Chapter 1 Escape

Hearing the sound, everyone stopped immediately. The brawny man was also startled. He had been so focused on stopping the others that he had forgotten about the problem with his own door.

"It's alright!"

Li Chenzhou raised his arm and waved it gently, saying, "You don't need to be so easily alarmed. It's good to be cautious, but you don't have to scare yourselves. The commotion those zombies made banging on the door earlier will have already attracted any nearby zombies."

Before Li Chenzhou could finish speaking, a zombie suddenly ran out of the residential area's entrance and rushed towards them.

The others looked at the zombie, then at Li Chenzhou, none of them daring to say a word.

Li Chenzhou hadn't expected that a zombie would pop out to slap him in the face before he could even finish his sentence. His lips twitched. He stepped forward to meet it, and just as the zombie reached out to grab him, he deflected its arm and plunged his dagger into its skull.

"Even if there are any left, there won't be many!"

After killing the zombie, Li Chenzhou pulled out his dagger and let the zombie's corpse fall to the ground, adding, "I need to save some face, right?"

"L...Leader!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Duan Lei pointed behind Li Chenzhou, towards the entrance of the residential area, stammering, "Maybe... maybe we should find a place to hide?"

Li Chenzhou was stunned, but he soon heard the roars of zombies coming from behind him. He quickly turned around and was shocked to find that thirty or forty zombies were rushing out of the residential area's entrance in a continuous stream.

"Damn it!"

Li Chenzhou couldn't help but curse. When had he become Cao Cao?

"Quick! Get inside!"

Turning back, Li Chenzhou pointed at the brawny man who was standing dumbfounded at the door with the iron gate open, and shouted.

The others reacted immediately. Duan Xue was the first to grab Duan Lei and rush to the door, pushing the brawny man, who was blocking the entrance in a daze, inside first. Then, they both entered the ramen shop.

Leopard and Gray Bear followed closely behind, but when they reached the door, they both stopped at the same time, turning to look at Li Chenzhou, who was the last one remaining outside.

"Get inside!"

Li Chenzhou shouted again, then turned around and killed the fastest-running zombie, pushing its corpse towards the zombies behind it. He then turned and charged into the ramen shop.

Leopard and Gray Bear finally entered the ramen shop, and Li Chenzhou arrived just in time. After entering, he immediately turned around and closed the iron gate with a grating sound.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

Just as he closed the iron gate, the zombies arrived, slamming into it one after another and making a loud noise.

"Get out of the way!"

The brawny man finally reacted and shouted, pushing through the crowd to reach the door. He took a padlock and locked the iron gate, finally breathing a sigh of relief before retreating to the back.

"Why are there so many zombies?"

Duan Lei noticed that Li Chenzhou was looking at the zombies at the door with a solemn expression and thought he was feeling embarrassed because of what he had said earlier, so he quickly tried to divert everyone's attention.

"This isn't much! There are more behind!"

The brawny man said with a wry smile, then pointed to the back, "Almost all the shops in this row are restaurants. At night, we set up food stalls. Because we're not allowed to put tables outside on the street, we all opened back doors and put the tables in the residential area."

When Li Chenzhou heard this, he immediately walked towards the back. As he passed the counter, he suddenly sensed something and turned to look at the counter on the right.

A little girl, only seven or eight years old, was hiding inside the counter, looking at him timidly.

The little girl was very beautiful, with a delicate face. She was wearing a white dress, and her big eyes were watery. She was holding a handmade doll that looked similar to her.

When Li Chenzhou saw the little girl's face and the doll in her hand, his body suddenly shook violently. His brain exploded as a series of images from his previous life flashed before his eyes.

These images were all extremely bloody, and the background was always a massive horde of zombies. At the center of each image was a petite figure with long, flowing hair, dressed in white, holding a girl doll - the Youming Shi Wang (Netherworld Corpse King)!

This was a name that made all men tremble with fear in his previous life. Even hearing these four words would cause an instant change in expression, and an endless fear would well up in their hearts.

The Youming Shi Wang was, of course, a zombie, and a smart corpse king at that. Unlike other enhanced zombies, she didn't like to stay in cities. Instead, she often led a horde of about 100,000 zombies around.

In his previous life, about a dozen small bases were destroyed at her hands. But strangely, she and the zombies she led never killed children, women, or the elderly, only adult men.

Furthermore, the men who fell into her hands were all tortured to death. It was said that each man's death would last at least three days, enduring more than 70 hours of torment before finally dying in agonizing screams, without even the chance to become a zombie.

Because the Youming Shi Wang liked to extract men's bones, and while they were still alive, extracting all the bones from their bodies one by one, and then assembling them in front of them.

The most incredible thing was that those men would not die, even if only their skulls remained. They could still see the terrifying corpse king piecing together their bones to form a headless skeleton.

Every camp destroyed by the Youming Shi Wang was like a hell on earth, bloody, terrifying, and filled with white bones. Next to them were pools of men's corpses that had been stripped of all their bones, like human skins, with only their heads still intact.

As for the elderly, children, and women, they would be left in the camp by the Youming Shi Wang to fend for themselves. When others found these camps, they would discover that many of these living old and weak had been scared to death by the previous horrific scenes, and a large portion had gone insane, becoming forever unrecoverable madmen.

Only a few with strong wills were able to remain sane and recount their previous experiences. The name of the Youming Shi Wang spread rapidly as a result, becoming the nightmare of all men.

White clothes, black hair, a teenage girl holding a doll - this was the image of the Youming Shi Wang. Moreover, according to those who survived, the Youming Shi Wang was different from other enhanced zombies. She seemed to be able to speak.

More than one person had heard the Youming Shi Wang muttering to herself while disassembling men's bones. Some had even vaguely heard her crying, but no one could understand what she was saying. They only said that there seemed to be words like "dad," "bully," "mom," and "scared."

In addition, the Youming Shi Wang had never made the same roars as other zombies. Therefore, many people speculated that the Youming Shi Wang might be human, because, judging from the way the Youming Shi Wang acted, she seemed to hate men very much, and hatred, such an emotion, was only reflected so vividly in humans.

Calculating the time, the Youming Shi Wang only appeared four years after the end of the world, and this little girl, four years later, would also be a teenager…