Chapter Eighty-Six: Preparing for Battle

The migrations of humankind also drove the migrations of evolved beasts. Iron Pillar and Hubble, leading their subordinates, would set out from the base from time to time, and each return brought back all manner of strange evolved creatures. Some were dead, some alive. The dead naturally became rations, while the living were penned up in the underground city for breeding. There was no fear that these newly discovered evolved beasts could turn the world upside down, for the one guarding them was Hammer, already a seventh-tier zombie. With his strength, even after another year of growth, these beasts might still not be his match.

At the mountain summit, a gigantic banner had been raised on a flagpole ripped from the school grounds, standing atop the peak. The huge character for "Sacred" towered there; even a human who was not an evolver could make it out clearly from the foot of the mountain, and evolvers could also see the slightly smaller words beneath it: Peerless Warrior.

Through Lily's mouth, the name of the Holy, Peerless Legion had already resounded through the ranks of the Human Allied Army. Given Ma Yi's present strength, people felt he deserved the title of "sacred," and in private they had quietly begun to call him the Peerless Corpse King. In the hearts of these people, Ma Yi was now the embodiment of justice, and even the Heavenly Demon Army and the Heavenly Courage Army under him had been spread far and wide by Lily's word to the humans who came seeking intelligence.

Compared with the name first chosen just for fun, Hubble now, as a fearsome existence, truly matched the prestige of his title as Heavenly Demon General. Iron Pillar was the same; by now he had the strength to make humans remember the name of his Heavenly Courage Army's Loyal and Brave General. Not long from now, whether the Heavenly Demon Army or the Heavenly Courage Army, they would become the strongest barrier on which human survival could rely.

Once that barrier collapsed, the day of humanity's extinction would not be far off.

The Holy, Peerless Legion could not possibly compare in numbers with those zombie hordes numbering in the hundreds of millions, but in quality it was already unquestionably the most powerful existence. After so long of relentless training, every warrior in the legion had mastered Shockwave, and with continued training, those zombies who had originally joined the legion at only fourth tier had now mostly advanced to fifth tier. The warriors in the underground city who had reached fourth tier were also selected before being absorbed into the legion to replenish its strength. As for those fourth-tier fighters who were not chosen, they appeared under the name of reserve troops.

According to Ma Yi, the legion would henceforth value quality over quantity. Only those who possessed a decent level of strength would qualify to join. Unless there was a need, the legion would not expand its numbers again. This ensured the superiority of the warriors within it. Though these zombies might not feel any sense of superiority, nor would they object to any of Ma Yi's arrangements, rules were rules, and once established, they still had to be kept.

Standing atop the mountain, Ma Yi could see that the two great camps below, which had once shone with a golden brilliance, were now pitch-black. Though many golden zombies still remained among them, he believed that in time, these golden fellows would all advance to the level of fifth-tier zombies.

To help his warriors make better use of Shockwave in battle, Ma Yi even assigned Chasing Wind to gather weapons for them. Once a zombie's strength reached the fifth tier, ordinary objects were no longer very suitable, but after so long, Ma Yi finally found something that could replace those brittle metals: beast bones, specifically the leg bones of evolved beasts.

As evolved beasts advanced, their bones evolved as well. In density, quality, and hardness alike, they were far beyond what ordinary steel and metal could compare with. With these hard, heavy bones, the effect of using Shockwave was remarkably good.

Especially those leg bones from which the marrow had been hollowed out: when using Shockwave, their power was even a little greater than that of solid leg bones. In a life-or-death struggle, even a single point of extra power could decide victory.

Chasing Wind's task was to gather these hard evolved beast leg bones, hollow them out, and then distribute them according to rank from highest to lowest. From that day on, these weapons would belong to them alone, and they would have to cherish them themselves.

Many zombie soldiers even painted strange patterns on their bones to prove that the weapon belonged to them, just like what a soldier in peacetime might do.

Iron Pillar and Hubble each had weapons of their own as well, though theirs were made by their own hands. To find bones large and hard enough, the two of them had fought to the death with a giant elephant thirty meters tall. Putting aside the elephant itself, even in peaceful times it would have been rare to see an elephant in a zoo, and no one knew how the two of them had found it.

Two tusks more than five meters long now rested in Ma Yi's courtyard, presented as a gift to him.

The leg bones of the evolved elephant certainly did not end at those two. The remaining huge bones were handed over only after much reluctance at Ma Yi's request, and there were six massive bones, each five meters long, which Ma Yi intended to reward to the warriors who later distinguished themselves most in battle.

After all, just think about it: being able to wield the same weapon as a general—wouldn't that allow one to boast richly among one's peers? It carried with it, invisibly, the aura of swaggering bravado. Of course, anyone who could obtain such a giant bone weapon was declaring themselves a terrifying existence in battle, absolutely the sort who could stand against a hundred alone. Most importantly, ordinary low-ranking warriors could not even make use of such a leg bone, so those who earned this honor would surely be the great squad leaders of sixth tier or above.

