Chapter Five: The Rusty Hatchet

  In winter days, the noon sunlight is always the most comfortable and lazy, bright but not dazzling, warm but not scorching.

  But at this moment, in this quiet neighborhood, the sunlight seems to bring a chill to one's heart. Over a hundred evil spirits with green faces and sharp teeth, having a pair of terrifying black claws, are wandering unconsciously. The ground is covered with countless fragments of corpses, and the scarlet blood, due to the extremely low temperature, has frozen on the ground. The walls seem to be silently telling the story of the recent crazy and tragic scene.

  It's now 12:15, exactly one hour and fifteen minutes since the black city appeared. For Zhou Yue and many survivors, this hour was so long and thrilling that it overturned their entire world, fundamentally changing all their perceptions!

  The black city in the downtown area still exists, and the increasingly fierce gunfire keeps coming, it's unclear whether the military is attacking the black city or retaking other places. The ear-piercing sirens are ringing throughout the entire Red Mountain City, as if all the residents of the city are evacuating and fleeing!

  Compared with other areas, this residential building located in a remote suburb is eerily quiet!

  The three Zhao Dashi on the opposite floor had long stopped using bows and crossbows to kill the evil spirits, because they had consumed hundreds of arrows before killing only five evil spirits, with very little results. On the one hand, it was because those evil spirits were extremely agile, far from comparable to the clumsy zombies in movies. On the other hand, these evil spirits also belonged to data-based bodies, and even if they were shot in the head with crossbow arrows, they would not die immediately, at most losing some life value.

  At this moment, Zhou Yue stood in front of the window, expressionless, looking down at the tragic scene in the building area. An hour ago, he probably couldn't have imagined that he could ignore all of this in such a short period of time!

  But now those mangled corpses and those gruesome evil spirits no longer pose any threat to him!

  "It's time to take action!"

  Zhou Yue thought to himself, looking down at the injury on his right hand with a faint smile. He had to admit that he was grateful for the benefits brought by this data-based body. Previously, his right arm had been severely injured, but without any complicated treatment, just eating an apple that increased his vitality a bit and taking a half-hour rest, the injury had already healed more than halfway. At this time, except for feeling a little sore and heavy, he could move freely and exert force at will!

  The more he felt this magical change, the more urgent Zhou Yue became to continue upgrading. Now in his eyes, the many evil spirits wandering around the neighborhood had lost their original threat and turned into a large amount of experience that could make him stronger.

  This is also the main reason why Zhou Yue didn't dare to wait for his right arm injury to fully recover before taking action. He must take advantage of others not realizing this point yet and pull away first, because the gunfire in the city center is getting more intense, perhaps the garrison around Chishan has arrived. He doesn't know how powerful Zhang Jiao's Yellow Turbans are in the city center, but these evil spirits are definitely no match for a modernized army. If he really stays here waiting for reinforcements and waits for the army to clear out all the evil spirits, he will have no chance to level up!

  Taking a deep breath, Zhou Yue turned around and quickly gathered her equipment, swiftly heading downstairs from the fifth floor to the first floor. There were no signs of evil spirits in the stairwell, which was normal; otherwise, they would have been startled by the previous battle!

  As he arrived at the entrance of the unit, Zhou Yue subconsciously tightened his grip on the machete in his right hand, while his mind quickly flashed back to the distribution of all the evil spirits he had observed in the neighborhood.

  According to his previous observations, the residential area where he lived was a narrow and long strip of four rows of 24 buildings, with 72 units. In the middle of these four rows of buildings were three areas about 50 meters wide and 200 meters long. The evil spirits were basically distributed in these three building areas, with approximately 156 heads, more than half of which wandered around the front two building areas because there was a small square there.

  In the back building district where Fang Ruo was located, there were only more than 40, and more importantly, with Zhao Dashan's help, at least 20 or so evil spirits gathered under his building, and the remaining dozen or so were scattered on both sides. These dozen or so evil spirits were Zhou Yue's target, after all, he could now only face one evil spirit at a time, if it was two, he might get injured, and when there were three or more, he had to flee quickly.

  After recalling so quickly, Zhou Yue handed the cleaver in his right hand to his left hand, then carefully opened the unit door. After the unit door was opened, he immediately used a mop that had been prepared in advance to hold the unit door in place, and finally jumped out with an extremely light body.

  Because Zhou Yue's residence was a single unit, the distance between him and the group of evil spirits on the third floor of the opposite building was at least sixty or seventy meters, so they were not startled. However, an evil spirit about twenty meters away was startled. At the same time as Zhou Yue jumped out, it let out a low growl and quickly pounced over!

  But at this moment, Zhou Yue was no longer the same as he was an hour ago. Not only was he more agile, but also calmer. Seeing the evil spirit pounce on him, he didn't have a hint of panic, and instead countered with even greater speed!

