Wen Jiuzhe could feel the restlessness in his heart, but he was the kind of person who became calmer the more anxious he felt.

Carrying part of the ammunition and weapons, Wen Jiuzhe boarded the speedboat alone. Standing at the bow, he controlled the direction with one hand, the other holding a weapon, ready.

The zombies in the river were like floating lotus leaves on the water’s surface, layered upon layered. Some of their bodies were already rotting away; when they heard movement, they would still lift their decayed faces out of the water.

Drawn by the sound, they moved closer to the speedboat, but because they couldn’t sense a human presence, they weren’t agitated, and not many climbed onto the boat.

Wen Jiuzhe raised the lowered muzzle of his gun and blew the head off a zombie clinging to the side of the boat with a single shot.

The corpse fell back into the water, then was pushed aside by the speedboat, splashing gray-black water onto the gunwale.

This river had already been heavily polluted in the past, yet there were still residents along the banks who used its water and fished here. Now, with so many zombies soaking in it, the river water had already turned gray-black and was completely unusable.

If this kind of water were drunk, it could probably infect a person with the virus as well.

Passing beneath the collapsed bridge that spanned the river, the speedboat drew close to the riverbank of Donghai City. The closer it got to shore, the more densely packed the zombies became.

Because Donghai City no longer had any living people, and on the other side was an endless sea, the zombies, in their pursuit of humans, could only slowly shift toward the great river on the other side.

When these non-swimming zombies completely covered the river’s surface, the billions of zombies in Donghai City would step along the path laid down by their “predecessors,” gradually setting foot on the land on the other side, migrating toward places with living people like geese flying south.

When the speedboat was almost at the shore, it could no longer move at all. Wen Jiuzhe slung his gear over his back and jumped straight off the boat, stepping on the piled-up zombie corpses and the foul, black water as he made his way toward the bank.

The sensation of stepping into rotten flesh, with the corpses beneath his feet occasionally struggling suddenly, was exceptionally awful.

To humans, this was a swamp of death.

Captain Shen Zhang had told Wen Jiuzhe that the previous action squad had failed to withdraw successfully, leaving behind vehicles and some weapons in Donghai City.

He was now going to find a vehicle he could still use and head for the biological research institute Wen Yi had mentioned.

Present-day Donghai City had formed a very strange situation.

In the prosperous downtown area, many zombies were still trapped, wandering around like headless flies.

Many of the zombies in the midsection had moved toward the outskirts, almost all gathering in a ring around the exits, making it difficult to enter the city, and difficult to go deep into the city center as well. Only the middle zone had the fewest zombies.

The vehicles left behind by the previous squad were in that area.

Wen Jiuzhe found the vehicle the squad had left behind. He ignored the smeared blood dragged across it, crawled into the wide-open car door, and checked what was still usable.

Starting the car, and comparing it against the map provided by Wen Yi and the others, he headed straight for that biological research institute.

Within Donghai City, it looked as though there had once been great chaos. Many roads were packed full of cars, clogging countless zombies in the middle of the streets.

In front of many residential compounds and buildings were roadblocks piled up with debris. The people inside might once have resisted stubbornly, but unfortunately, Donghai City, turned into an isolated island, hadn’t allowed them to hold out for long.

Countless roadblocks spread across every street, and many roads were completely blocked and destroyed.

Wen Jiuzhe changed routes again and again, and in the end discovered there was no way forward—he would have to clear a path himself.

He took his weapons and got out of the car, using explosive rounds to draw wandering zombies, driving as many surrounding zombies as possible into a single street.

Then he went up into the buildings on both sides, calculated the positions and angles, installed explosive devices, and blew away parts of the buildings at both ends of the road, sealing off an entire street of zombies at the front and back.

Using the least ammunition to achieve the best effect.

The squad members stationed on the other side of the great river in Donghai City could all hear explosion after explosion coming from the distant city, occasionally accompanied by the sound of buildings collapsing.

