Still hoarding supplies in the apocalypse? I'll just go on a killing spree and looting!

Team Leader Song looked up at the window, his eyes narrowing slightly as he remained silent.

In the square where he couldn't see.

A huge sheet of paper, pieced together and glued together, was laid on the ground. Each sheet was two meters in size.

Each card has only one word, which, when put together, reads: Let's talk.

Beside this huge inscription are two chairs, a sunshade, and a tea set on a simple table.

If the observer were in the sky, they would be able to spot the conspicuous lettering on the ground.

Lin You, driving her SUV, had already traveled about seven kilometers along the road.

Having left the Dongba area of ​​Z City, we are not too far from the area where the strange beasts gathered, as mentioned by Team Leader Song.

The wind blew from both sides of the road, swirling up fallen leaves and garbage bags from the road surface.

The distant mountain ridgeline appeared exceptionally clear in the morning light, like a knife slicing across the horizon.

Scattered buildings began to appear along the roadside: a car wash, abandoned houses, and a hardware store with half of its facade collapsed.

Most of the doors and windows had been pried open, and the ground was littered with broken glass and rusty parts, with the occasional dried animal carcass.

There was a faint smell of decay mixed with the scent of plants and grass in the air.

A memorable apocalyptic feel.

Lin You slammed on the brakes, and the SUV came to a stop on the road.

Mu Xue immediately became alert, raising her shotgun and looking around warily.

About two hundred meters ahead, at the bend in the road, there were two vehicles stopped. One was a white van, its front end angled towards the roadbed, its front wheels stuck in a drainage ditch.

The other vehicle was a black SUV, lying across the middle of the road, with large claw marks on its side, more than one centimeter deep.

It looked like the side of the car was swept away by some giant claw, tearing it apart.

There were no animal carcasses around the vehicle.

There was no one there.

After confirming that there were no other alarming sounds around, Lin You jumped out of the car and went to a spot about ten meters from the accident site.

He crouched down, keeping his line of sight level with the ground, and scanned the marks on the road surface.

Tire tracks, footprints, and marks left by something heavy being dragged led into the fields by the roadside.

The marks weren't fresh; they were probably from a day or two ago.

"There's blood." Lin You frowned as she looked at the dark brown stain and said in a low voice.

Mu Xue followed her gaze. The driver's side door of the white van was open, and there was a dark brown stain on the inside of the door, which had dried completely.

"Cover me," Lin You said, already drawing her mantis knife.

Mu Xue followed behind, feeling her way into the weeds on the outer side of the road.

The two men did not approach the two vehicles, keeping a distance of about ten meters from them, and crossed over a dry field ridge.

Lin You pushed aside the waist-high weeds and stepped into the dried-up drainage ditch.

The soil beneath my feet was as hard as bricks, cracked with spiderweb-like patterns.

Lin You bent over, holding two mantis knives in reverse, with the tips pointing outwards, her vision low.

It's like a leopard lurking and approaching its prey.

Compared to Lin You, Mu Xue appeared much clumsy, only able to lower her body and look like a Japanese soldier entering a village.

"The right side," Lin You said softly.

Mu Xue turned her head to look to her right. At the bend of the drainage ditch, a patch of wild grass lay flattened, as if something had rolled down and pressed down on it.

Lin You had already approached the area and was using the back of her knife to clear away the weeds.

Two human corpses were piled up at the bottom of the ditch.

A man and a woman, the woman on top and the man on the bottom, as if they were thrown in by something.

The weather was hot at the end of June, and the corpse was already emitting a foul odor. The skin had an unnatural grayish-white color, and the exposed limbs were covered with lacerations.

It wasn't a knife wound, but bite marks and claw marks, with jagged edges, as if it had been repeatedly torn.

Lin You squatted down, held her breath, and looked carefully for a few seconds.

"He died recently, so the body is still relatively fresh," Lin You said, frowning. "My assessment of the wound condition and degree of decomposition is correct."

"Did a strange beast do this?" Mu Xue asked, suppressing her nausea.

"Yes." Lin You gently lifted the female corpse's arm with the tip of her knife, turned it over, and examined the wounds on the inside. "Forelimb bites, torso tearing... the attack method is consistent with the habits of a dinosaur. But there's a problem..."

Lin You paused for a moment.

"Dreadbeasts are the lowest-ranking predatory beasts. Obtaining food is not easy for them; they won't just bite a few times and leave it. They will drag their prey away until they are completely devoured. These two corpses are left here, as if something interrupted their meal."

Mu Xue gripped the shotgun tightly in her hand.

"What interrupted our feeding was another, even stronger force." Lin You stood up, shifting her gaze from the ditch to a more distant area. "Keep searching; there must be some traces left behind."

They walked about twenty meters more along the ditch.

After rounding a collapsed embankment, Mu Xue suddenly stopped.

The ditch widened into a shallow depression here, filled with murky water covered with a layer of green algae and broken leaves. On the edge of the depression, in the semi-dry mud, lay the corpses of several strange beasts lying haphazardly.

"...Six bodies." Mu Xue counted. "No, seven. One of them is submerged in water, with only half of it showing."

Lin You walked over and circled the edge of the depression, carefully examining the cause of death of each of the strange beast corpses.

Some had their necks broken, some had their skulls smashed by some kind of blunt object, and some had their necks cut open—the cuts were clean, a single, clean cut, without any extra marks.

"These people were murdered," Lin You said, frowning.

Mu Xue paused for a moment, "A person?"

"There should be more than one person." Lin You pointed to the cut on the neck of a strange beast corpse. "This cut was made from top to bottom with great force; it should be male, over 1.75 meters tall. This one…,"

Lin You pointed to the head wound of another beast, "It was hit by a hard, heavy object that shattered the skull. It was most likely a flail or a heavy hammer, probably from someone else."

"Are they still nearby?"

Lin You didn't answer. She squatted down and placed her hand directly on the corpse of the monstrous beast.

Disassemble, activate!

As the green glow spread, the corpses of the terrifying beasts quickly disappeared.

As Lin You returned to the country road, she glanced back at the village in the distance.

Perhaps those people haven't left yet. Should I go over there?

After hesitating for a moment, Lin You still didn't plan to go over and say hello. Although the apocalypse had just happened, many people still maintained their old ways of doing things.

But there are always exceptions; some people will quickly degenerate into plunderers.

The more powerful a person is, the faster they can fall into depravity.

Back in the off-road SUV, we left the village far behind and turned onto narrower country roads.

Although it would be a longer route, Lin You felt that the loss of time was acceptable in the face of potential risks.

The farmland on both sides of the country road has long been abandoned and overgrown with waist-high weeds and shrubs.

Occasionally, a low-level beast would dart out from the depths of the grass, but upon hearing the roar of a car, it would run far away, showing no desire to even approach.

These herbivorous beasts are truly at the very bottom of society.

Any slightest disturbance will cause them to quickly move away, whether it be a human or another predator.

They walked another five kilometers before noon.

We came to the edge of a dry ditch, about three meters wide, with cracked silt and gravel exposed at the bottom, and reed-like wild grass growing on the riverbed.

A concrete bridge spans across it, its surface so narrow that only one car can pass at a time.

Across the bridge stands a solitary two-story building, its exterior walls covered with mostly peeling white tiles, revealing dusty, gray cement.

A clothesline was strung in front of the building, with several washed clothes hanging on it, still dripping water.

This means there are living people.