"Heh heh—"
Rounding a corner, Huan Tian never expected to crash straight into a zombie's grasp. The zombie's eyes bulged wildly as its hands clamped around him, sinking sharp teeth viciously into him.
Crunch!
Huan Tian had no time to dodge but slammed his helmet hard against the zombie's biting jaws. The fierce impact shattered the zombie's bloody teeth, while his right fist smashed forcefully into the zombie's temple.
His raised fist, fueled with a strength level of 14, drove power into the zombie's brain, which instantly exploded into a messy pulp.
But the real threat was the horde behind that zombie—over twenty staggering figures shambling rapidly toward them.
"Stay close!"
Huan Tian released Lin Qingqing's tightly gripped hand. The Desert Eagle instantly materialized in his palm.
Chamber, raise, aim, squeeze the trigger.
Each move was fluid and precise, his eyes sharp and cold like a blade.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Relentless gunfire erupted down the corridor. Seven bullets tore through the crowd, and seven scattered zombie heads exploded almost simultaneously.
Then the Desert Eagle vanished in an instant. His hands flicked like lightning, drawing two bone knives. As he gripped them tightly, twin glints of deadly cold sliced into the zombie horde like the blades of a meat grinder.
The long bone knife in his right hand swung with wide, crushing arcs—each strike severing two or three zombies in half—while the short bone dagger in his left hand struck with lethal precision, stabbing the temples and eye sockets of any approaching zombies, killing them instantly.
Lin Qingqing's vision was suddenly drenched in dark blood. She stared in shock, her cherry lips involuntarily parting wider and wider in terror.
If the Huan Tian of the past was merely a skilled assassin who used tactics to take down zombies, then the Huan Tian now was a full-fledged god of slaughter—unstoppable and absolute.
With protective gear shielding his body and a helmet guarding his eyes and mouth from the infectious spray of zombie blood, this was the first time Huan Tian devoted himself entirely—body and soul—to killing.
And only when he surrendered himself wholly to the slaughter did he become what he truly was:
The Demon Hunter God.
A cold, lethal aura seeped from every inch of his skin, surging from every pore like a storm. His killing speed accelerated with terrifying momentum—at first, Lin Qingqing could still follow his movements, but soon her eyes could no longer keep up.
With 12 points in agility, Huan Tian now moved twice as fast as any first-tier zombie. To him, the zombies' attacks were in slow motion—before their jaws could even open for a bite, they were already dead, intercepted mid-lunge by his bone blades.
As Huan Tian carved a path forward, the walls and floor behind him were drenched in splattered black blood.
But it wasn't enough.
Still not enough!
Another swarm of zombies poured in—this time more than forty!
For a fleeting moment, Huan Tian's forward momentum faltered. But only for an instant—then the Desert Eagle reappeared in his grasp!
Now was the time to test the fruits of their training.
Clack—!
The empty magazine slid from the base of the Desert Eagle. As the fresh magazine clicked into place, the spent one had already been tossed backward.
"Got it!"
Lin Qingqing's focus was razor-sharp. Her left hand snatched the magazine out of the air while her right hand reached for the special pouch at her waist—inside were the fifty Nightmare Ammo Huan Tian had entrusted to her.
During those two days in the warehouse, spent slaying zombies, every spare moment was used to drill the skill of reloading empty magazines. Even in her sleep, her hand remained clutched around the magazine of the Desert Eagle.
But the grueling pace of their forced march had already pushed Lin Qingqing to the edge of exhaustion. She took a deep breath to suppress the fatigue weighing on her limbs and began loading the Nightmare rounds—but her arms were trembling from the sheer effort of staying upright.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Seven shots rang out. The leading zombies were down in a flash. The moment the empty magazine dropped from his hand, Huan Tian felt a familiar shape tap against his shoulder.
"Nice work!"
He snapped the fresh magazine into place with a sharp click, just as Lin Qingqing collected the spent one from the ground.
Another burst of precision fire—another seven zombies fell instantly.
Then: eject, reload, reload again.
Lin Qingqing was like a second pair of arms behind Huan Tian, seamlessly taking care of everything he didn't have the bandwidth to handle.
Letting out a harsh breath, she pushed forward to follow, but her foot suddenly caught on a zombie corpse, sending her sprawling to the ground.
The moment she hit the floor, all the accumulated exhaustion from nonstop sprinting and fighting surged through her body like a tidal wave. Her backpack now felt impossibly heavy, like a mountain pressing down on her back. Even lifting herself seemed almost impossible.
"Roar!"
A nearby zombie spotted her fall and veered around Huan Tian, jaws gaping as it lunged straight at her. Lin Qingqing could see the jagged, blood-coated teeth spilling from its split upper jaw, ripped apart from too much biting and gnawing.
A wave of despair crushed down on her.
But then—
Spurt!
With a crisp crack of bone, a white bone blade pierced clean through the zombie's open mouth, pinning it mid-air like a grotesque puppet.
The blade stopped just inches from Lin Qingqing's helmet visor.
Thick, blackened blood splattered across her visor. Huan Tian had already spun back around, grabbing her arm in one swift motion to pull her upright.
Without thinking, he smacked her hard on the butt with the flat of his hand.
"Focus," he growled, already turning back to the battlefield.
"Why are you spacing out? Move!"
But Huan Tian quickly realized that Lin Qingqing still hadn't snapped out of it. Though she was running, her movements were sluggish and unfocused—her mind still trapped in a daze.
Right now, her vision was stuck replaying the moment black blood had splattered across her face. Fragments of chaotic images flashed through her mind until suddenly, everything froze.
That black blood transformed into a monstrous six-legged black widow, its limbs twisted and flailing. A sharp, needle-like stinger was aimed straight at her chest!
Buzz!
A sharp jolt surged through Lin Qingqing's brain.
That six-legged black widow preferred to parasitize wombs, but that didn't mean it was limited to wombs!
Everything started after they killed that terrifying black widow. These creatures—they were likely all hosts that had been parasitized. Just like wasps, they were furiously seeking vengeance for their fallen kin!
As she thought deeper, Lin Qingqing's face turned deathly pale.
Why were those zombies so desperate to get to the 36th floor, willing to be trampled just to charge forward?
Why did the number of zombies start thinning out from the 40th floor onward?
There was only one explanation—
The 37th floor had already become the nest of parasitic mutants!
Zombies who didn't want to be parasitized were frantically fleeing, and the rest?
They had already become offspring of the nightmare.
This entire floor… was likely a living, breathing hell of infestation.