Chapter 173: Spiritual Solidification
Yue Zhong walked up the corpse of the Z1, and found that the Z1 zombie had dropped several items: A skill book, a green coloured treasure box and 200 [System] coins
"Level 3 skill book: Spiritual Solidification. This skill is a passive skill. After learning this skill your spiritual power will permanently increase by 10."
Yue Zhong immediately opted to learn this skill.
Instantly, in Yue Zhong's brain, there appears a new rune. Once this new rune appeared, Yue Zhong's headache seemed to magically disappear. The mild feeling of disorientation he had as a result of the mind blast also completely vanished.
Looking at the massive head of this Z1 zombie, Yue Zhong took out his Tang Imitation sword and chopped off its brains. He tried to examine if there were any blood coloured beads or crystals inside it.
Just as Yue Zhong was checking the corpse, Little Greenie flew down, and with a peck, begins to eat the zombie with relish. After several big gulps, it quickly swallowed the entire zombie.
"There is no evolution this time?"
Seeing that Little Greenie had not evolved, he was feeling quite disappointed.
He opened the green treasure box, and BINGO!
"Level 3 Treasure: Power Gloves. +10 to strength on equip."
On the route back to the camp, he kept all the items that the elite zombies had dropped into his spatial ring.
Once the Z1 zombie had been killed, the entire town had no further threats. Yue Zhong's men had also entered into Big Cliff village, and had began to look for survivors,
While his men were busying searching for survival, Yue Zhong was greedily looking at the spoils of this battle.
This time, the numbers of evolved zombies were relatively high. Therefore the rewards were also much higher. Yue Zhong had managed to collect 63 white colour treasure box, 3 green colour treasure box and 6 skill books.
After opening all the treasure boxes, Yue Zhong found that he had 3 pairs of Level 1 strength enhancing shoes, 32 Tang Imitation Swords, 1 complete set of Level 1 protective vest, 1 set of Level 2 protective vest, 3 pairs of white colour gloves, 1 Level 2 Tang Sabre, 1 Level 2 wand.
As well, the seven skill books include Level 1 fireball, Level 2 strength boost, Level 1 Ice Cone, Level 1 Minor Healing, Level 2 high speed movement skill, level 1 accelerate skill.
"Level 2 Treasure: Tang Sabre. This sabre is much sharper and more resilient than the Tang Imitation Sword"
"Level 2 Treasure: Inferior Wand. With the aid of the wand, spells that take more than 15 seconds to cast may save 1 second off the casting time.
"Level 1 accelerate skill: Using this skill will consume 5 points of stamina. After using this skill, the agility will be increased by 10 points for 30 seconds."
Looking at the 32 sets of Tang Imitation Swords, Yue Zhong was very happy. "With this I can create another 3 teams of close combat evolvers!" he thought.
Each evolver's combat powers and stamina is way stronger than normal humans. With strict training and more combat experience, it is very easy to create a team of special elite troops.
Most of the white colour treasure boxes that were dropped by ordinary zombies were empty. The drops were mostly taken from white colour treasure box dropped by evolved zombies. Big Cliff village had a much larger number of evolved zombies than Stone Horse village. As a result, the number of treasure box that were dropped was much more than that of Stone Horse village.
Having a new Tang Sabre, Yue Zhong can finally let go of his Tang Imitation Sword.
Although the Tang Imitation Sword were effective against normal zombies, it was ineffective against creatures with high armour such the Snake Mutant Beasts or L2 zombies. If not for the fact that Yue Zhong had invested some points into strength, it would not be so easy for Yue Zhong to kill the S2 zombies.
With each successive evolution, the zombies not only increase in their primary stat. Their skin and bones also harden, making them tougher to fight. The S2 zombies may not be comparable to an L2 zombie in terms of toughness, but these S2 zombies are almost as tough as an L1. If Yue Zhong had insufficient strength to behead an S2 zombie with a single hit, the battle against these zombies would be much harder.
While Yue Zhong was busy looking into the spoils of war, the troops that rushed into Big Cliff village had discovered many survivors. Almost all of these survivors were starving. The village that used to have more than 5000+ people had been reduced to less than 400 survivors!
Of course, there were cannibals among the survivors who preyed on other humans. These cannibals were shot by Yue Zhong's men. For those who had commit other crimes against their fellow men, they were dragged towards the prisoner camp.
The prisoner camp suddenly had 53 more prisoners. After considering the death toll from earlier, the total number of prisoners had a net gain of 20+ new prisoners.
Big Cliff village had a steel factory. At the same time, there were many enterprises that use the steel from the factory to produce other items. Before the apocalypse, the steel factory and the coal power plant had massive amount of coal in their reserves. If there were sufficient men, it would be possible to restart the factory.
During this time, Yue Zhong had repeatedly recruited men from Longhai Survival Camp. In addition, he had assigned men to find survivors from the surrounding area. If you include this group of survivors from Big Cliff Village, he finally had close to 3,000 men under his command!
After he had taken control of Big Cliff village, Yue Zhong sent 1,000 of his citizens from Stone Horse Village into Big Cliff Village. He began to process steel, and used this steel to create more items that he deemed were useful, such as machetes, steel shields, barbed wires, sharp iron staffs etc.
The amount of steel remaining in Stone Horse Village was very little. Creating 100 steel shields and machetes had already used up a majority of the steel in Stone Horse Village. Therefore, Yue Zhong could only let his men create these primitive weapons and armors to arm the prisoners.. Therefore, capturing the steel factory was of paramount importance in the eyes of Yue Zhong.
A construction site in Big Cliff Village had been surrounded with barbed wire. In this place, various clothes had been placed on the ground. These clothes are the bed for the prisoners who were held in Big Cliff Village.
There were 10 sentries keeping watch over the prisoner camp. If these prisoners try to talk to each other or try to escape, these guards were authorised to shoot and kill these prisoners.
In this prisoner camp, a group of men clustered together as they complained about the harshness of the camp.
"Damn it! Big Brother Gao, these men are really too much! This time we went out and fought, 20+ men died. If this continues on, all of us will die." A short, skinny man was complaining to the massive 1.9m tall giant man besides him.
The tall giant just stared at the short, skinny man. With a voice as cold enough to freeze the surrounding air, he rebuked: "Nanlan Mingzhu [Pearl Nanlan]! Shut up! You know the predicament we are currently in! If the top brass hears what you have just said, you and I will be shot on sight!"
The big prisoner is named Gao Daqiang (Strongman Gao). Before the apocalypse, he was a farmer. After the apocalypse, he drifted along and worked for Bi Caishan. As a man working under Bi Caishan, he had also committed several crimes. After Yue Zhong destroyed Bi Caishan, he was sent to the prisoner camp.
Listening to Strongman Gao, Pearl Nalan began to shiver and seemed to shrink smaller as he hugged himself and curled up. He carefully looked around at the guards surrounding the camp, and his eyes shown traces of fear.