To the Start of a New World

2.11

"Damn it!" Lu Hao grit his teeth. He struggled his way to his feet, like he was starting up a rusty machine.

The next time he saw that zombie, he was going to tear it to pieces.

That disturbingly human-looking zombie's attack had left him paralyzed for at least thirty minutes. In that time, anything could have happened to the girl Lu Hao had been trying to save.

Lu Hao fought against the numbness in his body and focused his senses. There was something strange about this fog: it was blocking his perception. Lu Hao couldn't find any trace of another person throughout the valley, not even a zombie. He couldn't even sense Hong Sheng and Zhang Luo in the truck. It was this reason why he'd been trapped in the forest with that zombie. But for what reason did the zombie trap him here, then abandon him without even killing him?

Lu Hao investigated the pile of corpses the zombie had left behind. Judging by the clothing, these were scavengers. Perhaps they'd even been making their way to the SG camp when they'd been killed. Lu Hao left them there. He didn't have time to bury their corpses.

Digging into his jacket pocket, Lu Hao unearthed the communicator. It had been radio silent this entire time. "Hong Sheng? Zhang Luo?" Lu Hao tried to contact his team, but there was no response.

Sense blocking and signal blocking. Whatever was behind this fog was powerful. Frustrated, Lu Hao put away the communicator. He had to break out of this strange area as fast as possible.

He realized that he'd been trapped in some sort of spatial loop. Only something with a powerful spatial ability could construct such a thing. It aggravated Lu Hao to realize this—how the hell could zombies of this magnitude set up camp this close to the SG base? He'd let his guard down.

But that just meant that when he got out of here, he had to eliminate these zombies with extreme prejudice.

A spatial ability user's domain wasn't infallible. It consumed a lot of energy, and harming the user was enough to make the domain falter. But Lu Hao suspected he wouldn't be able to find that zombie in this space, so he had to go with the second option of escaping—
—Destroy everything until the space broke.

Heavy bolts of lightning surged around Lu Hao's feet. When Lu Hao raised his head, his eyes sparked with blinding white energy.

A storm raged with Lu Hao in the center. Lightning shattered the earth and turned trees into ash. The world itself seemed to buckle beneath the rapid and powerful strikes. There was a veil desperately defending against the onslaught, but the lightning pierced the veil, and it burst.

Lu Hao stood in a forest.

There was a road several kilometers to the north. Zombies, all level six or below, ambled between the trees. There were no living humans in the area. The scent of smoke reached Lu Hao's highly-tuned senses.

One second, Lu Hao was in the forest. In the next few moments, he raced onto the road.

There had been an explosion.

The remains of the SG truck were still burning, the gas fire unwilling to go out. Burnt zombies littered the ground. They looked to have been blown up by an explosive. Lu Hao found Zhang Luo's corpse nearby. He'd been eaten and killed before he could turn into a zombie.

Hong Sheng wasn't here.

Lu Hao reached into the flaming remains of the SG truck with his bare hands and pried the door open. He didn't see a human body among the metal wreckage.

Immediately Lu Hao's eyes scanned the ground for tracks. They zeroed in on traces of a body being dragged. He found impressions of boots against the dirt—they were small. A girl's. And then there were two tracks: the girl's alongside a man's.