Doomsday police, please show your god/demon ID card.

The next day, early morning.

The fog outside the window was thicker than usual, like a pot of overcooked grayish-white rice soup, clinging tightly to every window of the police station.

Visibility had been reduced to less than five meters, and even the outline of the building across the street had disappeared into the murky gray-white.

Tang Long leaned against the wall, gazing out the window with a slight frown.

At this time.

"Dinner's ready." A voice sounded from behind.

Tang Long turned his head and saw Su Yan carrying a pot of steaming white porridge away from Guo Ali.

Nurses Xiaolin and Xiaozhao followed behind, carrying bowls, chopsticks, and a small dish of pickled vegetables.

"Wow, it smells so good." Wang Hu was the first to go over.

He didn't sleep well in the latter half of last night, feeling uneasy unless he saw it with his own eyes, and as a result, he still has dark circles under his eyes.

He waved to Tang Long: "Officer Tang... come and eat!"

Perhaps it was the late-night conversation that eased the tension among everyone.

In the end, we're all just pitiful people struggling to survive in the apocalypse.

"Here I am." Tang Long nodded.

......

After finishing breakfast, Tang Long placed the empty bowl on the table.

"Let's have a meeting."

He tapped on the table.

All eyes were on him.

"We can't stay holed up here forever."

"Supplies will eventually run out. We need more people who can fight, and we also need to eliminate the threats around us."

Wang Hu wiped his mouth and asked in a muffled voice, "How do we do it?"

"My plan is to clean up from the police station outwards."

"Target area: three kilometers."

He stretched out his finger and drew a circle on the table.

"There are two main tasks."

"First, to search for survivors, we need more capable people, such as police officers and soldiers."

"Second, clear out the surrounding zombies and collect all usable supplies: food, medicine, tools, everything."

Wang Hu was the first to nod after hearing this.

"I agree."

"I agree! It's just..." Dr. Zhang pushed up his glasses, glanced at the two nurses beside him, and hesitated.

"If people like us go out, we'll probably only hold them back."

Tang Long glanced at him.

"You don't need to go out."

He looked at Wang Hu and Su Yan.

"Today, Wang Hu, Su Yan, and I will go out."

"I'll be in charge of command and support. Wang Hu will lead the attack, and Su Yan... well, she'll assist from the side. If we get injured, she can treat us in time."

Su Yan immediately replied, "No problem, I'll bring the first aid kit."

Tang Long's gaze then turned to Dr. Zhang.

"Dr. Zhang, you, Xiao Lin, and Xiao Zhao will stay behind."

"Remember, no matter what noise you hear, do not open the door."

"Unless we come back."

Dr. Zhang nodded solemnly: "Don't worry."

……

laugh--

The alloy gate slid open to both sides.

A thick, grayish-white mist rushed in, carrying a damp, earthy smell, instantly engulfing the three figures.

The streets were deathly silent.

The abandoned cars, like rusty coffins, were parked crookedly in the middle of the road. The wind swirled up the plastic bags on the ground, making a rustling sound that was particularly jarring in the thick fog.

Tang Long led the way, pistol held to his chest, his steps as light as a cat's. Wang Hu followed closely behind, a fire axe in one hand and a Type 92 rifle in the other.

Su Yan walked at the back, her breathing a little rapid, not because she was tired, but because the feeling of being enveloped in thick fog and not knowing where danger might come from always made her heart race.

After walking less than a hundred meters, several swaying dark figures appeared in the fog ahead.

"Three," Wang Hu said in a low voice, gripping the fire axe in his hand tightly.

Tang Long raised his hand and made a "two-one" gesture.

Wang Hu understood and nodded.

The two worked together to flank from both sides.

Wang Hu's movements were bold and sweeping. He rushed forward in one stride, and the fire axe swept out with a whoosh.

puff!

The zombie on the far left had half its head sliced ​​off.

The other two zombies were attracted by the sound and roared as they pounced on Wang Hu.

boom!

Tang Long's gunshot rang out.

One of the zombies exploded from the back of its head, releasing a cloud of black blood, and collapsed forward.

Wang Hu dodged the last zombie's claws by sidestepping, then swung his axe handle upwards and slammed it hard into the zombie's chin.

Click.

The zombie's entire jawbone was smashed to pieces, and its body fell backward.

