True Apocalypse Game

Shen Feng frowned, having already drawn the Bullet Shield Gun from his back. He instantly pulled the trigger.

A steel ball shot out, sending the zombie flying backward, the top half of its head shattering on impact.

Two more shots rang out. The two zombies behind the first were also taken down with headshots, but even more zombies smashed through the door and rushed in!

Judging by their clothes, they were the same zombie horde Shen Feng had seen attacking the survivors earlier.

’I didn’t expect them to come back.’

Shen Feng’s brow furrowed. He pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it, simultaneously rushing to the balcony and leaping straight down from the second floor.

BOOM! A loud explosion sent the zombies that had rushed into the room flying. The few in the center were blown to pieces, and most of the others were knocked to the ground by shrapnel.

Weighed down by his heavy gear, Shen Feng landed hard, right in front of the three Mexican survivors.

Seeing Shen Feng appear, the three men first raised their guns in unison, then stared in astonishment as they got a clear look at him.

"A person from Hua Country? You saved us?" Reyes asked in surprise, lowering his gun.

Elu, still wary, pointed at Shen Feng and said,

"Kid, where’d you come from? Brothers, be careful. We’re screwed if he’s one of those Symbiote freaks!"

Colin nonchalantly pushed Elu’s gun down and said with a smile,

"I’ve never seen a zombie that can carry this many weapons, not even a Symbiote... Friend, thanks for saving our asses back there. Otherwise, we’d have been eaten alive by those things by now."

Shen Feng paid them no mind, instead turning to look back at the second-floor room he had just jumped from. His expression was grim as he spoke,

"This isn’t the time for thanks. I don’t know what these ’Symbiotes’ you’re talking about are, but those things are already back..."

As he spoke, the zombies that had been blown to the ground were dragging their mutilated bodies back to their feet. Even with massive wounds blown into them and their intestines spilling onto the floor, their expressions were unfazed, as if it wasn’t their own bodies being destroyed.

All the zombies wore strange smiles on their faces. More zombies with similar smiles were already emerging from the ends of the street, surrounding the four of them.

The zombies didn’t attack immediately. Instead, they advanced slowly, as if psychologically torturing their prey.

A zombie in a suit, likely an office worker in its previous life, shuffled forward and spoke,

"You are..."

Another zombie, a young woman, opened her half-rotten lips and continued,

"Can’t escape... You will be..."

A zombie dressed as an elementary school student spoke next,

"Sacrificed to the great..."

Then another zombie,

"Shen Feng..."

These dozens of zombies, each stumbling around just like a normal zombie, had suddenly begun to converse rapidly.

Each zombie spoke only a few words, but they linked together at high speed, forming complete sentences.

"Shen Feng requires..."

"A... sacrifice..."

"Requires pain..."

"He will rule..."

"This world..."

"Poor living..."

"Must die..."

"Struggle..."

"Is useless..."

A strange electromagnetic field was forming around them. Shen Feng scanned the slowly approaching zombies, listening to the complete sentences formed from their different voices and tones, and said grimly,

"I think I understand what you mean by ’Symbiote’ now..."

He now understood completely. After the zombies’ own brains had atrophied, their ability to receive and transmit signals had been enhanced. Their original consciousness was erased, but they were now using their own signal transmission network to maximize the remaining brainpower of each zombie. By linking together, they had formed an entirely new consciousness!

A Symbiote that shared a single consciousness!

At this moment, every single zombie had become something like an organ or a limb for that powerful Symbiote consciousness.

Some were responsible for combat, some for defense, some possibly for communication, and they might even develop entirely new skills.

It could be said that this Symbiote was a completely new form of life!

Shen Feng also finally understood what that small cluster of a dozen or so zombies he had encountered before was.

That had also been a zombie Symbiote, just nowhere near as powerful as the one before him, which was composed of over a hundred zombies.

"Hua Country man, if you have any more weapons, use them now! Once they surround us, we won’t be able to escape!" Elu roared, aiming his gun at a zombie.

The zombies were still closing in. They were in extreme danger; they could be torn to shreds and devoured at any moment!

But now, they didn’t dare to open fire, afraid of completely enraging the zombie Symbiote. A hundred zombies would swarm them at once, devouring them completely.

Shen Feng’s eyes narrowed, his expression chilling.

’I still have a grenade launcher and plenty of ammo,’ Shen Feng thought. ’If I activate my petrification combat form, I can easily break out of this encirclement. But if I do that, these three survivors I just found will be completely finished.’

The zombie Symbiote drew ever closer, the electrical senses connecting them growing stronger and stronger, like an invisible net trapping Shen Feng and the others inside.

Shen Feng understood that this communication network was the very reason for the zombie Symbiote’s existence.

It was the foundation of its consciousness.

Just as the enemy was about to completely close in, Shen Feng suddenly had an idea. He spoke to the three survivors beside him in Spanish,

"In a moment, I’m going to interfere with the Symbiote’s consciousness. Then I’ll use grenades to clear a path and we’ll break out. You have to stay close! Also, who can drive?"

