Chapter Ninety-Three: The Strange Thing

Fan Li’s question went unanswered. The clicking sound went on and on. Judging from experience, there was a ninety-nine percent chance the thing ahead was a zombie.

He motioned for Ellie to walk in front, then moved gradually toward the faint sound.

His night vision worked within about five meters. As he drew closer, the figure in front of him came into view.

A man in work clothes was sitting on a stool, head bowed. From time to time something fell onto the table, and he would snatch it up and stuff it into his mouth.

Without warning, the man suddenly raised his head. His cheeks were bulging, stuffed to the brim, the muscles seeming on the verge of bursting. He looked like a toad in a field.

His face was deathly pale, with no obvious wounds. What puzzled Fan Li most was his eyes: one was a cloudy white, like the eye of someone with severe cataracts, while the other was no different from a normal person’s, except that it held a cold, indifferent, inhuman gaze.

It seemed Fan Li had unwittingly trespassed into his territory.

The zombie’s calm features began to twist. It abruptly opened its mouth, and a streak of vivid red shot straight at Fan Li’s face.

It happened so suddenly that Fan Li did not even have time to react before he felt a blow at his waist. Then his whole body was knocked aside, while Ellie took his place.

With a sharp clatter, as though nails were striking the floor, Fan Li hurriedly looked up and saw the attack for what it was.

A string of buttons, tangled together, stained with a gum-like red viscous fluid. The long stream of slime remained connected to the inside of the zombie’s mouth.

Having failed to land the hit, the zombie drew in a hard breath, and the cluster of buttons, bound together by countless strands of slime, was sucked back into its mouth.

There were too many of them; some buttons spilled from its lips, and the zombie quickly reached out and stuffed them back in by force.

Only then did Fan Li finally understand that the sounds he had heard before had been the noise of buttons falling onto the table.

Ordinary buttons, spat from a zombie’s mouth, had unexpectedly become formidable weapons. Ellie had just blocked that strike with her hammer, and shallow pits were already visible all over the hammer’s surface.

If that blow had landed on him, even the flesh on his skin might have been torn apart.

Fan Li could not feel the pressure one would expect from a monster. Clearly, this thing was still in the midst of its mutation.

A creature with bizarre behavior and a strange appearance, even one capable of using “weapons,” was obviously out of place compared with an ordinary zombie.

It looked to be about thirty-five, with some premature white hair, a square face, and ordinary features. He wore the factory’s standard work uniform.

In the vast factory, he was unremarkable, merely one of the thousands of laborers struggling on the front line.

After the attack, the mutated creature did not attempt to press the assault. It stood where it was, a dim light flashing in its normal eye as it fixed Fan Li in place. Opening its mouth, it let out a roar like a beast.

It did not feel like the zombies Fan Li had encountered before, mindless things that knew only slaughter. Rather, it seemed to be roaring deliberately, trying to drive him away.

It stood before the workbench, arms spread, cheeks bulging and writhing from time to time, like a battered old dog guarding its pups.

A zombie protecting the machine that made buttons?

Fan Li frowned, feeling his mind unable to keep pace with the speed of his suspicions. Still, if Ellie had not been there just now, that so-called warning would already have killed him.

He was not about to remain calm. No matter how strange the creature’s behavior, a zombie was still a zombie—that much was beyond dispute. Fan Li pointed at the mutated body. “Ellie, smash it!”

Taking the order, Ellie bent her knees and sprang up in a flash. Those slender legs concealed astonishing explosive power. Before the mutated creature could even react, the huge hammer had already crashed into its chest.

Bang!

The mutated creature, still roaring, was cut off mid-sound. Its chest caved in under the blow, and a great many buttons burst from its mouth. Stripped of the viscous coating that held them together, the buttons rolled wildly across the floor. One of them even rolled to a stop beside Fan Li’s foot.

Bending down, Fan Li picked up the button. A layer of bloodlike substance clung to it, sticky and difficult to pull apart.

The button was utterly ordinary, nothing remarkable at all. In a factory this large, such buttons could be seen everywhere.

The mutated creature possessed vitality stronger than that of an ordinary zombie. Struggling, it managed to rise again. Compared with the scattered debris on the floor, Fan Li’s motion of holding the button up for a closer look was far more conspicuous.

A guttural shriek escaped it.

The mutated creature tried to pounce at Fan Li, but its cry suddenly caught in its throat. Its whole body flew up once more, then smashed heavily onto the workbench.

Ellie stood where she was, still in the motion of swinging the hammer.

The hammer was easy to use. After beating down dozens of zombies, Ellie had already become adept with it.

Bang!

Bang!

The sound of iron hammer striking bone rang out through the workshop. The mutated creature, which had been so ferocious only moments before, had its legs shattered by several blows and collapsed helplessly to the ground.

A pair of feet appeared before its eyes. It instinctively lifted its head and saw Fan Li holding up the button and extending it toward it.

“You want this?”

The zombie’s face was smeared with filthy blood broken open by the hammer. Its normal pupil flashed with dark light, fixed tightly on Fan Li.

“Smash it!”

Bang!

Standing by for orders, Ellie heard Fan Li and raised the fierce-looking hammer, bringing it down hard on the creature’s waist.

Crack!

With the sound of bones breaking, the zombie’s spine caved in completely.

The mutated creature let out a shriek unlike any zombie’s. It looked as if it knew it was enduring some kind of pain.

The curiosity in Fan Li’s eyes grew stronger and stronger. To verify his guess, he took another step forward and asked, “Do you want this button?”

Only its upper body could move now. Seeing Fan Li approach, the creature instinctively shrank its head back, offering no reply to his question.

“Smash.”

Bang!

From a medical standpoint, the creature’s left arm was now in the state of a comminuted fracture.

“Button.”

Fan Li said only the two words. To his surprise, the mutated creature had already learned its lesson by then. Its face, smeared with filthy blood, nodded rapidly.

“So it really can understand what I’m saying. It has some degree of awareness.”

The creature’s reaction entered Fan Li’s eyes, and the hand holding the button trembled visibly.

And at that moment, a line of blood-red text appeared in Fan Li’s previously gray-white field of vision.

[Monster, incomplete, critically wounded. Sealing conditions met.]
[Monster, incomplete, in extreme terror. Sealing conditions met.]
[Seal the monster, incomplete?]