Chapter 200 - 199: This Thunder: A Divine Punishment or a Blessing?

Chapter 200: Chapter 199: This Thunder: A Divine Punishment or a Blessing?

Time ticked by, second by second. No matter how much Wang Zhong prayed for it to slow, five minutes still vanished in the blink of an eye.

Something in the storefront from before had been ignited by the grenade and was now a raging fire.

Wang Zhong looked through the rearview mirror. A dozen or so zombies, attracted by the crackling of the flames, were shambling around where the vehicle had been parked.

Among them were two or three figures that were exceptionally tall.

’Just thirty more seconds...’

Wang Zhong counted silently.

A minute later, the military assault vehicle’s taillights flared to life, and it suddenly lurched forward.

The zombies noticed the movement and gave chase.

But they could never catch the vehicle. They could only chase furiously after its taillights, watching helplessly as their prey sped farther and farther away without a backward glance...

Meanwhile, Lin Fan traveled south along the street-facing storefronts. To his surprise, however, he had already passed the vanguard of the zombie horde but still hadn’t found any trace of Ye Qingniao.

The night vision granted by the concealment potion was about to expire, so Lin Fan had no choice but to pull a [Gasoline (Small)] and a [Diesel (Small)] from his inventory.

These were two 10-liter metal cans. Lin Fan tossed them onto the rooftop, poked them with his spear, and a gurgling stream of liquid flowed out, spreading toward a low-lying area.

He retreated to the edge of the building and scraped his spear against the ground. The resulting sparks instantly ignited the gasoline, and an orange-yellow blaze erupted upward. Then, the Diesel also caught fire, belching thick black smoke.

The flames flowed down toward the floor below via a drainpipe, setting the entire building’s walls ablaze.

In an instant, the three-story storefront became a torch. Flames several meters high brightly illuminated the surrounding area for hundreds of meters.

Lin Fan leaped aside, landing on a half-ruined section of another building.

The advancing army of zombies, drawn either by the light of the fire or the sound of the conflagration, swarmed toward the building. However, the intense heat drove them back. Only the first few dozen zombies were pushed from behind into the cascading waterfall of fire. They were coated in the burning Diesel, turned into human torches, and stumbled into the crowd, setting other zombies alight.

But with limited fuel, not a single zombie was actually burned to death.

It wasn’t that Lin Fan wanted to burn the zombies to death with fire, anyway. Without the right terrain, even a ton of gasoline wouldn’t necessarily kill many of them. It would just be a waste of resources.

But time was limited. He couldn’t keep searching for Ye Qingniao indefinitely. He could only hope she would notice the fire and give him some kind of signal...

He raised his arm and glanced at his watch. His earlier calculation was that he had to turn back five minutes after passing the vanguard of the horde. This was because he wouldn’t be able to see the path on his way back and would have to travel on the ground, weaving between zombie clusters and buildings. That would drastically slow him down, so he had to leave enough time.

Three minutes had passed since he split up with Wang Zhong, and it had been over a minute since he’d crossed paths with the zombie vanguard...

’A little over three minutes left...’

But since he was already here, Lin Fan frowned, gripped his spear, and forced his way through the zombie horde. He charged forward another kilometer or so to his front-left, then leaped up and landed on the third-floor balcony of a residential building across the street, shaking off the Mutated Zombies that had been pursuing him.

This residential building hadn’t collapsed in the earthquake, but many of its windows were shattered. It was impossible to tell if they were broken by the quake or by Mutated Zombies bursting out.

The vanguard of the horde was already far ahead. Most of the stragglers were either zombies that had just merged onto the main road from the residential complexes on either side, or they were those massive but somewhat clumsy types of individual Mutated Zombies. The number of health bars was much sparser, but the quality had jumped a notch...

With a thought, a large barrel appeared at Lin Fan’s feet.

A [Gasoline (Medium)].

One hundred liters.

With his recent experience in starting fires, Lin Fan saw no need to use Diesel inside a residential building.

He unscrewed the cap on the barrel, kicked it over, and gurgling gasoline began to spread across the balcony. It flowed out through the shattered floor-to-ceiling window and streamed down the building’s exterior wall.

