Chapter 165: The Cost of an Outbreak

No matter where, a person can easily crush an ant, but if someone is surrounded by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, even billions of ants, and those ants' only purpose is to bite the person once, who could survive?

Gao Yuan is a superhuman now, but zombies are no ants.

And this superhuman, Gao Yuan, isn't that powerful.

Glancing left and right, then ahead, Gao Yuan reluctantly decided to enter the building, to go upstairs.

Unlike horror movies, where characters prefer to run to the rooftop, into the darkness, or to deserted places—that's for the plot, because everyone makes very rational choices; otherwise, the movie can't proceed.

But for Gao Yuan to run into a building and think of going to the rooftop was to seek a change from infinite to finite.

What is infinite? Right now, zombies are virtually infinite, but as long as Gao Yuan can get into a closed space where zombies outside can't enter, the number of zombies inside, no matter how many, is finite.

In the fields, Gao Yuan could deal with hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies because he had space.

Now, on the streets of the city, the same number of thousands of zombies would surround him, a different outcome due to different terrain.

So adapting tactics to the situation was still essential.

But this place had to be chosen carefully; if he ran into a building and got surrounded by zombies, that would be a real death trap.

The first thing you see is a row of small shops by the road. Nope, can't go in there, you wouldn't be able to get out again.

A small shopping mall?

Can't go in, there are no other buildings nearby, and if the zombies surrounded it, there'd be no escape.

A big hotel? Nope, still can't go in.

Residential building?

Gao Yuan turned his head and noticed that the distance between buildings wasn't very large, and it was an old community with only six floors, with just a narrow road, at most ten meters wide, separating two buildings.

And below were rows of small houses with tall poplars planted in between.

This could work, this really could.

Gao Yuan turned a corner into the community, then knocked down a zombie and leaped onto the second-floor balcony.

Then Gao Yuan fell back down.

It was somewhat embarrassing because his left hand held a mace, and his right a knife. In his haste, he had leaped high enough to reach the second-floor balcony, but he had no hand free to grab the railing that enclosed it.

After landing, Gao Yuan kept running forward, then attempted to sheath his mace back behind him, trying several times without success.

PRACTICE was still needed; a misstep in sheathing a knife or mace could be fatal.

Gao Yuan could only keep running as the zombies were catching up again.

And it was quite difficult to sheathe a knife while running.

Gao Yuan could only leap onto the roof of the storage room. He stopped there to catch his breath, then hurriedly sheathed his knife and put the mace back into its holster.

Just this brief delay was enough for the zombies to swarm in.

Thousands upon thousands?

That's an understatement; a horde of zombies, too many to see the edge, quickly filled every space in the old community in front of Gao Yuan.

Gao Yuan took a few steps back, then as the foremost zombies drew closer, he took a running start and leaped toward the building opposite the small house.

The distance of four or five meters was vaulted in a single leap, and as Gao Yuan began to fall, he grabbed the upper edge of a railing outside a second-floor kitchen window.

With a loud clang, the weight of Gao Yuan was too much for the railing to bear, and the anti-theft net, fixed only with a few expansion screws, began detaching from the top.

About to fall, Gao Yuan didn't even have the time to curse his bad luck, he used his hands and feet in tandem, and before the anti-theft net could fully detach, he somehow mustered the strength to leap upwards again, grasping the kitchen anti-theft net of the third floor.

Old neighborhoods, small houses; the kitchen windows generally extended outwards.

So there he was, embarrassingly hanging in mid-air, his feet finding no foothold below.

Zombies had already reached below Gao Yuan's feet, jumping and thrashing madly, and those from afar kept pushing forward.

If these were normal people, this would have been a severe trampling incident.

But these were zombies, so when they began climbing over each other's heads and piling up to form human towers, Gao Yuan realized something.

Never measure zombies by the standards of normal people.

Zombies wouldn't consider whether they would crush those beneath their feet, nor worry about getting crushed by other zombies.

So in just a few short seconds, the tower of zombies was nearly tall enough to reach Gao Yuan's feet.

Gao Yuan climbed alternately with his arms, the anti-theft net on the third floor being of much better quality; it didn't deform or come off under his weight.

Swiftly he climbed to the fourth floor, then the fifth, and finally, with a leap, he caught the ledge of a sixth-floor window and, using the strength of his arms, pulled himself up to find a foothold, his legs braced, and with a strong yank, he tore a large hole in the anti-theft net.

With an elbow, he shattered the window glass, then tore open a bit more of the iron bars of the anti-theft net, and at last, he crawled into the top-floor apartment.

Gao Yuan entered the kitchen. He looked around the neatly kept room from the window ledge before jumping down onto the cabinet.

After hopping off, he first checked that the living room door was closed, then drew his ax and headed straight to the bedroom.

All the doors were open; in the bedroom hung a large wedding photo, with "double happiness" characters plastered in many places, and brand new bedding on the bed. Well, this was a bridal chamber.

There was no telling if the wedding had happened on time, but it seemed the house had not yet been used.

Gao Yuan sat down directly on the bed.

He had to think about how to proceed next.

The zombies should be able to get up eventually, but not too quickly, whether by climbing the staircase or piling on each other outside until they reached the height of the sixth floor.

Gao Yuan looked down and saw blood all over his hands, the blood of zombies, then checked his clothes, spattered with dots of blood all over.

And it was at that moment Gao Yuan surprisingly felt a bit of hunger.

Not starving, but also not the sensation of being full of energy after eating well.

He found it odd because it hadn't been long since he had started moving, and he had eaten his fill, quite a lot actually.

This meant that during the recent outbreak of exertion, which was brief, he had rapidly burned through his energy.

Such full-force exertion was clearly unsustainable.

Up to now, Gao Yuan still didn't understand the limits of his body, as it was difficult to truly unleash his full potential during normal training as he had done just now.

If the proportion was running for ten hours to ten seconds of all-out effort, then distributing Gao Yuan's stamina would become a complex matter.

But that was for future exploration. As for the present, Gao Yuan first needed to ensure his survival, because even if he were Superman, the sheer number of zombies would be enough to grind him to death.