Free Web NovelChapter 28: Footsteps in the dust
Han Zheng stepped over the threshold of the hidden mountain bunker first, his heavy boots clearing a path through the scattered debris as he kept his modified assault rifle raised. His eyes, sharp and piercing after days of surviving the brutal evolutionary wasteland, scanned the dark corridor with absolute intensity. Behind him, his elite team moved like synchronized ghosts.
Since the start of the apocalypse, the sheer emotional weight crushing Han Zheng’s chest had been suffocating. He had fought through hellish hordes of mutated abominations and collapsed cities just to make it back to these coordinates.
Every logical indicator told him that a mother and a little child left alone at the epicenter of the viral collapse couldn’t possibly survive. Yet, a stubborn instinct deep within his gut refused to let him accept that reality.
"Commander, perimeter is completely clear," Lieutenant Chen reported, lowering his rifle as his low voice echoed off the concrete walls. "The primary security seals were cleanly bypassed from the inside, not forced. Someone has definitely been utilizing this facility recently."
Han Zheng didn’t answer. His heart hammered against his ribs as he strode deeper into the living quarters, his flashlight beam sweeping across the pristine, organized space.
The bunker wasn’t a dusty tomb. It bore the unmistakable human habitation.
He walked over to the kitchen counter, his fingers tracing the edge. There were no dusty remains; instead, he found clean, meticulously organized storage containers and a faint, residual scent of cooked military rations that his trained senses knew couldn’t be more than too old.
They were alive. Lin Qing and his son, Han Ye, had actually survived the initial cataclysm inside this iron womb.
"They were here," Han Zheng breathed, a rare, fierce surge of emotion breaking through his usually stoic demeanor. A heavy wave of relief washed over his features, temporarily clearing the deep exhaustion that had plagued his system for weeks. "They didn’t just crawl into a corner to die. They were thriving."
"Commander, you need to look at this," Ah Hua called out from the armory sector, his voice laced with absolute amazement. "The weapon racks have been cleaned out. The rifles, the tactical vests, the ammunition crates—it’s all gone. Someone must have lifted everything to load a vehicle. Sir... did your wife do this alone?"
Han Zheng walked into the empty armory, his eyes sweeping across the bare metal racks as a profound, jarring confusion threw his mind into chaos.
Before the apocalypse, Lin Qing was just a gentle, ordinary housewife. When he had left her behind to go on duty, she was a quiet stepmother who spent her days cooking, taking care of Han Ye, and managing the household. She didn’t know how to clean a rifle, let alone clear out a high-tier military armory.
’Who the hell actually did this?’ Han Zheng thought, his jaw tightening as he stared at the empty weapon mounts. Was there another survivor group that took her? Or... had he completely misunderstood the woman he married?
"She shouldn’t even know how to release the safety on a Type-95," Han Zheng muttered aloud, his intense anxiety warring with total bewilderment.
He immediately began a meticulous search of the remaining rooms for any scrap of intelligence. He looked around the bunker, his fingers sweeping across the map tables until they locked onto a discarded, rough paper map tucked deep into a side drawer.
His eyes widened as he smoothed it out. Marked in red ink was a singular, heavily circled destination hundreds of miles to the south. Below it, a faint, precise trajectory line traced a deliberate path directly toward the provincial border lines.
"She’s moving to the south," Han Zheng analyzed, his voice dropping into a lethal register.
Turning to his team, he commanded, "Ah Hua, sweep the remaining supplies into the SUV. Every crate of medical rations, every spare magazine left in the reserve vaults—load them up. We are moving out immediately. We follow her trail."
Within less than an hour, their two heavy, armored tactical SUVs rumbled out of the mountain bunker’s hidden exit, driven by Da Yong. They launched onto the highway bypass, tracking the faint but distinct heavy tire indentations left behind by Lin Qing’s massive rig.
After a period of driving, Han Zheng’s lead vehicle ground to a sudden, jarring halt.
"Commander... you need to step out and see this," Lieutenant Chen’s voice crackled over the comms, shaking slightly.
Han Zheng threw his door open, his rifle lowered as he walked onto the blood-stained asphalt. Spread across a fifty-meter stretch of the ruined highway were the mangled, frozen corpses of nearly a dozen mutated zombie dogs.
The beasts were colossal, their muscular, skinless frames torn apart. But what caught Han Zheng’s attention were the strange, deep lacerations slicing through the carcasses—clean, deep wounds that looked as if they had been pierced by solid, invisible blades of compressed air.
The sheer scale of the slaughter was immense. It looked like the work of an entire heavy weapons squad.
Han Zheng closed his eyes, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck. He had no way of knowing that these terrifying demons had been executed by his own child.
In his mind, he assumed Lin Qing had driven straight into an absolute death trap. ’Please, god,’ Han Zheng prayed silently, a desperate, raw plea tearing through his mind for the first time in years. ’Let them have bypassed this nightmare. Don’t let Lin Qing and my little boy have encountered these demons.’