Wang Hu stepped forward, raised the fire axe high, and slammed it down.

[Police Officer Wang Hu, killed a regular zombie, Order Points +1]

[Police officer Wang Hu, killed...]

"Sure, Tiger." Tang Long stepped forward and whistled.

"You're not bad either." Wang Hu grinned, revealing two rows of white teeth.

The two worked together even better than expected.

Wang Hu was responsible for drawing attention and launching attacks from the front, while Tang Long provided precise fire support from the flanks.

The efficiency was more than twice as high as when Tang Long was alone.

Su Yan followed behind.

She didn't participate in the fighting, but after each battle, she would crouch down, put on medical gloves, and carefully examine the zombie corpses.

It wasn't out of pity, but rather to find clues about viral mutations from these corpses.

suddenly.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"As expected, it's happening again..." she muttered to herself, carefully cutting open the skin of a zombie's arm with a scalpel.

The zombie's neck and arms were covered with a grayish-black, fungal-like pattern, like a spider web, seeping out from under the skin and even pulsating slightly.

When she gently touched them with the tip of her knife, the mycelium underwent a barely perceptible contraction.

Su Yan immediately took a sample and put a small piece of tissue with mycelium into a sealed bag.

This is the fifth sample she has collected today.

She noticed that the further east she went, the more obvious this "fungal symbiosis" phenomenon became on the zombies—the hyphae were denser, the color was darker, and some zombies even had small, mushroom-shaped growths on their joints.

She even discovered...

These zombies exhibiting "fungal symbiosis" show a high degree of consistency in the degree of pupil dilation, muscle rigidity, and even the location of lividity.

This is completely inconsistent with the randomness of natural variation.

It's like... being "formatted" by some uniform pattern.

suddenly.

"Dr. Su, let's go." Tang Long called out from the front.

"They're here." Su Yan stood up, put away the sample bag, and quickly followed.

After walking for about twenty more minutes, a blurry outline appeared faintly in the thick fog ahead.

"It's that neighborhood supermarket," Su Yan pointed ahead. "I've been here before. It's quite large and should have a warehouse."

Tang Long and Wang Hu exchanged a glance and simultaneously slowed their pace.

"Let's go take a look."

More than a dozen cars were parked haphazardly in the parking lot in front of the supermarket. Two of them had collided, and the front of the cars were severely deformed.

Five or six zombies were wandering aimlessly among the vehicles. When they heard footsteps, they all turned their heads at once.

"Six." Tang Long quickly glanced at them. "Same as always, you take three from the left, I'll take three from the right."

"no problem."

Wang Hu took a deep breath and suddenly accelerated forward! His footsteps were exceptionally loud in the silent parking lot, instantly attracting the attention of all the zombies.

"Hehe..."

The zombies roared and surged toward him.

Instead of fighting head-on, Wang Hu cleverly maneuvered around to the back of a van.

Three zombies followed, while the other three were drawn by Tang Long's gunshot.

boom! boom! boom!

Three bursts of fire, and three bodies fell to the ground.

Almost simultaneously, the muffled sound of an axe chopping and the cracking of bones breaking came from behind the truck.

A few seconds later...

Wang Hu walked out carrying a blood-dripping fire axe, with three zombies at his feet whose heads had been smashed open.

Kill a regular zombie, and you'll earn +1 Order Point.

Kill a regular zombie, and you'll earn +1 Order Point.

Kill a regular zombie, and you'll earn +1 Order Point.

[Police Officer Wang Hu, killed a regular zombie, Order Points +1]

"Solved." Wang Hu panted, shaking his aching arms. "Damn, this axe is getting heavier and heavier."

Tang Long changed to a new magazine and joked.

"Alright! Use a gun if you need to, what's with the show-off?"

Wang Hu scratched his head and chuckled.

"I was just thinking of saving some bullets."

Tang Long paused for a moment, opened his mouth, but didn't know how to respond.

He really couldn't tell the other party about the system.

but...

He never expected that Wang Hu would harbor such thoughts.

He shook his head and walked to the supermarket entrance.

The glass door was shattered, the inside was dark, the shelves were overturned, and various product packaging was scattered on the floor.

"I'll go first, Tiger will bring up the rear, Dr. Su, stay close to me." Tang Long gestured and stepped into the darkness first.