  In the state where both were rushing forward at their fastest speed, a distance of over 20 meters was almost instantaneous. Just as Zhou Yue was about to collide with that evil spirit, his body suddenly and swiftly ducked down without warning. His left hand's wooden shield rose up to meet it, blocking the evil spirit's pair of claws while his right hand's chopping knife quickly chopped into the evil spirit's left leg's knee joint!

  This is the experience that Zhou Yue summarized from the previous battle, and at this moment, with an increase of two points in agility value, this series of actions was as smooth as a cloud!

  With a crisp "crack", the evil spirit's knee joint snapped, and its entire body, which was in a state of rapid movement, suddenly lost balance and crashed to the left. At this moment, Zhou Yue had already bounced up from the ground, his right hand's knife slicing through the air in a flowing arc, and then precisely chopping onto the evil spirit's neck!

  Although Zhou Yue's strength had not changed at all, due to the significant improvement in coordination and flexibility throughout his body, all his movements were smooth and effortless. This knife was almost equivalent to concentrating his entire body's impact force, its power was naturally extraordinary. With a loud "crack", the evil spirit's head flew out directly, it was a one-hit kill!

  The entire process, from Zhou Yue's initial sprint to the killing of the evil spirit, took less than five seconds. Such speed even left Zhou Yue himself in astonishment!

  He took a deep breath, and Zhou Yue quickly calmed down the excitement in his heart. He then picked up the small bag that had fallen beside the evil spirit's body. It seemed that the drop rate of killing these evil spirits was quite high! The three he had killed, plus the five evil spirits Zhao Dashan had killed with his crossbow, all had drops. Unfortunately, the items that had dropped were a bit too poor.

  He rummaged through the small bag, and Zhou Yue's face suddenly lit up with joy, because this time the fallen object was neither an apple nor a copper coin, but a weapon similar to a machete. However, when he took a closer look, he couldn't help but feel greatly disappointed, because it turned out to be a rusty short knife with five or six notches on the blade, which was even more pathetic than the machete in his hand!

  "Rusty Hatchet, Level 1, Strength +1, Attack +1, Durability 5/5"

  This attribute is so simple it can't be simpler, and trashy to the point of being untrashable!

  Zhou Yue smiled wryly and replaced his previous hatchet with this rusty chopping knife. No choice, after all, even a small mosquito is still meat. At least this chopping knife has two additional attributes, so now his strength attribute became 11 points, and the originally non-existent attack attribute became 1 point.

  With a swing of the axe, Zhou Yue found it to be quite handy, with a suitable weight, but looking rather embarrassing. He chuckled to himself and continued to creep along the edge of the building towards the direction of the third unit, where there were five lone 1st-level evil spirits wandering about, which should be easily taken care of.

  However, after walking forward for over ten meters and passing by a window of a house, Zhou Yue suddenly heard someone lightly tapping on the window from inside the room. Turning her head to look, it was a girl who had been scared pale, with two eyes crying like peaches, holding a white paper in her hand with three words written on it: "Save me". It seemed that she understood the reason why she couldn't speak loudly.

  But at this moment, Zhou Yue had no interest in comforting the girl. Anyway, she was safe now, as long as she didn't cry out loud, there was no need to worry about her life for the time being, so he just gave the girl a cold glance and quickly left!

  At this time, among the two rows of twelve residential buildings, there were still many survivors, all of whom were secretly sizing up everything outside, and Zhou Yue's appearance quickly became the focus of attention for all the survivors.

  "Hey, kid, do you want to die a little faster? There are five evil spirits forty meters ahead of you, hurry back, or do you want to give us a live show of eating people alive?"

  At this time, Zhao Dashan on the fifth floor of Building 3 opposite also discovered Zhou Yue's actions and immediately shouted loudly. As soon as he shouted, two of the five target evil spirits in front of Zhou Yue ran to the bottom of Zhao Dashan's building. Although he might have done it with good intentions, at this moment, Zhou Yue was so angry that he wanted to cut off Zhao's mouth with a knife! Because those five evil spirits were completely within his power to eliminate, but now they had all run into that large group of evil spirits, how could he make a move?

  Without bothering to reason with Zhao Dashan, Zhou Yue suddenly accelerated his running speed, rushing towards the remaining three evil spirits in front of him. No way, if that big mouth Zhao shouted a few more sentences, he wouldn't even be able to drink a sip of soup!

  However, Zhou Yue suddenly accelerated his speed, and in an instant, he attracted the attention of the remaining three evil spirits. Amidst the low growls, they all pounced towards Zhou Yue!

  This scene suddenly made the many survivors on both sides of the residential building take a deep breath, and some timid ones even covered their eyes directly, because everyone knew that in the next moment, Zhou Yue would inevitably be torn to pieces!