Chapter 79: Nightfall
The cold hit harder the second we stepped outside.
Not the kind of cold you could avoid with a jacket or a bit of movement. The icy chill seeped into your bones, and the filthy stench of rusted iron, mildew and old blood didn’t help either. A heavy air filled the night, wet footsteps muffled but the faint, damp shuffle of things moving somewhere in the dark.
Mu Qinglan led, her boots whispering over broken concrete, body low and fluid like a cat ready to kill. Shen Yifei stuck to my side, tighter than I liked, but I let it slide. Fear wasn’t a sin tonight. It was survival.
We moved fast but quiet, weaving through the wreckage of Longwan’s corpse. Burnt-out cars. Shattered storefronts. Places that once buzzed with life and now served only as traps.
A soft click to my right — Qinglan raised a fist, signalling a stop.
Three infected stumbled out from a wrecked electronics store. Their jaws hung slack, skin rotting in the places their nails had clawed too deep. The closest one twitched toward the noise of Yifei’s breathing.
I slipped forward before it could scream.
One hard stab under the jaw — through the mouth, into the brain. The zombie dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Qinglan took the second. A clean downward strike crushed its temple. The third barely had time to turn before Yifei jabbed her spear through its eye, feet slipping slightly on the slippery ground.
She grunted, pulling the weapon free, with blood spattered across her leggings.
I watched her for a half-second. Shaky. Scared. But still standing.
"Move," I said quietly.