Why Did You Abandon Me?

Zhang Xiaohou's face had gone blue.

He finally exhaled. If he'd held it any longer, he would have blacked out.

At that moment, the skeleton in front of him was staring at him with a blank, bewildered look — completely puzzled by when exactly someone had ended up behind it.

The rusty cleaver in the skeleton's grip lowered. It did not attack.

The one behind Zhang Xiaohou ignored him entirely, drifting aimlessly through the area — glancing at the distant black horizon one moment, then bowing its head to rummage through the soil for an arm bone it had dropped the day before...

**"Phewww——"**

Only then did Zhang Xiaohou let out a long, shuddering breath. The others, so tense their calves had been trembling, nearly crumpled to the ground.

*It worked!!*

Neither the skeletons nor the rotting corpses had mounted any attack. At most they gave the humans exhaling that strange odor a puzzled glance — but the Undead were a mindless lot. These weren't living things, so there was no reason to attack. For all they knew, the group was just foul-smelling mud.

Team leader Qin Hu raised his hand without a word, gesturing for everyone to maintain formation and press forward.

The group quickly fell in together again. At first they moved with taut caution, terrified something would go wrong — but as they passed close by the Undead and the creatures did no more than emit dull warning calls without lunging, everyone gradually let their guard down.

"If I'd known this trick existed, what was there ever to fear from the Undead?" Wang Tong was getting a bit full of himself.

"Gray garlic counts as a rare plant — you can probably find some on the black market, though not in large quantities. The village chief gave us everything they'd stockpiled of this 'vegetable'..." Shi Shaoju said.

"Either way, as long as we don't have to fight these things, that's fine by me. Once we find the survey team's remains, we can head back and hand in the mission." Bi Lu said.

"It seems like talking doesn't disturb them either."

The group discovered that conversation was safe — apparently, as long as everyone's breath was masked by the garlic smell, the Undead couldn't detect them at all.

But the further they pressed on, the more their hearts sank. Over this land shrouded in a black curtain of darkness, new Undead appeared with almost every few steps...

The density of Undead far exceeded their initial estimates. Within any given hundred square meters there were at least one or two — a frightening concentration. If you were to plot them on a digital map, the entire area would be saturated blood red.

As they continued, dozens upon dozens of rotting corpses appeared in a packed horde up ahead...

They were crammed so tightly they formed a wall of bodies, blocking the path forward. They stood there dragging their limbs at a slow crawl, emitting those nauseating moans.

Without living creatures to awaken their bloodlust, they were slow and purposeless — the very definition of walking dead.

"Just walk right through — they won't attack us anyway." Wang Tong laughed and stepped to the front.

But when Wang Tong was less than twenty meters away, the entire horde turned as one. The pupils sunken in their rotting sockets blazed blood-red in an instant, locking onto Wang Tong without blinking...

Wang Tong went rigid.

**"Urgh! Urrgh!! UGH-AAAGH!!!!!"**

The horde erupted in howls and surged toward Wang Tong as one.

A mass of corpses gave chase, dust churning, the stench of the Undead billowing out in a thick, suffocating wave!!

"Eat the gray garlic — now!!" Shi Shaoju screamed.

Fortunately Wang Tong reacted in time. He snatched a clove from his satchel and swallowed it whole.

The gray garlic worked almost instantly — the breath it produced nearly choked Wang Tong himself.

The horde had already closed in when they suddenly lost their target. Each one lurched to a stop, staring blankly at the next, looking utterly stupefied.

After a moment, the rotting corpses seemed to have entirely forgotten why they had charged in the first place, and resumed their aimless wandering.

Wang Tong stood right in the middle of the horde, frightened nearly to the point of soiling himself.

Once everything had settled, he let loose a furious tirade: "This foul, reeking thing — and its effect only lasts *that* short?!"

"We don't have much gray garlic left, and the effect doesn't last long. We need to move faster." Shi Shaoju said, brow furrowed.

Since Wang Tong's had worn off, the others were probably close behind — and so everyone consumed another piece of gray garlic...

The moonlight was cold and cheerless, hanging at its highest point to bear silent witness as death crept and writhed across the earth.

The ground was frigid yet restless. Every so often, some creature that had been "sleeping" too long would claw its way up through the soil and shuffle about like a homeless scavenger with nowhere to go.

When there was no living flesh to feed on, the Undead would scavenge whatever lay on the surface or dig up whatever was buried beneath. Severed limbs and shattered bones always had their uses. Sometimes one would excavate a cursed pit — prime real estate, in its own grim way — and if it nurtured that spot for a few years, it might just advance to become a greater Undead...

Having witnessed all of this along the way, the group could only describe it as a grotesque parody of everyday life. None of them could understand how creatures like these had managed to persist in the world.

**BOOM——!!!**

Without warning, the ground ahead erupted. Black earth churned skyward — a terrifying sight against the pale moonlight.

Caught in the upheaval were scattered human bones, tattered clothing, and Undead unlucky enough to be in the blast radius — pandemonium in every direction.

The shockwave shuddered through the earth. Moments later, an Undead the size of a bull heaved itself upright...

Its body emerged first — every inch covered in fully hardened corpse-flesh, impenetrable as armor.

Its four limbs were massively built, though no one could fathom what had been grafted onto what. Four arms in total: two had fused into enormous blood-crusted axes, while the other two had elongated into things resembling cavalry sabers. If all four started swinging at once, it would be like standing next to an industrial meat grinder.

"It's that Blade-Axe Corpse Commander!" Wang Tong cried, the color draining from his face.

"Has it been following us the whole time?!"

"Or maybe we've been in its territory all along!"

All eight instinctively stepped back. That Corpse Commander had been what nearly wiped out their entire group the last time they encountered it — and now the monstrous thing had surfaced again.

"Stay calm, everyone stay calm — we ate the gray garlic, it won't be able to sense us... Wait. Don't move. Whatever you do, *don't move*. The village chief said Battle-General-class Undead have very keen hearing — they can tell from our movements alone whether we're living or Undead. If we stand completely still, we'll be fine." Shi Shaoju said urgently.

Everyone remembered the village chief's warning. They all became statues, eyes wide with dread, staring at the Blade-Axe Corpse Commander.

Zhang Xiaohou never took his eyes off it. He noticed the Corpse Commander had no head — yet on closer inspection, it didn't look as though anything had severed it.

The others also noticed the Blade-Axe Corpse Commander looked subtly different from before, but no one dared make a sound — who knew whether even speaking might draw its attention.

*"Guu... gurgle..."*

A sound rose — like something forcing its way through flesh.

From the Corpse Commander's hollow neck stump, a disproportionate head slowly pushed itself out...

First came hair — black and matted with blood, a revolting sight — spreading across the Corpse Commander's neck cavity.

Then came the head itself, shaped much like that of a person.

And then...

The head rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees, suddenly revealing a face framed by wild, disheveled hair — drenched in blood, slick with viscera, radiating pure, venomous malice.

"Wh... why... did you... *abandon* me!!"

The mouth opened, and the words spilled out in a torrent of seething resentment.

Every last one of them felt their blood run cold.

The head that had forced its way out of the Blade-Axe Corpse Commander's body — it was unmistakably the face of the dead female officer.

It was Jia Xi.