Chapter Ninety-Three: A Bloody Storm

How fast could an R3 really move in battle? No one had ever truly kept count. Its sprint speed might have been only a few dozen kilometers an hour, but the instant it burst forward, it often left behind nothing more than a fleeting afterimage. Anyone it swept past usually ended up either split in two by its claws or smashed into a shapeless pulp by the force of its swipe. This time, its goal was not simply to feed on the irresistibly tempting flesh before it, but to slaughter the people fleeing out of the base in a frenzy.

The R2s had only made it down the mountain a few minutes after the R3s, yet in those few minutes, the three R3s had turned the slopes into a scene from a blood-soaked hell. Countless severed limbs were strewn across the wasteland, and body after body, robbed of its head, still poured out blood. Some of the rolling heads had been cleaved in half; others had been smashed beyond recognition. On some corpses, the R3s’ sharp teeth had torn away huge slabs of flesh, exposing the brightly colored entrails beneath. Under the R3s’ savage assault, what they brought upon humans was not infection, but true death.

"Dammit... I'll fight you to the end!" one burly man roared madly. His submachine gun was spraying rounds at an R3 that had just smashed a woman into a pulpy ruin not far away. He no longer had the luxury of caring that all around the R3 people were panicking, desperate to escape.

Bullets flew at the R3 like a storm of rain, and blood blossoms burst and splattered into the air in an instant. To the man’s horror, those bursting red sprays did not come from the monster at all, but from the human beings beside it. Several unlucky victims, their eyes wide with disbelief, slowly toppled over. The man’s burst of fire had left each of them with several bloody holes.

"Ugh..." Sensing a faint sting on its body, the R3 lifted a claw and drew back, leaving the terrified woman in front of it, who had already fainted from fear, unharmed. Then it turned with a roar and charged straight at the burly man.

The man stared dumbly at the onrushing R3. Its speed was so sudden that before he could react, its claw had already swept across his throat. His head flew high into the air, spinning as it spewed a spray of blood, then crashed to the ground and rolled into the grass.

When Yang Xingjun finally understood what had happened ahead, his face went deathly pale. Looking at the people scattering in panic, some trying to break through the R3s’ slaughter, some trying to flee back toward the base, and others running around like headless flies, he saw the whole scene collapse into utter chaos under the attacks of the three R3s and ten R2s.

After hesitating for half a minute, Yang Xingjun suddenly shouted, "Push through! Keep moving forward!" Even if they withdrew to the base now, it would already be too late. With the vast convoy and the chaos all around, there was no way to turn around and head back.

He began to regret why he had bothered about the survival of the hundreds of thousands inside the base. If not for the confusion here, he would already have left this place long ago.

But regret was useless now. More than fifty or sixty thousand people were crowding this immense stretch of wasteland, and with only those few zombies, no matter how fierce they were, it was impossible for them to completely block such a massive evacuation. Thinking of this, Yang Xingjun understood that escape was not impossible. And even if they did run into trouble, the soldiers under his command were not to be compared with those surviving civilians.

At his roar, the leading light laser tanks started up again and surged onto the road, ignoring the terrified people in their path.

Though called light laser tanks, they still weighed thirty-five tons. Under the relentless advance of those tanks, anyone blocking the road shouted curses and leapt aside. Some who were too slow to dodge were mercilessly dragged beneath the tracks and crushed into a mass of gore.

Faced with such an all-out, savage force, everyone stared in disbelief.

It was this bloody suppression that emptied the road. No one dared step onto it again. Who knew whether the charged laser emitters would sweep over them? As for resistance, just looking at the weapons in the soldiers’ hands made it feel like suicidal madness.

Once the road was clear, the entire convoy rolled forward again without even needing another order from Yang Xingjun.

How swift was the R3’s killing? In that dense sea of humanity, every movement, every leap, every impact it made took a life. At times, a single charge could send several people flying beneath its sharp claws and fangs. It could even be said that the R3 had evolved for slaughter alone. In just a few minutes, the three R3s and ten R2s had cleared out a huge vacuum. Across that empty stretch, severed limbs and broken arms lay everywhere, forming a thick carpet.

The massive convoy’s engine roar caught the three R3s’ attention. All at once, they turned and charged toward the vehicles. The panicked people blocking their way were instantly slaughtered as the monsters carved a bloody path through them. Wherever they passed, limbs flew, and bodies fell.

From inside the command armored vehicle, Yang Xingjun had never seen such ferocious monsters before. Realizing that their target was precisely the convoy he was in, his heart sank. He shouted orders to the leading light laser tanks: "Aim at the three monsters ahead and kill them!"

The light laser tanks, which had already finished charging, locked onto the rampaging R3s at his command. Brilliant red light lit up on the tanks’ turrets, and red laser beams as thick as a man’s arm burst forth.

R3s were nothing like ordinary zombies. Everything about them not only gave them a sense of danger, but also a terrifying level of perception. They could naturally sense the threat from the nearby machines. So the instant the light laser tanks fired, the three R3s nearly simultaneously hurled themselves sideways, dodging the beams that would have dealt devastating damage.

Startled, the R3s moved even faster, their bodies seeming to drag afterimages in their wake.

Laser weapons were unlike beam cannons in that they did not fire in an intermittent burst. Their sustained output made them even more powerful at certain moments. Missing the first strike, the light laser tanks’ turrets began to move rapidly, dragging the laser beams with them as they swept across the battlefield like streaks of light.

Under normal circumstances, this was undeniably the right way to pursue a target. But the commander in the light laser tank had clearly forgotten that all around the R3s were panicked human beings, packed so tightly together that their density was even greater than a line of students doing calisthenics at school.

So when the laser beam swept sideways, countless people caught in its path were severed at the waist like wooden planks cut by a machine.

Screams of agony erupted all at once. Those sliced into two were still alive long enough to let out shrieks that tore at the sky, while watching with their own eyes as the seared edges of their wounds were burned by the laser’s extreme heat, then vaporized layer by layer, before they fell into endless darkness.

A smell of scorched meat drifted through the air. Under the mad sweeping fire of several light laser tanks, the space ahead within several hundred meters was filled with bodies cut into two or even several pieces. The human flesh, cooked by the high temperature, gave off thick steam, shrouding the entire upper air in a haze of heat.

"Hiss..." The slaughter, so cruel it defied humanity, left everyone stunned. Even Yang Xingjun, who was used to blood and iron, could not help sucking in a cold breath. If such a price could kill the R3s, then in Yang Xingjun’s view it would all be worth it. But through the thin veil of heat haze, the three fearsome R3s were still advancing with horrifying speed. Despite that frantic barrage, not a single shot had struck them.

The R3s were not far from the light laser tanks. In just a few breaths, while everyone remained frozen by the bloody spectacle, the agile figures of the R3s had already sprung from the ground like eagles diving from the sky, plunging straight toward the light laser tanks that had just unleashed that storm of carnage.