The supermarket was dark inside, and the stench was ten times stronger than outside.

The beam of the flashlight swept across the empty food shelves—they had long been looted. The household goods section was also a mess, with only some unimportant dishes and clothes hangers scattered on the floor.

"Looks like someone beat me to it." Wang Hu spat.

"Let's go check the back, the storage room and the staff area." Tang Long didn't give up and walked deeper into the supermarket with a flashlight.

Su Yan followed behind him, and when the flashlight beam accidentally swept across the ground, she suddenly stopped.

"etc."

"What's wrong?"

Su Yan didn't explain, but simply squatted down, the light shining on the zombie corpse in front of her.

This corpse was unusual—it was covered by a thick layer of gray-black mycelial tissue, almost completely obscuring its original skin and clothing.

Even more bizarrely, tiny, umbrella-shaped, grayish-white fungi have begun to grow from its mouth, nose, and ears.

"This..." Su Yan frowned, took out her hand, and gently poked at the fungi with a scalpel.

However, perhaps due to the lighting, her fingertips unconsciously brushed against the hyphae on the edge of her skin.

moment--

An indescribable, intense sense of emptiness suddenly gripped her!

Su Yan felt as if she hadn't eaten for three days and three nights, and her stomach was spasming slightly.

At the same time, a buzzing noise filled my ears, giving me a splitting headache, as if countless mouths were screaming, chewing, and swallowing in my ears...

She seemed to vaguely see a painting.

A massive, pulsating cocoon of decaying flesh, composed of countless mycelia and putrefactive matter, was slowly throbbing...

Tiny mycelia, like blood vessels, spread densely from the ground, connecting to every infected corpse around the supermarket...

"Ugh..." Su Yan groaned, and the scalpel in her hand clattered to the ground.

"Su Yan!" Tang Long exclaimed in shock and rushed over to support her.

Wang Hu immediately raised his fire axe and pistol, cautiously looking around: "What happened? Was she attacked?"

"I don't know!" Tang Long quickly checked Su Yan's neck and arms. There were no bite marks or scratches. "Su Yan! Can you hear me? Where are you hurt?"

Su Yan covered her head, her face covered in cold sweat, and curled up into a ball. "There's something underground... controlling them..."

"Things? What do you mean?" Tang Long's expression also became somewhat anxious.

Su Yan's pupils were unfocused. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but her body trembled even more violently.

at last...

"Escape..." she managed to squeeze out, then everything went black and she lost consciousness completely.

"Dr. Su!" Wang Hu exclaimed anxiously.

Tang Long's face was ashen. He swiftly and steadily hoisted Su Yan onto his back, shouting, "Retreat immediately! Something's wrong here!"

"yes!"

……

laugh--

The gates of the police station opened.

The people who remained behind panicked when they saw Tang Long carrying the unconscious Su Yan in.

"What's wrong with Dr. Su?"

"Is she injured?"

Nurses Xiaolin and Xiaozhao immediately surrounded them.

"Get out of the way," Tang Long shouted in a low voice.

He carefully placed Su Yan on the cot in the rest area.

"Dr. Zhang, please come quickly."

Dr. Zhang pushed aside the nurses who were watching and quickly stepped forward.

He first checked Su Yan's pupils, then touched her forehead, and then picked up the stethoscope to listen to her heartbeat.

After a series of examinations, Dr. Zhang's brows furrowed more and more deeply.

"strangeness."

"What's wrong?" Tang Long asked.

"There's nothing wrong." Dr. Zhang took off his stethoscope, his face full of confusion.

"Strange, the heartbeat is slightly fast but strong, breathing is slightly rapid but steady, body temperature is normal... there are no external injuries, no bite marks or scratches, and no typical rashes or edema caused by poisoning..."

His brows furrowed more and more deeply.

"The vital signs are not in immediate danger, but the cause is unknown, perhaps... perhaps it's acute stress syncope caused by extremely strong mental stimulation or fright?"

"Psychological trauma?" Wang Hu wrung his hands anxiously. "We were in the supermarket, and she squatted down to look at a zombie, then suddenly clutched her head and started talking nonsense, saying things like 'there are things on the ground' and 'control them,' and then she passed out!"

"Zombies?" Dr. Zhang caught the key phrase. "What kind of zombies?"

