He lifted his foot, stepped down the stairs, silently reciting the map he had long since memorized in his mind, and walked deep into the street straight ahead.

……

This was Kunming.

A double-decker bus with the sign "Route 389" on its roof had toppled over in the middle of the road. The rubber tires and metal body had left over thirty meters of friction marks on the asphalt, and more than half of the windows were wide open, with streaks of dark red blood trailing from inside. The blurry insides of the glass were covered in bloody handprints, and more than a dozen mutated infected were gathered around a victim's corpse, fiercely tearing at the flesh that had once belonged to their own kind.

The traffic lights continued to switch between red and green, while a dense mass of vehicles clogged the entire street. Beneath the tall silver birch trees, a traffic policeman who had died long ago sat slumped. His legs had been crushed by a "Jetta" sedan that had mounted the sidewalk, and his head, still wearing its police cap, had rolled like a ball next to the tire. Clear bite marks remained on the severed neck, and the bright red liquid gushing from his chest cavity had soaked his entire body, slowly sliding down the yellow-and-white striped reflective vest, being absorbed by the cotton police uniform, turning into patches of damp, dark red stains.

In the distance, crazed and hysterical screams rang out from time to time. The air, made unbearably hot by the sun, was thick with a suffocating stench of blood. Everywhere within sight, there were staggering infected—some teetering on the edge of madness, most already completely transformed into zombies.

Henry Sutton moved with a slight crouch, swiftly weaving through the gap between the greenbelt and the wall. His old leather jacket and gray trousers were plain in style, but blended perfectly with most environments, making for the best camouflage.

A few minutes later, he had already passed through the alley formed by the mall building and nearby structures, and saw the conspicuous round blue "P" sign hanging atop a utility pole. Directly beneath it, a red arrow pointing to the right indicated the entrance to a ramp leading underground.

If he hadn't happened to acquire a few old city renovation blueprints, Henry Sutton would never have chosen this city as the receiving point for the spacetime beacon. In the era he originally came from, those yellowed, worn blueprints were just antiques waiting for a discerning buyer on the black market. After memorizing all the streets and building coordinates on the blueprints, the storage room on the lowest level of this underground parking lot became the landing point for his first batch of important supplies.

A barrier arm with yellow and black stripes blocked the entrance. Nearby, in a narrow security booth, a zombie in a black suit was trapped. Its left arm, along with the sleeve, had been torn off, the wound's edge oozing pus and half-rotted gray muscle. The nameplate on its chest showed that it had once been the parking lot attendant for the building.

"Bang———bang bang———"

The sound of its head and body colliding with the wall was dull yet clear. It must have been attacked by infected, and in panic, fled into the booth to escape danger. The virus that entered through the wound quickly took over its body, turning it into a terrifying creature with a craving for fresh meat.

A mixture of cruelty and excitement crossed Henry Sutton's face as he strode forward, swung his axe, and smashed the glass on the side of the booth. The infected attendant immediately stuck its head out from the sharp shards, desperately twisting its body, trying to escape its prison. Before it could let out its first howl for freedom, the fire axe came down again, striking its neck with precision and sending the ugly, ferocious head flying on the spot.

Amid the stinking corpse, Henry Sutton accurately found that tiny, yet extremely precious, piece of silver bone. Wasting no time, he put the trophy into a pre-prepared tubular metal container, then immediately bypassed the barrier and strode into the depths of the pitch-black parking lot.

……

No sunlight could reach here, but it wasn't as dark as one might imagine. Every corner of the walls was fitted with energy-saving lamps; though not very powerful, the light they emitted was enough to see the ground and any obstacles.

On the car wash platform more than twenty meters from the first-floor exit, an expensive, luxurious "Mercedes-Benz" SUV was parked. The doors on both sides of the driver's seat were open, the windshield smashed to pieces, and dozens of zombies squirmed back and forth inside the car like maggots. Through the windows and gaps between bodies, one could see the target of their feeding frenzy: a man and a woman whose faces had been gnawed beyond recognition. They had been dead for a long time; if not for the zombie clutching a chunk of buttock and gnawing on the fat with a lacy thong still hanging from its mouth, and a bloodstained men's leather shoe lying at the other end of the car door, Henry Sutton would not have been able to determine the true gender of those two piles of bones and rotten flesh.

He moved silently in the shadowed darkness, as agile as a gecko, leaving not a trace to be found.

Henry Sutton was not some martial arts master, nor was he an invincible comic book protagonist. Although this body now possessed the finest human genes, in essence, he was still just an ordinary person.

He had not yet evolved.

In the long years of fighting zombies and all kinds of monsters, humanity had accumulated extremely rich experience. All the non-human species that appeared after the viral storm began were documented with color illustrations and related notes in future textbooks. Henry Sutton knew their habits, and he also knew their weaknesses.