Just as Wang Dajiang was repeatedly hitting a wall, the progress of Xiao Fan's base vehicle had already been completed halfway.
Inside the middle school campus, the chief engineer Ma Dun wiped the sweat off his brow, a smile on his face.
"Report to the commander that the base vehicle is over halfway done. Tell him to prepare to clear the roads in advance. This thing can't be transported by train - it's even heavier than a train."
Inside the campus, a massive metal vehicle had already taken shape.
Thirty meters long, ten meters wide, and three meters tall.
Underneath were huge metal treads that could reduce the pressure the base vehicle exerted on the roads.
An all-steel structure, its body reflected a dull black light.
Now that the exterior facilities were basically complete, only the interior details remained.
Of course, those details were no simple matter either - it would take at least another ten days before the vehicle could be completed.
The communications officer received Ma Dun's orders and immediately contacted the communications officer on Xiao Fan's side.
Upon receiving the report, Xiao Fan's side immediately dispatched troops to begin clearing the road from Kaoshangnongchang to Yanyunshi.
The base vehicle had to travel this route, so they had to ensure its safe passage. In addition to the necessary security forces, they also had to clear the roads in advance. Otherwise, it would be an arduous journey.
Both sides began working simultaneously, even if the infrastructural construction had to progress a bit slower, to ensure this task was done properly.
********
Yanyunshi Agricultural Products Market.
After the trade fair, the market grew quieter for a while.
Only Li Dahai's subordinates remained, with the survivors numbering only around fifty.
The rest had scattered and pledged allegiance to other leaders.
Most of the fifty or so remaining were armed fighters.
They didn't work anymore, subsisting through looting and robbery.
If they could scrounge up some food, they would live another day. If not, they would rob other survivors, as they knew the locations of many survivors.
They didn't accept ordinary survivors, except for women.
After all, for a group of grown men, women still had some use.
That night, the armed fighters were eating and drinking in a building at the agricultural products market.
The food wasn't great, just vacuum-packed rations. The drink was beer.
There was no shortage of alcohol in this apocalypse, and since beer had a short shelf life, they drank it while they could.
The armed fighters bared their chests, guns tucked in their waistbands, hair disheveled, women in their arms - debauchery and decadence.
It was like one final bout of madness.
But they never could have imagined that just twenty kilometers away, a massive disaster was brewing.
There, in a town that had become a ghost town in Yanyunshi, a place with a population of over fifty thousand, there was not a single survivor!
If a helicopter were to film the area from above, this is what it would see:
In the town center, a public square for residents' leisure.
Surrounding the square were teeming masses of zombies!
Countless ordinary zombies swarmed, howling endlessly, wave after wave of foul wind blowing through, deterring even birds from passing overhead.
The number of ordinary zombies had surpassed fifty thousand!
And within the ring of ordinary zombies was an inner circle of over a thousand mutated zombies.
Level one mutants, level two mutants.
These zombies patrolled the inner circle, separating the core area from the outer ring.
The ordinary zombies feared these mutated zombies, staying outside the inner circle. The zombie horde had a clear hierarchy.
Further inward in the core area, agile zombies covered in fine scales crouched, surrounded by massive iron-armored zombies.
There were nearly a hundred of these level three mutants, a force that would be an absolute disaster for any survivor group.
At the very center was an empty area.
In the empty area stood a table, where one zombie - Li Nanfeng - sat drinking wine.
Li Nanfeng took a bottle of expensive red wine and drained it in one gulp.
After finishing, he lit a cigar.
A female agile zombie approached, clumsily trying to light Li Nanfeng's cigar with a rigid claw holding a lighter, but failing to ignite it.
Li Nanfeng looked at the agile zombie with disgust.
This was the most attractive female zombie in the entire horde.
He had specifically found her a dress to wear and applied makeup layer after layer to her face.
Now dressed and made up, the female zombie didn't really look like a zombie anymore.
More like a ghost.
If he hadn't spent these past few days with the horde and grown accustomed to it, he might have vomited at the sight.
But now he couldn't vomit - after becoming a zombie, he had lost his sense of taste.
The fine wines and cigars were just for show, a constant reminder to himself that he was human, not one of these disgusting walking corpses. He lived in fear of the day his mind, too, would become like a zombie's.
So he didn't eat raw flesh and blood, but he also couldn't cook, subsisting each day on human food to stave off hunger.
Finally unable to tolerate the female zombie's inability to learn the simple task of lighting a cigarette, Li Nanfeng kicked her away and lit the cigar himself.
His gaze fell upon a massive zombie standing over two and a half meters tall beside him.
This zombie was at least three times thicker than an ordinary iron-armored zombie and twice as heavy, clearly on a whole different level.
Its features had changed as well, resembling a terrifying giant bear.
Li Nanfeng looked at this zombie, mutated to the highest degree, and his face finally showed a hint of satisfaction.
His raspy voice spoke slowly, like the sound of a rusted machine.
"Lu Leader... now you at least look like a leader."
"I'm growing impatient. I think we can go get revenge on Xiao Fan."
"But before that, I'll let you have another feast."
Li Nanfeng's gaze turned towards the agricultural products market in the distance.
"Heh... hehehehe!!!!"
He didn't seem very good at laughing - his laughter was awkward and rigid.
But he persisted, laughing so hard his shoulders shook, a chilling laughter.
He was laughing at his past, laughing at his present, and laughing at the future of those who had mocked him.
Had he lost?
No, he felt he had won!
In the darkness, Li Nanfeng's eyes glowed an eerie red.
The laughter stopped abruptly, replaced by an emotionless cold voice.
"Humans! I'm coming for you!"
The zombie horde of at least sixty or seventy thousand, like an army emerging from hell itself, began moving slowly towards the agricultural products market!