Chapter 181 - 180: The Hunting Cycle

Chapter 181: Chapter 180: The Hunting Cycle

Their round trip only took about half an hour.

The horde wasn’t spreading quickly. To be safe, the three observers had pulled back a few hundred meters.

Seeing Lin Fan and Ye Qingzhou return, Ye Qingniao hurried over from the rooftop, binoculars in hand.

"Why are they killing regular zombies?"

She gave the dust-covered Ye Qingzhou a quick glance, then turned to the even filthier Lin Fan and asked,

"I know that every zombie killed is one less to worry about, but they only killed a few dozen. What’s the point of that?"

Lin Fan could see her intense curiosity. He knew she sensed there might be a path to power here, one she didn’t know about.

"Like you said, one less zombie to worry about... Besides, we were just sitting around, and it’s not like Mutated Zombies are easy to find."

Lin Fan had no intention of giving her a real answer. There was no point in telling them about his leveling method, which was completely different from that of a typical Awakened One. So, he just gave her a part of the reason.

"Technique is honed one move at a time. If we don’t practice by killing them one by one, how are we supposed to fight a Mutated Zombie? With sloppy brawling...?"

"..."

From the moment she’d woken up in this new reality, Ye Qingniao had been in a quarantine zone. After becoming an Awakened One, she fought exclusively with firearms.

Mutated Zombies were either gunned down with heavy machine guns or flattened with grenade launchers; she’d basically never fought a zombie with a melee weapon.

Even after her convoy left the quarantine zone, they would either detour around zombies or take them out from a distance with headshots from suppressed rifles. Close-quarters combat was only necessary in extremely rare cases.

Even in those unavoidable close-quarters situations, they used suppressed pistols.

So, Lin Fan’s talk of "honing technique" didn’t really resonate with her. As far as she was concerned, she’d be better off practicing her marksmanship.

All of their tactics followed a single, universal principle: never engage in unnecessary close-quarters contact with a mutant.

All tactics were designed around how to efficiently destroy the target from the safest possible distance, using the least amount of ammunition.

She couldn’t see the point of killing zombies one by one with melee weapons when there were likely hundreds of millions of them.

So she remained unconvinced by Lin Fan’s explanation about honing his skills.

"Cyan Bird, you stay here and keep watch. Notify us immediately if there’s any unusual movement from the horde..."

Ye Qingzhou didn’t know if that was Lin Fan’s true goal or just an excuse, but since that’s what he said, there was no need to press the issue. She spoke up,

"The gas station is over ten kilometers from here. I’ll have Zhang Wenyuan and Hu Chen fall back and send one person to act as a relay... The walkie-talkies have an effective range of about four to five kilometers, so three relay stations in between will be enough."

She took off her mask as she spoke, walking to the edge of the roof to look at Lin Fan.

Lin Fan, meanwhile, took out his walkie-talkie and looked around for Su Qing and the others.

"Sister Qing... where are you guys?"

"KSHHH... You’re back? We’re in one of the buildings. This whole complex is empty. We haven’t even found anyone inside the apartments..."

A few seconds later, Su Qing’s voice came through the walkie-talkie,

"We’re coming out..."

CRACK—A sharp sound echoed from the distance as three figures leaped from a third-story window of a high-rise, landing on the lawn below.

Lin Fan took one look and saw that each of them had gained over twenty points of Life Value. It looked like the last half hour had been fruitful.

Lin Fan waved to them, then, with Ye Qingzhou, jumped from the rooftop down to the street.

A moment later, Su Qing’s group of three emerged from a storefront and joined them.

"Big Bro! Look!"

Chu Zhaozhao held out her small, blood-stained hand to Lin Fan. She opened her palm, revealing two crystals nestled inside.

Lin Fan took them—one Sharpness Crystal, and one Hardening Crystal.

"Whoa, impressive. Those Bone-Spur Zombies didn’t hurt any of you, did they...?"

