Zombified Creatures

Bian had just finished his evolution. Bao'er was perched on his shoulder and the ground beneath him was smoothened out.

Before he could completely process the buildings around him, a claw came aiming at his face.

Swoosh.

He narrowly managed to dodge the claw, his body groaning from the sudden movement.

Bian then stepped back and observed what had attacked him.

It was a humanoid creature with dark translucent skin, pitch black veins and claws stretching out like knives.

Its eyes were white and devoid of pupils, giving him a creepy feeling that something was wrong.

'I am stronger than it though, let's just be careful.'

He was sure of this because he could easily dodge its attacks as long as he was prepared.

"Roar!"

Bian swerved to the right, dodging another pounce and broke off a pipe from a building.

Keeping his distance from the creature, he avoids another attack and swings the pipe at its head.

Bang!

Its skull was caved in, throwing the creature off balance.

He jumped in and after three more hits, bashed its skull open like a watermelon, before quickly retreating from the body.

Who knew if it would explode like Executioner White.

Thankfully, the creature stopped moving. Regardless, Bian picked up another pipe and carefully examined it.

"Get up!"

He yelled at the creature.

It was obviously playing dead. Otherwise, he would have heard the announcement for the kill.

Waiting a while, Bian extended his Dongxuan Sense and probed the creature.

No lifeforce.

It really was dead, maybe it was dead even while attacking him.

Roar!

A cacophony of screams echoed as five more humanoid creatures blocked both sides of the alleyway. Two in front and three at the back.

"What is going on here?"

Some humanoid creatures had leopard patterns on their skin. Another was scaled and the last was pale white and had the horn of a rhino.

All their claws were long and blackened.

They looked at Bian with the same blank white eyes. And now that he scanned them, he found that they had no life force.

"Zombies!" Bian took in a deep breath.

The five creatures rushed at him, giving him little time to think.

Luckily for him, they had the fitness of the first one he faced. He reckoned they were Ordinary creatures, which would explain why he could handle them. They also charged and attacked in predictable patterns, lacking the cunning of normal creatures.

Then again, the strength of demigod creatures didn't solely lie in their body. He had an advantage there as Bian's physique was more mighty than average creatures on his level.

Still, he would have to be very careful of facing any demigod creature. Their danger lies in the diversity of their geno core.

With no gaps to escape from, he began making alternating jumps off both walls by his side. The pipes attached to the walls gave him little footing but also allowed the creatures to climb up after him.

Left! Right! Left! Right!

He kept oscillating until he reached a ledge and climbed on the rooftop.

"Killing them brings no benefits plus I don't know how many there are." Bian reasoned as he fled from the scene.

The rooftop was shadowed by other taller buildings which all had similar designs with steam pipes everywhere.

It was his first time seeing a shelter like this, but he wasn't too surprised.

He had inhabited a walking shelter, a ship-structured shelter and even knew of a teleporting shelter.

"Daddy look." Bao'er pointed out.

The streets were filled with humanoid creatures of different origins, which made his scalp tingle.

They were thousands of them littered across the part of the shelter he could see.

That wasn't a problem in itself, the issue was that the shelter was as large as a city.

This meant it belonged to a strong spirit and thus there could be stronger creatures roaming about.

One unlucky encounter with a sacred-blood variant or even worse a super zombie creature would cost him his life.

"They're persistent!"

Bian sneered at the sight of a dozen zombies chasing him.

Humanoid creatures with wings and several other variants had joined the chase.

Bian could lose them easily by moving faster, but ran the risk of exposing himself to stronger variants.

He wasn't even sure if he could beat a Primitive type humanoid zombie creature.

He had to move cautiously, trying his best to avoid larger swarms.

CAW!

A screech echoed from above, causing a shiver to run up his spine.

The spirit pillar activated automatically, time seemed to slow down.

Bian jumped off the rooftops, feeling a gust of wind blow past his back. If he was a fraction of a second slower, he would have been attacked by the creature.

The humanoid creature had feathers coating its body, its head was like an eagle head, except the beak was split into three and lined with razor-sharp teeth within.

It had attacked Bian with so much force, that him evading left the creature trailing forward at frightening speed.

Bian didn't pause to stare at the creature, he just briefly observed its passage with the Dongxuan Sutra.

As he landed, his body began vibrating at an extreme frequency, the ground beneath his feet turning to sand and swallowing him whole.

The claws of the other creatures struck the floor, leaving holes in the ground but Bian was gone.

