Chapter 285 - 151: Luochuan City

Chapter 285: Chapter 151: Luochuan City

Just as Xu Mo predicted, the gunshot was like cold water hitting hot oil, instantly enraging the nearby zombies.

First came the ones nearby. A chorus of roars erupted simultaneously from the shadowy doorways. Gray figures shot out from all directions—some were ordinary zombies, while others were faster: Agility Types, and even other mutated variants that Xu Mo didn’t have time to identify.

Then, the sound carried. The gunshot reverberated between the buildings, its echoes spreading deeper into the city and awakening more slumbering things.

As Xu Mo headed back, he scanned the surrounding buildings from the corner of his eye. He saw figures emerge from countless windows and from the edges of the shadows.

"Kicked the hornet’s nest..." Xu Mo cursed under his breath and, holding nothing back, broke into a dead sprint back the way he came.

Unleashing the full power of his Iron Bone Realm, vital energy and blood surged through his body like a raging river. He stopped concealing his aura and no longer bothered to muffle his footsteps.

With this many of them, concealment was pointless. Every building, every intersection, every patch of ruins spat out new pursuers. The only thing Xu Mo could do was run—run as fast as he possibly could—to break out of this area before he was completely surrounded.

Xu Mo didn’t even dare to fire again, afraid of attracting zombies from even farther away.

He had already slung the Barrett back over his shoulder, and the AK-47 hung silently on his chest. In this zombie-infested city, a gunshot was a coordinate marker, an invitation to the dead, a beacon broadcasting his position to every predator in the area.

One shot would draw more of them. A second might bring things from kilometers away.

Xu Mo drew his Mountain-Cutting Saber, its gleaming blade tasting blood the moment it was unsheathed. An Agility Type zombie lunging from his side was decapitated with a single slash. Its head tumbled into a puddle on the roadside, its body carried forward by inertia for two steps before collapsing. Without breaking stride, Xu Mo sidestepped a second Agility Type, burying his saber in the back of its skull with a reverse-grip strike. He yanked the blade free, flicked off the blood, and continued his mad dash.

The end of the street was getting closer, but it was also the area most densely packed with zombies.

Xu Mo charged into the horde. He gave up on precise decapitations, instead weaving his Mountain-Cutting Saber into an impenetrable curtain of light that tore a rift of death before him. Wherever his blade passed, limbs were severed, heads flew, and black blood splattered.

Right then, Xu Mo was like a drawn sword, carving a bloody path straight through the tide of corpses. Every step landed in pools of blood and on mangled flesh, and every step brought him closer to the exit.

Xu Mo burst out of the zombie-clogged intersection and glanced back, his heart instantly tightening in his chest.

The number of zombies chasing him hadn’t decreased; it had grown. Like piranhas smelling blood, more and more were pouring in from deeper parts of the city.

Worse still, at the forefront of the distant zombie "wave," it wasn’t ordinary zombies leading the charge, but at least seven Level 1 Agility Types.

They ran on all fours, scuttling at incredible speed, now less than a hundred meters away.

Xu Mo’s chest heaved, not from exhaustion, but from adrenaline coursing through his veins. He rapidly assessed the situation. ’I can outrun the zombies behind me, even the Agility Types, but I can’t shake the ones blocking my path. If I get tied up, the tide of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, will completely overwhelm me.’

’I can’t keep running!’

’I have to find a place to hide, lose them, and then take them out one by one.’

Xu Mo’s gaze swept across the nearby buildings, quickly locking onto a target.

It was a high-rise office building. The main structure was intact, and the entrance was open. It was dark and cavernous inside, undoubtedly full of zombies, but that would also make it easier for him to clear them out floor by floor. More importantly, it had a stairwell—for Xu Mo, the narrow, twisting stairs were the perfect battlefield to negate the speed advantage of the Agility Type zombies.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Xu Mo changed direction and made a beeline for the office building’s main entrance.

The moment he burst into the lobby, two gray shadows shot out from the gloom, lunging at him with a whistle of displaced air.

’More Agility Type zombies!’ He didn’t know if they had been drawn by the commotion outside or had been lurking here all along, waiting for prey.

But Xu Mo was ready. The moment he stepped through the entrance, he came to a dead stop, his body transitioning from extreme motion to absolute stillness as he shifted his weight back. The claws of the first zombie scraped past his tactical vest.

Instead of retreating, Xu Mo advanced. His Mountain-Cutting Saber swept upward, the blade slicing precisely through the zombie’s soft jaw and deep into its brain.

The second zombie was right behind it, attacking from the side.

With a flick of his wrist, he pulled the saber free and used the momentum from the first zombie’s fall to spin. The blade flashed in a perfect arc, biting deep into the side of the second zombie’s neck.

He kicked the corpse away and yanked out his blade.

The tip of the saber trailed a line of black blood. Two Agility Type zombies lay sprawled at his feet. The entire fight, from start to finish, had taken less than a breath.

Xu Mo flicked the blood from his blade and, without a second glance, headed straight for the stairwell.

The next forty minutes were the longest stairwell battle Xu Mo could remember.

He lost count of how many times he swung his saber, or how many zombies he cut down as they chased him into the stairwell. The landings were piled high with corpses. Black blood streamed down the steps, floor by floor, splashing against the walls to form abstract, grotesque patterns.

Xu Mo didn’t keep count. All he remembered was fighting his way upward, floor by floor—from the first to the fifth, from the fifth to the tenth. In the narrow stairwell, the incredibly fast Agility Type zombies lost their advantage completely. They couldn’t sprint, nor could they outflank him. They could only charge him one by one, almost as if lining up, only to have their skulls split open by his Mountain-Cutting Saber, one after another.