The three of them, Reyes and the others, exchanged glances. Reyes quickly raised his hand and said,

"I can! I used to be a taxi driver!"

"Good..." Shen Feng’s eyes narrowed as he pulled a fist-sized fragment of a Sacrificial Stone from Spider Nest City out of his backpack.

His Silicon-Based Brain instantly fired an electromagnetic wave at the Sacrificial Stone fragment. The special stone immediately released a powerful electromagnetic turbulence, disrupting all nearby wave transmissions.

The zombies, who had been closing in with ferocious smiles, suddenly showed looks of pain. They all clutched their heads, momentarily stunned.

"Now!" Shen Feng shouted, pulling the trigger and firing two grenades. BOOM! BOOM! Two loud explosions blew several zombies on the path ahead to bits. He then took off, sprinting back the way they came.

The three survivors behind him had no idea what was going on. They were shocked to see the zombie Symbiote suddenly halt. With no time to think, they broke into a full sprint after Shen Feng.

’We have to get out of here. Maybe, just maybe, this mysterious man from Hua Country can actually save us!’

The four of them ran, occasionally looking back and firing to take down as many zombies as possible and thin out their pursuers.

Behind them, the zombies making up the Symbiote had already recovered. A horde of them let out a furious roar and gave chase.

The foundation of the Symbiote’s consciousness lay in the highly mutated brains of the zombies, which could transmit and receive signals. Once that connection was severed, the Symbiote consciousness would "die" in an instant, leaving only ordinary zombies.

Therefore, the Symbiote consciousness was furious, driven nearly insane with rage.

The "combat division" of the zombie Symbiote—several of its strongest zombies—was now wielding clubs, knives, and pipes, shrieking as they relentlessly pursued them.

"Where... where are we going?" Elu asked, panting as he ran.

He glanced back and his heart sank. The zombies were catching up!

Reyes and Colin were also gritting their teeth, guns in hand, running for their lives. The fact that this man from Hua Country had managed to temporarily disable the zombie Symbiote had completely won them over.

Shen Feng ignored his question and continued to run silently at the head of the group.

Four humans ran in front while a hundred zombies chased from behind. As the zombie Symbiote let out strange shrieks and calls, more and more zombies joined the pursuit. Soon, hundreds of them were stampeding down the street, forcing the group to constantly fire at those charging them from the front.

In the blink of an eye, the four of them had run a full block. A fried chicken shop was right in front of them.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Shen Feng rushed inside.

The three survivors glanced at each other. Seeing no other option, they gritted their teeth and followed him in.

They didn’t have the stamina to keep running anyway. They could only hope the defenses here were strong enough to let them escape the Symbiote’s pursuit.

After rushing inside, the three of them slammed the fried chicken shop’s door shut.

About ten seconds later, the pursuing zombies reached the entrance. They smashed the door open and poured in. In an instant, dozens of the Symbiote’s zombies had swarmed into the fried chicken shop.

Just then, a sudden BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! erupted, accompanied by the crisp, almost musical clatter of metal shell casings hitting the floor.

A storm of heavy machine-gun fire then erupted from within the shop, shattering the glass and punching holes through the walls!

The zombies that had just rushed in were instantly cut in half at the waist or had their heads blown off, losing all mobility in a flash.

BOOM! After a tremendous crash, a Toyota semi-truck mounted with a heavy autocannon smashed through the fried chicken shop’s window and onto the street. Bits of flesh and gore hung from its front bumper. Reyes and Elu were in the cab, while Shen Feng stood expressionlessly behind the autocannon, aimed the barrel at the dense horde of zombies in the street, and pressed the trigger.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! ...

Thumb-sized shells swept out, tearing the zombies’ bodies apart, reducing them to clumps of mangled flesh and gore!

Colin stood beside Shen Feng, feeding the ammo belt and reeling in shock.

’I thought he was leading us here to hide,’ Colin thought, amazed. ’I never imagined he was leading us straight into a semi-underground armory to find a Toyota semi-truck mounted with an autocannon!’

The variety of weapons in that armory was mind-boggling. There was even an armored vehicle, a Mortar, and several RPGs capable of firing rockets!

"Hahahahaha! Die! Die!"

"Kill all these Symbiote monsters!"

Elu and Reyes, also firing from the cab, shouted at the top of their lungs.

Against this kind of heavy firepower, the flesh and blood of ordinary zombies was nothing. They were like paper dolls.

Soon, the hundreds of zombies lining the street had all been cut down. Most had large chunks of their bodies missing, were severed at the waist, or had their heads blown off. Not a single one was left standing.

Unlike the steel-like zombies in movies and on TV, when real flesh and blood was hit by firearms—especially heavy weapons like machine guns and autocannons—it was basically like tofu being hit by a sledgehammer. The sheer force could blast flesh into pulp.

But the zombies’ vitality was terrifyingly tenacious. Dozens of them that had been blown in half were still crawling on the ground with their hands, each one spitting out a few words to form coherent sentences.

"The sacrifice..."

"Cannot..."

"Escape..."

"The Tree of Nothingness will..."

"Revive..."

"Shen Feng will become..."

"The King... of Kings..."