"Alright, you guys get started." The man in the jacket called out to me and Liao Zhuojun, and then said to the red-haired man, "Don't go too far, just walk around here." ”

The redhead nodded in agreement. After seeing me and Liao Zhuojun start the collection work, the two of them turned their attention to the rest of the hall. Maybe these two guys regarded me as Liao Zhuojun's assistant, but for me, let alone doing this kind of collection work, I was confused about doing experiments at school in the past. So I had to regard myself as her "insect repellent", squatting idly beside Liao Zhuojun, trying to reduce my sense of existence, and thinking about how to deal with future troubles while observing Liao Zhuojun busy with her work.

"You know what? This zombie crisis may be a catastrophe for us humans, but it has made breakthroughs in the field of botany. Seeing that I had nothing to do, Liao Zhuojun found a topic to talk to me.

"What's going on?"

"Viruses have stimulated the growth of plants, while also evolving many new varieties. You see," Liao Zhuojun became more and more energetic, and she pulled out a plant that seemed to me to be a weed from her feet, "I think this little guy should have been purslane, an edible herb." ”

She twisted the weeds in her hands and shook them in front of my eyes, and I immediately declared to her, "I'm not going to eat this." ”

"Hehe, I won't let you eat it, because this herb has been infected, and after eating it, it no longer only has anti-inflammatory and other medicinal effects, but also makes you hallucinate."

"Hallucinations?"

"Yes, this herb is not only common in the forests of the dead city, but also in urban areas where there is no widespread infection. Some people think of it as a doomsday drug, and 'Dream Grass' is one of its many new names. ”

Liao Zhuojun picked a few leaves of Dream Grass with tweezers and put it into a test tube containing a transparent reagent, and after a squeak, the reagent turned dark green, and those leaves faded to white in the bubbles. "This is the result of soaking in the drug I tried to develop before, the chlorophyll structure has been destroyed, and there is widespread necrosis inside the plant cells."

"It's a bit of a failure."

"That's right." Liao Zhuojun gladly accepted my evaluation, then opened the aluminum alloy box, took out a needle, pulled out a little light blue potion from the metal tube like a kettle, shot it into another test tube, and put in a few leaves of dream grass. This time, after soaking for a few seconds, a layer of dirt floated on the test solution and the leaves seemed to be intact. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Yang Shanao's vaccine, although it is poison to you, it is still quite effective against plants."

After witnessing the effects of the vaccine, I seemed to see a glimmer of hope, and for a few seconds I felt as if I had forgotten that I was at the center of this diseased flora.

After Liao Zhuojun did this simple experiment for me, she began to concentrate on collecting the plant samples she needed. After about ten minutes, the red-haired man not far away began to get impatient.

"Hey!" The red-haired man roared, and everything in the hall seemed to be awakened, "I said how long are you going to grind?" It's getting dark! ”

In fact, in the hall, it was impossible to see what the sky was outside, the only few rays of light that came in were very faint themselves, and the vines that were thicker than the curtains tightly blocked every pane of glass.

"It's almost there." Liao Zhuojun replied casually.

"Then hurry up, I'm a little creepy in this place." I don't know why the red-haired man suddenly became so cringe, the momentum of the rush just now seemed to be exhausted.

Liao Zhuojun did not continue to argue with the red-haired man, she quickly cut off a fern with small leaves and slender stems, and shook her head to signal me to pick up this fern that was like a wire. "Be careful, there's a thorn in it."

I secretly complained in my heart that Liao Zhuojun asked me to pick up the fern because I was worried about being stung, but she stared at me seriously and whispered: "This is a mutated clemat fern, I call it 'wasp grass'." Its stings have a paralyzing toxin, and people will have the same sting as a wasp sting after stinging, as well as symptoms of local paralysis and difficulty breathing, but this toxin will not work for you. ”

"Why?"

