256

Luo Xun and the team had a bad time these days, although the base was very safe. But the torrent of zombies was heart-stopping. This zombie wave was different from the last time since the last one was only passing through. They did not know if there were people around so even if the zombies surrounded the mutant plants but found they were not human an inedible, they would not stick around.

This time the zombies were different, they knew that there were people here and did not find it difficult to breakthrough. So a large group of zombies was left behind, trying to break through the obstacles in order to eat the people inside.

How could they feel safe in either case while inside the base?

Fortunately, now everyone could finally see the light of day.

Sure enough, at ten o'clock, After moving the cameras at home to check the situation outside they could finally see the end tail of the zombie wave.

The last of the zombies had reached the line of traps and the mutant vines. They surrounded the base and began the final attack.

"Wait an hour, after 11:30, we'll start a new round of counterattacks." Luo Xun checked outside and said with a relieved smile on his face.

"Good!" All the people inside the base waved their fists with hidden excitement.

The reason for the decision to fight back after 11:30 was that Luo Xun found after long observation that they would receive satellite photos the earliest after 9:30 and the lastest around 10:40. For safety reasons, they dared not do anything large during this time at their base. In case anyone saw the photos and caused trouble.

Now their final counterattack, they could definitely not be found.

Although it would take more than an hour to start the fight, they could start preparations.

Other than those who stayed in the room to watch the outside, the rest went to grab things from one of the ice rooms.

This room was different from the others, there was no plumbing but with a large amount of ice it was a natural cooler!

Although their home had many fridges and freezers those things required energy to maintain. Plus the storage was limited, it was enough to put food and meat but after a certain amount, it was not easy to deal with.

Instead, this natural fridge was worry-free and with it in place, it could store frozen mushroom juice.

For today's defensive battle, it was not that they did not want to fight back using mushroom juice. With the zombies and mutant vines, what better natural biological weapon than this?

But they could not use it, yes they could not.

Before they dug out the circle of traps outside the base, they half-filled it with mushroom juice so their stores were eight percent depleted. If not for the zombie army arriving, they would not use their remaining stock. Although there were mushrooms growing at home, they could not accumulate a lot in a short period of time.

At this point, it was time to use it to put an end to the battle.

They transported boxes of frozen mushroom juice from the basement to the ground floor using the elevator. It did not take long for the mushroom juice to be delivered.

At this time, He Qiankun and Wu Xin continued monitoring the situation while the others made final preparations.

Xu Mei used her fire ability to warm the metal boxes while the other watched outside. Zhang Yi and Song Lingling prepared their own crystal cores while listening to Luo Xun's attack plans: direction, scope and so on.

Besides Xu Mei, the others would move the thawed boxes to the third floor. Once everything was transported, they were on standby.

Luo Xun held his weapon while watching outside. He Qiankun confirmed the situation and Luo Xun ordered the two main attackers. "Ready, go!"

Yan Fei opened the sealed metal window, Zhang Yi controlled the air while Song Lingling flung out the mushroom juice. The wind brought out the red liquid past the walls and rained down in all directions.

When the red rain came into contact with the zombies there came the smell of burning flesh along with plumes of white smoke. It looked like incense was burning and lingering in the air.

The mutant devil vines that seemed to have eaten their fill were suddenly awoken. Their branches twisted excitedly and waved in the air.

The mushroom juice rained in all directions. Almost all the nearby zombies were drenched and the devil vines descended on. It was as if delicious food had become even more delicious! The end result was that the vines ignored their full stomachs and continued twisting around.

Luo Xun and the others were surprised seeing the devil vines come alive and even more excited than when the zombies first arrived. None of them thought that this would happen. They wanted to just sprinkle a little mushroom juice to deal with some zombies but did not expect it would act like stomach medicine to alleviate indigestion and even increased their appetite.

"...I knew we should have sprinkled the plants with mushroom juice earlier." Wang Duo muttered. Although they only had some mushroom juice on hand, there was enough to use as a medicine for the vines.

Luo Xun coughed. "We didn't know before and we don't know if there would be any adverse effects if they ate too much..." Indeed zombie waves, not a good thing, since they had only experienced one before, it was normal to be inexperienced. They would check the vines after the zombie wave. If everything was okay, they would be able to use this for defense.

But what if there were adverse reactions to overeating - what if they died? Then they would have to recultivate new vines to plant.

The team accepted and learned their lesson. The next time they encountered this kind of thing they would have a report and find an appropriate response.

Still, the red mushroom juice rained down. Regardless of whether the mutant plants would have any adverse reactions from absorbing the mushroom juice, Luo Xun would have to deal with this later. So Zhang Yi and Song Lingling had to spill as much mushroom juice on the mutant plants as possible.

Bit by bit, everyone worked from eleven to two in the afternoon. Finally, the zombies around the base were mostly dealt with. They also ran out of their stored mushroom juice.

