Volume 1: The Descent of the Apocalypse - Chapter 55: The Vanguard, Luring the Enemy Deep

Xiang Dongliang was not a man of many words, nor was he particularly skilled at stirring up people's emotions. He simply stated today's combat objective in a clear and straightforward manner before ordering the troops to set out.

This time, the entire camp was mobilized: 122 combatants, including Xiang Chenguang and Xiang Dongliang, alongside 42 non-combatant elders and children.

For this battle, every ounce of combat strength in the camp was heading to the frontline, including six middle-aged women and four slightly younger seniors from Wangjiawan.

In truth, the villagers of Wangjiawan had displayed an extremely strong will to fight and a deep yearning for strength.

This was because the two scumbags, Wang Defa and Wang Shuangjiang, had taught the villagers of Wangjiawan through a bloody reality what it meant for strength to reign supreme in the apocalyptic era.

Before the apocalypse, Wangjiawan had a permanent resident population of 26, and 22 more individuals had joined the camp subsequently.

Aside from Wang Defa and Wang Shuangjiang, two other people had died after the outbreak. One was Wang Fude, who died under Wang Defa's gun for resisting their attempt to forcibly seize supplies.

The other was Wang Fude's elderly wife. After witnessing her husband being shot dead and her daughter-in-law violated and forcefully taken away, she hanged herself in her own home.

In other words, not a single person from the entire village of Wangjiawan had fallen to the invading monsters after the apocalypse began.

Consequently, the villagers of Wangjiawan harbored very little fear toward the invading monsters; instead, they were terrified of once again falling victim to the persecution of their own kind due to a lack of self-defense capabilities.

Since all combatants were heading to the battlefield, the camp's defenses would be left exceptionally empty. Therefore, Xiang Dongliang decided to bring the 42 elders and children to the battlefield as well, preventing their home from being ambushed by suddenly appearing monsters.

Furthermore, this battle was bound to be unprecedentedly fierce, and casualties would inevitably occur. These 42 elders and children could also assist in transporting the wounded to the rear when the time came.

Although the camp's objective was to annihilate the giant army ants, Xiang Chenguang had no intention of leading their meager force to assault the nest of the giant army ants.

Engaging in urban warfare within intricately winding streets against an unknown quantity of giant army ants was clearly not a wise move. There was a strong possibility of being surrounded by the swarm of giant army ants at any moment.

Xiang Dongliang decided to have the camp's personnel establish a defensive line outside the county town and lure the giant army ants into an attack.

In the open terrain of the outskirts, if the ant swarm's assault proved too overwhelming, they could fight while retreating, thus avoiding being surrounded by the swarm.

After departing from the camp, they split into two separate paths. One group, led by Xiang Dongliang, ventured into the mountain forests to clear out the monsters that had entered this side via the spatial rift last night.

The plan was to fight their way all the way to the spatial rift. Once all monsters in the mountain forests were cleared, He Wan and several members of the guard unit would station themselves outside the spatial rift to wipe out any incoming monsters.

The other path consisted of Xiang Chenguang alone. He followed the provincial highway straight back to the county town to scout the changes that had taken place over the past few days, as well as the movements of the giant army ants. He also intended to find a way to lure the giant army ants back to the defensive line formed by the camp's warriors outside the city.

Since this area had been repeatedly cleared by the camp's members over the past few days, and monsters clearly preferred remaining in the mountain forests barring special circumstances, Xiang Chenguang's journey back to the county town went smoothly without any obstructions.

It was not until he passed the three-way intersection outside the city and officially entered the old street of the county town that the figures of monsters began to appear in the surroundings.

Five days had passed since the day Xiang Chenguang led his team away, and during these five days, the world had undergone drastic changes once again. Not only had stronger monsters of the first and second tiers begun to emerge, but the density of ordinary monsters had also increased significantly.

