Yin Mei led Ri En back to the car, without the notice of the other group members. The car was parked a fairly good distance away from where the group was fighting, to the point where Ri En was already unable to see them very well. Yin Mei's eyesight had been enhanced by energy cores, so she could still see them though.
"What's the interesting thing that you mentioned?" Ri En said curiously. He was feeling a little bad that they weren't helping out, thinking that he might not get paid if the other members of the group reported this.
"Oh, it'll be here soon." Yin Mei narrowed her eyes. Beyond the group, she could see a dust cloud rising as the ground seemed to shake ever so slightly. It slowly grew more and more obvious as the sound of rumbling reached their ears. "Hear that? That's the sound of what we call a zombie horde! Ha ha!"
In only a few moments, even Ri En could see the vague form of the zombie horde. It was a mass of darkness enveloped in a dust cloud. "Oh my god-" He was shocked. How many zombies was that? But he didn't have the time to panic as Yin Mei pushed him into the passenger seat of the military vehicle, while she herself got into the driver's seat, turning on the engine and pressing the gas.
She then drove back in the direction of the city.
"Wait, are we just leaving the others behind?" Ri En said, glancing back. He could actually see the rest of the group running toward them, but they were too far for him to tell any details. In only a few minutes, they were overwhelmed by the zombie horde.
"Why should we stick our necks out for them? They're already dead anyways, aren't they?" Yin Mei said, glancing through the mirror and also seeing them swarmed by the zombies. Then, as if nothing happened, she once again went into lecture mode. "The exact science and cause behind a zombie horde probably won't even be discovered ten years later, though a few reasons can be theorized. The horde can consist of anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of zombies all migrating at once."
Ri En clutched the passenger assist handle and the door handle as Yin Mei pressed on the pedal even more, her not-so skillful maneuvers practically heart attack inducing. Yin Mei wasn't a bad driver on normal days, but being chased by a zombie horde really made one throw all conventions out of the window and the result was just pure recklessness.
"I feel sick..." Ri En said, this rough driving hard for his body to handle.
"Hm? Hang in there. When dealing with a zombie horde, you have to bring enough people with massively destructive abilities. The good thing about a zombie horde is that most of the zombies involved tend to be fairly low level, though there may be an occasional high ranked leader. The problem with a horde like that is that the leader will normally have a group of elite guard zombies. The difficulty in getting rid of the zombies in this case would explode exponentially. Oddly enough, zombie hordes seem to possess something of a hive mind-" Yin Mei continued on and on, but perhaps thankfully enough, Ri En was on the verge of fainting and already no longer paying attention. If he was, he would definitely be suspicious over how Yin Mei possessed so much knowledge. He was different from the young and naive Qin Shuang, who blindly worshipped Yin Mei.
She saw that Ri En had already stopped responding so she also quieted down. She looked into the back mirror again, seeing that the zombie horde was already far away now. Killing humans... hm, it didn't feel much different from killing a zombie, huh? She felt that she realized the reason killing humans was so common in the zombie apocalypse wasn't because of the collapse of law in order, it was that people had become desensitized to murder. How scary! She shook her head, focusing her attention back on driving.
It took them fifteen minutes to get back to the city, which directly halved their previous travel time. As a member of an expedition group, they did have a special pass that allowed them to jump the line and immediately be inspected for wounds before being able to enter the city.
Yin Mei reached the inspection point, parking the car and dragging out a semi-conscious Ri En from his seat, half carrying him to where the guards were standing.
"Eh? Isn't this Lu Mei? What happened to the rest of your group?" The guard said. Since Yin Mei was pretty and a regular, most of the guards were already able to recognize her.
"Probably dead," Yin Mei said blandly, constantly glancing over her back to check the distance of the zombie horde.
"Wha- all of them? What in the world happened?" The guard was bewildered. Although a few deaths were common, he never expected for a close to full party wipe. After all, these zombie clearing missions weren't terribly hard, as they were just cleaning up any straggler zombies.
"Zombie horde." Yin Mei replied.
"What?" The guard hadn't heard the term before. No, he had, just only in books and movies.
"Can you hurry and let me through? I have to quickly report this to the higher ups. Unless you want a swarm of thousands of zombies at your doorstep before you can even-" Yin Mei didn't get to finish before the guard immediately let her through at the quickest speed possible, his eyes showing panic and fear. He didn't doubt Yin Mei's words. After all, what reason was there for her to lie?
She sped through inspection, a messenger having been sent to the higher ups to grant her an audience.
Before long, she was standing in front of the commander in charge of B City's base, as well as Ming Wei. She didn't expect to meet him at this point in time, but she only quickly glanced at him before she began her report.
"A zombie horde of..." She recalled the information stored in the system. "Roughly a few thousand zombies is making their way toward the city about now. The rest of the team aside from myself and one other member have already perished. They should be here in approximately... give or take a couple of hours?"
The commander whispered with his advisors, shocked. "A zombie horde... and here I thought that those would only happen in the novels, to think that we actually..."
"Sir, I recommend we take immediate action. We should rally together anyone who has abilities. I believe that lightning, ice, and earth abilities would be especially useful in this case." Yin Mei said with an impatient expression. Even if she left B City alone, it would still survive this zombie attack, but seeing these old men continue discussing while the zombie horde was marching toward their door really annoyed her.
"Yes, yes, that's a good idea. We should quickly have the special forces immediately move out," the commander said, seemingly unbothered by Yin Mei's biting tone.
Ming Wei glanced at the young girl, who also looked at him with an interested gaze.
