Outside the gates of a water purification government facility, two young men wobbled as they walked forward. 

One person was supporting the other as the second one looked severely injured, not to mention that he lacked a couple of limbs. One of his legs was missing along with his right hand.

But nevertheless, the two young men looked very lively and their faces showed traces of tremendous courage along with tiredness as they wobbled forwards.

"You there! Stop." A loud voice suddenly echoed out of the security booth at the entrance of the facility. "If you take another step forward, you will have to face the consequences!" A man's gruff voice informed them.

The two young men immediately stopped on hearing this loud announcement. They looked as if they didn't want to create any unnecessary trouble and obediently listened to the person.

Before long, a tall and muscular man walked out of the security booth. He had a big machine gun in his hand and he was wearing the green and brown military uniform.

"What business do the both of you have here? What brings you here?"

The handicapped person leaned more on his friend as he was not able to support himself well while continuing to stand at a single spot.

Watching this, the guard's expression visibly softened up a little.

"Sir, we are just normal university students? Are you with the government? Is there a shelter here? Please. Please. Please let us in. I can fight for the both of us."

The young man who was speaking was very shaken and he sounded as if he had just barely survived by clutching his life in his hands. 

"It's alright. Calm down first." The guard raised his hand, asking him to take a few deep breaths and calm down.

"Let me tell you this. We do have a shelter here, but I cannot take you both in just yet."

"Ah! Why? My friend here needs help. He is very badly injured. Isn't the government supposed to help people? Why are you sending us back?"

"Calm down. Calm down. I am not sending you back. I just have a few questions you need to answer. After you do that, you can go in."

Hearing this, the young man seemed to finally relax and then he quickly nodded.

"Ok let's start with this then." The guard opened some sort of notepad that he was carrying in his hand and scribbled on it with his pen.

"What is your name? Do you have any ID cards with you?"

"Ah… ID card?" The young man looked speechless. Who in their right mind would try to keep track of their ID card at a time like this?

"It's fine. Just your name will do."

"My name is Lu Chen, sir. My friend's name is Mo Ling. He has even served in the military in the past, but he is badly injured now."

The guard's eyes immediately widened in surprise. "Oh! You have served before? Good brother. I am glad you managed to survive somehow."

Mo Ling bitterly smiled. "Thanks, brother. Look at my condition though. I should have maybe not survived."

"No. No. Don't say that. We have a few doctors and even a surgeon. Come, let us go inside."

The guard welcomed both of them inside and the three walked into the facility. However, just as they took a few steps, the guard suddenly stopped.

"Wait, I forgot to ask you something. How did you both learn about this shelter?"

Mo Ling's face immediately became tense and stiff. However, Lu Chen was quicker to respond. "That… Ah… Actually, it was just a random lucky guess." 

"Mo Ling mentioned that the government might not be completely disrupted. So we have been trying to see if there are any survivors in a lot of government facilities." 

"We only came here by chance. We didn't expect anyone to be here and fortunately, we somehow got lucky."

The guard listened to his explanation and nodded in understanding. "Oh! So that's how things are. You did good, brother. What a clever strategy!"

"Alright. Alright. I have made you both wait long enough. Let's go inside." 

The three of them walked into the huge building, Mo Ling and the guard chatting about their respective experiences in the military back in the day, which regiment they had served, and so on. 

Lu Chen, on the other hand, walked silently beside them, his eyes rapidly darting here and there, observing the huge facility.

The bordering compound walls were huge, tall, sturdy, and were laced with barbed wire. On the outside, there were plenty of signs of blood, struggle, and destruction. However, the inside was cleaner.

It looked like they had been dealing with all the zombie corpses immediately and keeping the place as clean as they possibly could. 

If they had left all the zombie corpses and the other creatures dead bodies lying around, it would definitely have attracted more attention. So this sort of maintenance was required.

"Not bad." Lu Chen muttered under his breath. He lifted his head up to next take a look at the building in front of him. 

The building itself was located right next to the gate, so there wasn't a lot of free space and greenery like a garden or lawn.

This would normally be a bad design. However, in the current situation, it wasn't too bad. In fact, it was quite convenient to safeguard the place since it was medium-sized and manageable.

Otherwise, if it had been as large as the hospital, a much bigger force would be required to assure the same amount of safety.

Lu Chen examined every inch of the building in detail, not leaving a single spot out. 

In the beginning, he had noticed only a few guards stationed at the entrance but as he looked around more, he saw a total of twenty to thirty guards surrounding the compound wall.

It looked like all of them were tasked with the single duty of guarding the facility. Lu Chen was impressed with the sheer manpower of their group.

Even though their own group had numbers, they were all just civilians compared to these people. Not to mention the fact that each person guarding the boundary had a machine gun in his arms.

Most of their group members had only daggers at hand and since it was a close combat weapon, it was not very convenient for everyone as facing the monstrosities up close was too mentally scarring.

However, Lu Chen didn't particularly care about this part as he believed that people needed to temper themselves against such things. Otherwise, they were never going to survive.

The group continued walking into the main building which was the one and only big building within the compound wall. Besides this big building, there was also the water purification plant which had all the machinery.

The guard looked at Lu Chen observing the facility, so he smiled and explained. "We decided to set up a temporary camp here mainly because of this plant."

"Water is the most important necessity after all. Are you guys hungry? We have a lot of food inside. We will first have to meet with the command leader and once he gives the final approval you can officially join the group."

The guard took the two of them into the building after muttering something to the two men standing outside the building's front door. One of them walked over to take his place in the security booth.

However, as this new guard walked to the front of the compound, he completely failed to notice the presence of two blurred figures moving in the hues of the dusk.

Qin Hua and Guan Ye were also both currently wandering in this water purification facility. Guan Ye had it slightly easier than Qin Hua as he was able to maintain complete stealth.

Qin Hua, on the other hand, had to find a shadow in order to remain hidden. But soon it would be night time and then her ability would be no different than the assassin's stealth ability.

As these two loitered here and there, taking account of everything in the vicinity, a dull roar resounded in the background. 

Qin Hua's ears immediately perked up and she observed the guards on the compound. Were these people just for namesake or did they have any actual ability? 

She slipped into a shadow and emerged outside to see a huge centipede pop out of the ground. This looked like the same mutated beast Alex had dealt with.

A lean man who was standing above the compound at that spot immediately jumped down without showing any signs of fear. "This one is mine!" He shouted.

Two other men walked over and stood beside him, but didn't appear to be concerned about the beast. Qin Hua was rather surprised. She didn't expect this group to be so experienced. 

In reality, if one started to fight early on in the apocalypse and managed to gather enough momentum and strengthen and condition oneself, facing a single mutated beast like this wasn't a big deal.