Chapter 10.1: Blue Sea VS Cosmic
Wang Moning stared in shock as more than a dozen people simply swung themselves down.
The crystal hunters wore black tactical masks that only revealed their sharp, piercing eyes. Their combat uniforms clung tightly to their lean, agile frames.
As they descended, the sounds of crashing and banging never stopped.
Inside the building, the zombies had sensed people outside through the glass. They smashed through windows or burst out from balconies, lunging toward them.
The crystal hunters were well prepared. Gripping their ropes, they used the momentum to kick the airborne zombies away midair.
But some zombies fell from above, and some even landed directly above Song Xi.
Wang Moning felt a jolt of panic. She shouted, “Captain! Watch your head!”
Song Xi seemed to have eyes on the top of her head. She tightened her core and, without any foothold, flipped her body a full 180 degrees in midair. From below, she kicked upward at a zombie falling from above, then used the force to swing herself upside down toward the left.
At the same time, she even turned toward Wang Moning on the rooftop and tapped her chest with her right hand, signaling she was fine.
It was too far away and getting dark, and Song Xi was wearing a mask, so Wang Moning couldn’t see her expression.
But somehow, she felt that Song Xi looked completely at ease.
Wang Moning watched as several ferocious zombies kept dropping past her, right beside her: “……”
She had already thought the crystal hunters were impressive enough.
When Song Xi first took her, using a single rope to climb from one skyscraper rooftop to another like a spider, Wang Moning had already thought that was the limit.
Later, trembling with fear, she tried copying the others climbing ropes and even gained a bit of confidence in herself.
But now she realized that what she had seen before—jumping between rooftops and climbing around—was child’s play compared to simply “jumping down from a building.”
Sure enough… are they really aliens?
Even though they all looked the same on the outside, their strength, speed, and those almost recklessly fearless actions completely outclassed her.
—Bang! Bang! Bang!
The zombies that fell from the high-rise crashed onto the ground, smashing some of the ground-level zombies in the process.
Everything happened quickly. In just about two minutes, the crystal hunters had already swung themselves to the front-left side of the trapped vehicles.
People inside the cars were pleasantly surprised to find that, thanks to their presence, a large number of zombies originally surrounding the vehicles had been drawn away toward the front.
But when they looked at the number of crystal hunters—and the dense, overwhelming swarm of zombies—their hearts tightened again.
So many zombies… could they really handle them?
Song Xi and the others didn’t even have the concept of “can we win this,” only “how many can we take down, and for how long.”
She directly opened her bag and started throwing Molotov cocktails downward.
After most of the fire bottles were thrown, flames rose as they burned the zombies. The heat even forced her to relocate. She fired her grappling rope toward another window frame and swung over.
Because it was a battle, there was no time to quickly find sturdy footholds. Song Xi fell twice—each time making Wang Moning’s heart nearly stop.
That was a straight drop from the sky into a zombie horde!
But every time, Song Xi could precisely control her muscle groups. Her feet would land on a zombie’s head, and she would immediately grab onto a seemingly flat wall that looked like it had nowhere to grip, climbing back up at high speed.
The other crystal hunters operated in similar ways. To an observer, it looked like they were constantly dancing on the edge of death—yet somehow, they always narrowly avoided it each time.
Their bodies were so flexible it was almost beyond what cats could do.
Aside from throwing Molotov cocktails everywhere, the crystal hunters also worked together on both sides of the street. Using grappling hooks, they latched onto nearby vehicles, and with a coordinated pull from five people, they yanked an entire car over.
Although the Blue Sea people seemed like the type to rush headfirst into battle, they actually weren’t.
The five crystal hunters went on like this, pulling one vehicle after another over and blocking both sides of the street—effectively sealing the entire road shut.
Although scattered zombies still managed to squeeze through gaps here and there, at the very least, they no longer had to worry about an endless, unkillable swarm in this area.
Next, all the crystal hunters found stable footholds, put down their large backpacks, took out firearms from inside, quickly assembled them with practiced ease, and opened heavy fire directly into the zombie horde.
This naturally included Song Xi’s exploration team as well.
Wang Moning watched her teammates—whom she had been with for half a month—now firing their guns with fierce, relentless precision: “……”
What?!
So you’ve all been carrying guns this whole time?!
Over the past half month, how many times had they been on the verge of death? How many times had they been surrounded by zombies? She had always thought everyone had only barely survived through sheer desperation.
And now they were pulling out guns.
Not just any guns, either—ones she didn’t recognize, capable of firing multiple bullets at once with extremely high power.
Wang Moning could only tell herself: maybe they were afraid gunfire would attract even more zombies.
After all, hadn’t they blocked off the road first before opening fire?
The battle continued into the night.
When it finally ended, the survivors trapped in the vehicles finally let out a breath of relief. Looking at the entire street filled with zombie corpses, they felt both excited and deeply grateful.
Song Xi used grappling hooks step by step to climb up the high-rise and brought the translator, Wang Moning, back down.
“Are you the official government?”
“You have guns! Usable guns!”
“You must be official troops, right?! You’re still here! That’s great!! Can we go with you to an official base? We’ll do any kind of work!”
Six people got out of the vehicle—four men and two women.
All of them looked dazed. Their bodies were covered in dried blood and unknown grime. Their eyes were numb yet filled with pain. They immediately dropped to their knees in front of the crystal hunters, desperately kowtowing and begging to be taken with them. They kept rambling about what kinds of work they could do, and among those mentions were also references to sex work, regardless of gender.