"I don't know, it should be that the blood in your body is different from ordinary people now. Now you are immune to almost all the effects of mutated plants, whether they are good or bad for your body. The HST virus structure they carry will break down when it blends with your blood. Liao Zhuojun's focus at the moment didn't seem to be on the characteristics of my body, she sneaked a glance at our guard, lowered her voice and said to me, "You put it away, maybe it will come in handy." ”

Only then did I understand what Liao Zhuojun wanted, and quietly rolled the wire fern into a bundle and put it in the pocket of his hoodie. The two Jiangshang people immediately strode towards us. When we heard their approaching footsteps, Liao Zhuojun and I couldn't help but be stunned, for fear that they would see my private practice of hiding the fern.

"Are you playing tricks?" The red-haired man's judgment was actually very accurate, but based on his observations, I believe it was not enough to discover what Liao Zhuojun and I had just done.

When he and the man in the jacket were painstakingly trying to find clues from the experimental tools in Liao Zhuojun's hand, I was relieved and simply let go of my body to mess around with the red-haired man.

"I'm really doing rigorous gathering work and not growing vegetables, if there is any negligence, will you bring me here again?" I don't know where Liao Zhuojun got the courage from, so he glared at the red-haired man righteously.

The red-haired man didn't dare to touch the equipment in Liao Zhuojun's hand, after all, he didn't know the purpose of the equipment, and he didn't know if the plants he collected were dangerous. After two minutes of "observing" without purpose, he could only retreat, but in order to save face, he still waved his hand unconvinced. "Hurry up."

Liao Zhuojun gave him a roll of the eyes, re-cut a piece of iron fern, put it in a storage test tube, and put it into a small drop-proof cylinder bag along with other plant samples. Just as the collection was about to be announced, there was a sudden sound of items breaking from the depths of the hall.

We shuddered as if we had been electrocuted, staring at the other side of the hall in the darkness. The two Jiangshang people who had weapons took out their own weapons, but I felt that if there was really any big trouble, their swords and guns might not be of much use.

"What sound?" The red-haired man asked me in horror

My heart was pounding, and of course, like him, I didn't know what it was, so I had to fool myself: "I guess some decorations from the past were blown down by the wind." ”

Within seconds of my conclusion, the faces of four or five mutants came into view from the darkness; Before we could come to our senses, a dozen more mutants followed. They are growing in number, as if a rising tide is coming towards us.

The dim light of the hall couldn't slow down the mutants, and the monsters roared at us like galloping hounds. The red-haired boy's weapon is a rotatable serration on the basis of a thick blade, and the sharp serrations roll along the bearing, so as to avoid the situation that the knife and saw get stuck in the opponent's flesh and bones, so that when the blade cuts through the flesh and skin, the saw blade will be pulled to give further damage. I saw him slash at the first mutant in front of us, the saw slashing from the top of his head, maroon blood splattering everywhere like cutting a cake, and I saw the rotten cross-section of the mutant. The two pieces of corpse twitched on the ground and ceased to move not long after.

As soon as the red-haired man put down the knife, another mutant pounced on him, but he didn't hesitate, but with a swollen swing of blood, the knife saw cut off the mutant in front of him. He then smashed the mutant's upper body that fell to the ground, and the mutant's head was stabbed with a sword like a watermelon, and with another turn of the knife, the head was unscrewed off the neck with a snap. The red-haired man shook the long knife in his hand, and the head of the mutant on the tip of the knife drew a line of blood in the air, and fell into the crowd of zombies.

The mutants have not stopped their onslaught at us because of the tragic fate of their kind. The only two Egami men with weapons fought back and repelled the closest monster as they shouted and ordered us to exit the hall.

"Damn, aren't you supposed to have a way to make these monsters wait to die? Why is this happening now? The man in the jacket scolded me.

How can I explain this to him? I don't even know the specific reason for the Shock Deterrence Mutant, let alone explain why this ability is not working now?

"Give me your gun!" I didn't have time to explain, so I turned to the red-haired man and asked, "Give me your gun!" ”

The red-haired man hesitated for a moment, but when another mutant pounced and was cut off by him, he decided to hand me the pistol he was carrying. After getting the pistol, Liao Zhuojun and I both looked at each other, we both knew that if we ran now, these two Jiangshang people would have no time to take care of us; This is also what the red-haired man is afraid of.

But we didn't, I raised my gun, deftly opened the safety, and pulled the trigger. The recoil from firing gave me back my strength, and the mutant in front of me with a close-range headshot proved my strength and position. The red-haired man finally let down his guard and continued to concentrate on fighting off the next wave of mutants with me.

