The situation suddenly became extremely grim.
It was obvious that the zombie captured by Dr. Max for research had some unknown connection to the Ultimate Mutant that was rapidly approaching!
Now, that connection was severed because one side of the connection was already dead!
But Dr. Max's reasoning was also normal: he didn't want to see the zombie he had personally enhanced go out and kill and eat people.
Isn't it only natural for humans to kill zombies?
So he intended to kill that zombie before leaving, but this action completely enraged the Ultimate Mutant!
"Immediately evacuate Dr. Max!"
After quickly relaying his speculation in the communication channel, Zhou Ming issued the order to retreat.
'There's still a chance. Leaving that corpse there should keep the Ultimate Mutant occupied for a short while. By the time it remembers to chase us, we might already be out of its detectable range.'
At Zhou Ming's command, the zombies began to change their actions, shifting from 'preventing zombies from approaching the villa' to 'opening a path to the outside world'.
The Ultimate Mutant was coming from the southwest, so they would leave in the northeast direction.
Although Shandar City was to the northwest of New Sunset City, the most urgent goal now was to get away from the Ultimate Mutant, even if it meant taking a detour.
Thus, when Gong He and Xiang Zenan rushed out of the villa with Dr. Max, they were surprised to see countless zombies forming a "safe corridor" with their bodies, leading directly to the northeast of the city.
Watching the slightly panicked Dr. Max follow behind the two, Zhou Ming sighed, not blaming him for anything.
Whale Shark and Qin Wumeng also quickly moved here. The Reincarnators were all gathered, and the path forward had been cleared, but Zhou Ming himself did not plan to leave so quickly.
"You go first, I'll catch up soon." Zhou Ming glanced behind him. In his Soul perception, an incredibly massive "Qi mass" was rapidly approaching, and it would reach them in about three minutes.
"Are you sure?" Gong He asked worriedly, "We still have time…"
"But time is short, so you'd better not dawdle here!" Zhou Ming had no time for pleasantries with them and urged impatiently.
"Whale Shark, quickly take them away! I'll catch up to you in ten minutes at most!"
"…Alright!" Whale Shark hesitated for only two seconds before grabbing Dr. Max and slinging him onto his back. At the same time, he shouted to the others, "I won't stop to wait for you, so run with all your might!"
Whale Shark, possessing the strongest Physical Body in the team, had astonishing speed once he unleashed it.
Even with Dr. Max on his back, the hundred-plus pounds felt like carrying a small satchel to him. In a blink of an eye, Whale Shark had already run several hundred meters away.
The others could only follow. Qin Wumeng, who was at the very back, turned to give Zhou Ming a deep look before closely following the footsteps of the others as they departed.
Without watching his teammates disappear, Zhou Ming had already turned and entered the villa the moment they left.
"About two and a half minutes left, there's still time."
He quickly descended into Dr. Max's underground laboratory, looking at the corpse lying on the mobile hospital bed, silently estimating the time.
Two minutes later, Zhou Ming burst out of Dr. Max's villa, heading straight northwest. He leaped onto a high-rise building, used the Deception Gu to conceal his aura to the lowest possible level, and coldly stared at the distant villa.
Less than twenty seconds later, a lightning-fast grey-white figure swooped down from afar, bringing with it a gust of wind as it crashed into Dr. Max's villa.
Wherever it passed, both zombies and infected were churned into minced meat by the swirling wind around its body, without exception.
Ten seconds later, another earth-shattering wail echoed across the land.
"Now!" Zhou Ming pressed the button in his hand with a "click."
The distant villa suddenly began to collapse inwards.
Crash! Countless bricks, stones, wood, reinforced concrete, glass windows, various appliances, furniture, daily necessities—everything, absolutely everything, was converging towards a single point.
It was as if a tiny black hole had suddenly appeared there, attracting all matter to approach, compress, and collapse.
Water, the fire of exploding electronics, air—nothing could escape. Everything was converging.
Even some unlucky zombies and infected who were too close were sucked in by the terrifying gravitational pull, sticking tightly to other matter, compressed into a mass of flesh and blood, and then continuously permeating into the interior of other substances.
Zhou Ming stared unblinkingly at the strange scene in the distance, his face showing no surprise, for it was precisely what he had set up, one of his super weapons targeting the Ultimate Mutant—
The Gravity Bomb!
Once detonated, it would create a high-gravity field, attracting all matter within a ten-meter radius towards the center, compressing it into a high-density sphere.
During this process, depending on the mass of matter absorbed, the strength of the high-gravity field would continuously increase until the duration of the Gravity Bomb expired.