Lin Fan leaped down, striking the remnant of a metal window frame with a backhand blow from his spear. Sparks flew. A tongue of fire shot down the trail of fuel, igniting the second and first floors before roaring back up.

A blue light from his Armor Crystal flashed. The moment Lin Fan landed, he was spotted by two Mutated Zombies waiting below, but he had no time to kill them.

The instant he touched the ground, he leaped high into the air again. Activating the Sharp Energy in his spear, he stabbed it straight into the side of a large building, leaving himself hanging at the height of the fourth or fifth floor. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the other side of the road.

Hu Chen had said all three of them were on the west side of the road. Wang Zhong was, so Ye Qingniao should be too.

After all, it was unlikely she would have insisted on crossing the road to this side while the horde was surging through.

To get back, she could only have gone via the rooftops of the storefronts on the west side, or through the streets of the residential complexes behind them...

Ignited by a fast-burning fuel like gasoline, the entire building began to burn furiously from the bottom up. Tongues of fire licked out of every window. In less than half a minute, it had become a colossal torch.

Lin Fan believed that with a fire burning this fiercely all of a sudden, a clever girl like Ye Qingniao would know it was man-made. And considering they had spent last night studying the footage of him fighting that tree, she would definitely realize he was the one who set it!

Two minutes remaining. Lin Fan hung from the side of the building, calmly observing everything across the street, searching for any clue.

Drip... Drip.

The weather had been a bit gloomy in the afternoon, but Lin Fan hadn’t thought it would rain. He never expected it to suddenly start pouring now.

Raindrops fell on his hands, his head, and his face, running into his eyes and dripping from their corners.

With a constitution of [1830] HP, he could suppress all his basic reflexes, including blinking, if he so wished.

Lin Fan hung from the building, motionless as a statue, his gaze sweeping over everything like a bird of prey...

’A grenade, a flashbang, even a smoke grenade would do. A gunshot, a flash of light, or a flicker of flame...’

He was sure that not a single anomaly would escape his notice.

The rain grew heavier. Doused by the downpour, the flames on the building dwindled, and thick black smoke drifted into the sky. Lin Fan’s heart sank with them.

Time was almost up.

A deep, rolling peal of thunder echoed from the distance.

He could confirm that this was real thunder.

After two days of listening to explosions and collapsing buildings, the sound of actual thunder felt almost... familiar.

’Maybe Ye Qingniao has already gone back?’

The thought flashed through his mind. He knew he was letting his guard down; his subconscious was urging him to leave.

But there were still forty-two seconds left.

He recalled her figure: not tall, dressed in a baggy, filthy combat suit. She radiated a unique, conflicting aura—a constant clash and fusion of two disparate qualities: that of a young girl, and that of a Warrior.

Awkward, not straightforward, cunning, yet delicate.

Like a stray cat.

The kind you don’t want to let go of.

Ten seconds left.

Suddenly, Lin Fan felt an indescribable tingling and stinging sensation. A strange, metallic taste filled his mouth, and the spear in his hand inexplicably began to vibrate with a low BUZZZZ...

Startled by the strange sensation, he turned his head for the first time in minutes and looked toward the residential building beside him.

In the dim glow of the fire, thick black smoke drifted toward the sky.

’He seemed to remember reading somewhere that smoke attracts lightning...’

"Holy shit...!!!"

With a thought, the spear vanished from his hand!

He instinctively equipped his Armor Crystal, tensed every muscle in his body, and braced to take the hit head-on!

His body was still anchored in mid-air by inertia when a flash of indescribably bright light erupted!

A ribbon of light connecting heaven and earth instantly appeared before Lin Fan’s eyes!

But faster than his mind could possibly react, it abruptly diverted, striking the top of a ruined low-rise building across the street and kicking up a shower of sparks.

It was as if it had been there from the very beginning.

In that moment, all that remained on his retina was an intensely bright, jagged line.

BOOM!!!

The heaven-and-earth-shattering thunderclap exploded in his ears just as Lin Fan landed on the ground.

The moment he landed, only the flash of light and two thoughts remained in his mind...

The first was that he would never again start a fire while standing in a high place. He’d get struck by lightning.

The second was: if that was her fucking signal, it was way too damn over-the-top!!!