Chapter 523 - Powerful Enemies
Bai Zemin looked at the female zombie and suddenly sighed, "This skill that allows me to teleport behind my enemies really is powerful. Even Second Order zombies can't take a single hit."
Then, he didn't give the female zombie time to think as his body disappears before the eyes of the creature.
The female zombie's red pupils constricted as she noticed the human that a second ago was in front of her disappear. In addition, she felt movement in the back of her body so she hurriedly tried to turn around while conjuring a huge sphere of air and slamming it backward.
However, soon the female zombie realized that something was wrong. Her nose twitched similar to that of a dog sniffing something and the natural danger sense of a Second Order zombie warned her of her approaching death.
It all happened too fast, in a matter of one second. Therefore, when the female zombie tried to turn around, two black chains suddenly coiled fiercely around her limbs blocking her movements effectively.
"How-"
The female zombie's eyes inadvertently moved to the ground and her pupils fiercely twitched as she noticed that the black blood that had previously been used to form the whips that destroyed the air spheres had now crawled close enough that an enemy capable of controlling blood could launch a surprise attack.
The blood chains only served to restrain the female zombie for a thousandth of a second. However, that millisecond in a melee battle was more than enough for a powerful warrior to claim the life of their enemy.
Bang!
The female zombie broke free and quickly turned around after discovering that she had been tricked, however, all she saw was a crimson red tip piercing right between her eyebrows before she could do anything else.
Bai Zemin looked coldly into the eyes of the female zombie that was looking at him with resentment even in the face of death. His body was slightly leaning forward with his right foot in front and left foot behind as he used both of his hands to hold onto the golden spear tightly. His two outstretched arms accompanied the stabbing motion of the spear; a spear which was surrounded by a bright crimson red flame that added another shade of mystery to the legendary weapon.
He said nothing and put more power into his thrust, causing Annihilation of the Falling Sky to pierce the female zombie's head from side to side and finally ending her life completely.
[You have received the Soul Power of Second Order Zombie Commander 'Lang Nuan' level 71....]
Bai Zemin ignored the message flashing in his retina indicating that the life of his enemy had indeed been taken and with a swift movement put away the female zombie's body just as the corpse and head of the male zombie.
He looked back at the zombie horde and noticed that there was indeed a noticeable change to go unnoticed.
Previously, all the zombies were standing still but when they noticed him it was not only the zombies in the surrounding area that were advancing in his direction but even those zombies that were more than a mile or two distant were trying to hunt him down.
This was extremely uncommon since everyone knew after two months of the apocalypse that zombies did not chase zombies just like that; in short, even if a zombie noticed you it did not mean that another zombie a meter away from the first one would also notice you or that it would chase you just because the first one noticed you.
So, now that two Zombie Commanders had suddenly been killed by Bai Zemin, the horde at the front of the zombie army stopped their movements of trying to chase him since he was at a distance that should naturally be impossible for these normal zombies to be able to detect him.
"Really, the zombies are getting more and more dangerous." Bai Zemin waved his spear and extinguished the Crimson Flame of his Blood Manipulation skill as he reasoned in a low voice.
Although Bai Zemin at his full strength should be able to defeat any Second Order existence with relative ease, this Bai Zemin could not defeat so easily on the bridge since if he were to completely let go and stop restraining himself, the structure built with pre-apocalypse. materials would definitely collapse.
Therefore, to avoid trouble and to prevent as much as possible any kind of possible infection, Bai Zemin used his fiercest attacks along with some cunning.
First, he used Blood Manipulation to finish off the female zombie's magical attacks by exploding them before his body was even hit. Then, Bai Zemin used the large number of blood whips to cover his body for a split of a second and taking advantage of that small gap he used Shadow Blink to teleport into the shadow of the male zombie.
After killing the Second Order male zombie with a swing of his spear, Bai Zemin naturally managed to shock the female zombie greatly; it was here that Bai Zemin had to play around a bit for his next move.
Using Shadow Blink again was impossible as the skill had barely gone into cooldown at that time, so, Bai Zemin took advantage of the female zombie's shock and made her believe that he possessed a skill that teleported him to the back of his enemies.
Bai Zemin firmly believed that if the zombies had regained their ability to communicate and could give orders as he saw thanks to the movement of the male zombie, then he was sure that these zombies were definitely beings with some degree of intelligence.... And along with intelligence, fear and doubt came hand in hand.
His bet turned out to be correct.
After planting the seed of fear and with doubt taking root in the female zombie's heart, when Bai Zemin verbally tricked her before disappearing right in front of her eyes without giving her time to think, the Second Order zombie reacted instinctively to protect herself and turned around to face the danger she believed was imminent.
However, Bai Zemin had naturally not teleported behind the female zombie. All he had done was activate the skill Invisibility; thus creating the effect he had hoped to create.
By the time the female zombie realized that she had been tricked thanks to her heightened senses that were not unlike those of a beast, Bai Zemin had already made sure to restrain her for a brief moment in order for him to grant the Second Order zombie eternal rest.
