Chapter 414 - 188: Xin’an City

Chapter 414: Chapter 188: Xin’an City

They circled overhead, as if waiting for Xu Mo to leave so they could resume their feast.

Xu Mo ignored the noisy birds overhead and looked down at the ground.

This was a body dump. Hundreds of corpses were piled haphazardly, some rotted down to the bone, others still retaining a rough human shape. After being soaked by the previous day’s downpour and pecked at by birds for who knew how long, the bodies were unrecognizable, emitting a pungent, nauseating stench.

Forcing himself to endure the stench, Xu Mo crouched down for a closer look. He noticed the clothing on the corpses fell into two distinct types.

Some of the clothes were tattered, hanging off the bodies like strips of cloth. This was zombie attire—the clothes people had been wearing before they turned, which they continued to wear until they rotted away.

The clothes on other bodies were relatively intact. Though soaked and wrinkled by the rain, their original styles were still discernible. These were the clothes of survivors—the clothes of the living.

Xu Mo stood up, his gaze sweeping across the body dump. He made a rough estimate: of the hundreds of corpses, about a third were survivors and two-thirds were zombies.

The bodies of survivors and zombies had been dumped together, left for birds and beasts to devour.

’What is this all about?’

Logically, the best way to dispose of any corpse, survivor or zombie, was cremation. Otherwise, you risked creating Level 1 or Level 2 zombies. But that wasn’t what was happening here. The fact that these bodies were deliberately abandoned was very strange.

Even stranger, there was a body dump like this every ten or so kilometers. They were clearly man-made.

Whoever was doing this had a reason, but Xu Mo couldn’t figure out what it was.

Shaking his head, Xu Mo turned to walk back. Seeing him leave, the carrion birds overhead swooped back down to the ground and resumed feasting on the corpses.

Back in his car, Xu Mo started the engine and drove on.

’I can’t figure it out, but I have a nagging suspicion.’ These body dumps might be connected to Xin’an City. ’Once I get there, I should be able to find some answers.’

By afternoon, Xu Mo finally saw the outline of Xin’an City.

But as the city’s outline came into view, Xu Mo’s brow furrowed.

In the distance, Xin’an City lay quietly upon the earth. The silhouettes of skyscrapers appeared somewhat dim in the sunlight. The city’s edge was lined with low-rise buildings, and beyond them lay desolate farmland and abandoned factories.

Judging by its silhouette, Xin’an City was a mid-sized city. But what truly made Xu Mo frown was what hung in the sky above it.

A massive, sky-blotting flock of birds!

As far as Xu Mo could see, the flock had no discernible edge. It swirled above the city, blotting out the sun like a shifting black cloud.

Sunlight filtered through gaps in the flock, casting mottled shadows on the ground below. The birds’ cries blended into a constant, maddening cacophony that Xu Mo could faintly hear even from this distance.

Xu Mo stopped the car, got out, and stood beside it, gazing into the distance.

The scale of the flock was greater than anything he had ever seen. There had been a flock over the Red Star Industrial Zone in Jiang City, but it was child’s play compared to this. This flock had to be at least several hundred thousand strong, perhaps even a million, and it blanketed the entire sky above the city.

Xu Mo squinted, observing them closely. The flock was in constant motion. Some birds dove from high in the sky, disappearing behind the city’s skyline, while others flew up from within the city to join the swirling mass.

The birds were a motley collection—large and small, of all different colors—forming a massive, teeming cloud of life.

Xu Mo thought of Jiang City, and of the Red Star Industrial Zone, the so-called "zombie spawn point."

That place was an overlapping region between two worlds, where zombies appeared in a never-ending stream. As soon as they emerged, they were devoured by the flock of birds that had taken root there. The birds had made it their home, feasting day after day on fresh flesh and blood, a process that had spawned a huge number of mutated creatures.

It was highly likely that the same thing was happening here in Xin’an City.

Xu Mo’s gaze shifted from the flock to the city itself. He was too far away to make out any specific details, but he could see that some buildings on the outskirts were covered in a dense layer of perched birds, as if the structures themselves were giant nests.

’Could there really be any survivors in a city like this?’

Xu Mo thought back to the body dumps he’d seen on the road—the deliberately abandoned corpses of survivors and zombies, the grisly banquet sites that appeared every ten kilometers or so. ’Could the survivors in Xin’an City be the ones doing this?’

He guessed that the survivors in Xin’an City might be using the bodies to lure a portion of the flock away, thereby reducing the pressure on the city itself.

The theory seemed plausible.

Furthermore, it suggested that there were indeed survivors in Xin’an City—and likely a considerable number of them. Otherwise, an operation on this scale would be impossible.

Xu Mo stood by the car, thinking in silence for a few minutes. Then he made his decision: he would go into Xin’an City and see for himself.

’I’ve already come this far,’ he thought. ’And if there’s a chance of a survivor settlement in that city, I have to check it out.’

Back in the car, Xu Mo started the engine and drove toward Xin’an City.

As the SUV drew closer to Xin’an City, the flock’s reaction became more apparent.

The first to spot Xu Mo were the birds loitering on the city’s outskirts. Seeing a moving vehicle approach, they let out piercing cries. More and more birds began to take notice of the intruder.