Chapter 17： Burdensome Children

'There's a child...' Shen Chen's expression suddenly became animated. Watching the crowd of zombies heading toward him, he smiled faintly. "Hold on! I'll get you within three hours!"

Then he hung up the phone. Black Blade was like the moon. It flashed a cold glint, and a hideous, rotten zombie head flew into the air, drawing an arc of black blood. Shen Chen pushed hard. The dead zombie fell toward the other zombies. Several zombies were instantly sent flying, which temporarily obstructed their attack.

The temporary break gave Shen Chen an opportunity to use his knife. Black Blade was like Death's scythe in his hands, taking away zombies' lives. Arcs of light endlessly flashed through the air like a black song of death.

After killing dozens of zombies like this, Shen Chen started to run out of breath. Even though he just took the evolution fluid, he still didn't have the physique of a First Tier neo-human yet. He couldn't kill all these zombies on his own like he had in the previous life. His goal was just to buy some time for his brothers to safely enter the through elevator.

As more and more zombies poured in, Shen Chen was backed up to the windowsill. He suddenly leaped and stood on the windowsill, the black blood on his blade dripping down in a stream, painting the air like ink with every swing. Shen Chen watched the zombies with a cold gaze. He suddenly shattered the entire glass window, then quickly jumped down before the zombies' arms could reach him. He rolled over on the ground and stood back up.

Covered in ink-like blood, standing in the cold wind, he seemed so sharp and proud.

The zombies' angry roars came from the broken window. Then, a zombie walked out with swaying steps. It seemed to not notice any danger and just jumped down. After one zombie jumped down, more and more zombies followed, falling hard on the ground. But after their bones became stiff, they didn't know how to lessen the impact as they fell. They all jumped down in a straight posture, and their legs all snapped. They could only crawl on the ground in a twisted and slow manner.

Shen Chen laughed. He proudly raised Black Blade, watching the zombies that continued to follow their instincts to consume even if they had to crawl toward their prey.

The Black Blade in his hand gave off a cold glimmer. Shen Chen narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, he moved. Like the best dancer in the world, he waltzed through the zombies crawling toward him. His knife rose and fell like thunder. The sound of zombies' heads getting cut off was like a joyous little nocturno.

Black blood and broken limbs covered the green lawn. After a whole hour, more than eight zombies had ended their lives like this in the hotel lobby.

Shen Chen silently opened his backpack. Inside were twenty containers that gave off a silver glint. Each zombie had some evolution fluid in their head. Just seventy zombies provided him with twenty-four full vials of evolution fluid. Looking at the last ten corpses, Shen Chen was a little reluctant to let them go to waste. He thought for a bit, then opened a bottle of water, drank the water inside, and collected nearly half a bottle of evolution fluid from the remaining ten bodies. Shen Chen examined his loot with satisfaction, then put his containers away. Although there weren't many containers, the evolution fluid he collected was more than enough to share with his brothers.

When Shen Chen entered the hotel again, he saw that the through elevator was not on the sixteenth floor. He was very astonished. Where were Zhao Zhen, Guo Yuan, and the rest?

Then, he saw the control room's door suddenly get pushed open. Zhao Zhen dashed out of it. "Boss! Boss, you're not dead!"

Then Guo Yuan shot out too. Pan Di ran over with a limp, crying and laughing at the same time. The three of them surrounded him. The young men all had red eyes.

"Didn't I tell you to go up to the sixteenth floor?" Shen Chen asked helplessly.

Zhao Zhen looked at his brothers, then patted Shen Chen heavily. "Everyone wanted to wait for you to come down, so we didn't go up."

Shen Chen looked at Zhao Ze and Li Qi to the side, and smiled faintly. He understood his brothers' friendship, but those two had probably been forced to stay.

"I thought you turned into a zombie! We saw you kneeling down, and didn't dare to come out." Guo Yuan's eyes were red. "If you had really turned into a zombie, none of us would have had the heart to kill you."

Pan Di patted Shen Chen heavily, smiling while choking back his tears. "Good thing you walked inside! Good thing you didn't become a zombie!"

Watching how excited his brothers were, Shen Chen found a sense of long-lost familiarity. 'Yes, this is how it should be. Brothers for life. Profound friendship. The moment had finally come!'

Shen Chen's eyes were a little red. He patted his brothers' shoulders and was momentarily at a loss for words.

Zhao Ze watched all this with impatience. He stared nervously at the zombies who had died outside the door, then urged, "This is great. Shen Chen didn't die. Let's all return!"

"Let's go! We'll all return!"

