The dozen or so people on the truck clearly underestimated the two young women, whose figures had yet to fully develop. No one took the initiative to greet them.
Of course, Feng Moxi paid it no mind.
He Ping looked at the small courtyard gate and said softly, "Check it out, carefully."
A young man in his twenties slowly walked to the gate. With a flick of his wrist, a Golden Blade shot out, and the lock on the gate clattered to the ground. Wan Yong, holding his Big Saber, carefully pushed the door open.
Sure enough, the female monster that had been gurgling inside immediately lunged forward. Half of its face had been chewed clean off, revealing ghastly, blood-stained fangs.
The young man threw out a Golden Shield. Wan Yong's Big Saber came straight down, instantly splitting the female monster's head in two.
A spray of foul blood erupted.
Meanwhile, the woman held the boy even tighter, not daring to take a breath. Fortunately, she didn't scream.
Feng Moxi nodded to herself. 'This team probably wasn't just thrown together. They don't waste words, and their coordination is pretty good.'
'They must have been through a lot on the road to get this sharp.'
There were only three monsters in the entire house, and the group dispatched them quickly.
The young man quickly opened the main gate, and three vehicles filed in. The space was limited, which meant Feng Moxi's car could no longer fit.
He Ping gave Feng Moxi an awkward look. "We have a lot of people, and we can't risk our vehicles getting damaged. How about this? We'll clear out the house next door. You can park your car over there, how does that sound?"
Feng Moxi nodded. "Don't trouble yourselves. Just a moment."
With that, Feng Moxi walked over to a small, two-story building about ten meters away. With a light sweep of her fingers, the tightly shut iron gate swung open.
Luo Yunxi followed her inside, carrying an iron rod. Fortunately, the quaint little building was completely devoid of monsters and looked remarkably clean.
'The owners must have left a long time ago.'
The car she'd salvaged from White Poplar Village was still in good shape, and she had no plans to abandon it for now. By the time she finished parking, He Ping's group had finished their preparations and walked over with six men.
All of them were able-bodied men.
"We've split into two teams. Are you girls ready to go?"
"We are," Feng Moxi replied coolly. Luo Yunxi remained silent from start to finish, simply following behind her with the iron rod in hand.
The group quickly moved around to the back of the houses, proceeding cautiously across a small bridge.
Just after the bridge, a street stretched out before them, its end lost in the distance. Dense rows of houses lined both sides. The road itself was a disaster, covered in massive bloodstains and teeming with roaming monsters. They would have to clear a path to get through town.
The group's arrival immediately alerted the nearby monsters, which began to stagger toward them.
He Ping made a 'shushing' gesture and whispered cautiously, "Stick to the houses and clear them out slowly. Don't go into the middle of the street."
With that, the men quickly split into two groups, left and right, using the fences along the houses for cover as they began to slowly clear out the monsters.
Feng Moxi gave Luo Yunxi a meaningful look, and the two of them quickly circled around to the back of the street. She had already noticed that the third shop down was a small supermarket.
'Since we're not facing the monsters head-on, guerrilla tactics will have to do.' As the two women disappeared from view, the Big-bearded Wan Yong called out quietly to He Ping, "Fifth Brother?"
"Let them be. They're just a couple of young girls."
'Although he felt Feng Moxi was difficult to deal with, what could two of them possibly accomplish on their own? This was why, when they were parking earlier, he had subtly instructed his men to take the better spots first.'
The young man with the Gold Ability also let out a soft chuckle.
Once Feng Moxi got to the alley behind the main street, she surveyed the terrain. The path was narrow and littered with countless obstacles; driving through was completely out of the question.
'If we abandon the car and proceed on foot, I'm not sure if we'll be able to make it through.'
A few monsters wandered sparsely through the countless intersecting alleyways.
Any that rushed her, she knocked down with a single strike of her rod. Her other hand glowed with a golden light as she stirred it around inside the monster's head.
After four or five in a row, she still found no signs of a Demon Core.
Seeing this, a curious Luo Yunxi asked, "Xiao Xi, what are you looking for?"
"Crystal Magic Cores. Keep an eye out for them as we go, see if you can find any."
"What do they look like?"
"Look around the monster's temples for a hard, white core about the size of a peanut. Be careful." She added, "Right now, the low-level monsters only have white ones."
"Once they reach Level 2, the cores will have different colors based on the monster's attributes."
"Okay."
The two continued along the wall and soon reached the third shop. It had an automatic door. A light tap from a Golden Blade sent the door retracting upward.
Six or seven monsters immediately rushed out, all of them snarling and clawing, their fingers dripping black blood. 'Is it my imagination,' Feng Moxi wondered, 'or are these monsters rushing out to attack a little faster than the ones outside?'
'I guess there were a lot of people in this little supermarket when the Apocalypse began. They all turned into monsters and must have fed on a lot of flesh and blood.'
As usual, Luo Yunxi took on one monster while Feng Moxi took care of the rest.
Just as Feng Moxi entered the supermarket to gather supplies, she heard Luo Yunxi exclaim in delight, "Xiao Xi, look...!" She rushed over to her.
Her arm was stretched out as far as it could go, her head was turned away, and her brow was tightly furrowed. In her hand, she held a small, gooey pellet—it looked exactly like a Demon Core from a monster's brain.
Feng Moxi coughed lightly and said with a look of distaste, "Clean it off."
'This kid really took my words to heart.' She had fought through her revulsion to rummage around in the heads of all six or seven monsters, one by one.
"Ah, I forgot." A thin stream of water then appeared from Luo Yunxi's palm and washed the object clean. A crystal-clear, peanut-sized bead now lay sparkling in her hand.
It really was a Demon Core.
Feng Moxi plucked it from her hand. "Great job. This is it." The appearance of the first Demon Core meant that more were gradually forming, and that the monsters were evolving as well.
Luo Yunxi let out a sigh of relief and went to close the back door, beaming.
By now, Feng Moxi had already started gathering supplies. She went into the small storeroom first and stowed away all of the supermarket's inventory before turning her attention to the rows of shelves in the main store.
She gathered some pots, bowls, and other kitchenware, along with some daily necessities.
She took every last bit of the feminine hygiene products and toilet paper.
Finally, she selected some of her favorite foods from the shelves and put them away. 'I don't want to reveal my storage space to the others,' she thought, so she didn't take too much from the public-facing shelves.
The small supermarket was well-stocked. It was likely that during the Early Stage of the monster outbreak, most people had fled in a panic before they even realized what was happening.
That, combined with the high density of monsters here, meant the supermarket had never been looted.
In another week or two, once people realized the importance of food, areas like this, no matter how dangerous, would be picked clean. And with that, humanity would face even more death.