Chapter 73: The zombified eyes
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
The flares fired at the forefront illuminated the rows of bodies, and Lin Xu vaguely felt that one face was inexplicably familiar to him, and he pulled Heinrich forward at a fast pace, almost jogging.
The corpses in the glass pods were white from the loss of blood, and the viscous, still fluid clouded the undulating shadows with a greenish glow. This is…
Lin Xu opened his eyes wide to stare at the corpse in the culture chamber, a stiff face belonging to a middle-aged man and his memory of the vivid young man gradually overlapping. This is… Yan Yuan?
The number of beds in the living area and the number of culture pods here basically matched, and most of the rooms were emptied of signs of habitation, which might still be able to say that someone forced them into the culture pods.
But if Yan Yuan was to organize everything and calmly leave the room, there was no sign of being forced. Only his and the other two rooms were left with remnants of their daily belongings. Perhaps, these three people left the room at the end and no one was there to take care of the remaining items for them. Could it be that they had sent themselves into the incubator of their own accord?
Lin Xu took a step back, looked down at the structure of the flat bridge, and found that there was indeed a gate that could be split off to connect the flat bridge to the incubation chamber. But it didn’t make sense, why would they do that?
The people who could design such a huge and sophisticated device could not possibly not consider how long the energy reserves of the base could support the capsule, they must know the end result. Could they be creating a mass graveyard for surviving humans? Lin Xu’s mind was rarely confused, countless guesses flashed through his head, and then were quickly rejected.
Heinrich suddenly tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to the ground at the entrance. The previous zombies had come out from here, crossed the flat bridge, followed the noise and human scent up to the settlement, and attacked Heinrich and Lin Xu.
The entrance was full of stains left by the zombies’ actions, and half of the upper body of a human with only a skeleton left, judging from the level of decomposition, it should be the corpse of a zombie.
“When a zombie is hungry, it will also eat its companions.” He explained to Heinrich. Lin Xu shone a flashlight and found that behind the violently broken entrance was a medical laboratory with several ripped open iron cages inside. It should be a laboratory where the base kept live zombies and used them to study the zombie virus.
Now all the humans in the base were plunged into the darkness of death, and a few high-level zombies instead survived the 3,000 years and continued to run out to attack humans.
“… If they are hungry, will they devour human corpses?” Lin Xu looked at Heinrich unexpectedly, the other party would not just ask a question, everything happened for a reason.
Heinrich stepped forward and blocked the flashlight with his palm, pressed his chin and instructed Lin Xu to pay attention to the space below.
In the darkness, Lin Xu listened sideways, and a faint sound of gurgling and chewing was caught by his sensitive hearing.
There was only metal, glass and corpses in this space, and no matter what kind of creature it was, it would not eat the first two building materials, and only the corpses would be chewed. With that in mind, the target was clear.
One zombie, awakened by the ringing, escaped the lab, and instead of going up to the habitation area to attack the two living people, he feasted on the corpses in the culture pods here.
The sound of clacking and biting through bones had become weak as it echoed up, but to Lin Xu’s ears it was like a drumbeat. Suddenly, the chewing sound stopped.
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of Lin Xu’s forehead and landed on the containment membrane, and the collector put it away so as not to contaminate the ancient Earth biological environment. The sound of breaking wind suddenly appeared and Lin Xu shouted, “Get back!”
The next instant, the metal grid bridge between Heinrich and Lin Xu was smashed through by the black shadow, the smell of blood and decay came with the strong wind, and the zombie reached out first to attack Lin Xu who made the sound.
When Lin Xu dodged, he drew his knife, the short knife hit the zombie’s arm, but it was like hitting another piece of super-strong alloy, with a stabbing sound and sparks cut through, barely leaving a wound for the zombie.
Heinrich immediately fired two cryogenic flares to indicate the combat situation for Lin Xu, and then used his blaster gun to fire two shots at the zombie’s head the moment Lin Xu dodged out of range.
One shot hit the temple and the other hit the cheek, but the penetrating power of the blaster only caused a little trouble for the zombie to move, unlike the two A-Class zombies that were directly shot in the head by the blaster.
This zombie was at least S-Class, and the four zombies were not only following the human scent to the upper level, but also because this S-Class zombie wanted to have all the corpses in this cemetery to himself!
The S-Class zombie was angered by the two blasting bullets, and bounced trying to pounce on Heinrich, who calmly put away the gun to draw the light energy sword, crossed the sword facing the zombie’s head.
