The voice came from ahead, and to Su Mo, it sounded very young, probably belonging to a small child.
Only when the source of the voice ran out of the quaint white buildings in front did they see the kind of monster that was following him.
Su Mo could guarantee that this was the first time she had seen a dog with its skin peeled off, its head split open in the middle, and a lower jaw growing out of it, with tentacles like an octopus opening and closing, sharp teeth bared.
"This... This is a dog, right!" Shock filled her pupils, not just because of the appearance of the dog, but also because of the little boy who was sprinting their way.
"Prepare for battle," Lu Chen said coldly, and then he glanced at her, "Protect yourself."
"Understood," Su Mo nodded.
Everyone was ready for battle as zombie dogs kept springing out from around the boy, charging at him.
"Save him," Li Qian simply told them.
Noticing the boy was a key figure, Lu Chen rushed forward, his superpower bursting forth as Cold Ice Barbs quickly formed behind the boy, impaling a zombie dog that was about to pounce on him.
However, more dogs kept emerging from the buildings, at least a dozen of them.
Their heads split open, foul-smelling slime dripping from their jaws, and they moved with alarming speed and a numbing howl.
Li Chuan and the others couldn’t just stand by any longer and took action to defend themselves. He conjured fireballs in his pale hands and threw them at the approaching zombie dogs. The dogs were so fast that his chances of hitting them were slim, so he quickly led his group in a detour to avoid them.
Su Mo drank a mouthful of West Lake Longjing Tea and, once the prompt appeared, she quickly activated her superpower and dashed toward the running boy.
Out of a white building on the boy’s left, a zombie dog shattered the glass on the second floor and leaped down, its jaw gaping, aiming to bite the boy’s head.
Su Mo maxed out her speed with buildings seemingly moving backward at the speed of light, and as the zombie dog snapped down, she grabbed the boy and rolled to the side in the nick of time.
The zombie dog crashed to the ground, stood up shaking its head, and continued to charge at her.
Su Mo quickly got up, holding the boy, and leapt onto an abandoned car. With the Tang Blade appearing in her hand, she threw it violently behind her, hearing a whimper as the blade struck true, pinning the dog’s head to the ground through its jaw.
She got off the car with the boy and pulled out the blade.
"Are you okay?" she asked as she bent down.
"Mhm," the boy’s eyes were red, and his gaunt face had lost all its color.
"Su Mo! Get down!" Lu Chen yelled at her urgently, with his superpower flaring up.
Without thinking, Su Mo lay down, pulling the boy with her, protecting him under her body as a zombie dog jumped over their heads, its tentacles missing its target. As it landed, it was impaled by a Cold Ice Barb, and she immediately stood up and chopped off its head with her blade.
Not daring to linger, she grabbed the boy’s collar and, using her superpower, moved towards Lu Chen.
Jianxiong was wrestling with the zombie dogs alongside Li Qian, while Su Niang remained right behind Li Qian.
Su Mo handed the boy to Zhao Changsheng, who seemed capable of coping, and shouted at her, "Protect him!"
With a swing of her Thunder Whip, Zhao Changsheng fended off the zombie dogs that were closing in on her, whipping them with such force that their skin split open. She pulled the boy close, her enchanting fox-like eyes filled with concern as she looked at Su Mo, "Be careful, Momo."
She nodded and went to help Lu Chen with her blade. He was already entangled with five zombie dogs, under attack from all sides.
Surrounded by scattered cars, she scanned the terrain and then hopped onto the car roof, agilely weaving between the vehicles.
Below Lu Chen’s feet, a layer of Cold Ice spread out centered on him. He had formed a cage around himself with Cold Ice Barbs; zombie dogs howled around him, circling as he took an assault rifle out of his Space and opened fire on them.
A few who were unguarded were hit in the legs and immediately let out a whine, followed by even more ferocious roars.
They were fast, but Lu Chen always managed to hit their vital points. Su Mo was observing them from atop a small car and was about to draw her Tang Blade to help when a gust of wind whistled past her ear, and she was knocked off the roof by a zombie dog.
The Tang Blade slipped from her grasp, entangling her directly with the dog as they crashed heavily onto the pavement.
With an outstretched arm, she pressed against its neck, its tentacles that were rushing toward her face waving just a few centimeters away, emitting a nauseating smell.
With lips pursed, Su Mo hooked her thigh up, pressing her knee directly into the zombie dog’s belly and flipping it over. She rolled to one side, picked up the Tang Blade, and split its head open from the jaw.
The disgusting mucus left the blade as it was pulled out, and when she stood up again from behind the vehicle, there were hardly any zombie dogs left around Lu Chen. Jianxiong and Li Qian had made quick work of the cleanup, and she advanced towards Lu Chen, brandishing her blade.
Just as the last dog noticed her, she raised the Tang Blade high and chopped down, black blood splashing onto her face.
She sheathed the blade, Lu Chen retracted his superpower and approached, wiping the blood from her face.
"Let’s go check it out," she said, looking up at him and blinking.
Jianxiong began to clean up the battlefield, collecting only the Crystal Cores from the dogs he had killed, which amounted to a high percentage.
"Damn, these dogs are disgusting," Jianxiong muttered, disgustedly picking up a Crystal Stone and wiping off the mucus and blood.
Li Chuan’s group also acquired four or five Cores, while Sheng Yuan, who had been following them without contributing much, didn’t receive a share.
"For you, little sister," Jianxiong said, holding out a blood-stained Crystal Stone to Su Mo, who took it and placed it into a bag of Crystal Stones before tossing it into her System Bag.
Lu Chen put away his gun and walked over to her. The group gathered around, and a little boy was brought forward by the scruff of his neck by Zhao Changsheng.
He was dropped in the middle of them, red-eyed and shivering.
Without a word, Su Mo looked at Zhao Changsheng, then immediately smiled and crouched down to pat the boy on the head, "Little brother, what’s your name?"
Her naturally childlike face easily won over children, and the sight of the kind and beautiful older sister in front of him stopped his tears.
"Ling Ye," he said, somewhat timidly.
"Ling Ye, then tell sister how you came to be here all alone?" Su Mo asked patiently, tugging at Lu Chen’s trouser leg beside her and opening her palm toward him.
"Hand me a box of milk," she said without turning her head toward him.
As requested, the man fetched a bottle of milk from his Space and crouched down to hand it to her.
She inserted a straw and handed the milk to Ling Ye’s little hands. He hugged it and gulped down a large portion, seemingly quite startled by the night’s events.
"Lu Chen, we’ve rescued the boy, but we can’t linger on him forever," Sheng Yuan said, approaching from behind, unsettled. He had already lost one person and couldn’t stand to lose another.
"If you don’t like it, you’re free not to follow," Jianxiong retorted, waving his burly fist at him with an aggressive look.