Chapter 8: You’re Safe, For Now

“What are you standing there for? Run!” Fang Qingzhou roared. Behind him, three or four zombies had already raked their cold, rotting nails across his back, tearing through fabric and leaving bloody gashes across his flesh.

Sharp pain flared up, but Bristleback quickly suppressed it to a manageable level.

Elliot’s eyes stung with heat. Not daring to delay any longer, he gritted his teeth and dashed forward, shouting as he ran, “Leon! Hang in there! I’ll go get backup!”

The sound of his footsteps rapidly faded into the distance.

Fang Qingzhou had no time to watch Elliot run off. A zombie clamped its jaws hard onto his shoulder, right into the left shoulder that had already been bitten before.

Even with Bristleback dulling the pain, the bite made Fang Qingzhou’s vision black out. An instant later, another surge of fierce pain struck as yet another zombie bit down, this time sinking its teeth into his thigh.

The Bristleback talent had reinforced his muscle fibers, making it impossible for the zombies to tear off flesh in the short term, but he could clearly feel teeth grinding frantically inside his muscle.

“Die, bastard!^[1]” Bloodshot eyes blazing, Fang Qingzhou roared, swinging the butt of his gun hard into the temple of the zombie on his left.

“Bam! Bam! Bam!”

Three strikes in rapid succession. The sickening sound of fracturing bone burst out alongside black blood. The zombie’s jaws finally tore free from his shoulder, and its entire body slumped sideways like a heap of rotten meat.

【Killed Zombie ×1, EXP +10】

Gritting his teeth against the searing pain, Fang Qingzhou grabbed the zombie biting his thigh by the hair, hauling its head up with his left hand. He jammed the muzzle hard against its temple and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

A muffled gunshot erupted. He shoved the shattered, rotting head away, his back slamming heavily against the cold wall as he gasped violently for air.

But the remaining zombies gave him no chance to catch his breath, lunging at him with crazed snarls.

“Come on! Come at me, all of you! Let’s see how I slaughter every last one of you!” Fang Qingzhou’s roar echoed through the corridor, edged with a near-hysterical madness.

Blood still seeped from his left shoulder and thigh. His clothes were shredded in several places, exposing the mangled flesh beneath. Blood trickled down his leg, soaking his pant leg and pooling on the floor into a small puddle of dark red.

Yet Fang Qingzhou could no longer feel the pain.

It wasn’t because Bristleback suppressed it, but because his adrenaline had spiked to unprecedented heights. He was like a bowstring drawn to its absolute limit, liable to snap at any second, yet stubbornly holding together.

Five zombies still remained, surrounding him completely. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the barrel into the open mouth of one lunging forward. The gun went off. Now only four remained.

The four survivors leaped on him, sinking their teeth into him and leaving four fresh sets of bite marks across his flesh. Like a madman, he pressed his gun against their temples and blew their heads off one by one.

Finally, all eight zombies were dead.

Fang Qingzhou lay flat on the icy floor, panting heavily. The corpses of eight zombies sprawled haphazardly around him, dark red blood oozing from their shattered skulls and pooling into sticky puddles in the dips of the floor, completely soaking his back.

As the adrenaline faded, agonizing pain rushed back. His body was covered in ragged bite marks and claw gashes.

If not for his Protagonist Aura and Bristleback abilities, the zombies would have torn him to shreds long ago. Even with Bristleback significantly numbing the pain, such an onslaught of wounds was still almost unbearable.

After lying on the floor for nearly two minutes, Fang Qingzhou struggled to his feet. He needed to get back to the police station’s main hall as quickly as possible. His body was essentially at its limit, his gun was empty, and if he ran into another zombie now, he stood no chance.

Clutching the empty pistol in one hand and supporting himself against the wall with the other, Fang Qingzhou stumbled back the way he came. With every step, the deep ring of bite marks on his thigh flared with a dull ache, like someone carving away his flesh stroke by stroke with a blunt knife.

His left shoulder was in no better shape. Whenever he raised his arm, he could feel the wound pull, sending a burning pain that radiated all the way from his shoulder to his fingertips.

Fang Qingzhou gritted his teeth and pressed forward without a word.

The corridor hadn’t been long, but now it felt as if it would never end.

Right then, a loud crash and a zombie’s snarl echoed from behind him. The zombie that had been chasing Elliot had actually squeezed out from under that damned shutter door.

“Dammit… I took down eight of them at once… No way in hell I’m getting killed by just one…” Fang Qingzhou gritted his teeth and tried to move faster, but his badly injured, depleted body simply couldn’t keep up with his will.

He couldn’t run at all now. His pace was roughly equal to the zombie behind him, maybe even a little slower.

Now he was in a race against the creature: would he make it back to the police station’s main hall first, or would the zombie catch him first?

The footsteps behind him drew closer and closer.

Fang Qingzhou didn’t look back, but he could judge the distance from the sound: about five or six meters, and closing fast.

The footsteps behind him drew nearer.

Four meters.

Three meters.

Then Fang Qingzhou saw the shutter door he had come through. Throwing himself onto the floor, he began scrambling under it. But just as he was crawling out, the zombie caught his leg in a terrifyingly powerful grip.

“Fuck!”

Fang Qingzhou cursed and twisted around, kicking hard at the zombie’s head with his other foot. The zombie’s head snapped back violently, but its hand never loosened from his ankle. It was already pulling half its body through the shutter door after him.

Fang Qingzhou kicked the zombie’s head again and again, but in his current state, he didn’t have the strength to break free.

“Am I really going to waste ten million on this one damn zombie…?”

Fang Qingzhou couldn’t accept this. His first life in this world hadn’t ended in a horde of zombies, nor at the hands of a Tyrant or a Licker, but was about to be snuffed out in the jaws of a single pathetic zombie.

Just as Fang Qingzhou was truly on the verge of despair, several bullets tore into the zombie’s head, blowing it apart instantly.

Fang Qingzhou looked toward where the shots had come from. A Black sheriff stood not far away, smoke still drifting from the barrel of his gun. Elliot, who had fled earlier, stood right beside him.

“You’re safe now. For now,” the Black sheriff said, walking over to Fang Qingzhou.

Fang Qingzhou did not hear a word he said. A system chime had just sounded in his head.

【Host has completed the first plot node. Return to the original world immediately?】

Summoning the very last of his strength, Fang Qingzhou roared in his mind, Return!

The instant the words faded, Fang Qingzhou felt as if someone had hit pause on the entire world.

Then, the police station lobby before him, the Black sheriff, Elliot, the blood-soaked floor, and the mangled zombie remains disintegrated layer by layer, like a shattering mirror.