Bang!

The strong eagle variant from before crashed into the mob scattering them.

It gazed everywhere, but couldn't find a trace of the prey that escaped.

It screeched to the skies in anger.

Bian used the Dongxuan Sense to navigate underground moving across the shelter.

The surface was littered with those creatures and that eagle variant was dastardly strong.

He was sure there would be others like it and was stuck in a dilemma, unsure of where to head to.

He could try leaving this region and search for greener grass but that would be risky.

There were already flying variants, who was to say there weren't tunneling variants either.

Not to mention, these creatures seemed brain dead but had accute senses.

With much on his mind, Bian decided to use the Empirical Aura. Its range would have been suppressed in the fourth sanctuaries, but would still far surpass the Dongxuan Sense.

Plus creatures couldn't trail him from the Empirical Aura. Except for the initial spread, there were no obvious traces in its uniform light.

The initial spread itself was very fast and couldn't be tracked unless they witnessed it spread from his body.

After thinking so, Bian unleashed the Empirical Aura, beaming an indigo light from his body to the world.

Unlike the hundred-meter radius of the Dongxuan Sutra, the Empirical Aura covered tens of thousands of meters.

He could 'see' the situation of the shelter and a part of the land beyond it.

"This isn't good." Bian's gaze darkened.

Judging by the large size of the shelter, it should belong to a royal spirit, which was equivalent to a sacred-blood creature.

He could already see over a hundred thousand zombies prowling around the shelter, but never going too far from it.

The number within the shelter was more manageable but was still over forty thousand.

Just as he speculated, there were over a hundred zombies tunneling through the grounds of the shelter.

And beneath the grounds...

Bian saw several more creatures, this time not humanoid, but normal monstrous-shaped creatures.

He could even sense their life force and noticed the strongest amongst them was a royal spirit and three sacred-blood creatures that followed her around.

"There are actually creatures living underground, but how can I sense their life force?"

"Could this be the evolution of the Empirical Aura that I felt before? It somehow uses the powers of the Dongxuan Sutra to sense life force."

Bian was quite happy with this new upgrade. If only he wasn't facing zombies without life force, it would have been even more useful.

Since he could still last for some time and wasn't in distress, he brought up his status to check the next level of his super body.

Bian Manwei: Empirical Decree

Level: Demi-God

Lifespan: 500

Evolution Requirements: None

Geno Points: None

Demi-God Geno Cores: None

Self Geno Core: Bronze Solum Mirror

'Empirical Decree? I can feel it within me. It wants to act, but what exactly does it want to do?'

Given a quiet place to settle down and think, Bian would figure this out.

He turned and decisively moved towards the underground shelter.

Spirits in the fourth sanctuary were a lot easier to communicate with and were more friendly to humans.

The fourth sanctuary reminded him of university in that aspect.

Suddenly the spirits, who were like school bullies, seemed to mature.

It was a little bit comical.

The space underground was large and the nearest tunneling zombie was thousands of meters away.

Bian descended until he encountered a strong layer of metal coating a tunnel.

Terraslip wouldn't work on metals, so he had to find a way to enter without it.

He could try to brute force his way in, but that would leave a bad impression with the inhabitants and might get him into trouble.

"I'm still too weak to stir up trouble, at least for now."

Bian said with a smile, observing as the creatures inside were in a panic about the universal indigo light.

He couldn't hear what they were saying, and the body language ranged from bipedal to four-legged beasts.

He could only guess the situation and it seemed to be going in his favour.

One of the creatures guarding the spirit, a big cheetah moved out with a small monkey following behind it.

They made several turns and twists, the monkey pulled on some levers, opening the metal doors in front of them with a puff of steam.

Soon they bypassed several layers of security and the cheetah took the lead.

Bian went ahead of them, finding a building which was one of the access points of the tunnels.

He made sure nothing was around and came out of the ground, quickly dashing into the building.

An ordinary wall on the second floor, full of pipes and machinery, split apart at the center.

As the door opened, the indigo light around them vanished and the Red-furred Cheetah saw a humanoid figure on the other side.

It pounced at him, jaws aiming for his throat.

At the same time, a yellow-tinted crystal armor covered the Cheetah's entire body and its eyes.

The creature moved at frightening speed, which even Bian couldn't follow.

It stopped dead in front of him, looking at his eyes which still had life in them.

"Hey there."

Bian gave a nervous wave.