Ming Wei was tall and had a cold expression and aura to him, his glasses framing his eyes, which were like deep pools of darkness. In terms of how handsome he was, Yin Mei would rate him a nine, with plus one point for glasses. She was weak toward glasses wearing beauties, what could she say.
But, she quickly turned her gaze away as a soldier led her to the building's planning room, where the group of special forces leaders were waiting for their orders. Once more, Yin Mei explained the zombie horde, in slightly more detail this time, pointing out their former location and predicted path on the map.
"A few thousand? Could you give more specific numbers?" The special forces leader, a veteran with a scar running down his face, asked.
Yin Mei stared at the man with an expression that looked like she was looking at an idiot. She then rolled her eyes, but complied. "I'd say maybe three thousand to five thousand. Is that good enough?" She looked like if he answered no, she would actually start a fight.
But this was also good enough, so the special forces leader nodded.
Yin Mei backed away to the side of the room as the group began discussing a plan of action in more detail. She had no interest in this, since she knew that at the very least B City wouldn't be overrun. That meant that they at least had some skill, so wouldn't need her interfering and drawing attention to herself.
"Why did you think lightning, ice, and earth abilities would be the best in combating the zombie horde?" A cold voice asked, and she looked to her left. Before she had noticed, Ming Wei had been standing beside her.
"Eh? Isn't that obvious?" Yin Mei reflexively replied, really thinking so. But she continued speaking anyways. "Ice can freeze the enemies to slow them down or kill them, while earth can change the ground to quicksand. They can also bury them alive. As for lightning, well, that's just because of the sheer destructive power it has."
Ming Wei nodded. This is what he also thought.
"Hey, you don't look like a soldier." Yin Mei suddenly commented, then looked him up and down. "You don't seem like some tactician either, or you'd be up there coming up with a plan like the rest of them." Yin Mei felt like she was getting better at acting, as she calmly spouted bullsh*t.
"What I am is none of your business." Ming Wei replied coldly.
"Cold! You could at least give me a hint." Yin Mei complained.
Ming Wei snorted, ignoring the girl.
She sneakily looked at him. She then took a gamble. "If you tell me, I'll give you some good information that I found out."
Ming Wei looked at her, narrowing his eyes as if calculating the possibility of how good the information she had would be. In the end, he turned away coldly.
"Hey! My information is really good okay? You'll regret it if you ignore me!" She complained, getting slightly worked up. Seriously, wasn't this b*stard a little too mean? She had awesome future knowledge here!
"Fine, what is it?" Ming Wei reluctantly replied with a stiff face. He couldn't set down the feeling that she really might have some important information. Whatever, it's not like he would lose something hearing it.
Yin Mei's lips curled up into a cruel smile. If one looked, it would definitely send shivers down their spine. "The key to curing the zombie virus is someone with a healing ability." Soft giggles left her mouth, and if felt like they were crawling up Ming Wei's skin, turning his body cold. Ming Yu's ability was precisely a healing ability. In the former timeline, Ming Wei had found another person with healing ability without ever finding out that Ming Yu had a healing ability, but Yin Mei would make sure that this time Ming Yu would end up in the depths of hell. This Ming family was pretty heartless. The little sister could still get together with the man that killed her brother, and the brother would have no qualms subjecting his sister to cruel experiments.
Yin Mei thought that if the little sister ended up as an experiment, it would be hilarious.
She never realized just how vicious her thoughts had become.
Ming Wei looked at Yin Mei, wondering just exactly how she knew this. He also wasn't quite sure what in the world she found funny, and why she was looking at him with such a gaze. Yin Mei saw that Ming Wei had on a probing expression, so proceeded to explain. "I saw someone with a healing ability heal a person with a zombie bite. In the end, the person with the zombie bite never turned into a zombie! Amazing, right? I then thought that that person would surely be the key to curing the virus."
Well, this had actually happened with the female lead and Lei Han, just she had never personally seen it. Though, since it was true, there was no way that Ming Wei could find anything odd about her statement, right?
Ming Wei paused. Actually, if this was true, then it would be amazing. The possibility of actually creating a cure would practically skyrocket. "This person with a healing ability... do you know who they are?" He asked, his voice low.
"Nope, but I remember what they look like." Yin Mei started to laugh again, as she began to describe Ming Yu. "They seemed like quite a pretty girl, but it's a pity that they had a scar going across their face." She pointed at her left eye. "Right here, down the eye. Such a pretty face ruined by a horrible scar like that, it really makes an impact, doesn't it?"
Ming Wei stiffened, looking at Yin Mei. "Huh? Now that I think about it, I think she looked kind of similar to you. Oh, but that would be such a coincidence, wouldn't it?" Yin Mei tilted her head, sounding innocently surprised, though her expression was like one that found delight in another's suffering.
Ming Wei shook his head, knowing that he was thinking too much into things. There was no way that this girl knew who he was, let alone who his sister was. But, that description, it really did match his sister. Could it be that she really had a healing ability? He resolved that he would question her when he got back.
"My information was really helpful right? You should tell me who you are now." Yin Mei said.
Ming Wei wasn't one to go back on his word, so he honestly came out with it. "I'm the head researcher of B City's lab."
Yin Mei was silent, staring at him.
"What?" He bristled, glaring at her.
"Oh, no, I didn't think that you would actually be so honest..." Yin Mei said. "I feel a little bad now..." She added on under her breath, feeling like she might have really gone too far in her teasing, truly not realizing how far gone she already was.