Chapter 66: Slaughter
After leaving Austin with a difficult problem, Bai Mo refocused his attention on the zombie dissection samples before him.
After struggling for a few minutes, Austin finally decided to remain where he was and try for a while.
"Mr. Bai," Austin requested softly, "I... I was wondering if you happen to have a text version of the {Martial Edict}. All my electronic devices that stored it were completely destroyed by the strong radiation."
He heard her but didn't reply, simply pulling out a handwritten copy of the {Martial Edict} from his suitcase and tossing it casually to Austin.
"Thank you!" Austin cradled the handwritten {Martial Edict} as if it were a treasure, found a corner, and began to read it word by word.
In the time that followed, Bai Mo continued to dissect the zombies that endlessly came to their deaths, discovering that each one had a similar small stone in its brainstem.
"During the recent scan, I didn't find such a stone in Austin's brainstem, though her brainstem seems to have already completed Spirit Energy conversion... Could it be that whether one retains sanity after zombification depends on whether the brainstem can successfully undergo Spirit Energy conversion? If so, could I accelerate the Spirit Energy conversion of my own brainstem by devouring these energy crystals?" Bai Mo's mind started to wander again.
"Though extracting them from zombie brains is a bit disgusting, their safety factor should be quite high. They aren't produced by the T-virus, but are simply products induced by a mixture of radiation and Spirit Qi. Moreover, no living creature would produce toxins within its own brain. These stones are at least harmless; it's worth a try."
After weighing the pros and cons, Bai Mo took a crystal from a sample bag and swallowed it as if taking medicine, paying no mind to the fact that it had been extracted from a human brain.
"It seems I'm too powerful compared to these zombies, so the effect isn't very significant. However, I can make up for it with quantity. If I kill all the zombies in Rome, that should be enough."
With that thought, Bai Mo used his telekinetic force to pulverize all the surrounding corpses.
With a resounding boom, the recently dissected zombies transformed into a sky-filling rain of blood and gore, splattering everywhere. Austin, who was studying the Martial Edict in a corner, poked her head out to check the situation, only to be splattered across the face by the blood rain. After she wiped her face clean, she discovered that Bai Mo had already departed.
Before Bai Mo's carpet-bombing radar search, Rome's zombies met their apocalypse. Fortunately for them, they had no sanity and thus knew no fear.
He was busy for half a day, killing over five hundred zombies, though most of that time was spent on searching. As soon as he found a zombie that had lost its sanity, Bai Mo would directly destroy it from the inside with his telekinetic force. Lacking a Life Field, they remained far too fragile when faced with telekinetic force acting from within.
Many streets and alleys throughout Rome, under Bai Mo's brutal massacre, were carpeted with burst flesh and blood, not a single relatively intact corpse to be found. It was truly a hellish slaughterhouse.
Every time Bai Mo exploded a zombie, he would use his telekinetic force to dig out the brainstem stone and place it in his pocket. Soon, he found that all the pockets in his clothes couldn't hold his haul, so he simply started eating them as he killed.
"After half a day, the effect is quite remarkable. My brainstem has completed approximately fifty percent Spirit Energy conversion, but my physical constitution seems to have hit a bottleneck. This many energy crystals only strengthened me a little; most of the released Spirit Energy was used to replenish the consumption from the great slaughter."
"Of the over five hundred people I encountered today, fewer than twenty successfully passed this stage without losing their sanity. This proportion is too low." Bai Mo left no one alive except those who still possessed their sanity. And with his movement speed, these people couldn't even clearly see Bai Mo's appearance, only feeling a gust of strong wind sweeping past.
After realizing their situation, the survivors in Rome began to gather. Because a large area of nearby zombies had been completely eradicated by Bai Mo, the survivor team encountered no zombies on their journey, only continuous scenes of carnage.
Not long after, the team of over ten people, now assembled, discovered Austin sitting and reading.
"Are you a survivor too?" the team's temporary leader asked Austin.
"Yes, are you as well?" Austin put down her book, stood up, and retorted.
"You still have the leisure to read a book?" one person in the team asked.
"What else is there to do if not read?" Austin retorted again.
"Aren't you planning to search for food, and then leave this living hell?"
"Food is everywhere. Everyone's dead anyway, so when you need it, just go anywhere and take some. And as for leaving... haven't you noticed that the Spirit Qi level here is particularly high?"
"We were so busy searching for companions along the way that we didn't pay any attention to that. Miss, may we exchange some information?" The leader realized this woman seemed to know a great deal.
"Of course. All of this was told to me by someone else."
"First, you don't need to worry about your appearances. According to that person, we are among the few who successfully endured the zombification mutation. We've essentially ascended to heaven in one step, becoming physically enhanced Ability Users. Those who didn't endure have all turned into mindless zombies, and your epidermal injuries will heal completely within half a month."
"Second, the closer you get to the center of the explosion, the higher the radiation, and the greater the possibility of us losing our sanity again. However, correspondingly, the Spirit Qi concentration level is also higher. This point was also told to me by him."
"Finally, these zombies, if nothing else, were all killed by that person." Austin pointed to a few puddles of blood and gore around them.
"Miss, do you mean that a powerful Ability User told you all this, and then all the shattered blood and gore we saw scattered along the way were the work of that person?" the leader asked.
"I don't know how many he killed exactly; I only know that these few puddles here are his masterpieces," Austin explained.
"We encountered hundreds of similar blood and gore puddles along the way..." the leader said faintly.
"That madman who doesn't treat people as people... anything is possible with him." Austin said, a hint of lingering fear in her voice as she thought of this. "But it seems he showed mercy; otherwise, you all would have already become minced meat."
"I survived simply because he discovered I still possessed my sanity and was a creature capable of communication. That's all."
Comments