Chapter 119: Chapter 107: The Predator’s Craving for Food

Murderous intent flashed in Oscar Owen’s eyes. The surrounding wind, as if sensing his purpose, swirled eagerly around him. Several vortexes of wind before him rapidly disintegrated, transforming into an innumerable swarm of tiny wind blades.

Before Hayden Winters could even react to the murderous intent in Oscar Owen’s eyes, a flurry of Wind Blades had already savaged him, shredding his cheeks, forehead, chest, thighs, waist, and the artery in his neck.

By the time he realized what was happening, his consciousness was already beginning to fade.

Oscar Owen stood close to Hayden Winters, his clothes and face splattered with gushing blood. The blood was warm, its bright red a shock to the eyes. His own heart began to pound, lodged high in his chest.

His face covered in blood, Oscar Owen turned to look at Jane Monroe. He was about to speak when he saw Jane suddenly wave her hand. A ball of water struck the burning tent. The flames diminished but were not extinguished.

’I wanted to be the hero of the moment, to make Oscar Owen grateful to me. But who would have thought my Water Element superpower was so weak? I can’t even extinguish a normal fire—one no longer controlled by a superpower user—with a single ability.’

She looked at the way Oscar Owen was staring at her, and her ankles gave out. She nearly fell to the ground and would have if Sasha Gable hadn’t been there to support her.

Realizing she had not only failed to impress but had actually made a fool of herself, Jane Monroe didn’t dare to speak. She watched as Luna Thorne, Leigh Atwood, and a few of the men present grabbed the basins and bags she normally used to store water and began to fight the fire. She, too, continued releasing her superpower to help douse the flames.

Without a superpower user controlling it, the fire was no different from an ordinary one. After the blaze was extinguished, everyone looked at Oscar Owen with lingering fear.

Murder. This wasn’t a zombie being killed, but a living, breathing person. These people, who hadn’t awakened any superpowers and had been cowering in corners since the apocalypse began, suddenly shuddered.

But no one dared to speak. In the apocalypse, the weak survived by depending on the strong.

Becoming strong was the fundamental rule of survival in the apocalypse.

Although Phoenix City was only a third-tier city, its population was nearly eight million. It had been over ten days since the apocalypse began. Even if there were still people hiding in the urban areas, their chances of survival were slim.

Eight million people. Aside from a small number who had already escaped, everyone else was now locked forever within this small city.

From a public hospital in the center of Phoenix City, an ear-piercing shriek suddenly erupted. The sound was like the grinding screech of a failing machine, and it cut through the background clamor, reaching every corner within a hundred kilometers.

As the shriek gradually faded, a woman in a blue-and-white striped hospital gown appeared at the entrance of the hospital’s inpatient ward, slowly shuffling her way out.

She had reddish-brown hair, a color likely dyed before the apocalypse. The blue-and-white hospital gown made her face look abnormally pale and sickly. A splint was still strapped to her leg, suggesting a pre-apocalypse injury from some accident. The stub of an IV needle, the kind used for hospital patients, was still in her arm. The blood that had seeped into it had turned black and coagulated inside the tube.

She lifted her head to the sun, her unnaturally pale face completely expressionless. Her eyes, lit by the sunlight, had no pupils—only a tiny, vertical slit, like a cat’s eye in the light.

She looked at her own kind wandering aimlessly before her inside the hospital, then suddenly stood still, opened her mouth, and threw her head back with another shriek.

"KRAA!" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

A few zombies wandering nearby suddenly seemed to find a purpose, and they all began sprinting wildly toward her.

A dozen or so zombies, as if given some kind of command, surrounded the woman and then stopped, standing motionless with their heads bowed.

The long-haired woman extended a pale, skeletal hand and plunged it into the top of the nearest zombie’s skull. She pried its skull open as easily as popping the tab on a soda can. Then, she reached into the zombie’s head and, with a single grab, pulled out a translucent, sparkling Crystal Core.

Under the sun, the woman opened her dark purple mouth, revealing jagged, animalistic fangs. She stuffed the Crystal Core into her mouth, chewed for a moment, and swallowed.