But Shen Chen shook his head and said, "No, we still have to go rescue people!"

"Rescue people? Rescue who?" The others were all very baffled.

Zhao Zhen suddenly looked surprised. "Boss, you're not thinking of rescuing the one who called?"

"No way, Boss!" Guo Yuan also shouted in amazement.

"He nearly killed us, and we're going to rescue him?"

...

Everyone suddenly started talking at once. Li Qi and Zhao Ze's faces were as dark as ink. The two of them had wanted to return to the sixteenth floor in the first place, but they hadn't expected that Guo Yuan and Zhao Ze would make them stay behind. When they watched Shen Chen kneel down on the ground, they really thought Shen Chen had become a man-eating zombie. Then, when Shen Chen walked inside, they thought everything was over. Such a fierce zombie definitely would have eaten them all! They didn't expect that, thank heaven, Shen Chen hadn't died.

They thought they could finally return now, but who would have thought they were going to rescue people? They put their hopes in Pan Di and Guo Yuan. They thought that they might not agree with Shen Chen, either.

"Pan Di, you don't want to go save them either, do you? They just nearly killed us earlier…"

Shen Chen coldly watched Zhao Ze, who looked very anxious. He felt increasingly indifferent. This was the apocalypse. The ugliness of human nature would be exposed as the living environment gradually worsened. Zhao Ze was just one of them...

Shen Chen smiled coolly. His voice was clear and determined. "There's a child among them!"

The announcement made Zhao Zhen, Guo Yuan, and Pan Di all go silent. "A child…"

"Children are burdens…" Guo Yuan said with some difficulty.

Zhao Zhen was also silent. "Boss, not that I have anything against them, but that guy nearly killed us, yet now we're returning for them… and besides, a child is hard to keep!"

Shen Chen looked into the distance. "They are burdens. And the ignorance and cries of children will kill many people, but has anyone thought about the fact that if all children are abandoned as burdens, when we grow old, who will pick up the weapons to fight against these monsters? By that time… it would be the true apocalypse."

That was the predicament that humans had faced in his previous life… The age gap due to not having any children had nearly led to the complete annihilation of mankind several times… Only then had everyone realized how stupid they had been to abandon the children. Humans may not have died in the hands of zombies, but they had ruined themselves by not having offspring.

Shen Chen couldn't tell the people before him about these things, but the desolation in his tone made everyone go silent. A while later, Guo Yuan cursed and said, "Let's go. Let's go save the child!"

"Boss, I'm going too!" Pan Di said.

Zhao Zhen shook his head helplessly. "Although I think we still won't be able to beat these monsters by the time we're old, you're right. We need people to provide for us when we're old and bury us when we die. Let's go save the child!"

Zhao Ze and Li Qi's eyes widened. They hadn't expected Shen Chen's words to change the three brothers' minds. They couldn't understand it at all. They had barely managed to stay safe, yet they were now returning to danger. 'These people, do they respect our opinions at all?'

"No! I don't agree!" Zhao Ze finally couldn't stand it anymore. Li Qi could endure it, but Zhao Ze had an arrogant personality. He shouted in agitation, "I certainly won't go save people! Certainly not!"

Woosh! A cold knife was placed on his neck. Zhao Ze instantly stopped speaking. "I'm not negotiating with you. I'm just announcing my decision!" Shen Chen said extremely coldly.

Zhao Ze took a deep breath, his face turning red from agitation. Then he said in a whisper, "Alright… let's… let's go save them!"

Guo Yuan asked, "Boss, where are the survivors located?"

"518."

Pan Di was surprised. "That's simple. As long as it's not the fourth floor where those zombies ran out from, we'll just ride the elevator up to save them."

Shen Chen shook his head. "I'm afraid it's not that simple. Otherwise, these people would have escaped already."

Zhao Zhen looked back at the control room. He said with a smile, "How did we forget about the monitors in the control room? Let's take a look at the situation on the fifth floor. Then we'll think of a plan."

The monitors in the control room showed that the situation on the fifth floor was not promising. A conservative estimate of the zombies wandering the halls of the fifth floor was over a hundred. It was impossible to know where the zombies even came from.

The camera aimed at 518. It was a room close to the fire escape, near the end of the hall. At the moment, a dozen zombies were pounding on the door. The door was slightly loosening already.

"We must make it quick!" said Shen Chen. "If we get there any later, they might not be able to hold on!"

"What can we do? There are over a hundred zombies. Are we going to lead them to the second floor again and kill them by jumping out the window?"

Shen Chen shook his head, his gaze falling on the elevator in the lobby. He smiled and said, "I have a better plan!"