Suddenly, the zombie stopped in mid-air and hissed in anger as Lin Xu grabbed his ankle and dragged him back to the ground, mermaid claws running directly through his ankle.
The light energy sword left a charred scar on the corpse’s chest.
The zombie fell to the ground on its back and tried to bounce up, only to be smashed in the nose by Lin Xu’s powered exoskeleton-clad fist, which ran wild with electricity and machinery.
More precarious than the zombie’s nose was the middle of the flat bridge, broken by the force of this punch conducted down into the ground along the zombie’s head. The fragile flat bridge opened directly from the front, tilted downward, smashed on the flat bridge below, which could not withstand the sudden force, and its tail broke and continued to fall. Four backward bridges broke and collapsed like dominoes, the loud sound echoed in space as if it was the hiss of a giant monster.
Lin Xu’s sharp claws pierced through the chest of the zombie to directly grasp its ribs so that it would not escape, one person and one zombie tangled and rolled down the inclined bridge to the fourth level. During the tumbling process, the zombie’s claws scratched wildly, the exoskeleton and isolation suit were able to block them, but could not stop the S-Class zombie’s teeth that came to bite.
“Hiss–” the zombie bit Lin Xu’s left hand with its tiger mouth, and even broke Lin Xu’s sharp nails when he opened his bloody mouth. Lin Xu pulled out his right hand that was inserted into the zombie’s chest cavity, and hit it with a hook, smashing the zombie’s mouth full of rotten teeth. The price was that he broke his right nail as well.
Lin Xu looked up at Heinrich, who was sliding down the inclined bridge with his light energy sword, and immediately pressed his knee against the corpse’s chest to control its mobility, and then pressed the corpse’s hands, “Use the light energy sword to cut its neck.”
Heinrich yanked the corpse’s thinly shed hair to control its attempts to raise its head to bite, and the light energy sword pressed against the corpse’s throat, scorching and searing open the corpse’s throat inch by inch.
“Hiss – ho-ho…”
The light energy sword pressed down inch by inch, the zombie instinctively struggled frantically, and in the smoke of the charred skin tissue, the light energy sword completely split the zombie’s body and head in two. It twitched a few times and finally became a corpse completely.
“Whew…” Lin Xu let out a breath and aimed another punch at the zombie’s head, directly smashing its skull into a soft, rotten puddle. Heinrich’s eyes jumped at Lin Xu’s violent outburst, then realized that Lin Xu was only trying to remove the crystal core from the zombie’s brain.
As the flares burned out and fell, Heinrich picked up his flashlight to light the way for the two of them. The smoke and dust from the continuous collapse of the flat bridge filled the air, and no one noticed a few bright flashes of light on the stone wall above, hidden in the darkness.
In the flashlight light, the S-Class zombie’s crystal core was as big as a baby’s fist, a crystal-clear light blue, but it was still covered with zombie flesh and bright red blood.
… Bright red blood? The zombie’s blood was a rotten dark brown!
“You’re injured?” Heinrich suddenly remembered that Lin Xu said that the zombie virus was highly contagious and had a 100 percent incidence rate that could not be cured. Lin Xu looked at his left hand after putting away the crystal core.
“Hmm.”
“The zombie virus…”
“Oh, it’s okay, the virus doesn’t work on me.” Lin Xu took off his gloves, the zombie’s growing canines almost pierced through his palm, the tissue was repairing itself, but not as fast, blood was slowly dripping out along the wound, “I… was bitten by a zombie once, you can understand that I have antibodies in my body.”
“Can this virus be cured?” The question made Lin Xu silent, so Heinrich stopped asking questions and looked down to take out the emergency medicine he carried with him to disinfect and medicate the wound on Lin Xu’s hand. Lin Xu looked down at Heinrich’s fingers, closed his eyes, and spoke again, “No.”
The final step in Heinrich’s treatment of Lin Xu’s trauma was to apply a healing gel to keep the wound from becoming infected with outside bacteria, and Lin Xu’s answer again caused his hand to freeze.
The space was once again peaceful, with the remaining walkers either eating each other and killing each other or being taken care of by the two men without fear of another walker suddenly appearing.
Lin Xu’s left hand was rinsed clean of walker bodily fluids and his own blood by the disinfectant, a hundred times cleaner than his right hand that had penetrated the walker’s chest cavity, and he lifted his left hand after he finished speaking and cupped Heinrich’s cheek, pulling the other man’s furrowed brow into shape.
“Look at my eyes.” Lin Xu loosened his fingers and touched Heinrich’s cheek, setting his eyes right. Heinrich did not avoid Lin Xu’s movement and looked straight into Lin Xu’s gray eyes.
