Not even "divine soldiers from heaven" could describe the shock of this moment. Guo Weixiang was dumbfounded, petrified on the spot.

It was a matter of a blink of an eye. Si Nan broke into a mad dash, practically stepping on the zombies' shoulders and necks to leap and vault, so fast that he only left a few faint afterimages.

Countless rotten, withered hands reached out to grab his trouser cuffs, but before they could even touch him, they were mercilessly stomped into a meat paste. He was like a low-flying thunderbolt, leaping from the last zombie to the ground, rolling to his feet, and charging forward without looking back.

“Roar roar roar—”

The majority of the zombies were drawn by the strong Omega Pheromone, and they all turned around, jostling one another as they gave chase!

Si Nan was strong, no less so than any of the hand-picked special forces soldiers from Unit 118. Guo Weixiang had always known that.

But this was the first time he had personally felt just how strong this person was.

So close, so completely unconcealed, that heart-shaking explosive power, like a wild cheetah's, lingered long on his retinas, making him unable to even trust his own nose.

That could absolutely not be an Omega.

But what floated in the air was, indeed, the scent of Omega Pheromone.

The roar of a helicopter landing came from above. Guo Weixiang shuddered and quickly pulled the trigger on the dozen or so zombies lingering around him. The machine gun's bullets were instantly spent. Before he could load a new drum, several volleys of bullets whistled past his shoulder from above, and the zombies in front of him had their heads blown apart.

“Rong-ge!”

Two dark green helicopters circled to land on the hospital rooftop. Before they had even touched down completely, Zhou Rong had already roughly broken free from Ding Shi's grasp and leaped out of the cabin, his jacket billowing wildly in the hurricane kicked up by the propellers.

Doctor Zheng's limbs went soft. He stumbled over and ran up. "Cap-Cap-Captain Zhou, Si-Si-Si Nan, I-I-I don't know what's going on, he went that-that-that way..."

Zhou Rong said nothing. He grabbed a climbing rope at the edge of the rooftop and slid to the ground. In his mad dash, he fired several bursts to clear out the zombies, but was stopped by Guo Weixiang. "Ro-Ro-Rong-ge, quick, that way, Si Nan went that way—"

“Are you okay?”

Guo Weixiang was so tongue-tied he could only shake his head frantically.

Zhou Rong nodded. Just as he was about to chase in the direction Si Nan had disappeared, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. "What's that smell?"

Yan Hao, following behind, also seemed to have noticed something and stopped, incredulous.

Judging by Guo Weixiang's expression, he probably didn't believe the words he was about to say himself. But in this race against time, there was no room for buffer or concealment; only the naked truth was torn open before everyone. "O... Omega."

Guo Weixiang said with a tremor in his voice, "He-he-he... He's an Omega."

·

Looking down from high above, the zombies in several city blocks moved upon catching the scent, gathering in ever-increasing numbers. They pursued the small, rapidly moving black dot at the lead, gradually converging into a terrifying torrent.

Cold air flooded his lungs, his internal organs felt like they were being sliced by knives, but Si Nan knew he couldn't stop.

Zombies emerged from street corners, alleyways, behind garbage heaps, and from all sorts of unimaginable crevices. Several times, he felt a zombie's nail snag the back of his jacket. If he paused for even a moment, he would be instantly torn into bloody shreds right there on the street.

The buildings on both sides of the street flew backward. Suddenly, Si Nan caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around and saw a large, bright red character written on a wall—Demolish.

Demolition in the old city district. Beyond the guardrail on the street was a construction site.

On the site, a crane stood alone, soaring into the sky. Dense rebar and concrete slabs were half-assembled, not yet filled with poured concrete, looking quite bizarre at first glance.

Si Nan had no time to worry if his luck was clashing with construction sites today. He immediately veered, running along the sidewalk right past the hands of the front-row zombies, vaulting sideways over the guardrail, and dashing into the construction site. In just a few moves, he was grabbing onto the scaffolding and climbing up.

The zombie horde was tripped up by the half-meter-high guardrail, with most of them falling over. The rest trampled over their companions' bodies to get into the site, howling as they chased him and clumsily tried to climb the scaffolding.

However, the zombies' knee joints were stiff, and they had no sense of coordination. They would often climb two steps and then fall, creating a chaotic scene of zombies rising and falling all over the ground.

Si Nan climbed more than ten meters up the scaffolding, flipped into the building's interior, and finally stopped on a concrete slab, letting out a spasmodic breath.

The seven or eight bloody gashes on his left arm had already coagulated and dried. The crisscrossing wounds looked ferocious and frightening. Si Nan tremblingly pulled his sleeve down, only then feeling a sharp, needle-like pain in his arm with the slightest exertion.

The excessive blood loss made him slightly dizzy, and his already pale face was now frighteningly pallid.

Actually, he didn't need to cut himself so deeply, and it would be a lot of trouble if he accidentally injured a ligament or his radial artery. But if he cut his abdomen, thigh, or other areas, it would affect his running speed, and it would be a real shame to be caught by zombies because of that.

Si Nan knelt on the suspended concrete slab, his thoughts wandering for a moment. He finally came to the conclusion that next time, he would have no choice but to cut his face.

He gave a self-deprecating smile, then suddenly heard something and looked up toward the street.