"Really... It won't be easy." Bai Zemin sighed as his eyes flashed coldly.
There, deep within the horde, he could detect an aura even stronger than that of the two zombies he had just faced. It was a weak feeling that only appeared occasionally before disappearing without a trace, it was so ephemeral that Bai Zemin even came to think it was an illusion. However, now he was sure that there was definitely something lurking there.
Third Order? Maybe. Bai Zemin couldn't be sure considering that from the beginning the Earth didn't seem to be behaving the way it was supposed to behave. Although Lilith had told him that it was not possible for a Third Order existence to have appeared so fast, Bai Zemin believed that she was wrong from the moment a First Order beast appeared less than a week after the apocalypse broke out at the university.
"Let's hope it's Second Order max.... Because if it's a Third Order zombie, my current self isn't confident of beating it 100%." Bai Zemin shook his head and turned to leave.
"Blood Bullets."
Before he left, his voice floated in the air and as if his words were the king's decree, blood became the herald that claimed the lives of over 10,000 zombies in a matter of seconds.
From the back of the horde, two creatures watched as Bai Zemin disappeared beyond the bridge, going into the thick and dangerous woodlands.
One of them was tall, muscular, and instead of arms had tentacles. He had no hair on his head and his skin was as white as paper with black veins well marked around his body. His red pupils exposed that he was definitely a zombie.
"That human killed 2 of my Commanders." Said the tall zombie with two tentacles. His voice was clear and no different than that of a normal human. He looked at the creature next to him and said with some anger, "My battle power will drop by at least 10% now if I want to keep control over these 17,000,000 soldiers. Are you sure it's a good idea to fight here?"
As for the other one... The other was a small ape about 5 feet tall riding a caiman over 20 feet long over two feet tall. The little ape's eyes flashed with a hint of intelligence as it looked off into the distance before looking behind it and observing the beasts awaiting its command.
The little ape looked at the zombie with two tentacles and said in a sharp voice, "That human, I've been following him for over a month now. He is not simple to be able to kill Second Order beings even while he is holding back although he is only a First Order. Even you and I, were it not for finding that plant, could not be as powerful as we are now. If we're not careful the ones who will fall could be us and not him."
"Hmph!" The zombie with two tentacles snorted as an extremely long tongue darted out of its mouth and it swung like a snake. "I want his brain!"
"Kekeke..." The little ape gave a bloodcurdling laugh and as its eyes took on a deep golden hue, it said calmly, "Here, he'll have to restrain himself whether he likes it or not. In the meantime, we can fight to our heart's content. Even if we lose all these soldiers, that human's pure Soul Power will definitely be worth it. He'll die once that girl gives the order to her troops while you and I will be able to leave without any problems thanks to our prior agreement."
The tentacled zombie said nothing and simply nodded. Still, anger was visible in his gaze as he looked off into the distance.
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"Ufff... Ufff... Ugh...."
Bai Zemin leaned against a tree while panting heavily.
His handsome face occasionally distorted at the pain that came from deep inside him but still he didn't allow himself to scream so he could only grunt like a small wounded beast licking its wounds silently waiting for the moment to attack.
It had been two hours since he had decided to pause the assault on the bridge and had gone into one of the forests. During that time, Bai Zemin had done nothing but rest. Avoiding moving as much as possible and letting his soul recover as quickly as possible.
However, Bai Zemin had greatly underestimated what a soul injury meant and had overestimated what his Health stat could do to his soul's condition.
"Now I understand.... Of course, my Health stat represents the life of my soul. Since my soul is injured, expecting my Health stat to fix things faster is stupid." Bai Zemin sat down and took out a piece of fried chicken meat.
In other words, now that his soul was injured, his Health stat had indeed dropped. Not only had he lost around 66 Health points until his soul fully recovered but Bai Zemin could also feel that the current him was indeed slightly weaker than before; it wasn't much, but weaker was weaker and the pain that occasionally hit him didn't help in this kind of circumstance either.
Bai Zemin looked at the chicken meat in his hand and began to eat in large bites without losing his breath.
This chicken meat was precisely part of the giant eagle that Bai Zemin had finished killing in Oblon World; the level 99 beast that had been mortally wounded by Shangguan Bing Xue in exchange for her receiving an even worse wound.
He devoured part of the beast's wing in a matter of minutes and felt his soul recover slightly as the Soul Power remaining inside the beast's body was absorbed and digested by his organism.
[You have received Health +24]
[You have received Stamina +24]
[You have received Mana +24]
The fact that Bai Zemin's soul could no longer absorb Soul Power and was storing it during the evolution process had disadvantages. However, this also had its own advantages and one of them was that since Bai Zemin technically had not even gone up a level and his Soul Power was still the same, he could obtain stats by eating the meat of creatures far above his level and Order.
The giant eagle had been a Second Order level 99 beast while Bai Zemin was only a First Order level 50 human.
Therefore, the giant eagle's meat was a treasure to him.
"At least with this, I can regain a good portion of my temporarily lost power." Bai Zemin wiped his mouth as he looked in the direction of one of the largest bridges in all of China with cold eyes.
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