Liao Zhuojun was the first to rush out of the hall, she hurriedly loaded the equipment into the car, and after taking the key thrown by the jacket man, she immediately started the engine.

"Quick!" This urging actually didn't help much for the rest of us who didn't get on the bus, but at least the two Jiangshang people wouldn't worry that Liao Zhuojun would abandon us.

The red-haired man turned on the spot and slashed the two mutants, not directly ending them, but the resistance bought the rest of us some time. When I got into the jeep side by side with him, I realized that the man in the jacket hadn't gotten into the car, and when I looked back, he was surrounded by mutants.

"Help!"

"Let's go, there's no time!" In the face of his companion's pleas, the red-haired man was indifferent, and he anxiously urged Liao Zhuojun to drive.

But Liao Zhuojun and I were both hesitant, looking at the desperate man in the jacket, we couldn't bear to watch him being torn apart alive by the mutants. Liao Zhuojun constantly resisted the orders of the red-haired man, and I, under the gushing arguments between the two of them, was still determined to rush and gamble on luck to save the jacket man who was hanging by a thread.

The seven bullets in the pistol killed only four mutants, leaving seven more around the jacket man. He used Zhang Xiaoying's recurve bow to push it away once, and the rest followed. The man in the jacket had only a short-handled scythe for harvesting rice, but he was clever enough to dig out the mutant's jaw so that at least he wouldn't worry about being bitten. The mutant clings to the man in the jacket with his teeth and claws, and thankfully the jacket on his body has become his last protective barrier to some extent.

"Get me out!"

"I know!"

"Quick!"

My rescue gave the man in the jacket a glimmer of hope, but it also made him more anxious, his mantis arm like a car like a car of weak resistance gradually lost the last bit of rhythm, a mutant dodged his counterattack, successfully bit his arm, although the jacket material is stronger, but it does not last long. Since I won't be infected by the virus, I don't have to worry about whether I will die because of the bite of the mutant. So I simply boldly rushed into the layers of mutants and ripped them apart one by one like a cabbage.

As I expected, the mutants didn't seem to be planning to attack me at all. After they were pulled away by me, they just surrounded the jacket man again and again, ignoring me. In the midst of the chaos, I finally grabbed the jacket man's hand and gritted my teeth to pull him out of the zombie quagmire.

The man in the jacket ran into the jeep in a panic, but the mutants still refused to stop, and even crawled past me and pulled towards the jeep hungrily. My first instinct was to run back to the car, but when I left, my right hand touched the grip of an object, and when I picked it up, it was the scythe that the man in the jacket had dropped in a panic.

I picked up the scythe and macheted all the way to the mutant in front of me, but there were more behind me, and the dim light of the abrupt sky made the situation even more tricky. Liao Zhuojun kept shouting at me in the car, but there were too many mutants in front of me, and no matter how much I slashed and killed, no matter how many foul-smelling corpses piled up under my feet, I still moved slowly. Several mutants had already reached the jeep before me, and they were slapping the jeep angrily like a mob; Even though the Jeep has been modified and reinforced, it doesn't seem to be going to last long.

My hands mechanically repeated the action of wielding the scythe, and despite my slaughter, the mutants still did not attack me, but this was not enough for me, I had never been so eager to get back the special ability that was abnormally produced by the injection of Qin Rong's medicine in my body. Every time I swung the scythe, I thought silently in my heart, hoping that a miracle would happen in the next second, and the crazy mutants in front of me were all deadlocked, but this miracle never appeared, and at the same time, the exhaustion and despair of my body were growing rapidly.

As I exhausted myself by kicking away the mutants stuck in the scythe, and as I leaned over to catch my breath, I caught a glimpse of a monster that was completely different from the mutants around me—the sarcoma! That's right! It's the sarcoma monster that exists like a queen ant in an ant colony, as if it is the activity switch of the mutants around it!

It slowly moved its fat body, and staggered about four or five meters away from me. The body wrapped in countless sarcomas that looked like malignant tumors twisted and swayed from side to side, and from time to time it made a muffled sound similar to that of someone covering their mouth with a thick quilt. At its feet dripped, perhaps acidic, foul-smelling, green slime. Two mutants accompanied it like guards, moving to the rhythm of its steps.