This was a weapon Zhou Ming directly exchanged from the Main God, and he chose a highly powerful, advanced version. One such bomb cost a whopping 2500 exchange points, a luxury few players in the novice period could afford.
Watching the entire villa almost completely destroyed into ruins, with even a huge pit appearing underground, at the center of which was a black sphere with a radius of less than half a meter, silently suspended in mid-air for a few seconds before suddenly plummeting into the pit below.
"Boom!"
With a massive explosion, the high-density, high-mass black sphere fell from a height of ten meters, its immense kinetic energy causing the earth to tremble incessantly. Cracks spread across the ground, and dust billowed up from underground, spreading in all directions.
"It still didn't die?" Zhou Ming lowered his eyelids, concealing the disappointment in his eyes.
He had not heard any prompts from the Main God, and in his Soul perception, the originally massive "Qi mass," though suddenly contracted to less than a tenth of its original size, still existed and had not disappeared.
Crack! Crack!
In the deep underground pit, unseen by anyone, the incredibly dense black sphere suddenly developed a deep crack on its surface, then a second, a third, a fourth… In an instant, countless cracks covered the entire sphere. The next moment, the sphere exploded with a boom, and a small, slender figure burst out from within, covering dozens of meters in a flash and rushing to the surface.
"Hm?" Zhou Ming immediately noticed this anomaly. He activated the Ghost Eye Gu and instantly saw what was rushing up: it was just a meatball the size of a human head.
As soon as it burst out of the ground, the meatball rapidly deformed. Spikes extended from both ends and grew quickly, while the middle of the meatball rapidly thinned.
Hiss, hiss, hiss!
Tendrils of flesh connected to spikes shot out from the meatball, swiftly piercing nearby moving objects—zombies and infected.
The bodies of the pierced zombies and infected quickly shriveled, becoming empty husks that toppled to the ground. The tendrils then flew out to find their next targets, while new tendrils generated to capture new prey.
"Even if it didn't die, it's severely injured!"
Zhou Ming abruptly stood up, pulled a single-soldier rocket launcher from his Pocket Gu, aimed at the meatball, and fired.
The meatball reacted extremely quickly. As soon as the rocket approached, it was immediately entangled by several tentacles, which changed the rocket's trajectory, sending it flying to the side where it exploded with a boom.
In the roaring flames, the meatball was not affected in the slightest, and even its "feeding" speed did not slow down much.
"Indeed, even like this, it's still very difficult to deal with."
The meatball's recovery speed was too fast. From crawling out of the ground to deflecting Zhou Ming's rocket attack, only a few tens of seconds had passed. Its tentacles had already extended up to five hundred meters away, and one tentacle could even pierce several zombies or infected, absorbing their flesh and blood to replenish itself.
Moreover, the zombie poison on the infected had no effect on it, or if it did, the effect was too weak to even be noticeable.
This process was too brief; Zhou Ming didn't even have time to order the infected to retreat. Large numbers of infected were absorbed, while other infected quickly moved away from the center. The zombies, however, seemed like fanatics dedicating themselves to their god, actively running towards the meatball and then being quickly drained.
As the absorbed flesh and energy rapidly increased, the meatball began to deform violently. Hands, feet, torso, head—in just a few seconds, the meatball transformed back into its humanoid appearance from not long ago.
It was a mutant about two meters tall, with skin like stone, grey-white in color, completely devoid of hair, even its scalp was smooth. It didn't appear particularly strong, and its streamlined figure looked essentially identical to a human's.
"What a pity. It seems that unless it's a super weapon that can kill it in one go, ordinary thermal weapons can't deal with it."
As Zhou Ming silently calculated, the Ultimate Mutant, having regained its form, silently raised its head, locked its gaze on the northeast direction, and then, without a word, chased fiercely in that direction.
"Its target isn't me!"
Zhou Ming secretly cursed. He had run in the northwest direction precisely to test how the Ultimate Mutant tracked others.
The Gravity Bomb was placed by his own hands, directly beneath the female zombie's body. Now, the female zombie's remains were utterly obliterated along with that massive black sphere.
He had fired the rocket. In fact, to leave a lasting impression on the Ultimate Mutant, he had deliberately left his "scent" as a clue, making it easier for the Ultimate Mutant to find him.
However, the Ultimate Mutant hadn't even glanced at him, charging unhesitatingly towards the northeast. Clearly, it possessed another form of tracking ability.
Moreover, its target was very likely Dr. Max, as Dr. Max was the true killer of that mutant.
But if that were the case, they, having been targeted by the Ultimate Mutant, would have no choice but to truly fight it.