The enormous noise rang out from daytime into the night, barely stopping at all except for a brief interval in between.

Not a single person in the squad was able to sleep all night. The few specially recruited team members who had been making sarcastic remarks at the beginning were now listening to the rumbling sounds, completely unable to say anything anymore.

Listening to the noise, the soldiers all began to feel heartache for the ammunition—they were usually very frugal with it when carrying out missions.

Captain Shen Zhang was still handling matters related to the ship, and even he couldn’t help but feel puzzled: had they really equipped Wen Jiuzhe with this much weaponry and ammunition?

They hadn’t—but Wen Jiuzhe was good at making use of local resources. In the apocalypse, everything was scarce, and he was also a skilled scavenger.

Donghai City was so large that many places had firearms, ammunition, and usable weapons. With a bit of simple processing and modification, it was enough for him to blast out a road.

They were all things taken for free; Wen Jiuzhe didn’t feel the slightest bit of heartache.

He only chose the most efficient method—brute-force advance.

After dealing with the zombies, there were also cars blocking the road. He found a bulldozer used for roadwork and unceremoniously drove it, pushing all the obstructing vehicles to both sides.

Whether they were cars worth tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, or luxury cars worth millions or tens of millions, along with the zombies trapped inside them, all were casually crushed together by him and swept aside.

A road of death that had devoured countless lives—a death district that the previous two squads had failed to pass through—was blasted and pushed by Wen Jiuzhe, turning into another kind of “zombie death road.”

He spent two days and one night clearing out a road that led straight to the biological research institute.

The team led by Shen Zhang hadn’t caught up yet, and Wen Jiuzhe didn’t mind. He had always worked alone and didn’t need anyone’s help.

His previous experience traveling with convoys had taught him that having more people didn’t mean things would go more smoothly; instead, it could lead to people dragging things down or engaging in infighting.

He preferred to control the progress of the mission himself, spending the shortest amount of time to complete it as quickly as possible.

Entering the biological research institute to retrieve the items was the most troublesome part of this mission.

Wen Jiuzhe, covered in grime, grabbed his stiff fingers and kneaded them to loosen them up, then carried his toolbox over to open the institute’s door.

Captain Shen Zhang was a very steady person. He planned things in detail and always thought through retreat routes before acting. It was precisely because of his prudence that General Hao had arranged for him to carry out this mission.

Because he understood the failures and level of danger of the previous two operations, even with Wen Jiuzhe involved this time, Captain Shen Zhang still made meticulous arrangements to ensure that even if Wen Jiuzhe’s mission failed, they would still be able to continue and complete the task.

What he hadn’t expected was that just as he finished his arrangements and successfully led dozens of squad members across the river to reach the Donghai City bank, preparing to advance forward in formation, he saw Wen Jiuzhe coming back.

He drove back in a vehicle carrying the mission items—precious laboratory equipment and materials.

Captain Shen Zhang: “……”

We just got off the ship?

For once, he was left somewhat speechless. Wen Jiuzhe impatiently urged him, “If you’re not at ease, you can check it.”

“If there’s no problem, then go back.”

He hadn’t left out a single mission item, and he also hadn’t taken a single extra thing that wasn’t on the mission list.

The principle was simple: only complete the work within his duties, absolutely not exert one bit of extra effort.

Captain Shen Zhang, still not quite in a state of mind, finished checking the items and still hadn’t fully processed it.

That was it? The mission was completed just like that?

There was no sign of confusion on his face; he even remembered to tell the soldiers to carefully move the items onto the ship and transport them back.

Returning to the riverbank and preparing to set off back to Beizheng Base, a soldier beside him muttered, “So we didn’t do anything at all—did we just come to be porters?”

Captain Shen Zhang snapped back to himself, gave him a pat, and smiled. “Isn’t that good? Everyone gets to return safely.”

Someone looked at Wen Jiuzhe getting back into the vehicle and sitting in his original seat, and couldn’t help saying, “I also want to be this kind of zombie—completing missions is really convenient.”

