Chapter 675: Mud Buddha Crossing the River

“Fuck, Brother Duan, there’s… there’s a Big Guy up ahead! Stop! Stop the car!”

Zhao De’s exaggerated voice crackled through the radio—he sat in the passenger seat of Lu Yu’s vehicle, leading the way and scouting ahead.

Zzzz…

The bread van, packed to the brim with grain, groaned under its compressed suspension, as if it might not make it back to Tianma Yu.

Vehicles screeched to a halt, still over three hundred meters from the small group of zombies, not disturbing their meal.

“Bad luck again—we ran into another Big Guy. Isn’t it supposed to be one in a hundred normal zombies? This ratio doesn’t add up!”

“Normally it’s one in a hundred, but the scope’s unclear—like a village with three hundred zombies and not a single Big Guy, while the next village has only four zombies, and all four turn into Big Guys!”

“Fuck, your odds are harder than winning the lottery jackpot…”

People got out one by one, chatting among themselves, but no one looked nervous—they’d faced plenty of skirmishes on the way, and now that they understood their strength, their confidence had grown.

Hong Laosi stood at the edge of the crowd, clutching his homemade steel spear, silent and unremarkable.

“Stop overanalyzing—just deal with it. Those survivors were already unlucky; if they’d held on ten more minutes, they could’ve been saved…”

Duan Wu sighed—only four or five kilometers separated Honggou Village from here. If only they’d driven faster, if only they’d loaded the grain quicker, if only…

But there were no “ifs”!

More than one survivor had died—otherwise, thirty-odd zombies wouldn’t have been chewing away so long without looking up.

“Master Duan, what’s the plan—kill them or lure them away?”

Lu Yu asked.

“Captain Shen, what do you think?”

Duan Wu politely turned to Shen Lin, since they were cooperating across two factions—even though Shen Lin had let him take the lead all along, asking was still necessary.

“I think we should lure them…”

“Wait, Captain Shen—I… damn it, those victims are our camp brothers!”

Park Chan-yong, who hadn’t lowered his binoculars, whispered urgently, voice thick with grief: “I recognize our work boots!”

A shoe factory on the outskirts of Shanhai District had just received a big order for autumn-winter men’s work boots in early Q3, producing them fine—until the disaster struck.

Longtou Camp scoured for supplies like flipping pancakes, and unsurprisingly, they’d secured enough boots from that factory to last everyone in the camp for years—every official member who hadn’t committed a major offense got a pair.

Even officers like Shen Lin wore gold-tier thickened work boots, with better insulation.

It wasn’t that other survivors couldn’t wear them—just that the chance of anyone else wearing the exact same style and color was minuscule!

“Hand them over!”

Shen Lin took the binoculars from Park Chan-yong, studied them for a moment, then grimaced and sighed: “They must’ve been the brothers sent to scavenge in the village… damn.”

One of their main missions on this return trip was to find scattered camp members—they’d already encountered a squad before entering Shanhai District, but all that remained were fragments. “Avenging them!”

Fan Donglu, a burly man from Longtou Camp, clenched his weapon until his knuckles turned white, uttering only two words.

But his suggestion met no response from the others…

Shen Lin patted Fan Donglu’s shoulder and said: “Old Fan, right now we’re mud Buddhas crossing a river—I think we should focus on ourselves first.”

Revenge?

Was that something they should even be considering in their current state? The men from Shanhai didn’t support Fan Donglu, but they didn’t oppose him either—it was their internal matter, and they trusted Shen Lin to handle it.

Hong Laosi wouldn’t speak up either—he stood quietly, motionless.

“But Captain Shen… damn!”

Fan Donglu wanted to argue, but seeing his other comrades remain silent, clearly unwilling to stir trouble, he stomped his foot and gave up.

Shen Lin patted Fan Donglu’s back again to comfort him, then turned to Duan Wu: “Could you ask Xiao Wu to handle it?”

“Got it!”

Duan Wu didn’t hesitate—he nodded to Wu Lue.

Their tactics were well-practiced: one for killing, one for luring. Wu Lue launched the drone, swiftly drawing the zombies into the ruined village ruins—a kilometer away, they wouldn’t return anytime soon.

The vehicles arrived at the scene. From the scattered human remains, five victims were confirmed—traces led from the rice paddy embankment to the highway, clearly indicating they were from Longtou Camp’s scouting team.

“Our scouting teams usually operate in groups of five. They were fully staffed, but had no vehicle—they must’ve been trapped in some village by the shockwave. What a cruel twist of fate.”

Shen Lin picked up a relatively intact work boot, sighing deeply.

These men hadn’t died in the camp’s explosion, nor from the shockwave—yet in the end, they couldn’t escape the zombies.

“They didn’t have firearms?”

Zhao De scanned the area and asked.

Zhou Haiquan explained: “Originally, each scouting team was issued three guns. But after several teams kept losing weapons, an investigation revealed they’d been hoarding them… so Longtou completely revoked thermal weapon allocations for scouting teams.”

“Hoarding guns? What the hell were they planning? But canceling them entirely is too extreme!”

“Stop speculating…”

Duan Wu cut off Zhao De’s criticism of other camp leaders, glanced at the gruesome scene, and suggested: “How about… lighting a cigarette for the fallen brothers?”

The suggestion quickly won approval from Longtou Camp’s members.

After a simple memorial, no one collected the scattered supplies nearby—the vehicles were already at maximum capacity, each crammed to bursting.

They resumed their journey. The accident site was still twelve or thirteen kilometers from Shanhai District’s urban center, but Longtou Camp lay in the northeast corner of the district—they’d need to cross the entire city, adding another twenty kilometers or so.

They didn’t know that just a few kilometers after leaving, a tall passerby had cleaned up the “leftovers” the first wave of zombies hadn’t finished…

For some unknown physical reason, roads near Shanhai District were noticeably cleaner, though some sections still showed damage—nothing that slowed the vehicles, which gradually increased speed to forty or fifty kph.

The road was indeed easier now. Occasionally, dead trees toppled beside the path; farther out, the villages were utterly devastated—within sight, not a single intact house remained, all walls collapsed, not even a patch of ground to stand on!

At Honggou Village, at least half the houses were still standing, perhaps cracked but not yet fallen. But within ten kilometers of Shanhai District, the devastation was beyond words.

“Brother Duan, what exactly exploded? This is… too… too…”

Hong Laosi stared out the window at row after row of destroyed farmhouses, speechless, unable to find a word.

Duan Wu stayed silent too—if even the rural outskirts looked like this, he was already dreading what the city center must be like.

“They say it was triggered by a mutated zombie catching fire. Brother Hong, remember this: when you’re unsure, never use fire against zombies! Even regular zombies, once ignited, surge in power by over five times—unless you have absolute safety distance, never use fire. It’s terrifying!”

Seizing the moment, Duan Wu explained to Hong Laosi the effects of fire on zombies.

(End of Chapter)