The man in the villa looked completely unsettled. He had wanted to step closer to Jing Shu earlier to seek some kind of comfort in numbers, but now he instinctively backed away several steps. His hands gripped the doorframe until his knuckles turned white.
To him, this woman was terrifying. In the middle of a literal nightmare, she was still standing there wondering whether these monsters could be eaten. He wondered if she were some kind of demon wearing a human face.
"Wait. These bones are huge. They actually look usable," Jing Shu murmured to herself. She ignored his retreat, her mind already cataloging the potential. "Even if they cannot be eaten, they could be used as weapons or for raw materials. They might work as additives or even building materials."
Her eyes lit up with a cold, calculating excitement. In the apocalypse, anything edible or usable was worth its weight in gold.
The man quickly retreated further into the safety of his villa. It was too creepy for him to handle. He had never seen anyone stare at a pile of monstrous white bones with that kind of shining intensity. This person was simply too much for his nerves to take.
"How about we go back inside first? If there are too many of them, then we will be trapped," the man called out, but his voice was thin and shaky.
As if he had jinxed the moment, the silence was broken. Nothing fell from the upper floors this time, but from the deep shadows surrounding the exhibition area, a large number of sludge sirens suddenly surged forward. In the pitch darkness, they seemed to sense exactly where the living were huddling.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The heavy, wet footsteps pressed in like the approach of death itself.
Their target was obvious. They were heading straight for the three villas in the central exhibition hall. Jing Shu frowned as she counted the shifting shapes. There were too many of them. If she tried to hack them down one by one with her machetes, she wouldn't be fast enough to stop them all from reaching the doors.
More importantly, she was someone who valued her own life above all else. She wasn't about to put herself in unnecessary danger if there was a cleaner way to handle it. All of her primary combat abilities, like her bugs and snakes, were physical. The liquid gloves she wore could kill a few, but they weren't designed for a mass slaughter like this.
These sludge sirens feared fire, light, and electricity.
A plan formed in her mind. She turned and shouted at the people still peeking out from the neighboring buildings.
"Run! Get back into your villas and shut the doors! A lot of monsters are coming!"
The moment the words left her mouth, the villa doors on both sides slammed shut with loud, echoing bangs. Clattering sounds followed as the terrified occupants shoved furniture against the entrances to barricade themselves in.
Seeing that no one was watching her anymore, Jing Shu pushed the power generators inside her Rubik's Cube Space to their maximum output. She took the large containers of wastewater she had stored over the past few days and poured them out. The dark, foul-smelling water splashed across the ground where the sludge sirens were crawling. Then, she quickly laid heavy electric wires across the wet surface.
Crackle. Crackle—!
The sludge sirens were fast, moving with a predatory grace that was far superior to a normal person. But the moment their slimy bellies slid into the water, they started convulsing violently. Their bodies likely contained a high percentage of water, making the conductivity even better than Jing Shu had expected.
Any siren that touched one that was already twitching immediately started convulsing too. One after another, they fell in rows, a bizarre and astonishing sight in the dim light. Before long, thick black foam poured from their toothy mouths.
They only lasted a few seconds before dying completely, their bodies collapsing into piles of gray sludge and white bones. The water was diluted by the mud, but it didn't stop the current from doing its work.
Jing Shu was having a great time. This move was ridiculously effective and didn't require her to break a sweat. It felt amazing, like a mage standing inside a safe zone and spamming wide-area attacks to harvest kills effortlessly.
Of course, a few sludge sirens managed to avoid the water. These creatures clearly targeted the people inside the other villas, sensing the warmth of their bodies. They rushed straight over, but since they didn't know where the doors were, they simply slammed their massive heads into the walls.
With bodies nearly two meters long and weighing hundreds of kilograms, they crashed into the structures without any hint of fear or pain. The impact produced heavy, dull thuds that rattled the foundations.
The people inside the villas started screaming again, even though the creatures were hitting solid walls instead of the glass or doors. Still, as long as they didn't focus their strength on the entrances, it wouldn't be a major problem for a while.
Jing Shu frowned as more and more sludge sirens emerged from the darkness. This couldn't go on forever. Bones were already piling up around the villas in stacks of dozens. If the wave continued endlessly, the electricity would eventually fail.
While she poured more water to expand the lethal field, she sent her bugs out into the building to find the source of the infestation.
The screams upstairs hadn't stopped, but the sounds of gunfire and heavy weapons had joined the chorus. It seemed the fight on the upper floors had entered a full-scale battle phase.
It didn't take long for her bugs to find the entry point. The sludge sirens were climbing up through a large sewer pipe in one of the building's communal bathrooms. That pipe connected directly to the muddy swamp outside. Some of the creatures climbed further upward to the higher floors, while others rushed straight to the lobby. It was as if each pack had its own specific target.
It was a strange sight. Instead of entering through the front doors, they had found this hidden, filthy entrance. No wonder they had infiltrated the building so effectively. But this clearly wasn't the only entry point; there had to be another one on a higher level.
Jing Shu looked at the hand she had used to touch the bones earlier and quietly washed it with a splash of clean water. That sludge had a lingering, acrid smell that was hard to ignore.
Now that she knew the source, she didn't hesitate. She went to the newly filtered water pool and used her Cube Space to grab a massive amount of water. She poured it all around the bathroom area and the hallway leading to it, then electrified the entire zone.
Every sludge siren that emerged from the pipe was instantly electrocuted before it could even take a step. They charged forward without fear, one after another, like mindless soldiers walking into a meat grinder.
The only downside was the diesel consumption. She kept the electricity running for a full hour, pushing all of her generators to their maximum limit. The fuel drain was significant, but the results were undeniable.
The ground was completely covered with dead sludge sirens. Bones filled the entire hall and the connected paths, creating a macabre landscape. Every step Jing Shu took crunched painfully under her boots. There was barely any floor left to walk on.
Sludge coated the ground in a thick, slippery layer. It was impossible to imagine just how many monsters had appeared in such a short time. Eventually, the flow stopped. As if they had received a silent command from a leader, the remaining sludge sirens suddenly began retreating.
Before Jing Shu could react, several of them leaped down from the fourth-floor railing, thudding heavily onto the ground near her. The impact was so great that she felt the floor vibrate. Jumping from that height only led to a quicker death; they hit the electrified water and died instantly. A few found open exits and escaped back into the dark, but most simply ran around aimlessly until they were caught in the current.
"These bones are all good stuff," she whispered.
Taking advantage of the moment when no one was watching from the villas, Jing Shu quickly stored a large amount of the best bones into her Rubik's Cube Space.
Voices echoed from the upper stairwells. Bright lights began to shine down from the balconies as Li Youtian led a large group of armed men rushing down to the lobby. If those escaping monsters had threatened the people on the first floor, it would have been a disaster.
But when Li Youtian arrived, he froze at the bottom of the stairs.
Under the bright beams of their flashlights, he saw Jing Shu standing in the middle of the hall. She looked completely innocent, even a bit weary. She was bent over, wearing her heavy gloves and mud-caked rain boots, holding a huge pile of white bones in her arms.
And beside her... was a literal mountain of skeletal remains.