Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Activating the Second Layer of the Tower of Babel
𝗜'𝗺 𝘂𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 10-20 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗞𝗼-𝗙𝗜. 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗺𝗲! 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘆𝗼𝘂!!
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Boxes of supplies were loaded onto the truck.
Among the three store clerks, a man in his forties stepped out, looking like the leader there, and began to dissuade them:
"This is public property; you can't take it."
Ye Zi'an looked him in the eye and placed the Tang Dao against his neck, saying, "You have three seconds to organize your words. Whose stuff is this?"
The man, clearly someone who was afraid of the strong, quickly changed his tune: "It's yours, it's yours."
Ye Zi'an's Tang Dao was still dripping with blood, and the man could now see the dozens of zombie corpses sprawled on the ground outside the convenience store.
"Then why are you still talking? It's public property; why are you risking your life?"
Ye Zi'an's knife sliced through the man's neck with ease, cleanly cutting his throat, blood spraying onto the white walls of the convenience store.
The man clutched his neck in disbelief, falling to the ground in resentment.
He never expected to die over a single sentence; if he had known, he would have kept his mouth shut. It wasn't even his property.
Even if it were his own, it wasn't worth his life.
"Ah, ah, ah…"
The four people in the convenience store screamed uncontrollably at the sight of the man dying before them.
But Ye Zi'an simply shot them a cold glance, and they immediately stopped screaming, looking at him in fear.
The young couple was already so scared they had wet themselves. The two clerks were quietly sobbing.
Ye Zi'an shook his head in disappointment; these four had no value, too timid and with too little talent.
Meanwhile, the six team members were unfazed, quietly cooperating with Chen Ruoxue as they continued to move supplies from the convenience store to the trucks.
Everything from drinks, snacks, instant noodles, to anything usable was taken; even the shelves were emptied.
The once bustling convenience store, along with its 50-square-meter warehouse, now contained only a corpse and four terrified people.
Ye Zi'an nodded in satisfaction, seeing that the fuel tankers were also full, and the four trucks were loaded with diesel.
"Let's go back to the fortress."
Ye Zi'an left the convenience store and warehouse, with the supplies filling two trucks.
Chen Ruoxue spoke up: "What should we do with these people? Kill them or take them back?"
Ye Zi'an glanced at the four and replied, "No need. Let them fend for themselves."
"I thought you would kill them," Chen Ruoxue remarked.
Ye Zi'an looked at the corpse on the ground and smiled without answering.
Why kill them? He could let them turn into zombies to guard the oil depot for him.
Returning to the fortress with the convoy, although the distance wasn't far, moving the supplies took a considerable amount of time.
Seeing Ye Zi'an leave, the four let out a sigh of relief; the killing machine had finally departed.
"You two, go move that body out," the young man from the couple ordered the two clerks.
"Why don't you do it yourself? You were scared enough to wet your pants just now," one of the employees retorted, no longer willing to back down.
All the supplies had been emptied by Ye Zi'an, and the convenience store was no longer a place to linger. With the zombies killed by Ye Zi'an, they had a chance to escape, and the two were preparing to leave and find a new hiding place.
The young man, embarrassed by his earlier cowardice, rose in anger, ready to teach the two clerks a lesson.
The four of them immediately got into a scuffle, completely disregarding their appearances.
They no longer naively believed that rescue would come; society had completely transformed into a world of the survival of the fittest.
"Crack, crack, crack…"
A series of bone-cracking sounds emerged, but the four were oblivious, still caught up in their brawl, their insults drowning out the low growls of the approaching zombies.
The middle-aged man who had turned into a zombie struggled to get up, roaring as he joined the fray.
His sharp claws tore into the flesh of the four, and the already chaotic convenience store was filled with a thick smell of blood.
The convoy saw the towering Tower of Babel within the fortress from a distance, and the residents were awestruck by the miracles Ye Zi'an had displayed.
Ye Yu, standing on the fortress wall, spotted Ye Zi'an's convoy and immediately instructed the city defense team nearby to prepare to shoot the zombies and cover the convoy's entry.
However, to be cautious, Ye Yu waited until she clearly saw Ye Zi'an's face before entering the password to open the city gate.
The zombies trailing behind the convoy were shot by over twenty members of the city defense team armed with crossbows on the wall.
Accompanied by the sound of large gears turning, the iron gates slowly began to open inward.
A team of city defense teammates wearing plastic gloves and armed with long guns quickly emerged from the gate.
These individuals used their long guns to finish off the zombies that had fallen at the gate, collecting the fallen bolts, and piling the corpses together to douse them with gasoline and burn them.
Ye Zi'an arrived at the foot of the tower and gazed up at it. Yesterday, the Tower of Babel had only a few lonely rooms; today, its area had doubled.
Fortunately, he had reserved a lot of space in advance.
Above the main entrance was a sign painted in gold with the words "Tower of Babel" written in large characters. However, instead of a door, there was a layer of light blue energy membrane.
"You all go organize the supplies and store them; gather here later," Ye Zi'an instructed before stepping through the energy membrane alone, entering the interior of the Tower of Babel.
The original first floor had been moved above; this was the so-called second floor. In front of him were four energy membranes of different colors, each labeled with the characters "A," "B," "C," and "D."
These were likely the four training rooms, but he didn't know their differences.
Judging from the colors of the membranes, A was the lightest, almost transparent, giving Ye Zi'an the gentlest feeling. B was light blue, like the membrane at the entrance, C was dark blue, and D was pitch black, suggesting that A was the safest.
Ye Zi'an entered training room A, where there were dozens of common training equipment on one side, and in the center was a fighting arena measuring 10 meters by 10 meters, equipped with a screen in the middle and a control panel on one side. Behind the panel were ten futuristic capsule-shaped chambers, similar to the cryo-pods seen in space movies.
"System, what is the function of this training pod?"
"The host can place a biological sample on the control panel, which will simulate and generate a copy of that organism; the host can then engage in simulated combat within the training pod."
With no biological records on the panel, he naturally couldn't simulate any combat.
But that didn't stump Ye Zi'an; wasn't he a biological entity himself?
Ye Zi'an casually pulled out a hair and placed it in the nearby collector.
"Biological sample collected, system simulating."
The progress on the panel continued to jump: 81%, 86%, 97%, 100%.
Collection complete.
His name appeared on the once blank panel.
Ye Zi'an immediately opened a training pod, lay down inside, and eagerly awaited his chance to fight against himself.
•---•---•---•---•
𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁: '𝗕𝗼𝗴𝗱𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗲𝘀𝗰𝘂' 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝘆 $5 𝗧𝗶𝗲𝗿.
𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁: '𝗝𝗰1202' 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝘆 $5 𝗧𝗶𝗲𝗿.
𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗞𝗼-𝗙𝗶 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 35+ 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲:
𝗞𝗼-𝗙𝗶.𝗰𝗼𝗺/𝗚𝗼𝗱𝗢𝗳𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