Chapter 287: Zombie Farming Workshop (3)

“Hey! What are you staring at? Get over here!” Skinny shouted, dragging the fiercely struggling girl toward the center. He yelled over his shoulder at the hesitant fatty who was still standing guard, “Come help me hold her down! This bitch is surprisingly strong!”

“Coming!” The fatty, who had been guarding the iron cage and menacing the men inside with a club, immediately tossed the baton aside. He rubbed his hands together and sidled over. “Hurry up! Stop them from screaming! They’ll attract the monsters… And you’d better help me hold one down later, too.”

Despair, fear, and the collapse of order had allowed these normally meek lackeys to shed their humanity and reveal the beasts within.

BANG!

A dull, violent clang of metal abruptly interrupted Wang Wei’s actions. The malice in his eyes flared. “Liu Heng! Are you fucking looking to die?”

Liu Heng, clinging to the side of the iron cage, summoned strength from nowhere. Like a mad bull, he slammed his shoulder hard against the rusty iron bars. The cage shook violently, showering down flakes of rust and dust.

“Then let me die! I don’t want to live anymore!” one of the men roared, even louder than before, as if deliberately trying to attract something. “It’s true we survived thanks to you! We were pathetic! We were afraid to die! But that doesn’t mean I have to become an animal like you!”

He stared at Wang Wei, his eyes no longer filled with fear, only the resolution that comes with release.

“‘There are things one desires more than life, and things one loathes more than death!’ I learned that in school!”

“I’d rather die than accept help from someone like you!”

“Fuck! Then I’ll send you on your way!” Enraged, Wang Wei shoved the woman in front of him aside. He staggered to his feet, picked up a nearby hooked spear, and raised it to stab into the cage.

However, just as he took his first step, his spear still held high in the air…

That foot never came down.

An indescribable chill, like ice water poured down his back, shot up from the base of his spine to the crown of his head without any warning.

The atmosphere changed.

In that instant, the workshop, once filled with roars and cries, suddenly fell into a strange, almost vacuum-like silence.

Even Liu Heng, who just moments ago had been desperately slamming the bars and roaring until he was red in the face, fell silent in an instant. He still gripped the bars, but his posture was as rigid as a statue. His furious gaze, once fixed on Wang Wei, now traveled past Wang Wei’s shoulder, staring intently to the left, his eyes filled with horror.

“What the fuck are you trying to pull…”

Wang Wei’s heart skipped a beat. He swallowed hard, forcing down the tremor in his chest, and followed Liu Heng’s gaze. With extreme stiffness, he twisted his neck. And then, he saw a sight that terrified him to his very soul.

A man in gray work clothes, with a tall and straight posture, was standing silently less than three meters away.

In his hand, he casually held a long, solid-silver alloy spear.

Dark red blood trickled down its sharp blood groove, dripping one drop at a time onto the concrete floor and splashing into tiny blossoms of red.

And in the shadows by the man’s feet, Wang Wei’s two accomplices, Skinny and Fatty, were now slumped on the ground in twisted positions. They had become corpses without so much as a whimper.

The man wasn’t looking at Wang Wei. Instead, he was bent over, looking at the disheveled woman who had collapsed on the ground beside the two corpses.

His index finger was raised to his lips in a shushing gesture.

And the woman, who should have been screaming and breaking down, was instead curled up on the floor, trembling violently. Tears streamed down her face, but she was desperately, frantically clamping both hands over her own mouth. The force was so great that her face was turning purple, and she struggled to suppress every gasp for air.

It was as if the slightest sound would cause the spear in the man’s hand to instantly pierce her throat.

“Shhh…”

Lin Fan lifted his gaze. His indifferent eyes traveled through the air and landed on Wang Wei, who had frozen like a statue. His voice was soft, yet it plunged one into an icy abyss.

“Don’t be so loud, all of you. It’s… annoying…”

“GULP.” Wang Wei forced a swallow.

The immense, almost tangible pressure made him forget he was even holding a weapon.

‘It’s him…’ A thought exploded in Wang Wei’s mind.

He knew this person… no, rather, he’d seen him once from a distance, back when he was dragging corpses away from the front gate like a dog.

The only reason they could act like tyrants here was because the boss had fled, and all those high-and-mighty team leaders were dead…

And it was all because of the man standing before him.

“S-Sir…” Wang Wei’s voice trembled. His body shuddered, and the murderous ferocity from moments before vanished like smoke.

The steel-pipe spear in his hand fell to the ground with a CLANG. His knees went weak, and he almost fell to them to beg for mercy, just like before. “…A misunderstanding!”

“No misunderstanding.”

Lin Fan simply uttered two words.

A second later.

SHLICK!

A flash of silver light streaked through the air in a short, precise line. Wang Wei’s plea for mercy caught in his throat.

The tip of the alloy spear had pierced his forehead, precisely destroying his brain before exiting through the back of his skull.

He didn’t even have time to let out a scream. Wang Wei’s body went rigid for a moment, then slid limply to the ground with Lin Fan’s spear, making no sound at all.

Even in death, his eyes remained wide open, filled with lingering terror and disbelief.

When Lin Fan’s gaze swept over her, the disheveled woman on the floor wisely kept both hands clamped over her mouth. Even with Wang Wei—a gaping hole now punched through his head—collapsed right beside her, she forced herself not to make a sound.

In the apocalypse, keeping quiet is the greatest virtue.

The partitioned area once again fell into a deathly silence, broken only by the utterly suppressed sobs of the women and the heavy breathing of the men in the cage.

Lin Fan flicked his spear. All the blood and gore clinging to it seemed to pass through an illusion, falling to the ground, and the spear was once again pristine.

Only then did he slowly turn to face the iron cage to his left. His gaze fell upon Liu Heng, who was still frozen in his ramming posture, his face smeared with blood and grime.

“‘It is not only the worthy who have this heart. All men have it. The worthy are simply those who have not lost it.'”

As Lin Fan spoke, he swung his spear. The iron hook securing the gate snapped and fell to the ground with a CLANG, startling everyone in the room.

‘Didn’t this guy just tell us not to make a sound? What a double standard.’