Two crystals with a 10% effective channel structure represented two Mutated Zombies with one thousand Life Value each. And since none of their own Life Values had dropped, it meant the three of them had killed two Mutated Zombies without taking any damage.

Chu Zhaozhao and Su Qing had killed Mutated Zombies under his supervision before, but this was the first time they’d fought on their own. To achieve such a result proved their teamwork was already very polished.

"A measly Mutated Zombie can’t hurt us!"

Hearing the surprise in Lin Fan’s voice, Chu Zhaozhao immediately put her hands on her hips, stuck her chin up, and boasted,

"But Sister Qing’s shield did get a little banged up..."

With that, she pulled Su Qing forward, lifted her arm, and showed the small shield to Lin Fan.

The once-smooth surface of the small metal shield now bore several scratches and a deep gouge, but thankfully, it hadn’t been pierced.

Looks like dropped materials really are high-quality. That iron wok they used last time was pierced right through by a Bone-Spur Zombie.

As their Life Values increased, the protection from their tire-tread armor was no longer worth the hindrance to their mobility. So, they were all dressed in their normal clothes to maximize their agility.

Su Qing, for her part, was dressed in practical athletic wear. A headband held back her already short hair, showcasing the clean lines of her slender waist and long legs. With a shield in one hand and a spear in the other, she looked like a female Warrior who had stepped right out of a TV show.

The bloodstains dotting her body contrasted sharply with her fair skin. Her usual gentleness and her current fierce resolve combined to create a breathtaking kind of beauty.

The kind that was truly stunning.

"How was it? Could you take the impact?"

Lin Fan looked at Su Qing, worried. He knew she could block a Mutated Zombie’s attack with her shield, but the force of the blow would still transfer through. He wasn’t sure if her arm could handle that.

"Don’t underestimate me. I’m fine!"

Su Qing handed her spear to Chu Zhaozhao and wiped the sweat from her forehead with her free hand. Chu Zhaozhao usually carried her weapons for her; as for Xu Qian, he had to carry his own.

"It’s just this shield..."

"As long as you feel okay, that’s what matters. Don’t worry about the shield... heheh, I’ll fix it for you when we get back."

Lin Fan brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, but only managed to leave a black smudge of ash. He quickly pulled his hand back and said sheepishly.

"Were those... two crystals just now?"

Ye Qingzhou walked over as well. She had seen Chu Zhaozhao hand something to Lin Fan and caught a glimpse of the zombie crystals.

Before, they rarely had the opportunity to recover crystals. Either the Mutated Zombie was blown to bits by a grenade—sending the fingernail-sized crystal flying off to who-knows-where—or it was killed in the middle of a horde, making retrieval impossible.

Hunting a Mutated Zombie indoors at close range was a difficult proposition. Too few people meant not enough firepower, but too many meant no room to dodge. It was a surefire way to get people injured or killed.

That was why the few crystals she possessed had either been paid for with lives or found by sheer luck on some dismembered corpse.

But now, seeing his three-person team actually go inside and fight Mutated Zombies at close range—and come back with two crystals in such a short time—made her breath catch in her throat.

Awakened Ones were rare enough as it was; a small squad of them hunting Mutated Zombies was unheard of.

Now that she was seeing it for the first time, she was shocked at how efficient they were.

Moreover, the crystals they obtained could, in turn, be used to further strengthen the team. This process created a perfect, self-sustaining positive feedback loop...

’If they had thirty people, or three hundred, or even thirty thousand...’

"That’s right, two crystals. But I can’t give them to you. I have a use for them..."

Lin Fan tucked the crystals back into his pocket and said matter-of-factly.

"I wasn’t asking for them..."

Ye Qingzhou glanced at him, suppressing the storm of thoughts in her mind. She looked over at Ye Qingniao, who was still on the distant rooftop monitoring the horde, and saw that she hadn’t noticed what was happening here.

’If she were here, she would surely understand where her disagreement with Lin Fan had gone wrong.’