Chapter 257: Gunshots
The mall storage base was neither too close nor too far from Neoville City.
It was chosen because it was near the international metropolis of Neoville City, which allowed for efficient distribution of massive online shopping orders.
Additionally, the base had excellent transportation links; aside from the road leading to Neoville City, there was a highway right next to it.
This highway connected rapidly to three surrounding cities.
After a drive of just over ten minutes, Elijah and his team arrived at the outer perimeter of the storage base. The area had already been cleared by YLK group members, and numerous obstacles had been set up to prevent zombies from spilling out of the base.
Following the cleared paths, Elijah and his group entered the base. Ian and Theodore pointed to the location they had previously cleaned, saying, "It was right here where we encountered that extremely fast mutated zombie, which made it very difficult for us to advance further!"
Elijah glanced inside and saw that the zombies were scattered without any noticeable special ones. He waved dismissively, "Ignore that mutated zombie. Just continue with the clearing!"
He then assigned each team their respective areas and began coordinating the overall progress. Elijah and Fiona, along with their team, patrolled behind the squads to prevent any unexpected incidents.
With a large force at their disposal, even though there were many zombies in the storage base, they were quickly and efficiently dealt with as if they were being sliced like chives.
Each team had members specifically tasked with handling the corpses—either extracting corpse cores or ensuring zombies were fully dead. The bodies were then collected and buried in one place, hoping to grow zombie grass.
In fact, most of the zombie grass they had harvested recently had been grown this way.
"There\'s a suspicious zombie in the southwest direction!" Olivia, stationed at the rear, was fully focused on sensing the zombies ahead. Her ability wasn\'t particularly useful in this environment because there were zombies everywhere, making alerts unnecessary. However, through her recent training, Olivia had learned to recognize certain features of mutated zombies.
She could identify them based on the characteristics of the zombie clusters and their behavior patterns.
Just as Olivia finished speaking, a seemingly ordinary zombie in the crowd ahead of Ian suddenly launched an attack, speeding toward Ian\'s team with its sharp claws aimed at one of the awakened team members.
"Watch out!" Ian shouted in alarm!
As the zombie\'s claws were about to reach their team member, the mutated zombie—once a formidable adversary that had previously disabled Ian\'s arm and had been a source of frustration for Theodore—suddenly froze in place!
Ian and the other team members, who were not under attack, watched as two white darts shot through the air and struck the mutated zombie. The darts pierced through one side of the zombie\'s head and exited the other side, instantly killing the mutated zombie and saving their teammate.
They followed the trajectory of the flying darts and saw them eventually hovering in front of Fiona.
Was this… Telekinesis?
Indeed, it was incredibly powerful! They thought with a mix of admiration and envy.
Fiona merely glanced at them and said, "Don\'t get distracted. We\'ll handle any mutated zombies promptly!"
"Understood!" Ian responded and continued with the zombie clearing. However, Fiona\'s strength was deeply impressed upon the minds of the team members.
Because Fiona killed the mutated zombie, the corpse core ultimately ended up in her possession.
This zombie was a second-tier mutant with body modifications, somewhat similar to Elijah\'s clawed zombie.
However, this zombie\'s claws were not as sharp as Elijah\'s, though it was much faster, indicating a different evolutionary path.
After dealing with this crisis, Fiona stepped in several more times when various team members faced danger or encountered mutated zombies.
Her actions led to increasing gratitude and respect from the YLK group members, who were increasingly in awe of her strength.
Elijah, having held back to let Fiona showcase her abilities, found that this strategy worked well to impress and win over the YLK group.
Soon, Elijah, Lily, Abigail, Elena, and Kylie, accompanied by a group of zombies, began their official participation in the clearing.
The arrival of Elijah and his team stunned everyone due to their extraordinary efficiency in killing zombies.
Kylie\'s mental intimidation unsettled the zombies, while Elijah and Lily, abandoning defense, charged into the horde with their weapons, slicing through the zombies as if they were chopping vegetables.
The zombies fell in large numbers.
Under Abigail\'s command, the zombies led by her were equally impressive, especially the third-tier strength zombies, clawed zombies, and flame zombies. These zombies caused limbs to fly and emitted the stench of meat being partially roasted.
The white-clad female zombie, Elena, stayed by Kylie\'s side, focusing on protecting her. Occasionally, any zombies that slipped through were frozen into ice sculptures by Elena.
"It\'s incredible!"
"So this is the boss\'s strength?"
"Entering the zombie horde is like taking candy from a baby!"
Whether from the YLK group or the various gathering points led by Quentin, everyone was astonished. The amount of zombies Elijah\'s team had killed in just a short time equaled the number that dozens of people from their group had taken over an hour to clear.
"Don\'t get distracted; keep an eye on the zombies in front of you!" Fiona admonished two people who had almost been attacked by zombies due to their lack of attention.
"Okay… okay…" The rescued individuals nodded, embarrassed but focused as they returned to zombie clearing.
With Elijah\'s team\'s involvement, the clearing speed increased dramatically. Soon, they had cleaned out all visible zombies, and no new zombies were approaching. They then began to clean out the warehouse.
As time passed, and just when everyone was about to take a break after clearing one warehouse, a loud gunshot rang out.
"Bang!" The noise instantly silenced everyone.
"A gunshot? Someone\'s coming!"
"And it\'s not a pistol; it sounds like a sniper rifle!"
"From the sound, it\'s coming from the opposite direction!"
Quentin, who had military experience, was the first to identify the type and direction of the gunshot.
"What should we do, boss?" Everyone looked towards Elijah.
Elijah looked in the direction Quentin pointed out and realized it was another exit of the mall storage base, very close to the highway.
"You all stay here, keep alert. I\'ll go check it out!" Elijah instructed, then led Abigail, Kylie, and Elena into stealth mode as they proceeded towards the west gate of the mall storage base.