Chapter 82: A Million Zombies Mutate! The Semi-Classical Mutation Begins

Li Fengyi was a cautious man. “Perhaps the older you get in this world, the less daring you become,” he mocked himself silently.

When leading his troops out of Beijing, he meticulously inspected the arrangements along the way, setting up layer upon layer of barricades. He stationed the long-underutilized crossbow units at various key points. At his side were two hundred crossbows, fifty large mounted ballistae, and five hundred of Sun Xiaoshan’s modified silent firearms. Sun Xiaoshan had also assigned several weapons testers to his command to trial the effectiveness of silenced artillery.

Li Fengyi regarded the massive silencer attached to the artillery with some speechlessness—it was absurd in its size, as if they had dragged the entire contents of the weapons lab to the field. The effect was decent, but the cost was exorbitant; before the apocalypse, they had planned to refine the design before equipping the troops.

The army advanced in a long column toward the northeast. Along the way, field units joined the procession from all directions, red flags fluttering, yet as a matter of habit, they moved as silently as possible.

At the highest point northeast of Siyuan Bridge, the troops pitched their marching tents. In the command tent, Li Fengyi pored over the map, red arrows encircling black circles—the black circles enclosed Side Park and over twenty buildings to its southeast. He checked that each unit had reached its designated position; the staff officers were busy preparing contingency plans.

He stepped out of the tent and observed that the park’s vegetation was unusually lush, the foliage a deep green. The Dongba River wound through the park, its waters swift after the recent rains.

Troops surrounded Side Park on all sides, their banners answering each other from afar.

The corpses of zombies that had fallen at the base of the buildings were nowhere to be seen. The zombie horde stood everywhere, keeping a distance of about a hundred meters from the human forces, no longer wandering listlessly as before. Li Fengyi did not believe these zombies had simply turned to stone.

The rooftops were also crowded with zombies. Strangely, Li Fengyi had the feeling that those on the rooftops were watching him.

This operation had mobilized fifty thousand field troops in direct combat, with another fifty thousand blocking all routes in every direction.

It was July 29, the sixty-first day since the end of the world. At eight in the morning, the weather was clear, the sky cloudless, and the sun, rising from the east, shone piercingly on Li Fengyi’s face.

“These buildings—I don’t want them anymore.” Sensing danger, Li Fengyi decided to strike first. He turned and re-entered the tent, pointing at the map as he ordered the staff officer beside him, “Flatten them!”

He had brought six 59-1 model 130mm cannons, salvaged from the militia’s arsenal. Though their range could reach up to thirty-two kilometers, none of the available artillerymen or retired gunners—including Wei Yong, a former tank gunner who, upon hearing of the many cannons, refused the post of field division commander and insisted on being artillery commander instead—had ever used such guns before. None felt confident they could hit a target at that range; even landing shells on their own position would be tricky. Artillery was not a skill one could master from a few manuals. Even before the apocalypse, veterans sometimes sent rounds to unknown destinations.

Li Fengyi let the artillerymen choose positions where they felt confident; they settled on Sun Palace Park, less than two kilometers away. Even so, they advised front-line troops to brace themselves—everyone understood this meant the gunners were not exactly reliable.

The military academy sent artillery instructors and students to join the operation—not because they were more skilled, but to gain hands-on experience and develop new techniques. This made Li Fengyi even more apprehensive, but to bolster morale, he stood at the bridgehead to observe.

Unsurprisingly, the first shell missed. Whistling past the bridge, it struck the center of Side Park, shaking the earth and scattering a cluster of zombies into the air. The observation post reported the deviation over the radio, his face calm and heartbeat steady: “Commander, we’re correcting our aim. Once we’re on target with the first shot, all guns can fire using the same settings.” As he turned away to call it in, he wiped sweat from his brow.

The zombie horde grew restless. Within minutes, the second shell landed, striking the lower half of the last of the twenty buildings, blasting a gaping hole in it.

Further adjustment followed. By the fifth shot, they finally hit the central building. Then all the cannons roared in unison, saturating the area where the buildings stood. The ground shook even more violently, like a boat tossed on stormy seas—everyone staggered, gripping their sabers and steel-pipe guns tightly.

One of the cannons made a deeper, duller sound, so much so that people doubted it had fired at all; the impact was quieter as well, the spray of earth and debris much less than the others. Li Fengyi knew this was the experimental silenced artillery. Though quieter, its sound still carried. The Ministry of Science and Technology, he thought, was somewhat unreliable—such a silencer severely compromised the gun’s effectiveness, yet they treated it as a treasure.

The zombie horde began surging toward Siyuan Bridge, evidently discerning the direction of the artillery fire.

In the time it took for the zombies to rush forward, nearly six or seven buildings had been reduced to rubble, though the first remained untouched.

The trenches dug in preparation last time were now filled with rainwater, submerging the zombies up to their necks and forming a passage. The horde quickly reached eighty meters from the first defensive line.

Through his binoculars, Li Fengyi saw that the zombies’ bodies gleamed a dark, oily black, the decayed parts seemingly healed. He ordered his men to open fire at maximum range. The silenced guns gave off soft “puff puff” sounds as they targeted zombie skulls, but as expected, few hit their mark.

At a human sprint, the horde soon closed to within thirty meters of the line. The crossbows loosed their bolts, and the gunmen adjusted their aim, their accuracy greatly improved as they targeted the zombies’ heads.

Quickly, a wall of corpses piled up, with more zombies clambering over only to be shot down and tumble off. As the heap grew, the soldiers produced Molotov cocktails and hurled them, setting the corpse wall aflame. For a moment, all seemed to unfold just as it had during the recent recapture of Side Park.

Li Fengyi allowed himself a small sigh of relief.

On the south side of Side Park, the Dongba River flowed by. Some zombies were pushed into the water. Since the end of the world, the river’s water had grown clearer, and fish more plentiful, but not every stretch of river hosted carnivorous fish. The zombies, soaked to the bone, clambered out and charged into the flames. They endured the fire for a long time, and soon more zombies deliberately hurled themselves into the river, then emerged, drenched, to dash once again into the blaze. Some slipped into deeper water and drowned, but the zombies showed no fear, continuing to plunge into the river and scramble out to hurl themselves into the fire. Before long, burning zombies managed to burst through the flames, lunging at the soldiers.