Chapter 284 - 151: Luochuan City

Chapter 284: Chapter 151: Luochuan City

Night had fallen over the West District of Luochuan City.

Xu Mo stood on the twenty-second floor of an office building, his palm pressed against the cold, dusty floor-to-ceiling glass. His gaze pierced through the grime- and crack-covered curtain wall, looking out at the city beyond.

There were no lights.

This place must have once been prosperous, but now it was like a corpse run aground on the hidden reefs of time.

In the distance, clusters of buildings of varying heights stood silent in the darkness. The wind whistled through their shattered windows, a low, mournful cry, as if chanting a dirge.

Xu Mo slowly exhaled, took half a step back, and sat down.

The twenty-second floor. This was his temporary safe space. Xu Mo had carefully checked the floors above and below. Zombie corpses were piled up on the stairwell landings, and he had sealed the doors shut. Nothing would be creeping up here anytime soon.

But in this city, the word "safety" was always relative.

Outside the window, the Luochuan City night was as thick as ink. Xu Mo glanced out for only a moment before pulling his gaze away.

Closing his eyes, Xu Mo began to mentally review the day’s events.

...

Around ten in the morning, Xu Mo had driven toward the outskirts of Luochuan City. This was the fringe of the city’s planned development, a mishmash of low-slung factory buildings, scattered warehouses, and a few multi-story residential blocks.

The roads grew wider but also more fractured, forcing Xu Mo to slow down.

Xu Mo knew it was risky, but to gauge the actual traffic conditions in Luochuan’s urban center, he had to get closer. He needed to see with his own eyes whether the main roads, overpasses, and tunnel entrances were completely blocked by abandoned vehicles, or if there were any gaps a car could force its way through.

He also needed to assess the zombie density.

He needed a firsthand understanding of just how "high-risk" the areas marked with red skulls on the map truly were, rather than making decisions based on imagination.

The answer came faster and more violently than Xu Mo had anticipated.

At first, it was just a few scattered figures peering out from a distance, but the number of zombies quickly began to multiply.

First two or three, then seven or eight, and then twenty or thirty. They converged on the main road from all directions, their shambling or swift gaits merging into a growing, murky torrent that latched onto the back of his SUV.

Xu Mo glanced in the rearview mirror and roughly estimated there were now a hundred zombies trailing his vehicle. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

He wasn’t concerned about the regular zombies; shaking them off with the SUV’s speed was just a matter of time. The real trouble were the Agile Zombies mixed in with the horde, the ones that scrambled on all fours with incredible speed.

Xu Mo did a quick count. There were at least twelve Level 1 Agile Zombies, along with seven or eight burly, heavy-footed Strength Types mixed in with the common horde. Though not as fast as the Agility Types, they were no less of a threat.

Xu Mo didn’t stop. He slammed on the gas, and the SUV roared forward, breaking out of the rapidly closing encirclement.

In the rearview mirror, the Agile Zombies gave chase for several hundred meters before the distance between them gradually widened. The regular zombies were left further and further behind, like a receding tide.

But Xu Mo knew they hadn’t given up; they had just temporarily lost their target. The entire area had been stirred up. If he continued to drive brazenly closer, he would only attract more zombies.

This was when he needed to go in on foot, Concealing his Aura to scout ahead.

He parked the car inside an abandoned warehouse, shouldered his gear, and headed back to the edge of Luochuan’s West District on foot.

He needed to see for himself.

...

「Midday.」

Xu Mo crossed through the ruins of a collapsed row of street-side shops and set foot in the West District of Luochuan City.

The sight that greeted him made him slow his pace involuntarily.

The street was still there. The road surface hadn’t completely collapsed, and there weren’t even that many obvious obstacles. There were certainly a lot of abandoned vehicles—jammed haphazardly across the lanes on both sides—but the path down the middle wasn’t impassable. A powerful SUV could definitely squeeze through the relatively narrow gaps, or even force a path by driving over the wreckage of smaller cars.

The road conditions were better than he had expected.

Just as a flicker of relief rose in Xu Mo’s heart, he felt a dangerous presence.

It wasn’t something he saw, nor did it come from a specific direction. It was a chilling sensation of being targeted by something from the shadows.

’Level 2!’

The judgment flashed through Xu Mo’s mind instantly. A Level 1 zombie wouldn’t give him this feeling; they only had a predator’s fury, not its patience. This was the kind of feeling a higher-level variant would evoke.

Following the feeling, Xu Mo’s gaze swept across the general area to his right.

To his right stood a three-story abandoned shopping mall. The glass curtain wall on the second floor had long since shattered, revealing gaping, Black Hole-like windows. He couldn’t see what was inside, but the danger was definitely coming from that direction.

Without hesitation, Xu Mo swung the Barrett off his back, braced himself against a wall, and centered the crosshairs of the scope on the depths of that shadow.

Three seconds, five seconds...

He saw something move in the depths of the shadow. The movement was minuscule, so slight a normal person would never have noticed it, but Xu Mo’s dynamic vision caught it—a creature cautiously poking its head out.

BOOM—!!!

The roar of the Barrett erupted. The .50 caliber bullet tore through the air and plunged precisely into the shattered window. Through the scope, Xu Mo clearly saw a spray of blackish-red fluid explode in the shadows as a burly, humanoid silhouette jerked backward and disappeared into the deeper darkness.

’A hit.’

Xu Mo didn’t linger to admire his handiwork. He lowered his rifle, turned, and prepared to make a swift retreat from the now-exposed location.