As Zhang Ming completely kicked the bucket and turned into a zombie, Gu Shangse smashed his skull with a baseball bat, splattering brain matter everywhere.
Su Ling watched coldly. Compared to Xu Lin and the other two, Gu Shangse was the most like her.
Ruthless when necessary, gentle when needed, never indecisive or hesitant in the face of a crisis.
Thinking of the other three, Su Ling knew that apart from the fat and skinny ones, the biggest variable was Xu Lin.
Xu Lin had transferred to their newly formed five-person team from a previous group.
The other four of them carried no burdens or baggage.
But Xu Lin was different. On the third floor of that department store, he still had friends.
And these friends were not casually acquainted with Xu Lin; they were friends who had faced life and death together. This would inevitably become a point of contention for Xu Lin.
As for whether Xu Lin would stay or leave in the end, Su Ling was indifferent.
With Sister Na and Hanhan's arrival drawing closer, she focused all her attention on them and their group. She didn't want to waste too much energy on people they met along the way.
She only knew that those who ultimately passed the assessment would not necessarily earn her trust.
Trust was something that needed to be cultivated over time, not built in a single day.
Although Xu Lin and the others had made a good impression on her so far, the human heart was an unfathomable thing. Who knew what actions they might take in the future to achieve their goals?
Just like in her past life, her decade-long friendship with Yang Guang had ultimately ended in tragedy. Doomsday was a revealing mirror, showing all the good and bad without hiding anything.
After Gu Shangse finished dealing with Zhang Ming's corpse, he turned back to Su Ling and said, "Let's keep moving."
Su Ling hummed in response, pushing her bicycle slowly behind Gu Shangse.
Watching Gu Shangse's back as he fought zombies ahead, Su Ling looked up at the scorching sun. She knew that the day was slipping away.
Starting tomorrow, she needed to proceed according to her original plan.
She desperately needed a large quantity of crystal cores to accumulate for building her mobile fortress in the future.
Gu Shangse and the others must not become obstacles to her plan.
If they were destined to be, then they would be discarded.
Heavy rain was approaching, and she needed to harvest a wave of crystal cores and clear out some zombies before the rain began.
Otherwise, if the heavy rain continued for days, the zombies would evolve once it stopped, posing a significant obstacle to their departure from Xuyang City.
This was especially true since their route out of Xuyang City would require them to pass through the bustling and densely populated city center.
After Su Ling and Gu Shangse left, a tall man with long legs emerged from the corner of the cake shop.
The man carried a large-capacity backpack containing arrows, and he held a crossbow in his hand.
He seemed to have arrived earlier and had been hiding himself until Su Ling and Gu Shangse departed before revealing himself.
This man was Rao Beichen, who had appeared earlier.
Rao Beichen, with his backpack and crossbow, approached the scene of numerous zombies. Looking at the bashed-in zombie heads, the intelligent man seemed to realize that something important was inside the zombies' brains.
He glanced again in the direction Su Ling and Gu Shangse had gone, then turned back to the cake shop on the street corner.
Without hesitation, Rao Beichen walked towards it.
Stopping in front of the closed glass door, Rao Beichen kicked it with his foot.
With a 'crash', the glass door shattered.
Rao Beichen moved swiftly and gracefully, opening the door and entering the cake shop.
Upon seeing the state of the cake shop, even Rao Beichen, who had seen much of the world, was momentarily stunned.
Because—