"Mount up! Increase convoy speed to the limit!" Han Zheng barked, his anxiety hitting a fever pitch.
The convoy tore down the highway, pushing past the rural gas station bypass. All of a sudden a sharp, rhythmic ’CRACK’ of incoming gunfire shattered the quiet air.
’BANG! BANG! BANG!’
"Ambush! Left flank! Tree line!" Sun Hao roared over the radio.
From the dense brush near the gas station pumps, a disorganized hail of mismatched civilian bullets slammed toward them. It was the remaining scouts of the Iron Vanguard Syndicate—the human raiders who had fled. Seeing another clean set of military rigs rolling into their territory, their desperate greed completely overrode their caution.
"Rookies," Han Zheng hissed, his eyes burning with a cold, ruthless fury.
He threw his door open, his peak-level evolutionary core flaring to life. His first power activated instantly—High-Speed Hyper-Reflexes. The world around him slowed down into an absolute crawl. Bullets drifted through the air like lazy insects. Beside him, Xiao Li activated his Earth Hardening power, his skin instantly taking on a rock-hard molecular sheen, stepping forward with his advanced physical strength to block a stray volley meant for the vehicles.
Moving with transcendent, augmented velocity, Han Zheng bypassed the need for traditional cover. He activated his second power, projecting a devastating Kinetic Shockwave forward. ’BOOM!’. Raw force exploded from his palms, shattering the syndicate’s defensive walls and throwing the scouts into the air like ragdolls. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Lieutenant Chen followed up instantly. Using his advanced physical strength to handle the massive recoil of his weapon, his Thermal Manipulation flared, igniting his ammunition. The fired rounds hit the syndicate’s escape truck.
Within less than ninety seconds, the chaotic, undisciplined syndicate ambush was completely dismantled, leaving nothing but smoke and silence.
"Leave one alive for interrogation!" Han Zheng commanded, his cold voice cutting through the smell of gunpowder.
Lieutenant Chen, utilizing his advanced strength, easily dragged a bleeding, terrified survivor out of a muddy ditch by his collar, slamming him face-first against the hot hood of the SUV. The man was shaking violently, crying out as he looked up into the cold, predatory eyes of Han Zheng.
"Speak, and you might live," Lieutenant Chen demanded, drawing his heavy combat knife and pressing the freezing steel directly against the man’s frantic carotid artery. "Who controls this sector? And did a large military SUV pass through these coordinates yesterday?"
"Yes! Yes! A crazy, demon woman!" the raider screamed, his voice cracking in pure, unadulterated terror. "She killed our local boss! She wiped out our primary vanguard squad in less than a minute at the pumps! She went south!"
Han Zheng’s hand froze on the hilt of his knife. His sharp eyes narrowed into icy, dangerous slits as a profound shock rippled through his chest.
A demon woman?
The raider’s terrified words didn’t make any sense. Lin Qing was a regular, quiet housewife who used to get startled by loud thunder. The idea of her wielding high-caliber firearms, and annihilating a squad of hardened apocalyptic scavengers in sixty seconds was completely absurd.
Yet, the timing, the heavy transport rig tracks, and the sheer discipline of the execution matched the empty armory inside his bunker perfectly. A surreal realization began to dawn on him—the woman he married was keeping secrets far deeper than he could have ever imagined.
"But she’s dead now! She’s trapped!" the survivor laughed hysterically, blood leaking from his split lips. "The Iron Vanguard Syndicate has heavily fortified military blockades at every single bridge crossing leading south! Anyone who approaches gets executed on sight! She can’t force her way through an entire army with just one car!"
Han Zheng didn’t waste another second. He gave a cold, single nod to Lieutenant Chen, who twisted his wrist in a clean, fluid motion to slice the raider’s throat, dropping the useless body into the dirt.
Han Zheng immediately strode past the smoking wreckage of the syndicate truck, his boots grinding against the gravel as he walked toward the main intersection. He knelt down, his enhanced physical senses and tracking instincts locking onto the asphalt.
Using his powers, he started tracking her tire tracks.
The paper map from the bunker had shown a straight shot down the highway toward the research center. But looking at the road right now, the heavy tire tracks from Lin Qing’s transport rig suddenly told a completely different story.
The tracks led right back to this intersection, where the deep tire grooves aggressively cut across the dirt shoulder, aiming straight toward a rusted, overgrown regional road sign that read: Old Mountain Logging Trail.
"She didn’t head for the bridges," Han Zheng evaluated, his voice tight, intense, and filled with a dark, newfound bewilderment. He stood up, staring up at the fog-choked peaks as his mind completely reeled over the mystery of his wife. "She took the logging trail. Da Yong, turn the vehicles around. We are entering the mountain path immediately."
He climbed back into the driver’s seat, slamming the heavy SUV into gear. As the convoy turned violently toward the steep, dangerous mountain pass, Han Zheng’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. The distance between them was closing rapidly, and he couldn’t wait to look into the eyes of the woman who was currently turning the entire southern territory upside down.