Wang Moning felt extremely uncomfortable watching this.
Although she had also gone through dark times, she had been hiding in a storage room the entire time. Aside from the looming fear of food and water eventually running out, and the psychological distress of having to stay with the rotting corpses of her classmates, she hadn’t experienced much of what the apocalypse truly entailed.
In fact, Wang Moning didn’t even know why the apocalypse had happened.
All she knew was that her classmates suddenly turned into zombies, phone lines suddenly stopped working, there was no military rescue, and no survivor bases.
When she was on the verge of starving to death, she was rescued by aliens—and since then, she had been living under Song Xi’s group’s protection.
She had been told she was there to act as a translator, but because their route likely took them across high-rise rooftops, she hadn’t encountered any other survivors in half a month.
She had always wanted to meet other survivors, but she never expected them to be in such a state.
She didn’t know what to say and couldn’t help but look back at Song Xi.
Song Xi stood with the other crystal hunters. Their masks were still on, revealing only calm eyes.
They looked like they were waiting for her to communicate with the locals.
Wang Moning had no choice but to speak on her own.
“Please get up. We are not an official military unit. We are… a private armed group.”
Hearing that they were private, the group became even more unwilling to stand up.
“Please take us with you!”
“I’ll be obedient!”
“Right, right! We eat very little and can do a lot of work! Just give us a bite of food!”
Wang Moning realized that telling them to stand up was useless. They simply couldn’t hear it—they were completely consumed by pleading.
It wasn’t coercion or anything like that. It was more like they had realized Wang Moning was approachable, and were clinging to her as their last lifeline.
The only good news was that she caught a crucial piece of information from one of the women’s pleas.
“We really don’t want to go back there anymore. They don’t treat us like human beings at all. It’s fine if we don’t get enough food—we’re beaten every day and forced to lure zombies. Please, take me with you. I can do a lot of work! If not, you don’t even have to take me with you—just drop me in another city. Anywhere is fine, as long as it’s not here!”
Wang Moning’s expression sharpened. She stepped forward and pulled the woman up.
“Explain clearly. What is the place you’re talking about? Where is it?”
The woman slowly stood, glancing at her cautiously, then at the crystal hunters’ equipment before speaking carefully.
“You… you’re from outside, aren’t you?”
Wang Moning noticed her hesitation.
“Yes. We came from outside. What is going on with Qianli City? Why can’t we find a single survivor?”
The woman lowered her voice.
“All the survivors around here are in that suddenly appearing city. We barely managed to escape from there.”
So that must be the city their captain was looking for.
Wang Moning took a deep breath. Only now did it finally feel real to her—there really was such a city.
At that moment, Cheng Qisheng, who was in the middle of work, picked up on the keyword.
She immediately shifted part of her attention toward the crystal hunters’ side.
According to the woman, in her family’s remote mountain village, after the zombie outbreak, many people survived because the population was small, wild animals were present in the mountains, and the village was already surrounded by fences. With everyone cooperating, they managed to survive.
They became self-sufficient, reinforced the fences, and lived by farming and hunting.
But a month ago, a group of blue-skinned aliens attacked their village, captured them, and brought them to a city that had appeared in a nearby town. Everyone there was turned into slaves.
There were many slaves in that city, but not all of them were from this world. Some had rabbit ears, some had horns on their foreheads. No one could understand each other’s languages, and there was no time to learn—everyone was constantly forced to work for their lives, and some were even sent out to bleed themselves to attract zombies.
“We originally had over a hundred people. After just one month, only six of us are still alive.”
The woman did not cry. She simply said it in a numb voice.
“There are also people from Qianli City in that city. Someone said that on the night the zombie outbreak happened, all military personnel simultaneously turned into zombies, and all guns, weapons, and technological devices stopped working at the same time. It was as if… as if the heavens wanted to destroy us.”
“On top of a situation where there were already too many zombies and too few humans—and no firearms—that was hard enough. And now there’s even an alien city?!”
Wang Moning stood there, frozen in place.
She had always believed that the military must have some kind of survivor base somewhere—just farther away for safety, maybe in the deep desert or something like that.
And once the military recovered, civilization would definitely be rebuilt.
But now… was she hearing that the very first institution to disappear after the apocalypse was the military?
—
Cheng Qisheng slowly took her hand off the mouse.
A zombie outbreak could still be explained as a viral crisis. But the entire military getting infected, and all local firearms and high-tech weapons simultaneously becoming unusable—that was just absurd.
She immediately went to contact Coriander Safe City. Although this guy was only Tier 1 and not very strong, he was extremely good at making connections and very well-informed. He might know some inside information.
Sure enough, Coriander replied quickly.
[Yes, yes. Worlds on the verge of destruction do have this kind of trait—they tend to eliminate the strongest forces first. But no one knows where this trait comes from. Some say it’s more like a kind of “world-ending rule.”]
[Actually, this world is relatively lucky. In disasters like this, although all military forces are wiped out, at least some people survive. The zombies aren’t truly invincible either. They might even make it through this disaster and survive for another generation or two before the world ends.]
[Boss, let me tell you, worlds with viruses or natural disasters are actually on the better side. There are some unlucky ones where a black hole just drops next to the planet and swallows both the planet and its people—no chance of surviving at all. Now that is real bad luck.]
Cheng Qisheng, one of those “unlucky people” whose planet was swallowed by a black hole: “……”
