Chapter 58 - 51: Gunshot

Chapter 58: Chapter 51: Gunshot

A few more days passed quietly in a routine of training, vigilance, and the relatively mundane task of maintaining his supplies. Snow fell once more during that time, but it was a light dusting that lasted only half an afternoon before stopping.

But from that day forward, the thick, lead-gray clouds never parted. They hung low over the horizon like a filthy wad of cotton soaked with water, brewing something far more violent.

Xu Mo was exceptionally sensitive to changes in the weather, and the persistent low pressure and gloom put him on high alert. He made a point of taking the time to carefully re-inspect all his supplies. Food filled half the storage room, he had enough drinking water and fuel to last three months, medicine was neatly sorted and stacked in first-aid kits, and he certainly wasn’t short on ammunition.

Only after confirming that he had more than enough of everything could Xu Mo relax a little. No matter what happened outside, as long as his shelter remained secure and his supplies held out, he had the confidence to face it.

At noon that day, Xu Mo was in the first-floor training room, practicing his resistance to impact. The thuds of heavy impacts echoed throughout the room. Suddenly, his movements froze.

An extremely faint, yet exceptionally sharp sound pierced through the thick walls and the howling wind, barely reaching his ears.

It was a gunshot!

In this dead-silent town, where he was the only living soul, any unnatural sound stood out like a lighthouse in the dead of night. Xu Mo was extremely confident in his hearing; there was no way he had misheard.

’There’s trouble!’

Xu Mo instantly stopped his training, the roiling energy within him quickly subsiding. Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw on his combat suit, slung the Mountain-Cutting Saber onto his back, snatched up his AWM, and bolted up the stairs to the roof.

Standing at the edge of the freezing rooftop, Xu Mo raised his binoculars and scanned in the direction of the gunshot—the same area where he had previously spotted the Strength Zombie and the wolf pack.

At first, the distance was too great. Xu Mo could only hear sporadic, intermittent gunshots, but he couldn’t see what was happening. The shots sounded chaotic, suggesting the shooter was in a panic.

Xu Mo regulated his breathing and waited patiently.

A few minutes later, movement finally appeared in the binoculars’ field of view.

A squad of seven or eight survivors was struggling across the snowy plains. They were in a wretched state. One person’s backpack was torn, its contents spilling onto the snow behind them. Another moved in a panicked, frightened daze. Yet another was limping as they ran, clearly injured. The crude snowshoes strapped to their feet were of little use in the deep snow. Every step sank them deep, and they had to struggle to pull their feet free, slowing their progress to a crawl.

And trailing several dozen meters behind them were seven or eight gray-black wild wolves.

However, something about the wolves’ behavior struck Xu Mo as odd.

They were certainly pursuing the survivors, their paws kicking up powdered snow as they gave chase. But their actions seemed hesitant and anxious. They kept glancing back over their shoulders as if wary of something behind them.

It didn’t feel like hungry wolves in relentless pursuit of prey. Instead, they seemed more like startled animals that had been flushed from their den by something even more terrifying. They were fleeing in a panic, yet unwilling to completely give up on the "food" right in front of them. This constant looking over their shoulders made their pursuit seem half-hearted.

At the rear of the group, a middle-aged man in a tattered army greatcoat and a young woman with a ponytail were covering the retreat. They were holding guns; Xu Mo was too far to make out the specific models, but based on the sound and their shape, they appeared to be hunting rifles or old bolt-action rifles. The pair walked backward, following the group while periodically turning to fire in the direction of the wolf pack.

To Xu Mo, a "Precision Shooter," their marksmanship was utterly devoid of skill or discipline. Their bullets flew wild. It was less of an attack and more of an attempt to use the noise of the gunshots to intimidate the wolves and hopefully scare them away.

And the wolves were indeed affected by the gunshots. They didn’t dare get too close, merely hanging back at a distance, baring their fangs and letting out low, threatening growls. They maintained a dangerous and bizarre equilibrium with the survivors, the two groups slowly moving as one toward the town.

Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps the distance between them had closed. With a somewhat muffled CRACK, one of the smaller wolves in the pack let out a piercing yelp. It tumbled across the snow, kicking up a white spray, and struggled to get back on its feet, clearly hit.

The instant the wolf went down, the other wolves—which had been hesitating and baring their teeth—gave up the chase without a second thought. They immediately abandoned the survivors and swarmed their injured packmate. Two of them bit into the loose skin on the wounded wolf’s back, while the others formed a protective circle. Then, without a single glance back, the entire pack fled in the opposite direction of the town, quickly vanishing over the rolling, snowy hills.

They had abandoned the hunt so decisively. It was as if chasing the survivors had never been their main goal; preserving the pack and escaping the area was the real imperative.

