With the matter settled, Zhao Kun rushed to drag Old Hei and Skinny Monkey out from beneath the corpses.
"Brother Bin, can you have Brother Liang heal Old Hei and Monkey?" Zhao Kun pleaded.
Both were critically injured, still unconscious.
If Zhao Kun hadn't shielded them with his own body, the zombies would have gnawed them down to bare bone.
Yang Bin looked at their condition and felt a jolt of surprise. Say what you will about Zhao Kun-the man was ride-or-die for his brothers.
"Liang Zi, save them."
"On it."
Hu Wenliang hurried over, placing a hand on each man's wounds and channeling his healing.
After a few minutes, the serious injuries on Old Hei and Skinny Monkey had closed up. The minor scrapes would heal on their own. Hu Wenliang was running on fumes at this point-if he weren't already Tier 3, he'd have collapsed long ago.
Before long, the two slowly came to, blinking around in confusion.
"Thank god, you're finally awake!" Zhao Kun said, voice tight with relief.
"Kun Ge, we... we're still alive?!" The two could barely believe it. In that situation, they'd been certain it was over.
"Yeah. Alive. Brother Bin saved us." Zhao Kun gave them the short version of what happened.
The two scrambled to their feet and dropped to one knee before Yang Bin.
"Thank you, Brother Bin! Whatever Kun Ge decides, we decide. From now on, our lives are yours." Their voices were dead serious.
"Cut that out. We're brothers now. We look out for each other and fight to survive this damn apocalypse." Yang Bin grinned.
"Mm!" They all nodded firmly.
"Now that we've got numbers, a lot of Tier-3 Zombies we couldn't touch before should be fair game," Yang Bin said.
"Brother Bin, can you actually see zombie levels?" Zhao Kun asked suddenly.
"Yeah. I've got x-ray vision. I can judge a zombie's tier by the size of the crystal in its skull." Yang Bin nodded.
They were his people now. No point hiding it.
"No wonder..."
Zhao Kun nodded slowly, pieces clicking into place. He'd suspected something. Yang Bin had known to crack open that Special Zombie's skull and dig out the crystal on day one. Without being able to see it, who would've thought to do that?
This ability was a cheat code in the apocalypse.
Zombie strength was invisible from the outside. Every zombie looked the same. You only found out how strong one was after you engaged.
But once you engaged, disengaging wasn't easy. Plenty of teams had been wiped because they misjudged what they were fighting.
And teams hunting for high-order crystals would slaughter entire hordes only to find nothing worth taking. All that effort for nothing.
Being able to identify zombie tiers in advance-any team in the world would kill for that ability.
And this squad of just three people didn't only have a healer, they had a see-through ability too. No wonder they'd leveled up so fast.
Zhao Kun and the others could barely contain their excitement. Who wouldn't want to run with a squad like this?
"Hao Ge, your ability is Invisibility?" Zhao Kun turned to Chen Hao.
"That's right." Chen Hao smiled. The guy had seen him vanish-not hard to connect the dots.
"..."
"All three of you are Ability Users?!" Old Hei blurted.
"Brother Bin, is there some trick to it? Can we become Ability Users too?" Zhao Kun looked at Yang Bin, eyes full of hope.
"Don't look at me. You're out of luck. Ability Users were born on the first night of the apocalypse. If you had it that night, you have it. If you didn't, you don't. Whether there's another way to get one later-no clue." Yang Bin shook his head.
"Alright..." The three nodded, deflated.
"Don't sweat it. Abilities are just one tool. Once your raw strength is high enough, you're a monster with or without one." Yang Bin said.
"Mm." The three nodded.
"Hao Zi, give the remaining Tier-3 Crystal to Old Hei. One more Tier 3 means better odds when we hit the next group." Yang Bin said.
"Sure." Chen Hao didn't hesitate, pulling the Tier-3 Crystal from his pocket and tossing it to Old Hei.
"Thanks, Hao Ge!" Old Hei took the crystal, barely able to contain himself.
All three of them had actually been sitting at Tier-2 Peak for a while, but without ever killing a Tier-3 Zombie, they'd been stuck there with no way to break through.
Joining this team and getting handed a Tier 3 advancement on a silver platter? The benefits were insane.
Old Hei swallowed the crystal immediately.
Moments later, his strength surged to Tier 3.
The team of six: one Tier 4, four Tier 3. Add Little Orange and that made five Third Orders. Enough firepower to steamroll any squad out there.
Half an hour later, everyone had recovered enough to move. The group followed Yang Bin out the door.
Finding a zombie horde of one or two hundred that also contained a Tier-3 Zombie was tough. But if you bumped the number up to three or four hundred, the campus had plenty of options.
Stepping outside, Yang Bin whistled. Little Orange leapt down from a nearby building and fell in with the group.
Zhao Kun's trio were startled by the cat's sheer size, but Yang Bin had warned them beforehand, so they took it in stride.
Under Yang Bin's lead, it didn't take long to locate a zombie horde-roughly four hundred strong, with one Tier-3 Zombie mixed in.
Yang Bin had spotted this group before, but with no terrain to exploit nearby, he hadn't risked it.
This time was different. The team was stronger, and he was Tier 4 now. No need for terrain advantages-they could brute-force it.
"Hit them! Fast and clean!"
Yang Bin finished speaking and charged straight into the horde.
The others grabbed their weapons and followed without hesitation.
The zombies spotted them and surged forward in a wave.
Yang Bin swung the Barbell Rod in a wide arc. The front row of zombie skulls burst apart like rotten fruit.
At Tier 4, the Barbell Rod felt weightless in his hands. He whipped it through the air with terrifying speed-like Sun Wukong spinning the Golden Cudgel.
The others weren't slacking either. Chen Hao and Hu Wenliang needed no introduction-they'd long since adapted to high-intensity combat.
Zhao Kun's trio held their own just as well. All three now wielded Fire Axes, and their strikes were fast, precise, and brutal-every swing aimed at the skull. One chop, one kill.
The six of them formed a circle, backs together, cutting down zombies lunging in from every direction.
Finally, after more than ten minutes of savage fighting, all four hundred-plus zombies lay dead. Including the Tier-3 Zombie.
Only Zhao Kun's trio took injuries-mainly because the Fire Axes were too short. Even when they killed a zombie cleanly, the thing could still claw them on its way down.
"Hao Ge, those Barbell Rods are straight-up divine weapons," Old Hei said enviously, eyeing their gear.
"Damn right. That's called foresight." Chen Hao grinned.
"Quit drooling. We'll grab you guys a few later," Yang Bin said. "Now hurry up-loot the field, then we move to the next one."
"Got it."
From there, under Yang Bin's command, they entered full slaughter mode. From noon until nightfall, they tore through horde after horde-over two thousand zombies by the end.
Eight Tier-3 Crystals harvested. Enough to push Skinny Monkey up to Tier 3 and bring Chen Hao's strength to Tier-3 Peak.
This was Yang Bin's call. Advancement always took priority-the jump in power from breaking through was the biggest return on investment.
Once everyone had advanced, they'd push to peak one by one. That way the team maintained high-tier combat power up front while making sure nobody lagged behind.
As for who got priority, Yang Bin decided. Nobody argued.
In this squad, his word was final.