The few special talents who hadn’t even had a chance to show their skills likewise climbed into the vehicles in a daze and were taken back the same way they had come.

Who would have thought that a mission planned to take several months would be completed in less than a month, and that the most time-consuming part would turn out to be the journey?

It was like a grueling exam where the hardest question suddenly became open-book—they only needed to copy.

On the way back, Wen Jiuzhe still wore that same aloof, keep-your-distance expression he’d had on the way there, but this time the atmosphere in the vehicle was much better. Smiles could be seen on the soldiers’ faces, and some even dared to chat in front of Wen Jiuzhe.

When the team stopped to rest, Wen Jiuzhe went to a nearby river to fetch water and rinsed himself off twice more.

Soaked all over, he raised his arm and sniffed, still feeling like there was some strange smell lingering on him.

After washing several times, Wen Jiuzhe stood up from the river and put on his clothes. He then picked up a small red box placed beside the clothes, opened it to take a look, and stuffed it into his pocket.

He wondered whether Xue Ling was getting used to being alone at the base, and whether she was being excluded.

At this very moment, Xue Ling was fully prepared, about to head northwest with a hundred-person team.

This was an unexpected, sudden mission.

A day earlier, the base had received news that Academician Ji Shiping was still alive, but trapped in Long’an Ancient City.

With Academician Ji Shiping’s credentials and status, even Rong Lanjia would call him “senior.”

When the apocalypse broke out, he was already nearly eighty years old, yet he was still shining at his post.

He was one of the earliest people to begin researching the zombie virus, and it was also he who proposed that the zombie virus might have come from outer space. After that massive meteor shower, Academician Ji Shiping decisively proposed studying those meteorites to find a way to defeat the zombie virus.

At the time, most of the meteorites had fallen in the northwest. Academician Ji Shiping was unwilling to wait at the northern base for soldiers to bring meteorite samples back from the northwest.

He believed they should seize every second of time, and despite opposition, resolutely took several students with him and headed northwest under the escort of a squad of soldiers.

That trip lasted three years. Beizheng Base lost contact with them, and later teams sent out also failed to find any trace of them. As time passed, everyone tacitly assumed they had already sacrificed themselves.

The one who returned this time was one of the soldiers originally dispatched to protect Academician Ji Shiping. He came back with two comrades to report the news and seek help. They encountered many dangers along the way, and in the end, only he arrived safely at Beizheng Base.

The information he brought said that Academician Ji Shiping had stayed in the northwest all along—at first at a Gobi research institute, then relocating two or three more times. During this period, he had continued researching the zombie virus and meteorites, already achieving major breakthroughs.

However, he was too old and had overworked for too long. His health was poor, and amid constant travel he fell ill. The experiments stalled, and they then encountered a large-scale zombie tide.

They took Academician Ji Shiping and several researchers and left their original stronghold, hiding in Long’an Ancient City.

“We’re short on supplies, and most importantly, we have no doctors or medicine. Academician Ji’s condition is very bad.”

The soldier’s face was full of worry. He was afraid that during the time they spent traveling, Academician Ji might already fail to hold on.

General Hao and Academician Rong Lanjia convened an overnight meeting and finalized the list of people heading northwest.

This operation would involve as many as two hundred people, carrying supplies and weapons to provide support, along with doctors and medical vehicles.

Wen Yi also prepared to make the trip on behalf of her teacher, to facilitate mutual exchange of research results and assist with the work.

Academician Ji was far too important. General Hao personally came to request Xue Ling to go along, hoping she would accompany them, as many matters would be much more convenient with her present.

Xue Ling agreed. She had only one concern: “If Wen Jiuzhe comes back, he might get angry. If he does something against regulations, please don’t blame him.”

General Hao said, “Rest assured. We understand the concerns and dissatisfaction of family members, and we’ll definitely handle it properly for you!”