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This one thinks this mortal makes sense.

—You Qin Lixiang

“Murder? I would never. They were just in the way, that’s all. So I gave them a light push.” The hoodlum leader responded in his typical weaselly fashion. “Brothers, have you ever heard of a law that states that pushing someone is murder?”

His two troublemaker lackeys immediately chimed in, “Absolutely not. There’s no way such an unreasonable law would exist!”

“Exactly. Exactly. We are all law-abiding citizens here. Very law-abiding, in fact.”

Seeing that irksome grin on their faces, even Bitong couldn’t help but raise her voice at them. “You guys clearly knew that pushing them away would result in their deaths, but you still did it… you scumbags!”

“Now, now. Girlie, that’s not right, is it? What do you mean ‘knew’?” The hoodlum leader snorted at that point. “Even if we did not do that, there’s no guarantee they would survive either. In situations such as this, we can only look after our survival. It’s their fault for running so slowly.”

“You’re just twisting the facts!” Bitong hated more than anything else scoundrels like them, because her good friend was bullied by such a person in the past. People like these hoodlums touched a raw nerve for her.

“Twisting?” The hoodlum leader stared at Bitong, taking in her beauty for a good long while before licking his lips. “It’s all just survival. Survival of the fittest, and all that. They merely died because they were weak.”

“This one shouldn’t have kept the door open…” Even Lixiang, who normally liked to play the cool girl of the group, couldn’t stand the sight of these hoodlums.

“The old world is finished, don’t you see? The old order is gone, and the world will soon return to a more primitive state.” Having said that, the hoodlum leader’s eyes grew even more crazed. “Power is everything there… that will be the true face of our new world…”

Having said that, his two lackeys started fidgeting with excitement as well, seemingly influenced by his ravings.

Jiaojiao, on the other hand, did her best to duck behind Bitong.

Crazed though that hoodlum might be, one bit of his little speech concerned me. “How do you know it’s the entire world and not just Southern Plains?”

“What? You don’t know?” The hoodlum leader looked at me with a bemused look. Realising that I was genuinely seeking an answer, he stated as such, “That’s just how it goes in the movies.”

“Movies?” Bitong, Jiaojiao and I asked in unison.

We exchanged a quick look with each other: this guy is clearly out of his mind… No. These three!

Only Lixiang seemed to be silent, as if she actually believed them.

Lixiang… Come on. Now’s not the time for your middle school delusions. These guys are clearly off their rockers.

“An unexpected leak in some underground lab causes the entire planet to be infected with a strange virus. Those that survive the change evolve into a new human being, while the majority end up as mindless zombies…” The hoodlum leader rattled off about his theory without pause. Finally, he ended with a crescendo. “That is the new world! And I will definitely become a new human being and stand atop this world!”

“Ding~~” As if on cue, the elevator came to a halt just before he finished raving.

However, just because we were out of that hellhole didn’t mean we had time to entertain a crackpot’s delusions either. The moment the elevator doors slid open a tiny bit, a deathly pale hand shot in through the crevice grabbing blindly.

Lixiang immediately jammed down hard on the close button. But with a foreign object in between the doors, there was no way the elevator doors could shut. The best she could do was hold the doors in place by mashing the button.

Because we were all facing the other direction thanks to the hoodlum leader’s strange theories, the rest of us weren’t aware of this new development. Lixiang herself did not seem to have the presence of mind to warn us either, most likely because she was panicking.

Yet just as the hoodlum leader was revelling in his sweet dreams, a hand suddenly tapped him. Because of the distance between him and that hand, it only managed to tap him slightly.

Still, it was enough to make him turn around. By sheer coincidence, the zombie hand just so happened to dip below his field of vision.

“Hey. Did you two tap me?” As he said that, he saw that his two companions were all standing squarely on his right, and did not seem to have moved at all. That tapping came from the left instead…

It was then that he felt another tap on his left back, at which point he turned around to have a look…

“%&*&!!”

The hoodlum leader jumped back with a start, arms flailing about. Because the elevator still had some corpses from before, he ended up slipping… By the time he got up, his body, face and hands were all covered in blood.

In his defense, anyone would have gotten a fright if a hand suddenly reached out and touched you like that…

Ignoring the strange sensation of stepping on a corpse, I bravely took a step forward and sliced the hand with Icy Inferno.

With the arm gone, the elevator door finally closed.

“Is there some way to remotely open that door? Preferably with some distance to spare.” Even without looking, I could tell that there was probably a horde of zombies waiting for us outside the door. My first thought was to employ the Fire Wall skill just given to me by the system.

According to the system, this skill grew with the amount of spiritual energy I put in. However, I had a feeling that my version of the skill could adjust its own output.

“I can.” Even though Bitong still had no idea as to what I was planning, her trust in me made her reply immediately. “Lixiang, step back, I’ll control the door.”

“This duty is yours now.”

“No! Do not open that door!” Frightened by that zombie hand just moments ago, the hoodlum leader immediately reacted when he heard what I was planning. While he might not be the brightest of bulbs, his survival instincts told him that what was on the other side was bad news. “It’s all zombies out there, if we open that door, we will all die!”

As he said that, he signalled at his two lackeys who merely lagged for a second before immediately shouting, “Do not open that door! It’s your own business if you want to die, but we still want to live!”

“If anyone dares to open that door, they will have to answer to me!”