The survivors, however, didn’t relax. On the contrary, as if struck by an invisible whip, they scrambled even more desperately toward the town. It was as if they knew something utterly terrifying would happen if they slowed down for even a second.

"Faster! Get into the town!" the middle-aged man urged, his voice raw, as he glanced back in terror.

Seeing this, Xu Mo lowered his binoculars. His gaze turned incredibly sharp and deep.

He already had a good idea of what was happening.

The wolves’ bizarre behavior, the survivors’ desperate flight even after fending them off—it all pointed to one possibility: something was hunting both the wolves and the humans.

Whatever it was, it had struck a fear into the wolves far deeper than any human firearm, forcing them to be cautious even with prey right in front of them, and ultimately to abandon the hunt. And whatever it was, it was why the survivors didn’t dare stop, even after escaping the immediate threat of the pack.

And that "thing"...

The answer surfaced in Xu Mo’s mind almost instantly: mutated zombies. It was also highly likely that, just like his last encounter, a Strength Zombie and an Agile Zombie were working in tandem.

As the group of survivors stumbled and scrambled into the ruined buildings at the edge of town, Xu Mo lost interest in them. His gaze, sharp as a hawk’s, fixed on the direction they had come from—the vast, dead-silent snowfield—as he waited for the real "star of the show" to make its entrance.

The minutes ticked by. The cold wind whipped flurries of snow into spirals across the open ground. About ten minutes later, at the far edge of his binoculars’ view, a massive and familiar figure appeared on the horizon, its steps heavy and ponderous.

Its ashen-gray skin stood out starkly against the snow. It had grotesquely knotted muscles, a nearly-bare upper body, and that signature, oppressively slow gait—a Strength Zombie.

’Only one?’

A flicker of doubt arose in Xu Mo’s mind, and his guard, far from lowering, went up even higher. Based on his last encounter, the Strength Type and Agility Type were likely to appear together. Now, he only saw this behemoth lumbering after them. ’So where is the elusive Agile Zombie? Is it lurking in a blind spot, waiting to launch a fatal strike?’

Xu Mo carefully panned the binoculars, meticulously searching every snowdrift around the Strength Zombie, not missing the slightest movement. From his perspective, a single Strength Zombie was trouble, but not enough to reduce a group of armed survivors to such a desperate state. Not unless a more insidious hunter was lurking in the shadows.

This, however, was a blind spot in Xu Mo’s thinking. He himself was formidable. The defense and power of the Cowhide Realm, combined with his high-quality weapons and precise marksmanship, gave him a significant advantage against a lone mutated zombie. He couldn’t fully empathize with the perspective of ordinary survivors. To them, a Strength Zombie—impervious to blades and bullets, immensely powerful, and a tireless pursuer—was an unbeatable, team-wiping nightmare. They lacked the means to effectively breach its defenses, had limited stamina and ammunition, and their fear magnified the threat exponentially.

Xu Mo waited patiently for another moment, his gaze sweeping the area several more times, but he still found no sign of an Agile Zombie.

’Looks like it really is just the one,’ Xu Mo muttered to himself. Though a sliver of doubt remained, he couldn’t wait any longer. The Strength Zombie was still heading for the town. If he let it get inside, cleaning it up would be a hassle, and the group of survivors would truly be doomed.

’Whatever. Time to take it out.’

Xu Mo no longer hesitated. He settled the crosshairs of his AWM sniper rifle squarely on the Strength Zombie’s slowly swaying head.

CRACK!

The familiar, muffled report echoed across the snow.

In the distance, the Strength Zombie’s head exploded on impact like a smashed watermelon. Its massive body crashed to the ground, kicking up a cloud of powdered snow before falling completely still.

Xu Mo didn’t relax. He remained in his firing position, carefully scanning the area around the fallen zombie through his scope, listening intently for any unusual sounds.

Another five or six minutes passed. After confirming there was no further movement—that the snowy plain was just as it had been, save for the addition of a mutated zombie corpse—Xu Mo finally lowered his rifle and stood up.

’Looks like I was overthinking things,’ Xu Mo thought, shaking his head. He felt he might have been overly cautious. But in the apocalypse, caution was never a bad thing.

He turned and went downstairs, paying no more mind to the situation outside. The threat had been eliminated. Whether that group of survivors lived or died, stayed or left, was none of his concern. He wanted no unnecessary contact with them.

Back in the first-floor training room, Xu Mo assumed his stance and resumed the resistance to impact training that had been interrupted. It was as if the kill from the rooftop had been nothing more than a trivial interlude. For the man he was now, increasing his own strength was the only constant theme. As long as the chaos of the outside world didn’t come knocking on his door, it was all just smoke in the wind.