The zombie whose Crystal Core had been extracted collapsed instantly, its short, undead existence brought to an end.

The zombies surrounding her were completely oblivious to their fate, waiting like moths to a flame for the woman to "grace" them with her attention. Before long, a large number of zombies lay fallen around the woman, every one of them with the Crystal Core dug out of its head.

After feasting on the Crystal Cores, the woman’s body underwent a change. Though her skin was still a sickly pale, it was no longer as stiff as before. She seemed to notice this change herself. She excitedly moved her neck, curiously examining the IV needle in her arm and the splint on her leg, then let out another shriek.

A predator’s hunger is often innate. They know how to stand out from the competition and become stronger.

It wasn’t just the hospital in Phoenix City. Strange phenomena were suddenly appearing in certain places all over the world.

Many densely populated areas had been completely wiped out in the early days of the apocalypse. But high-level government officials from various countries, using satellite positioning, discovered something strange: in certain zones within these areas, large numbers of zombie corpses had suddenly appeared. Their heads were empty—the Crystal Cores and brains were gone, leaving only stiff, hideous bodies.

Lex Cross and his thirteen-member special forces team, along with Micah, Mervin Warren, and Tianna Bloom’s family, were traveling in two large military trucks from Sinia City. They came to a sudden stop at a highway entrance outside Phoenix City.

"Captain Cross, what is it? Why did we stop all of a sudden? Is something wrong?" Micah had been on high alert ever since he started traveling with Lex Cross and his team, never once letting his guard down.

They had driven all the way from Sinia City and had been attacked once by a small zombie horde. There were over two hundred zombies in the horde, even more than they had encountered that night in Varden Village.

Without a high-level zombie to lead them, a horde of any size was like a pile of scattered sand. Lex Cross simply told the civilians to stay in the trucks. His thirteen-member team got out, and in just over half an hour, they had eliminated all two hundred-plus zombies and harvested their Zombie Crystal Cores.

After dealing with the horde, they thought the rest of the journey would be smooth sailing. Phoenix City was on the way to Argent, a necessary stop. But who would have known that on the road to Phoenix City, they would find a section of the road that had been completely broken by a large transport truck lying across it. Most of the cars on either side had fallen into the resulting cracks in the collapsed pavement.

With no other choice, Lex Cross and his team had to turn back toward Sinia City and take a longer route. They drove for over a day before getting back on a road that led to Phoenix City. Along the way, they stopped at a gas station to refuel, clearing out a dozen or so zombies both inside and out. They encountered another wave of zombies while scavenging for supplies at a farm with fields on the outskirts of a town. Before reaching Phoenix City, they didn’t encounter a single living person.

Most of the highways and side roads were blocked by vehicles of all sizes, and zombies were gathered everywhere, from the city centers to the suburbs. With several people who had no superpowers in tow, they didn’t dare take the main roads into any cities. It was two days later when they finally reached the outskirts of Phoenix City.

The journey from Sinia City, which should have taken only a few hours, had stretched into two full days. This forced Lex Cross and his team to stop and re-evaluate. But at that moment, Lex Cross got out of the truck, frowning as he stared in the direction of Phoenix City. Three of his men—Five, The Crown Prince, and another nicknamed Racoon—leaped into nearby tall trees to get a look at the city.

"Boss, why is Phoenix City so quiet? I can’t see a single zombie."

Five’s superpower was the Wind Element. He suddenly created two small vortexes of wind under his feet, which lifted him into a tree closer to Phoenix City, where he continued to observe.

"Something’s not right, Boss. I remember we resupplied at the small base in Phoenix City before we went to Sinia City. There were a lot of people stationed there back then. It doesn’t make sense for the camp to be empty after just a few days, does it?"

Listening to Five, Lex Cross’s brow remained tightly furrowed. The situation in Phoenix City looked grim. He wondered if anyone from that camp had survived.

If even the people at the camp didn’t make it, then Phoenix City might already be a dead city with no living souls left.