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When the flames were at their strongest, it was already completely light.

The corpses of sixteen zombies were piled on the wasteland on the east side of the logistics park, and two full barrels of gasoline were poured on them.The tongues of fire licked those twisted gray limbs, the grease crackled under the high temperature, and the black smoke rolled upwards, pulling out a straight smoke column in the morning light, so high that it could be seen in the entire industrial area in the north of the city.

Lin Yue stood upwind ten meters away from the fire, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeves.The smell of burning zombies is different from burning anything - when the body fluids in the rotting flesh evaporate, it will bring out a sweet and nauseating smell, mixed with the pungent smell of gasoline and the burning smell of cracked bones.He had smelled it for five years in his previous life, and he didn't know what the air in the normal world smelled like until he was reborn.At this moment, the smell of the normal world is being burned away inch by inch by this smoke column.

Zhao Ming stood next to him. The black blood on his face had been wiped with his sleeve, but not clean. There was still a dark red mark on his cheekbones.His dagger had been cleaned and inserted back into his waist, and the sapper's shovel was placed on the ground. The remaining black stains on the shovel blade were illuminated by the firelight.From three o'clock in the morning to now, he has killed four zombies in total.The first one missed the target, and the last three were just one stab at a time.The speed of progress far exceeded Lin Yue's expectations.

"Brother Lin." Zhao Ming looked at the flames without turning his head, "The licker just now - you said you killed eleven in the previous life. How many more will there be besides it in this life?"

"I don't know." Lin Yue said, "The first licker appeared on the ninth day of the end of the world in the previous life. Now it is six days earlier."

Zhao Ming was silent for a while."What does this mean?"

"It means that the virus in this life evolves faster than in the previous life. The Corpse King will also appear earlier."

Zhao Ming tightened his grip on the engineer shovel and said nothing.

Lu Hanshuang walked from the direction of the main entrance, holding the clean matte black dagger in his hand.She walked to stand on the other side of Lin Yue, glanced at the fire, and then said something completely different from Zhao Ming's.

"The smoke column is too high. It can be seen within a radius of five kilometers. Today is the second day of the apocalypse. People who are still alive in the city will move to places with smoke - they will think that there is rescue here."

Lin Yue nodded.He knows this.He knew it when he lit this fire."It will take at least half an hour to burn these corpses. Let Lao Zheng and Xiao He go to the sentry tower, and Da Liu will guard the main gate. From now to noon, the first batch of survivors may come over."

"Should you accept it or not?" Lu Hanshuang asked.

"Single ones, those who haven't been bitten, collect them. Those with weapons should be disarmed first, registered, and isolated and observed for six hours. Don't collect those in groups - let them go north, give them two bottles of water and a pack of compressed biscuits, and tell them that there is a temporary military settlement in the north."

"Is there really one in the north?"

"Yes," Lin Yue said, "but not now. The military settlement in the north of the previous life was only established on the fifth day of the apocalypse. They have been there for the past two days and can't find it. But we need them to go north - if we let them stay in this industrial area, someone will plan to build a base within a day."

Lu Hanshuang glanced at him, with an evaluation in his eyes that was not easy to read.It's not that she disagrees, but she is putting this decision into her own tactical framework to verify it.After a few seconds, she nodded slightly.

"I agree. But I will add one more thing - if there are survivors with useful skills, exceptions can be made where appropriate. Doctors, nurses, engineers, radio operators, these people are worth the risk even if they are in groups."

"You decide." Lin Yue said, "You are the leader of the combat team, and the personnel selection is left to you. But no matter who is accepted - the six-hour isolation rule cannot be broken."

"Understood."

A broken leg bone rolled down from the pyre in the fire, sending up a cloud of sparks.Lin Yue took a step back, and sparks fell on the scorched earth in front of the toes of his boots, flickering twice and then extinguishing.

He turned around and walked towards the cold storage.When he walked through the main entrance, he saw Zhao Dezhu squatting on the wasteland next to the power distribution room.This fifty-eight-year-old farmer has been locked in the No. 3 cold storage since early in the morning. The first thing he did after coming out was not to rest or ask what happened outside. Instead, he continued to grab the soil with his hands.He grabbed a handful of alluvial soil and rubbed it in his palms. After rubbing it, he put it in front of his nose and smelled it. Then he put the soil back, grabbed a handful deeper, and repeated the same action.

"Uncle Zhao." Lin Yue walked over, "The smoke outside hasn't cleared yet, so don't stay outside for too long."

Zhao Dezhu raised his head and looked at him.There was no fear or even much fluctuation on this face that was covered with ravines carved by wind and frost.His eyes were a little cloudy in the morning light, but beneath the cloudiness was a kind of calmness that only comes after seeing too many lives and deaths.

"When I was in the army when I was young," Zhao Dezhu clapped the dirt on his hands and stood up, "I fought in a war. The people on the other side took guns, and we took hoes. After the war, we went back to farming. We have seen dead people, and we have seen fires burning through villages." He pointed to the column of black smoke rising to the sky in the east. "This smell is different from that time. But this - smoke - is the same."

Lin Yue looked at him.In his previous life, he knew that Zhao Dezhu was taciturn, but he never knew that he had fought in a war when he was young.This made him realize one thing - his understanding of Zhao Dezhu in his previous life was only as a farmer after the second year of the apocalypse.He had not asked about this person's previous life.

"How is the land?" Lin Yue changed the topic.

"It's not bad. The alluvial soil doesn't have enough base fertilizer, so I need to pile up green manure. I see a patch of weeds behind the power distribution room. They grow taller than anywhere else, which means the soil underneath has more organic matter than here. Get that patch out first." Zhao Dezhu said, suddenly paused, and then asked in a very calm tone, "The ones you just killed outside - were they transformed by humans?"

"It's people who change."

"Will you come again?"

"Yes."

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