Tang Long continued, "One type is a zombie covered in grayish-black mold, some even have mushrooms growing from their mouths!"

Wang Hu echoed this sentiment.

"Yes, yes, yes! Those zombies looked really strange. Tang Long and I encountered several at the beginning."

"However, those zombies are no different from ordinary zombies. One bullet is enough to take them out!"

"It's Dr. Su; she's been collecting samples of this stuff all along the way!"

"Wait, let me look for it first." Dr. Zhang began rummaging through Su Yan's first aid kit and took out the sealed sample bags from it.

His pupils constricted slightly when he saw the grayish-black mycelium in the bag, which seemed to be still wriggling slightly.

"Hiss~ This mycelium looks strange!"

"What's wrong?" Tang Long asked.

Dr. Zhang held the sample bag up to the light, his voice trembling slightly.

"Look, these hyphae are all following the direction of blood vessels and nerves... and there's this convergent gray-black pigment deposition and microcapsule structure..."

"I've read some very cutting-edge, even somewhat science fiction-like, pathological hypotheses about 'neuroparasites' or 'symbiotic' organisms that might enter or leave certain extreme environments... They can utilize the host's bioelectric or chemical signal transmission network."

"For example, some slime molds can form networks in rotting wood, transmitting signals like live wires."

"But that was just a rudimentary, simple biological network... But this, this is actually growing inside a zombie's body, and it's even connected to its nerves?"

"What do you mean?" Tang Long was a little confused.

Dr. Zhang quickly said, "If... if this really is a fungus we've never seen before, it can transmit signals through the zombie's remaining nervous system, forming... a living information network."

"When Dr. Su was examining the zombies, could her brain... have inadvertently received a strong signal from this network?"

"And she couldn't handle this interference, which caused her brain..."

"Just like a computer, it suddenly crashes and needs to be restarted," Tang Long added.

Dr. Zhang nodded: "That's right."

"Network? Interference?" Wang Hu was a little confused, but he still grasped the core idea. "You mean, those zombies are being remotely controlled by the 'mushroom net' underground? Dr. Su accidentally 'connected' to that net and was scared unconscious by the 'ghostly screams' inside?"

"That's one way to understand it," Dr. Zhang nodded, then shook his head in confusion. "But that doesn't explain the specific 'content' that Dr. Su perceived."

"It's possible for biological networks to transmit simple stimulus or chemotactic signals, but you're saying Su Yan saw something underground..."

This requires the network itself to have some kind of...a source of consciousness projection, or at least a highly unified instinctive driving pattern...

"Unless the 'network' itself is not an inanimate object."

suddenly.

A hoarse voice came from the cot.

Everyone was taken aback and looked over.

Only then did they realize that Su Yan had already woken up sometime earlier.

Her face was very pale, and her pupils held a hint of barely perceptible fear.

"How are you?" Tang Long handed her a glass of warm water and asked quickly.

Su Yan took the water glass, took a few sips, and her complexion improved.

"Thanks."

Wang Hu pressed on, "Su Yan, what exactly did you see earlier?"

Su Yan took a deep breath, closed her eyes and pondered, as if carefully recalling something.

Half an hour passed.

She spoke slowly, her voice trembling slightly.

"Meat balls."

Everyone was stunned.

"Meatball? What does that mean?" Tang Long frowned.

"It's not a real fleshy mass, it's more like..." Her fingers unconsciously tightened around the sheets: "Have you ever seen a beehive? Underground, very deep... very large, made of countless mycelia and... decaying things, pulsating."

She looked up at Tang Long, her eyes still filled with fear.

"That thing is very hungry! No... or rather, hunger is its instinct; it seems to want to eat everything."

"A single source... an all-encompassing instinct..." Dr. Zhang gasped, his face turning pale. "This... this is not a simple parasitic network or information interference."

"If what Dr. Su saw is true, then what we are facing may be a supra-individual invasion with a high degree of uniformity, and even initially showing some characteristics of... 'collective will'!"

"Those zombies might just be the 'end-stage execution units' of this fleshy ball!"

These words were spoken.

The temperature in the room dropped sharply.

Scattered zombies that can be defeated one by one, and an unknown "nest" that may have a unified will, hides underground, and uses zombies as extensions of their limbs, represent threats and unknowns that are completely different in dimension.