Chapter 44: Fierce Battle at the Pier

My name is Chihiro. Chihiro stuck out her tongue playfully, Zhao Qiang, I will remember you. Be careful yourself. As soon as the voice finished, Chihiro vanished into the jungle of containers.

Chihiro? What kind of name is that these days? Is she Japanese? Zhao Qiang shook his head, casting those messy thoughts aside. That intimate contact had distracted him a little, but now that the girl named Chihiro had finally left, he could finally concentrate on dealing with those creatures.

Come on! Zhao Qiang gripped two brand-new Kukri knives in his hands. He could no longer remember how many blades he had gone through. After every battle, the weapons he carried with him invariably turned into scrap iron. No matter how fine the steel or how sharp the edge, after hundreds or thousands of consecutive chops, they would all become utterly useless.

Holding off the assault of hundreds of zombies did not seem like too difficult a task to Zhao Qiang, even with numerous Crushers and zombie dogs mixed in. The most headache-inducing problem was the mastermind—that coward hiding in the shadows who dared not show its face, yet was capable of elevating the combat effectiveness of the zombie horde by several tiers.

There you are! Through the scope, Zhao Qiang had firmly locked onto the head of a Crusher. His remaining ammunition was limited, so every single bullet needed to maximize the return on investment.

With a deafening boom, the muzzle of the Type 97 assault rifle spewed an orange-red flame. A 5.8-millimeter caliber bullet roared out of the chamber at a speed of 920 meters per second. In less than a second, the modified projectile drilled spinning into the Crusher's skull. In an instant, the Crusher's head burst open like a smashed watermelon, shattering into countless fragments with a sharp snap.

The gunshot shattered the serene night sky, turning the zombie's ambush into a frontal assault. Accompanied by the thunderous collapse of the Crusher's massive body, the zombies, which had been marching in silence, finally erupted into their signature roars. The zombie dogs no longer restrained their pace, howling as they lunged toward Zhao Qiang's position.

Zhao Qiang did not change his position. Although this was a sniper's cardinal sin, the enemy possessed no snipers capable of threatening him, and even the fastest zombie dogs required over a dozen seconds to reach his current sniping perch. Therefore, Zhao Qiang could safely utilize this time differential to eliminate as many high-threat Crushers as possible.

In a mere dozen seconds, over a dozen Crushers in the zombie horde were mostly wiped out, and only then did the zombie dogs appear behind Zhao Qiang. Without looking back—and with no need to do so—Zhao Qiang directly discarded the empty-chambered rifle, snatched up the Kukri held close at hand, and slashed backward.

The result of a collision between a Kukri and a dog's head could only be one thing: the oversized canine skull being cleaved directly in half by the razor-thin blade. Requiring almost no physical effort of his own, Zhao Qiang merely needed to swing lightly, and the zombie dog's own tremendous momentum would split it cleanly into two halves of meat.

Having dispatched the trailing zombie dog, Zhao Qiang instantly leaped to the side. The moment he vacated his sniping perch, a series of booming concussions erupted from behind him. The Crushers' ranged attack had arrived. The containers that had been intact a moment before were now reduced to countless shards of steel; under the barrage of the Crushers, the containers were as fragile as paper.

Ignoring the commotion behind him entirely, Zhao Qiang shifted his weight and slid down to the ground through the narrow gaps between the containers. Shielded by the containers, the Crushers' ranged attacks lost their targets, but Zhao Qiang's own combat operations were severely hindered as well.

Everyone had their own habits, and Zhao Qiang had his own accustomed fighting style. By combining precise, lethal strikes with agile and swift footwork, he could weave freely through the hordes of zombies. Yet within this container yard, the densely packed containers not only restricted the zombies' paths of advance but similarly limited Zhao Qiang's mobility.

The traps left behind here earlier by Chihiro and her companions played an unimaginable role. The zombies had no way of knowing that those thin metallic wires could be lethal assassins. Attracted by the commotion Zhao Qiang created, the zombies poured frantically into the dense trapfield until dozens of them were inexplicably sliced in half. Only then did the mastermind hiding in the shadows make adjustments, designating the Crushers as the vanguard.

Before the Crushers, such compact and vicious traps were simply inadequate. Their massive bodies and solid muscles easily barreled through all the suspended metallic wires, and within moments, every single trap was destroyed.

Gradually, Zhao Qiang found his rhythm for fighting in such confined spaces, shifting his blade techniques from chopping to direct thrusting. Every strike pierced from a tricky angle, targeting the zombies' eyes. Wei Tao had once stated that the neural center truly responsible for movement in the human brain lay directly behind the eyes, no larger than a walnut. This was also why snipers rescuing hostages held by criminals bore such immense psychological pressure: only by striking that tiny area could the criminal be instantly silenced without reflex-driven nerve spasms that might harm the hostage.

The number of zombies did not decrease despite Zhao Qiang's efforts; more and more converged from all directions. The mastermind's objective was crystal clear: since the ambush had failed, a frontal assault was also a viable option. After all, the one thing the world was never short of was zombies.

Zhao Qiang's battles grew increasingly arduous. To buy Chihiro and her friends more preparation time, he was forced to contain the battlefield within the container zone. As the number of zombies continuously swelled, he had to expend ever-greater energy to ensure not a single creature breached this front.

Gradually, the pathways between the containers became completely clogged and jammed with the corpses of zombies. Treading upon these soft, yielding bodies severely tested Zhao Qiang's balance and adaptability. Moreover, the massive, flailing arms of the Crushers nearly filled the entire passage, leaving Zhao Qiang with less than a second to repel the zombies on the opposite flank if he wished to escape unscathed.

This time, Zhao Qiang's luck ran out. Two Crushers blocked his path head-on. With no other choice, Zhao Qiang hurled one of his Kukris like a flying knife at one of the Crushers, using the momentum to slip through the gap beside it and dodge the thunderous strike of the other.

The plan Zhao Qiang formulated in a split second was sound, but the mountain of piled corpses reminded him that opportunities lasted only an instant. Miss it, and what was lost might be life itself. The pile of zombie corpses was unstable; the moment Zhao Qiang stepped down, he sensed something was wrong. Even though he adjusted his center of gravity in time, the thrown flying knife lost its accuracy. The Kukri grazed the top of the Crusher's scalp and instantly embedded itself into the container wall behind it.

Damn it! Cold sweat poured down instantly. Zhao Qiang had no confidence in his ability to withstand a thunderous blow from a Crusher head-on, let alone the combined strike of two. He could even feel the suffocating wind pressure generated by those massive arms.