’The Tai Sui God’s progress is decent. Excluding the supply for its growth and evolution module, I’m gaining about 0.015 armor points per day.’
’It should be able to evolve again at the beginning of next month.’
He took in about seven hundred and fifty Mutated Zombies a day.
Feeding them to it yielded roughly 0.005 armor points.
Unfortunately, there were too few Zombie Lords in the area. Plus, even after he gave them the intelligence, they still needed time to carry out their missions.
The first day’s intake was a little higher, but afterward, new orders only trickled in—one or two at a time, and often none at all.
The first group of Zombie Lords that went to capture survivors for food still hadn’t returned.
After all, this area had been pretty much scoured clean of survivors. They had to venture further out.
To locate areas with large numbers of survivors, they had to rely on Qi Suian’s Immortal Satellite.
All the other satellites had been taken out, leaving them completely dependent on Qi Suian.
As for the notion that selling out human survivors to Zombie Lords was some kind of betrayal...
That was utterly absurd. The survivors were humans from other worlds, not his own. What the hell did they have to do with him?
When it came to blood ties, the zombies in this world were more closely related to Qi Suian than any of those survivors.
Qi Suian might be a "violator" in the eyes of the apocalypse game, but the game itself, along with its survivors, were the ones invading his world.
He couldn’t just consider them compatriots because they looked human. By that logic, zombies looked human, too.
So, Qi Suian felt no psychological burden whatsoever for killing survivors.
Besides, they had been enemies from the start. The apocalypse game’s bounty on his head was a permanent fixture, still active to this day.
If he showed mercy, the survivors certainly wouldn’t.
"I heard you can buy intelligence on survivors here?" A Zombie Lord pushed the door open and walked right in.
The Tai Sui God’s reconnaissance network had detected the visitor long before but held back because it was a potential customer.
"That’s right. You know the price, I assume," Qi Suian said.
"Of course. I already looked into it," the Zombie Lord replied.
Zombie Lords possessed intelligence, especially those who were once part of the Divine Prayer Association. They were originally the second consciousness of the Zombie People, so naturally, they understood more.
So it wasn’t surprising they would develop systems for trade and mutual exchange.
"Alright. How will you be making the payment?" Qi Suian cut straight to the chase. ’What else was there to ask?’
"I want the intelligence, but I don’t want to give you the zombies. So, what do you think we should do about that?" this Zombie Lord said suddenly.
Qi Suian looked up at him and said, "Take control of the Immortal Satellite from me."
"And if you can, it’d be best to kill me, right?"
The moment his words fell, the Zombie Lord erupted into action, lunging and swiping its claws at the Tai Sui God’s head.
His codename was Steel King. His body could transform into an extremely hard special steel, and his hands could morph into sharp steel claws.
It was a physique-type mutation, so not only was he powerful in strength, but his agility and constitution were equally formidable.
Confident in his great strength and his sudden close-range attack, he was certain he could catch his opponent completely off guard.
As it turned out, the Zombie Lord Steel King’s assumption was not wrong.
Without entering his burst mode and having only boosted his learning and cognitive abilities, Qi Suian himself wouldn’t have been able to react in time.
But the problem was, he didn’t normally fight himself, so whether he could react or not was irrelevant.
All that mattered was that the Tai Sui God and its AI could react.
Before its steel claws could even strike, the Divine Purification Force Field activated.
In an instant, the attacker was completely annihilated, turned to ash.
"You’re not the first one to think that, and you probably won’t be the last," Qi Suian said mockingly.
It wasn’t as if there weren’t other Zombie Lords who thought of killing him and taking everything for themselves. But the fact that Qi Suian was still alive meant that any zombie with such ideas was already dead.
He wasn’t some pushover.
The death of a Zombie Lord didn’t cause much of a stir.
The "Lord" in their title made them sound like a higher class, but in reality, most Zombie Lords were only at the level of a fifth-order Mutated Zombie.
A sixth-order Mutated Zombie like Flame was exceedingly rare.
He got up, swept the ashes into a dustpan, and dumped them straight into the gutter. The rain would wash them away eventually.
’It’s not like I was going to give him a proper burial. He wasn’t that important.’
"What a waste of a good deal," Qi Suian said with regret.
If that deal had gone through, it would have been seven hundred and fifty fourth-order regular zombies or third-order Mutated Zombies.
’Burning them up would have been so satisfying.’
’When you have enough power, you can’t just kill your enemies outright. You should at least squeeze them dry first.’
’If the Tai Sui God weren’t so limited in its abilities, I’d have the zombies working on an assembly line, tightening screws to generate electricity.’
Zombies weren’t perpetual motion machines; they suffered from wear and tear. Overwork could cause problems as the concentration and activity of the Abyssal Virus in their bodies decreased, potentially even leading to death.
’But that didn’t matter. Zombies were a dime a dozen. If one died, plenty of others could take its place.’
"Everyone, this time’s harvest was pretty good, wasn’t it?" Flame’s gaze swept over the Zombie Lords he had gathered.
The high temperature radiating from his body made many of the Zombie Lords instinctively recoil.
"Not bad. Over a hundred survivors. Enough for me to live it up for a while," replied a fellow sixth-order Zombie Lord who was unaffected by Flame’s heat, his tone flat.
With this Zombie Lord speaking up, the other Zombie Lords naturally followed suit and chimed in.
"But, are you content with being exploited by that tin can?"
"That’s seven hundred and fifty of our own kind each time. Can you accept that?" Flame proclaimed righteously.
Of course the Zombie Lords were content. The zombies they used for payment weren’t from their own territories.
However, as soon as Flame spoke, all the Zombie Lords present understood his true intention: he wanted to seize control of the Immortal Satellite for himself.
"His strength is not weak. Casualties will be high," another sixth-order Zombie Lord said.
"That’s why we need to form an alliance. After we take back the Immortal Satellite, we can then distribute its use," Flame said without hesitation. "I believe my strength is considerable, so I can serve as the Alliance Leader."
These words made all the Zombie Lords present fall silent.
"You’ll lead the charge?" a sixth-order Zombie Lord asked.
They didn’t care who the Alliance Leader was—they could always pay lip service to his orders—but who led the charge was very important.
"Yes. Afterward, I will be the one to distribute the survivor resources, and I will also have priority choice," Flame revealed his true objective.
"Heh. Let’s talk after you’ve actually killed that tin can," a sixth-order zombie sneered. "You haven’t even gotten your hands on it yet, and you’re already thinking about divvying up the spoils."
"Do you really think that tin can is some pushover you can just walk all over?"