He heard with his own ears the appalling series of words that could be deduced from Lin Xu being a zombie, the ugly corrosion still lying aside and emitting the stench, yet he did not seem to have any suspicion or disgust towards Lin Xu. Heinrich looked into Lin Xu’s eyes in accordance with his words.
Lin Xu’s gray eyes were not clear, the edges were especially hazy, like a mist that would melt into the water, and when the long, thick, ink-black lashes flashed, they reminded Heinrich of an evening in the Cacamorra Plains.
The night was falling on the plains, but the remnants of daylight were still scattered in the gloomy clouds, the light in the air was gray-blue, the distant mountains and fields were as black as ink, the wind and rain were coming, the weeds were depressed by the fierce wind, and the smell of moisture was on the breath. But Heinrich suddenly felt that the images that flashed through his mind were unfair and inaccurate for describing Lin Xu.
This was the landscape that stretched across the Cacamorra Plains when he first met Lin Xu, but Lin Xu only lived in the Cacamorra Plains; his true homeland was elsewhere. Perhaps Lin Xu was from Earth, the Earth of 3,000 years ago.
“Look at its eyes again.” Lin Xu used his right hand to poke open the zombie’s eyelids and showed its eyes to Heinrich. The zombie’s eyes were also gray, but lighter in color, the blurred edges almost blending with the whites of its eyes. Lin Xu blinked his own gray eyes, “This is a symbol of zombification.”
Heinrich suddenly thought of the sketch he had found in the safe earlier, where the author had not treated Lin Xu’s eyes to a light color, but to a shiny black.
“But you have reason and emotion, and you don’t eat people.”
Anyone who had experienced the zombie apocalypse couldn’t say that. Anyone who was scratched and bitten by a zombie should be executed on the spot, no matter what the rules were, both explicit and implicit. Lin Xu was the exception that broke the rule.
“I…”
However, before Lin Xu could finish his sentence, a radio announcement suddenly rang out in space, and the flashing light on the stone wall turned a constant red.
“Base self-destruct sequence confirmed to be activated.” This announcement was repeated three times, Heinrich did not understand Chinese, but he saw Lin Xu’s face change and he ran out of the room regardless.
Immediately the mountain rumbled like rolling thunder, the glass culture chamber shattered as the mountain trembled and bodies and green liquid poured out.
“It’s the base’s self-destruct program! Go!” Lin Xu shouted.
In the old base plan, the self-destruct program had a separate power supply system, but Lin Xu didn’t expect this system to be triggered after three thousand years! What had they done that could trigger the self-destruct program?
Following the fourth bridge, the two jumped onto another connecting corridor plane, however a violent explosion had ripped through the mountain peaks, the glare suddenly shone on the road ahead, looking up only to have the mountain crumble and the snow pounding like a giant wave pouring down on the two.
–
Extraterrestrial orbit, Abyss Fleet, the Victoria.
Ika sat in front of countless light screens doing the day to day data work, Blackie and Snowy were held in his arms scratching their backs. Lin Xu asked Ika to watch the two rabbit-cats for him before he left. Suddenly, the rapid change of a segment of numbers caught his attention.
After repeatedly confirming the accuracy and stability of the data, Ika’s eyes opened wider than the two rabbit-cats, and he immediately cut to the encrypted channel and sent a communication request to Godric.
“What is it, Ika?”
“I detected an electromagnetic wave frequency of God’s Crown.”
“What do you mean!”
“They’re in the Solar System…” Ika flew through the feedback data from the instruments detecting this frequency, “on Earth and traveling outside the galaxy.”
Godric said, “Dr. Lin is on Earth, what does he want to do?”
The data on another screen caught Ika’s eye, but instead of electromagnetic frequencies, this data described interplanetary gravitational conditions, and Ika followed the anomalous changes in the data to pull up real-time space footage.
Countless firefly Zerg-like shining points of light suddenly appeared in the cold universe, but they were also dragging a bright ribbon, drifting towards Earth. No, this was not some blinking firefly Zerg in the summer night, but small objects from the Kuiper Belt! Hundreds of small objects are being pushed towards Earth by the unusual gravitational force in the galaxy!
The author has something to say.
God’s Crown under is a whole honorific, people have names, but not yet developed to the point where someone can shout His plot without the honorific, let’s talk about it later.
Don’t worry about Marshal and Lin Xu, because the next chapter of the plot is about a lonely man and man trapped in a room… Understand?