An engine sound grew from far to near. A motorcycle shot out from a street corner, turned around with a screeching drift, and sped toward the construction site. There were two riders on the bike, one in front of the other. Even from such a great distance, Si Nan recognized Zhou Rong at a glance.

Zhou Rong and Yan Hao!

“You two...” The corners of Si Nan's lips curled up, though he himself didn't realize it was a smile. "What kind of illicit affair are you two having?"

Si Nan abruptly straightened up and waved his hand vigorously. He saw the motorcycle soar into the air, leap gracefully over the guardrail, and its machine gun opened fire in mid-air!

The zombie horde staggered from the hits, discovered the new target, and turned around, roaring. Zhou Rong brought the bike to a stop, the immense force causing it to skid sideways and instantly send several zombies flying. Yan Hao, in perfect sync, fired the machine gun wildly. Bullets poured out like a torrential storm, immediately blowing off the hands and limbs of the first wave of charging zombies, who convulsed and fell.

Zhou Rong got off the bike, drew his assault rifle, and walked head-on toward the zombie horde while firing, his roar intermittent amidst the hail of gunfire: "Si Xiao... Nan, you..."

The smile in Si Nan's eyes gradually faded as he began to realize a problem—they knew.

They must have known already.

What would that idiot Zhou Rong say?

What would the others think?

The thought flashed through his mind, but before he could dwell on it, the nerve that warned him of danger suddenly tensed. He reflexively tilted his head, dodging the sharp claws reaching for the back of his head.

—A zombie!

A massive, decaying body attacked with a foul stench. Si Nan rolled on the spot, dodging the zombie's sharp teeth in the nick of time.

But this concrete slab, set between the building's steel rebar, was extremely narrow, with nowhere to escape. The zombie lunged at him instead, pressing down on his chest. With a "pfft," Si Nan nearly coughed his lungs out of his throat!

This zombie wore a yellow helmet; it must have been a foreman before it died, perhaps the type who withheld wages from migrant workers. It was fat and pot-bellied, enormous in size, weighing a good three hundred jin, and probably as tall as Zhou Rong and Yan Hao if it stood up. Si Nan desperately held the zombie's neck to keep it from biting down, unable to imagine how something so fat could have climbed more than ten meters high—though perhaps it was because it was so fat that it had scrambled up here in desperation when the virus broke out, and then couldn't get back down after turning, which might be why it was stranded on the rebar and scaffolding.

“Gurgle gurgle gurgle...” The zombie's throat gurgled from being constricted, its moon-like face pressing closer and closer.

Si Nan tugged twice at the strap of his submachine gun but couldn't pull it free. He switched to drawing his dagger with a backhand grip, planning to make the zombie's face blossom with wounds, but just then, there was a sudden crack.

Si Nan didn't immediately realize what that was, but then, his body sank downward.

—Crack!

The concrete slab!

Boom—

Si Nan didn't even have time to curse the shoddy construction in his mind. The concrete slab shattered into pieces, and he plummeted from the scaffolding more than ten meters up!

In fact, if analyzed in slow motion, Si Nan's reaction at that moment could be called textbook-perfect—head covered, body arched to protect his heart and lungs, doing his utmost to curl into a ball. He ricocheted off the protruding rebar, avoiding all fatal areas.

The zombie, several sizes larger than him, was not so lucky. It was directly impaled through the chest by a jutting steel bar and stopped in mid-air.

Bang!

The recoil sent Si Nan bouncing up. He instantly spat out a mouthful of blood, and the back of his head slammed hard against the concrete floor!

For the first few seconds, he struggled to keep his eyes open, as if trying to stay conscious, even trying to get up.

But it was futile.

Dizziness, nausea, the sharp pain of concussed organs, thick and sticky blood... The entire clamorous world, all of it, gradually receded from him, like the surface of a river from another life.

It seemed he had fallen like this before, not too long ago, but he couldn't remember anything.

A black fog rose from the ground, gathering from all directions, slowly enveloping his vision and turning his five senses into a silent plain.

·

“...Begin the search, quickly...”

“Damn it, can he even survive a jump from that high...”

“Fuck this kid, grab him!...”

The distant city was brightly lit, but the wind at the bottom of the cliff was bone-chillingly cold. In the dark night came the sound of footsteps and barking dogs, the shouts and curses of soldiers rising and falling, and countless flashlight beams sweeping back and forth.

Suddenly, someone shouted, "There he is!"

Si Nan, his head and face covered in blood, climbed out of the grass at the foot of the cliff. He stumbled forward a few steps before being pounced on and knocked down by several military dogs at once.

“Got him, quick—”

“Sic 'em, teach him a lesson!”

Who am I? Where am I?

What is this place?

…

All the intense pain and struggle blurred in the chaos. In a daze, he only realized that he had become very small; his hands were small, his feet were small, and he couldn't even push away the ferocious giant dogs with a single shove.

“Hahaha, look at him...”

Piercing laughter, blinding flashlights, the hot, wet panting of beasts, the cold, damp grass; countless grotesque scenes turned into blades in the void, savagely slicing at the center of his brain until it bled freely.

The last thread of human consciousness snapped.

Hatred, burning with blood, flooded his pupils. In the instant before he fell into darkness, he only heard an inhuman roar erupt from his own throat.