With the anger of resentment in my chest, I strode towards the sarcoma monster, and after taking two steps, each sarcoma on the monster's body contracted and expanded after a spasm, and a stream of gray-green smoke instantly erupted from the hole in each sarcoma, and green smoke quickly enveloped it. I hurriedly covered my mouth and nose and took two steps back to make sure I didn't inhale the suspicious gas.

The jeep was almost surrounded by mutants at this time, and the red-haired man seemed to be snatching the steering wheel of Liao Zhuojun, and the two were scuffling, and the situation was precarious. I weighed the scythe in my hand, held my breath, ran two steps and then burst into the smoke, the sarcoma monster was right in front of me, it didn't care about my presence like the other mutants, I seized the opportunity, flew and jumped, slicing the flesh on the front of the sarcoma tube from top to bottom like a thick piece of paper.

The scythe was stuck in the lump of flesh almost at the waist, and I didn't care about it, and while the monster was still twisting and twisting with the pain, I kicked the hilt of the scythe, and the scythe went deeper, and the maroon blood spurted out of the sarcoma like a burst water balloon. I jumped out of the way, the oxygen in my chest was running out, my body didn't grasp the center as I retreated, and my foot slipped and fell out of the smoke.

As I got up from the ground and was about to take on the sarcoma monster that might go berserk, I saw it fall to the ground like a mess of rotten flesh, stirring up a circle of green smoke. Almost as soon as the green smoke drifted away with the wind, the surroundings returned to calm in an instant. All the mutants around me were motionless, and the mutants in the distance all fell to the ground. I looked back in surprise to see that all the mutants around the jeep had stopped going berserk and were frozen in place. ‘

Did I regain my old abilities? I shook off the green soot and dust that remained on my body to make sure there wasn't much left on my body before I trotted towards the jeep and pushed away the puppet-like mutants. As soon as I opened the door, the man in the jacket hurriedly pulled me into the car, and the red-haired man no longer competed with Liao Zhuojun for the driver's seat, and each of them was silent on the miracle that I had been waiting for for a long time.

"Oh my God, what did you do?"

"I killed that sarcoma monster." I shrugged and pointed to the puddle of rotten meat not far away, apparently not as easy as I said.

"Could it be that the monster interfered with your abilities, and as soon as it dies, you will have to use this power again?" The red-haired man said something as mysterious as a science fiction movie, and although none of us knew the reason for this situation, the truth must not be so simple.

"Come on, God knows what's going on. Let's go back quickly. I glanced at Liao Zhuojun and asked Liao Zhuojun to drive forward.

Liao Zhuojun put up gear, stepped on the accelerator, and the jeep crashed into the two rotten dolls and drove away from that terrible place. After driving more than ten meters, I looked back and saw that the group of mutants were scattered on the ground like a group of unattended building blocks; It is also unknown when they fell to the ground and for what. But I didn't have the heart to think about it right now, and my nerves slowed down as the car shook as it shook. Each of us remained silent in horror, not knowing what the three of them were thinking, but I believe that each of us had a lingering fear of what had just happened.

"Hey." The red-haired man sitting in the front row turned his head coldly, first glanced at his Jiangshang friend guiltily, then raised his head slightly at me, and said embarrassedly, "Thank you for saving my friend just now, to be honest, I was scared silly just now." ”

"Yes, thank you for saving me." The man in the jacket gratefully shook my still trembling hands.

I don't know what expression to use to respond to the sudden thanks from them, it seems that they have also forgotten that Liao Zhuojun and even Huang Weizheng are their captives at this time, of course, it is possible that it is because of this that Liao Zhuojun and I have gained more respect from them. I managed to squeeze out a smile and nodded unnaturally.

Inadvertently, I saw myself in the rearview mirror in the middle of the car. The blood stains and my pale complexion were a perfect match, the amber eyes stared at me coldly, the eyebrows slanted listlessly to the sides, and the messy hair was contoured with layers from the clotted blood.

I licked my dry, pale lips, and a familiar and disgusting smell of blood flashed through my palate......