Surviving the apocalypse with a wife and a system! [GL]

Chapter 220: Reaction.

Bai Li’s breathing got deeper, but she kept it under control. Her eyes stayed focused. Her steps stayed light. She was absorbing the fight, letting her muscles remember the pattern of violence.

Every now and then, she would glance toward the surrounding buildings, not because she was distracted, but because she liked to keep her environment in view. The courtyard was open, and open places could turn ugly in a heartbeat if a bigger wave appeared from somewhere she had not noticed. But for now, the area remained manageable, so she kept moving. One zombie. Two zombies. Three. She cut, she kicked, she ducked, she turned. If one opponent came too close, she shoved it away. If another raised its arms at the wrong angle, she used that opening to strike through the neck. She even started adjusting her footwork more smoothly, moving around dead bodies without tripping over them, using the uneven ground to her advantage instead of letting it slow her down. Her body was beginning to match the pace her mind wanted.

Up in the high-rise apartments, several residents happened to look out their windows, and what they saw absolutely terrified them to their cores.

At first, some of them thought they were imagining things. From a distance, Bai Li’s figure looked almost unreal against the gray courtyard and the broken mess of the world around her. She moved too quickly, too sharply, too confidently, and the thing in her hand flashed in the light every time she swung. For people who had been hiding indoors for too long, with fear pressing on their chests and every sound outside making them jump, the sight was almost impossible to take in. They saw a girl charging straight into groups of zombies instead of running away from them. They saw her kick one creature down and slash another apart without hesitation. They saw the bodies dropping one after another, almost as if the dead things were nothing more than broken puppets being tossed aside.

One resident grabbed the curtain with both hands and leaned closer to the glass, unable to believe what she was seeing. Another person let out a small gasp and stepped back from the window at once, his face turning pale. Someone else whispered that the girl out there must be crazy, because no normal person would dare fight like that. Yet even as they thought that, they could not stop watching. There was something terrible and powerful in the scene below. Bai Li did not look like a helpless survivor. She looked like a person who had already accepted the shape of this world and decided to tear through it anyway. Every zombie that rushed her seemed to be met with a cold, clean answer. Every move she made looked sharp enough to cut through fear itself.

One of the residents shook so badly that his teeth started chattering. He had been hiding for days and had barely been able to bring himself to look outside, and now this was what he saw. He watched Bai Li step into another group of zombies and felt a strange chill crawl down his spine. It was not just because the girl was fighting. It was because she was fighting so calmly. There was no wild screaming, no useless panic, no frozen hesitation. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she was doing, and that made the sight even more frightening. In a world where most people were either running, hiding, or breaking down, Bai Li was cutting down zombies in the open courtyard like this was just another task she had to finish before lunch.

Another resident whispered something about calling for help, then immediately realized how ridiculous that sounded. Who was going to come help them now? The police? The military? There was no guarantee of anything anymore. All they could do was watch from above and hope the girl below did not suddenly attract a bigger horde toward the building. That hope did not calm them much. In fact, it only made them more nervous. If Bai Li kept killing zombies so loudly and so openly, would more of them start gathering around? Would the noise make the situation worse? Would the courtyard become a feeding ground all over again? The questions piled up in their heads, and the more they watched, the more uneasy they became.

Bai Li, meanwhile, was still fully absorbed in the fight. She had no idea that people upstairs were looking down at her with fear, shock, and a kind of confused awe. To her, the zombies in front of her were just targets, each one giving her another chance to sharpen her skill and collect another core. She moved from one body to the next, slashing where she needed to slash, dodging where she needed to dodge, never letting her pace break. Sometimes she would catch a zombie mid-lunge and shut it down before it could even finish raising its arms. Sometimes she would step just out of reach, turn her body, and strike back so fast the dead thing would still be falling when the next one came forward. There was no wasted energy in her actions. She was using the courtyard as her training ground, the zombies as moving targets, and the whole brutal scene as a way to turn survival into habit.

The smell in the air got thicker with blood and rot, but Bai Li had stopped caring about that a long time ago. Her shoulders were working harder now, and her breathing had a rough edge to it, but her hands were steady. The sword rose and fell in repeated flashes of motion. The dead zombies kept dropping to the ground in tangled piles, some missing heads, some with split necks, some with broken limbs that no longer twitched. Bai Li stepped around them, adjusted her angle, and went straight for the next threat. The open space of the courtyard let her move better than the stairwell had, so she took full advantage of that. She could see farther. She could react faster. She could spread the zombies out and make them easier to kill.

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TO BE CONTINUED.