Hearing the sound, the zombies inside the tavern scanned their surroundings with their scarlet eyes and spotted Zhang Shi standing in front of the door. They immediately put down the rotting flesh in their hands and pounced on him.

The tavern was cramped and full of obstacles, making it easy for zombies to get close. Zhang Shi had specially changed into a full suit of iron armor, which provided some resistance to zombie attacks.

Facing the zombie with its gaping, blood-red maw, Zhang Shi remained calm and composed, slashing down with his sword and splitting its head in two. As he drew closer, he followed up with a horizontal slash, severing the claws that reached out towards the zombie's face.

Within three minutes, the four or five zombies inside the house were all beheaded. Zhang Shi cleaned the bloodstains off his armor and looked toward the place where the sound had come from.

If these are just ordinary-grade zombies, completing the class change quest is only a matter of time. Zhang Shi speculated that, given how unfair the system is, it would never have made the quest so simple.

Sure enough, half a zombie head appeared behind the bar.

The zombie's head was covered by some kind of unidentified connective tissue, with thick glands proliferating around its eye sockets. Its eyes were empty, yet it still peered out like a human.

When Zhang Shi first saw this kind of zombie, he guessed that it must have undergone some kind of mutation, so he immediately took a step back and kept a safe distance from it.

Sure enough, the next second, something resembling a blood vessel shot out of the zombie's eye socket with incredible speed. Zhang Shi didn't have time to observe it closely and hurriedly swung his knife to cut it off.

"Aww!"

The mutated zombie seemed to feel pain from its injuries, letting out a sharp, human-like roar before climbing onto the bar, revealing its full form.

This was a zombie resembling a monkey, its body hunched over. It had no eyes, but instead held a red-glowing fleshy tumor in its mouth. The tumor trembled incessantly like a pump, causing the mutated zombie's body to shake rhythmically.

The zombie's flesh was all shrunken together, as if it were dehydrated. Its long, sharp claws had worn deep marks into the bar counter, clearly indicating that the scraping sound from earlier was caused by it.

"Aww!"

The mutated zombie let out another sharp, piercing howl.

"Damn it, stop arguing!"

Fearing that its cries would attract more zombies, Zhang Shi used a Shadow Step to appear behind the zombie and cleaved it in two with a single strike, silencing its roar.

"Not much skill, but quite a loud voice."

Zhang Shi made a comment, then activated his Focus and focused his gaze on the mutated zombie. He discovered that it was actually a high-quality zombie, and the number of kills in the mission had suddenly increased by 10 points.

Zhang Shi's thinking became clear immediately: it's better to kill well than to kill a lot. If he could find more zombies with certain grades to kill, he believed that the time to complete the mission would be greatly reduced.

Suddenly, the mutated zombie's body began to tremble slightly. Pipi sniffed it, then stepped forward and separated the body that had been split in two, revealing a large worm in the pool of blood.

Zhang Shi took out an arrow and casually threw it at the worm, hitting it accurately and pinning it to the floor. Afterward, Zhang Shi activated his True Sense to analyze its information and discovered that this thing was quite extraordinary.

[Parasitic worm (blue): A type of parasite that is not offensive in itself, but can infect and parasitize others through blood or other means. The infected host quickly loses consciousness and becomes a tool for the parasite to spread.]

Zhang Shi nodded slightly. It turned out that the zombie crisis was not caused by a virus. The culprit was a worm-like parasite. He just didn't know where the system had transferred these monsters from.

...

After the tavern was cleared out, Zhang Shi checked it and found no useful resources, so he left with Pipi through the back door.

The night was pitch black, but with the combined support of Pipi and Dingzhen, Zhang Shi wasn't afraid. He dealt with any zombies that blocked his path easily; his ultimate goal was to reach a certain kill count, and as long as it wasn't a large group of zombies coming at once, Zhang Shi was happy to see these small, vulnerable hordes.

Zhang Shi wandered aimlessly in the darkness for over an hour until dawn broke. Only then did he realize that the ground beneath his feet was actually concrete. Because his feet were covered by thick iron armor, he hadn't noticed the difference in the ground for so long.

In the distance, modern buildings stand tall on both sides of the street, while abandoned cars and the occasional corpse paint a picture of a modern apocalypse.

Zhang Shi, dressed in a suit of steel armor, looked like a knight who had traveled from the Middle Ages, completely out of place in the scene, creating a jarring sense of absurdity.

Looking at the post-apocalyptic wasteland before him, Zhang Shi realized that this place, similar to Huo Family Village, was likely another real world.

The dense cluster of buildings gave Zhang Shi an opportunity to scout out a spot nearby and find a terrain advantageous to him to hunt zombies.

Along the highway, a gas station that had been abandoned for who knows how long caught Zhang Shi's eye. It was backed by a large building, and its front was blocked by countless abandoned cars on both sides, with only the front entrance providing passage.

Zhang Shi entered the gas station and inspected it. As expected, there were no useful supplies, the oil tanks were empty, and the shelves were bare. Only bloodstains and debris were scattered on the floor, telling the story of what had happened there.

With the spirit of "plucking feathers from a passing goose," Zhang Shi tried to pack all the iron shelves into his backpack, and to his surprise, he actually succeeded.

"It seems there isn't nothing at all."

Afterwards, Zhang Shi climbed onto the roof of the gas station, looked ahead and observed the surroundings, and quickly devised a simple combat strategy.

Zhang Shi first placed the prepared barbed wire along the path the zombies would inevitably take. Then he buried some homemade explosives and fuel in front of the barbed wire, preparing to kill the zombies when they gathered together.

Finally, Zhang Shi placed a dense array of spike traps around the gas station and piled all kinds of firearms, explosives, and arrows on the roof. With that, the pre-battle preparations were complete.

Looking at the sky, the sun had just risen sometime earlier, and the morning light was shining in the east, greatly reducing the difficulty of Zhang Shi's battle.

Zhang Shi grinned, picked up two pieces of pig iron, and began to strike them together violently. The dull hum was extremely jarring in the quiet city. Pipi, at Zhang Shi's behest, started barking wildly. The noise from the man and dog quickly attracted the attention of the zombies. Those who had been hiding in the buildings rushed towards the gas station from all directions, soon forming a formidable horde.

Zhang Shi showed no fear. He took a specially made arrow from the engineering corps, activated the triple strike, and shot it at the horde of corpses.

The arrow struck the horde of zombies like a small cannonball. Moments later, the explosives at the tip of the arrow detonated, turning the bewildered zombies into dust.

"Bang, bang!"

Two energy arrows replicated the explosion, followed by two more loud bangs. The zombies in that area were cleared away, creating a vacuum zone. The sparks from the explosion ignited the fuel and explosives that Zhang Shi had laid out beforehand, causing a chain reaction of explosions.

Countless zombie carcasses flew into the sky, and a wall of flames appeared in the middle of the passage. All the zombies that passed through were burned into jerky. After holding out for a while, they quickly collapsed to the ground and turned to ashes.