Zhang Yi and Song Lingling absorbed crystal cores to restore their strength. After they used the juice, Song Lingling asked, "Do you want to go to the planting room and get some juice from the planted mushrooms?" There were maturing mushrooms at home so they could grab some in a pinch.

Luo Xun held a telescope to check the situation outside, he shook his head in response. "Not for the time being, let's wait and see." The zombies that were clinging to the walls had all been pulled away by the excited devil vines. Now they could just wait quietly and wait for the end result.

Sure enough, as Luo Xun expected with the excited devil vines almost all the zombies were entangled in the vines. But due to a large number of zombies, they were stopped but could not be eaten all at once.

Mushroom juice was still good against the dead but the small amount only caused a certain amount of damage. So in the evening, the two sides were in a deadlock.

"We'll wait until tomorrow morning." After checking the situation outside, the team breathed a sigh of relief and calmed their hearts.

Right? At least now there were no zombies rampaging outside the base and smashing their walls, right?

257

In March, the warm spring breeze blew across the earth and the snow-covered mountains and frozen rivers slowly started to melt.

The people of the A-city base were not in the mood to pay attention to the natural world outside. They had been stuck in their base for more than a month, it was now mid-March.

Flying zombies, strength type zombies and non-human zombies had appeared....

The dark figures pressed desperately against the entire base. It was the first time they had encountered a defensive battle that had lasted so long.

What was even more frightening was that their outer city walls were starting to crumble!

"Come on! Earth users, walls, walls!"

As if to confirm their fears, screams came from several walls as those in charge of defense died. Others went to find earth users to repair the crumbling walls.

"It's gone, they're gone!"

"Who's gone?"

"The earth users...not only them but also the bigger teams!"

In a flash, it seemed that the military and ability teams stationed on the outer fence disappeared en masse. Those stationed on the walls felt their heart stop but they had a feeling. They turned their heads behind to the larger, stronger inner walls.

The outer city walls cracked and broke. At the same time, the originally combative military personnel had retreated while the regular people had lost the will to fight.

*Clang* One person dropped his gun and dropped to the ground in despair with a mad smile. "What else? What else is there to do? My friends and family are all out of town."

This was their home and they were willing to sacrifice themselves for that. But with the broken outer base, their relatives and friends were dead from the zombie air raids. With the discovery of people hiding in the more secure inner-city base instead of fighting, the people no longer had the will to fight.

Back in January, the inner city created a metal lid to defend against air attacks. So only the outer city was hit the zombie air raids.

At the start of the zombie attack, the base did not arrange for people to evacuate into the inner area. They protested but no one cared or helped. They could only head to the walls to defend the city.

The zombies roared at the huge gaps in the walls. They had finally cracked open the food box and now it was time to feast.

Every day between 9 and 11:30, Luo Xun and the team used the time to clean up crops and such. In the afternoon they cleaned out the traps and the surrounding zombie bodies on the road.

"Oh my God, I didn't expect our harvest to be so bountiful." Seeing all the crystal cores lying on the ground, their eyes were filled with emotion. Then they sighed and cleaned the crystal cores covered in mushroom juice.

Almost all the traps they had set were full and were at least seventy percent filled with crystal cores!

When they poured the mushroom juice down, it would naturally overflow with the number of zombies. Some of the ones walking by had corrosion damage on their lower limbs.

After that, the newly fallen zombies would continue to fill up the hole and continue to be dissolved. Therefore zombie bodies were everywhere, both inside and outside the traps.

Not to mention the mutant farmlands, Luo Xun could see in the distance that some of the bodies had not been digested by the plants.

The devil vine corpses were ignored and there was less worry about cores left there compared to elsewhere. They could go back and collect them slowly later.

Now they had Song Lingling clean the metal box and the crystal cores. No different from their previous work collecting cores. Then Yan Fei put the flattened metal back down with Yu Xinran adding sand on top. The traps would certainly be used again in the future. It would save the effort if they left the metal in the ground instead of transporting them back and forth.

This time they had spent more than a week going out to pick crystal cores but there was still half left. No way around it, they could only let Yan Fei sink the unfinished traps with Yu Xinran covering them and dig out a few each day.

Though there was a feeling of regret - although the harvest was quite large, they did not find any level six cores, the highest they found was level five. They were afraid if they could not find a level six within such a large batch, it would be very difficult to level up in the future.

However, the devil vines had a lot of crystal cores waiting for them before thinking about what to do.

In the evening after a busy day, the team dragged their tired bodies and stored the cores away. After returning to base, some people went to prepare dinner while others went to check today's photos and messages.

"Ah?! A-city base was broken through?!" Li Tie shouted while looking at the satellite photos from today.

"What?!"

"Look at these pictures..." He immediately showed a series of photos he was looking through.

Luo Xun hurried over and opened them. Sure enough, it was clearly shown that a portion of zombies were pouring into the base and had gradually surrounded the inner city walls!

"What's going on? How can the A-city base be so fragile?!" Luo Xun screeched and quickly went to look for news. They had been busy these past few days, although they had checked the photos, they did not pay much attention to the news.