This was already the tenth day of the apocalypse, and the food reserves in many households had been exhausted. Moreover, as of yesterday, the power supply system in their county town had malfunctioned.

This triggered an even more severe problem: in an urban setting, a power outage fundamentally meant a water outage as well.

People could manage to hold on for a few days without food, but without water, even a single day became agonizingly difficult to endure.

This forced many people to venture out on dangerous expeditions, desperately seeking food and drinking water.

Along the way, Xiang Chenguang casually eliminated the monsters lunging at him while observing the conditions on the streets.

Numerous traces indicated that someone had engaged in fierce battles with monsters on the streets over the past two days, and the massive amounts of bloodstains on the ground suggested that the fate of those people might have been utterly tragic.

When passing through the Golden Triangle district, many shops on both sides of the road had their doors pried open, and a mess of miscellaneous items was scattered outside the entrance of a relatively large supermarket.

It was unclear whether the people who entered the supermarket for supplies had dropped numerous items at the entrance in their panicked retreat, or if those who went searching for supplies met a grim end and were cornered by monsters right at the supermarket doors.

Looking at the pools of dark red blood on the ground, Xiang Chenguang leaned toward the second possibility.

Over the past five days, Xiang Chenguang had barely exerted himself to eliminate monsters. He now required over 3,000 psychic energy points to level up.

It would take killing two to three hundred tier-zero monsters just to gain a single level.

Meanwhile, many individuals who were still at level zero only needed 150 psychic energy points to advance by two levels.

To train the combat capabilities of the team and elevate the overall strength of the group as much as possible for an earlier encirclement and suppression of the army ant swarm, he had yielded the opportunities for killing monsters and leveling up to the ordinary members of the camp.

At the same time, to guard against potential second-tier monsters, he could not venture too far away from the camp to hunt monsters and level up alone.

Today, however, he finally got to cut loose to his heart's content.

Wielding the Golden-Hooped Rod in one hand and a silver flying disc in the other, whether terrestrial monsters or aerial creatures, as long as they entered his attack range, their heads and bodies were either smashed to pieces by the iron rod or decapitated by the flying disc.

When passing by the vegetable market intersection at the north end of Lihe Bridge, Xiang Chenguang glanced into the market and found that the streets inside were even more cluttered, with many mutant insect carcasses littering the ground.

Following the examples set by He Jie and Wei Wei, many survivors in the vegetable market had learned to utilize security window grills as terrain bottlenecks to slay monsters. Five days had passed, and it was entirely possible that some individuals among them had elevated their tiers to the first rank.

Xiang Chenguang had no intention of interacting with them or recruiting them; he merely cast a glance inward and stepped onto Lihe Bridge without the slightest pause.

There were not any monsters on the bridge, but strangely enough, there were not any monsters on the street south of the bridge either. Not even a single monster carcass was in sight, looking unnervingly clean.

Everything was a direct re-enactment of the scene he had witnessed on Jianxin Street on the second day of the apocalypse.

Had the hunting range of the giant army ants expanded to the south of Lihe Bridge, then?

Times were different now; Xiang Chenguang had come today specifically to look for trouble with the giant army ants, so he stepped onto the street south of Lihe Bridge without any hesitation.

Just like the playback of that day, the entire street was eerily silent, and not the slightest sign of human activity could be heard from the houses on either side of the road.

Xiang Chenguang deliberately dragged the Golden-Hooped Rod along the ground, producing a harsh, grating metallic screech.

Before long, housecat-sized black ants began emerging from the houses on both sides of the street, marching in neat formations toward Xiang Chenguang.

The number of giant army ants appearing this time was not particularly large, numbering only around several dozen.

His purpose in entering the city this time was to scout the situation and lure the giant army ants out of the city to charge their defensive line.

This objective was actually quite easy to achieve; he only needed to kill a few giant army ants and then retreat back to the camp's defense line, and the massive army of giant army ants would naturally track the pheromone scent and pursue them all the way.