the dense spikes in the bottomless mouthparts - then he would die.

The pain of death, whether long or short, depends on whether the predator wants to fill his belly a little faster or if he wants to play with the fear of the prey first.

"Shoot the arrows!"

The good news is that, at least tonight, at this time, he will not experience the feeling of death.

With that sonorous and powerful military order, the arrows rained down like a while, and the monster lying on the horse's corpse greedily sucking flesh and blood was pierced into a big hedgehog with a strange mouth.

"Be very careful, Hugh is going to injure the young master by mistake!"

Under this order, Li Weiyong understood:

He was saved.

(b)

"It was the army in the city that saved me, or maybe it was the screaming of the horses that caught their attention, or maybe the sentry standing guard on a high place spotted me...... Perhaps, both?"

"Actually, at that time I was very close to the fortress where the army was stationed – that is, my home – . If I hadn't fallen on that fall, I would have been able to ride back on horseback myself. But then I learned that it was much better for the horse to die there than to be ridden back to my hometown. ”

"Because it's going to mutate sooner or later, right?" Marisa interjected.

"Because it mutates sooner or later. Nalan nodded, "Actually, by the time I returned to the city, all the livestock had become monsters, and there was not a single horse to ride in the whole city. My horse was less affected and mutated more slowly because it was out for a long time, away from the center of the storm. ”

"But if it doesn't mix that and keeps running, and then at some point when I can't react, it suddenly goes crazy and turns around and nibbles on me, and that's going to be a big deal. ”

"From that point of view...... Seon lost his horse, how can he know the blessing or the curse?"

"That's a lot of......"

(c)

Escorted by the army, Li Weiyong fled to his relatively safe home, which served as a temporary refuge for the people of the city. He was greeted by a not-so-enthusiastic father.

As soon as he entered the door, he saw the family members gathered in the hall, his parents and grandmother, two brothers and a sister, all neatly organized, and immediately felt something, with tears in his eyes, and exclaimed:

"Dad, mother!"

"Oh, it's Viyon!"

His father looked back at him, not looking agitated. The others just looked at him calmly and didn't say anything.

He was now covered in dust, and he had a scratch on his forehead, stained with coagulated blood. If it was someone else's parents or someone else's children, they must have hugged each other a long time ago, right?

"If it were my brother, they would definitely be more enthusiastic......"

Thinking so, Li Weiyong showed a wry smile.

He always knew that his position in this family was very embarrassing. No one felt that he was a "necessary" family member, which was one of the reasons why he was in a hurry to go out and join the army. However, when his family's disregard for him was shown in this naked way, even if it was him, he was still a little sad.

"You're back just in time," his father said, "and we're packing up and getting ready to evacuate." You should hurry up and prepare, time is running out!"

When Li Weiyong heard this, he was stunned, looked up at his father's serious look, looked down at the luggage that had already been packed, and swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

"You ...... What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Get out of the city," his father repeated, "to run away, in the way you can understand it—there's no place to stay." ”

"Later, the army and the government will withdraw with us, and we will stay in the middle of the team, and our safety is guaranteed. ”

"Then, what about the people?" asked Li Weiyong again, "What about the people gathered in the walls of our compound, some old, some young, and some injured?"

The reason why Li Weiyong asked this question was because on the way home, he did see many people who had come in for refuge, and many of them knew people, such as those hairy children who pestered him to play marbles with him, those coachmen who drank with him and bragged about bulls, and the old melon seller who regarded him as his grandson. When they saw him, they greeted him cordially, and they all praised him for his hard life, and if he didn't die, he would have a blessing, and that attitude was even kinder than his biological parents.

Those simple and ignorant people, who thought that they could be saved and live until dawn, their innocent faces, under the reflection of the firelight, saw Li Weiyong's heartache.

"The people will follow the procession. His father said.

"On foot?"

"Yes, on foot, the horses are dead, everyone has to walk on their feet. ”

"Then, Daddy, let me ask one more question. Li Weiyong said, "How many defenders are there in this city?"

"And five thousand. ”

"What about the people?"

"Unknown, about sixty or seventy thousand. ”

"With 5,000 elite soldiers, you may be able to protect 70,000 people?"

"Viyon ......"

"If you can't protect it, and let the people walk behind and face the pursuit of those demon beasts, doesn't this use them as a shield?"

"Veyon!"

"Father!"

An old man and a young man, the two of them roared out together, their eyes wide with anger, almost bursting their sockets.

After a short silence, Li Weiyong first attacked:

"Using the common people as bait, he steals his own life. You are usually full of benevolence and morality, but when it comes to life and death, you don't even have a sense of shame?"

This was said by a seventeen-year-old boy to his father, and he said it with confidence, without the slightest uneasiness about his elders. His old father was angry for a while, so he walked up in two steps, raised his hand and slapped him, causing the corners of his mouth to bleed.

But after this slap, Li Weiyong didn't change color, he didn't even bother to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth, he just stood straight, staring at his father, without blinking his eyes. In the middle of the night, just as his mother was about to come up to persuade him, he spoke:

"Yes, you can escape. ”

Then he looked around again, and the people in the hall said in a loud voice to them:

"You can all escape!"

"But I won't go, give me eight hundred strong men, and I will defend this city to the death. I will never step out of this wall until the last of the people are safely gone!"

"Li Weiyong!"

When his father heard this, he was so angry that he bared his teeth and smoked, and his two hands were raised together and trembled for a long time, and he didn't know what to do.

"You stay, you can stay if you want, and if you want to die, you can send you to death!" his father finally put down his hand and yelled at him, "But I tell you, if you don't go with us today, there will be no more people like you in my Li family in the future!"

"Yes. Li Weiyong nodded flatly, "As soon as I leave this place, I will no longer be your son." ”

As he spoke, he bowed and said:

"I wish you a safe journey and take care!"