One had to know that even before a medium-sized base in the south had not been breached. Therefore Luo Xun had not worried about the A-city base to stay safe.

But now...

"Found it! Look at this file!"

The team turned over to find some internal documents. As they looked, their frowns deepened and their expressions became uglier.

Turns out, when the A-city base was attacked by the zombie wave, their higher-ups gave up the outer city and retreated to the inner portion. Plus the zombies had just surrounded the outer part and had not even reached the inner city at the time. They even covered the entire inner city in metal. As the fighting continued, the higher-ups ignored the discontent from the outer city that grew louder and louder.

Then around the tenth day of the siege, the inner city actually created this proposal. As for why they gave up the outer base, it was clear in the documents - the outer residents were not willing to support base work, unwilling to obey management, low combat power and they even pulled down defense efficiency. Therefore, they could take advantage of the zombie siege to shake off undesirables and centralize base management.

So yesterday, the base quietly evacuated the garrison forces and quickly withdrew to the inner city. As they expected, the outer city walls crumbled and broke.

"Assholes! A bunch of bastards!" He Qiankun clenched his fists and hammer the table with furious eyes. "They had long absorbed the ability users into their teams in the inner city but also left the ordinary people in the outer city?! Their fighting power can't match up! And they were left behind?! The regular people are abandoned and dead along with those without strong abilities!"

There was silence as everyone's eyes were filled with anger, unwillingness, and resentment.

After a while, Luo Xun took a deep breath and looked at the people in the room. "Now that A-city has been breached, I have no feelings for A-city even if it survives the attack. We don't need to maintain any contact with them."

He made this decision not only because of the higher-up's decision to abandon the regular people but because of the problematic atmosphere. What if they were suspicious and fancied their resources and decided to deal with them?

A-city base was different from the small convoy they encountered last time and they were completely out of touch. Luo Xun did not want to have any relationship who would abandon people once they were useless - like how the base's higher-ups were acting.

After Luo Xun's words, all nodded in silence. They also did not want to work with such a base, even communication made them shiver.

The march sunshine was just right, not too hot or cold.

The evening of the third day after the city walls had been broken, a large shadow of dark clouds appeared in the sky from the south to the north.

At that time Luo Xun and the team were busy next to a trap. They finished up and hurried home to rest. The three dogs noticed the situation first and ran for cover while barking.

Luo Xun quickly looked up to see the change. They packed up their things and drove straight to the gate.

"What's that?"

"I don't know, it's too far to see. It's not another zombie wave is it?"

"How is that possible? The biggest wave also passed our area, these couldn't be zombies!"

"Then what are those then?!"

Zhang Yi, with arms crossed interrupted the conversation. "Don't yell, they're migratory birds." He just received the information from the wind before guessing that they were birds.

The crowd was silent before laughing. "Oh, I forgot, isn't it time for the migratory birds to fly back?"

At the end of March, the birds migrated back from the north. The pond in front of their base once again welcomed their seasonal visitors.

For three days in a row, they did not go out again. They were waiting for the birds to fly over. As for those that remained, most of them lived near here last year, so they were old neighbors.

The two wolves licked their lips and looked towards the gate. Although they knew that there were too many birds outside so it was not a good time to leave.

What surprised them was that after the birds flew in, they received some satellite photos and some news from the base. It seemed that due to the migratory birds, the zombies actually started to leave upon their arrival...

Although they did not know the reason, this was a good thing. Because the outer base had not been completely destroyed! Yes, it was still standing!

After the city walls were broken, many of those left on the lower buildings were killed. The others climbed up the walls and hid inside the buildings.

Fortunately, since the start of the siege, most of the flying zombies had been eliminated by the crowd. Without that threat, those who hid in the upper floors were relatively safe.

As long as there was strength remaining, they could barely hold on.

The regular people were actually sort of lucky - the zombies were not interested in low-level regular people and instead went straight towards the inner wall. They surrounded the tall buildings and started to attack.

So after the death tide receded, the people in the outer city regained their souls. They walked out of the building and cried for their losses.

"I don't want to stay in such a place."

"Where would you go? There are walls in the base that can be defended and we can buy weapons..."

"Stay here and wait to be abandoned again? I have hands and feet! Although there are zombies in the city, I would rather fight behind my own walls than be stabbed in the back!"

"Yes, I know that there are a lot of small bases in the city! Some of them live in buildings and grow vegetables on the roof. Some simply dig tunnels to live. I don't know if they survived this attack though..."

"I'm going outside to see. Even if they did not survive, I would rather die fighting to protect myself than staying here, getting worked like cattle and giving up most of my work to someone that will leave us!"

"That's right! Even if I die outside, I don't want to stay here!"

"That's right, that's right!"

"My family is dead, they were all killed!"

"My daughter was taken by a man on an ability team. I don't even know if she's dead or alive and I can't go in and see if she is doing well..."

"Oh, you think you have it bad? My wife was snatched and now she's locked up in the base..."