"Survivors?"
Yun Xiaoxiao raised her eyes.
"Yes, about seven or eight kilometers east of us, there's a village called Xiangfu Village. It has over a dozen survivors," said Xiao Feng.
At that time, they had looked around the perimeter of the base and hadn't found any other zombies.
So they drove around searching, and eventually came to a place where "Xiangfu Village" was carved on a large stone.
They followed the small road into the village.
At the entrance, there were two farmhouses, one in front of the other.
The gates were wide open, with dried blood stains on the doors and ground.
In one of the yards, a dog had been eaten down to the bones.
In the other, only a few chicken feathers and a ground covered in black blood remained of the chickens.
Walking a bit further, they began to see more farmhouses.
They were scattered on both sides of the road.
It was then that they encountered their first zombie.
The zombie was dressed plainly, with mud on its rolled-up pant legs.
It was slapping at a closed courtyard gate with its blackened hands.
Again and again.
The two immediately got out of the car, prepared to collect blood samples from this zombie.
Everything was going smoothly at first, but just as they finished dealing with the zombie, the courtyard gate opened.
At first, the gap was very small, and they could see an iron dog chain across the opening.
Suddenly, a woman in her fifties cautiously poked her face out.
She first glanced at Lu Chen and Xiao Feng, then looked at the fallen male zombie on the ground, who appeared to be in his thirties.
In an instant, her cloudy eyes filled with tears.
"Changsheng! My son!"
"It was you! You killed my son, give me back my son!"
The woman undid the iron chain inside the door and came out with a hoe.
Her face filled with anger as she swung the hoe at Lu Chen.
Lu Chen frowned slightly and with a gentle tap, the woman felt her hand go numb.
In the next second, Lu Chen had taken the hoe and tossed it aside.
"Your son had already turned into a zombie. We didn't kill a person, but a corpse that was already dead."
But the woman glared at him angrily, "You're lying! My son could still move and walk! He's not dead, he's just sick!"
"If he's sick, would he frantically bite people and be able to move around without eating or drinking for a month or two?"
Xiao Feng frowned impatiently.
"If you think your son is still human, why didn't you open the door and let him in, instead of keeping him outside?"
Seeing the woman's tearful face, Xiao Feng softened his tone a bit and said finally,
"Actually, you've already accepted in your heart that he's not human anymore. You just don't want to admit it."
He took out a few pieces of bread from his bag and placed them at the doorway, then said to Lu Chen, "Brother Chen, let's go."
He was worried that if they kept arguing, nearby zombies would be drawn by the noise.
Giving her something was because they had indeed taken something from her son's body.
And resolving her zombie son in front of her - it was understandable that she would be heartbroken and unable to accept it.
This way, they could consider it even.
Seeing the two about to leave, the woman snapped out of her daze.
She angrily picked up the bread from the ground and threw it at their backs.
"Who wants your things! Get out! Get out of our village right now!"
She screamed at the top of her lungs.
Xiao Feng frowned, about to lose his temper, when he heard many hurried footsteps and familiar growling sounds.
His brows furrowed, "This is..."
"Mm, they're here already."
Lu Chen stared ahead, his voice ice-cold.
Sure enough, the next second, over a dozen zombies came rushing at them from both front and back.
"You take that side, I'll take this one."
Lu Chen indicated with his eyes, and Xiao Feng understood immediately.
"Got it."
The two stood back-to-back, each dealing with one side.
But the zombies kept coming, more and more. It seemed like all the zombies in the village had come.
Among them was even a level two mutated zombie.
After dealing with all the zombies, the two began collecting crystal cores.
This was a very ordinary task for them, but as they took knives to split open each corpse's head, stirring inside and pulling things out, the woman's face was filled with horror.
These were all people she used to greet almost every day!
She pointed a trembling finger at the two men.
"You... what are you doing?!"
Lu Chen, who wasn't talkative to begin with, only glanced at her before returning his attention to cracking open skulls.
Xiao Feng had a bad temper to begin with, but he didn't want to argue with a village woman either.
He frowned slightly and continued collecting crystal cores.
Seeing that neither man answered her, the woman became even more agitated.
"Ghosts! You're ghosts! Ghosts that eat people's brains!"
After saying this, the woman scrambled back into her house, slamming the door shut with a bang.
Lu Chen: ......
Xiao Feng: ......
Nothing else unusual happened after that, but as they were leaving, they saw about a dozen figures standing on the roof of a four-story building that was taller than the other houses.
They were too far away to make out their faces clearly.
"Brother Chen, those people..."
"Let's not worry about it. If they don't bother us, we don't need to kill them."
He was an assassin, but he didn't kill indiscriminately.
Xiaoxiao had mentioned before that in the years after the apocalypse, besides zombies, there would be various disasters and mutations of plants and animals.
If the few remaining humans killed each other, humanity wouldn't be far from extinction.
Of course, this was on the premise that others didn't harm them first.
Once someone did harm them, they would definitely kill them!
Ignoring the dozen or so people, they finished collecting the crystal cores and drove back.
After hearing what Xiao Feng and Lu Chen said, Yun Xiaoxiao nodded slightly without comment.
She felt the two had done nothing wrong, and she very much agreed with Lu Chen's view.
They would only kill those who deserved to die.
Lu Chen handed the bag of crystal cores to Yun Xiaoxiao.
"These are what we collected today."
Yun Xiaoxiao took it and then thought of the mission.
Seeing that there was no one else in the room except her, Lu Chen, Xiao Feng, and Ling Jing who was staring blankly at the ceiling, she took out a small wireless radio from her spatial storage.
She had dug this out last night from the electronic items they had collected previously, after learning about the mission.
In her past life, the various large and small bases used these things to communicate with each other when normal communications were down.
However...
She had only used ones that were already set up by others, never a brand new one.
"Do you know how to use this?" she asked, looking up at the two men.
They looked at it, and Xiao Feng shook his head.
Who would play with this thing for no reason?
As he was thinking this, Lu Chen took it.
"I'll try."
"Brother Chen, you even know how to use this?" Xiao Feng was surprised.
"Mm."
Xiao Feng couldn't help but ask curiously, "Brother Chen, what did you do before?"
"Killing people."
Xiao Feng: !!!