As for Ma Yi's side, he had prepared very thoroughly. Far away in the northwest, on the open land, large numbers of zombies were fleeing in disarray. Nearly every one of them was wounded. There were many zombies in the country, and quite a few high-tier ones too, but compared with enemies who had survived battle after battle, their combat experience was far too sparse. In the end, despite their overwhelming numbers, they remained at a disadvantage.

The battle on the front line was still ongoing. The moment a corpse king's side suffered losses, the enemy corpse king would instantly seize control of the soldiers beneath it. A force that had once been allied would, in the blink of an eye, turn on itself, and the carnage needed no description.

At the center, where the highest number of elite zombies were gathered, on a large platform carried by several giant zombies, a towering corpse king watched the distant battle with a sharp gaze. The instant their own side slew the opposing corpse king, she would release her spiritual power at once and take control of the lower-ranking zombies, whereupon those lower-ranking zombies would begin to defect.

All the way here, she had met no true rival. To her, it was as if she were the ordained sovereign of this world, seated high above, looking down upon the many elite zombies surrounding her feet. Her blood surged. By the time beings reached their level, intelligence had arisen once more, and where there was intelligence, there would be ambition. What she wanted now was to become the world's one and only king, to rule everything in it.

Whether human, zombie, or evolved beast, all would exist beneath her command. Anyone unwilling to submit would be killed without mercy. The obedient would prosper; the defiant would perish. Such had been her thought as she fought her way here, and even now there was no corpse king anywhere she had passed who was worthy of her personal action. They were all too weak. She did not even know why she had been pushing eastward all this way. It was as though, in some unseen way, once she reached the far eastern edge, she would encounter something that stirred her interest.

At the very moment when the army of hundreds of millions of zombies was advancing eastward in ordered fashion, Ma Yi, far away in the villa district, was not idle either.

From the accounts of soldiers who had fled from the northwest, Ma Yi had obtained precise figures. What he would soon face was not a zombie army of a million, or several million, or even tens of millions, but one exceeding one hundred million. What sort of notion was that? Merely thinking of it was enough to make one's scalp tingle with dread. If one person killed a thousand zombies a day, then one hundred million zombies would require one hundred thousand days to exterminate—nearly three hundred years. How long could a human live? Three hundred years. Even at Ma Yi's current level, if he killed one hundred thousand a day, it would still take more than a thousand days, nearly three years. It was an utterly terrifying number.

To better contend with such an enormous horde, Ma Yi was not without strategy.

First, five kilometers west of Ma Yi's villa district, the vast rat-zombie horde was constantly digging deep pits. These newly added corpse rats were reinforcements Chasing Wind had specially captured in the wild and sent back overnight to the rear hills of the villa. Through the tireless efforts of Iron Pillar and Blossom, they had become a new force. In Ma Yi's eyes, the role of these first-tier corpse rats even surpassed that of fifth-tier warriors.

The deep pit was thirty meters wide, and that was a restriction: low-tier zombies simply could not leap that far. Only fourth-tier and above could clear thirty meters. Nor was the pit a perfect square. At the top it had a thirty-meter opening, but at the bottom it was at least one hundred meters wide, shaped rather like a triangle, so that the zombies falling in could not climb back up along the edges.

The sand, gravel, and soil excavated from the pits were not wasted either. Near the ditch by the villas, they began to pile up, and masses of earth and stone formed a terraced rampart several dozen meters high. The side facing the pit was extremely steep and difficult to climb, while the other side was quite gentle. To prevent the corpse tide from taking a detour, every fifty meters above the pit a connecting span was left in place, linking the two sides so that one could walk across freely, though it was only three meters wide. On both sides of each span were pits a hundred meters deep, and beneath the span itself was hollow space, making it look a little like a floating bridge.

The first line of defense stretched a full fifteen kilometers, nearly sealing off every route from the west toward the villas, or toward the direction of humanity. Of course, taking a detour was possible, but it would mean skirting two rivers. The waters were no peaceful realm either. There were already countless mutated fish and aquatic insects starving there, and this feast delivered to their door would not be refused. These creatures were formidable as well. From Ma Yi's repeated observations, insects of the same rank were actually stronger than zombies of the same rank. In front of such insects, humans amounted to little more than an appetizer.

The second line of defense stood only two kilometers from the villas. This time, he simply encircled the entire villa and dug a moat more than two hundred meters wide. How deep this moat truly was was hard to say, but this single ring alone caused the water level of a river more than fifty meters wide to drop by a full thirty centimeters.

Ma Yi personally took action, capturing large numbers of high-level mutated fish and aquatic insects and releasing them into the moat. Thus, with such simple means, the second line of defense became the final barrier of Ma Yi and the villa district. If the zombie army crossed that moat, then Ma Yi would have no choice but to lead his men into a desperate fight to the death.