Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 136: Everyone, Please Strive to Survive

“They are here!”

“So many…”

“Everyone… please, strive to survive!”

Chu Che’s voice crackled over the radio, deep and unprecedentedly heavy. Then, the line went dead.

Chen Ye’s vigilance spiked to its limit.

He had fought Anomalies before, but the fear never dulled. It was a simple equation: an Anomaly could fail a thousand times, but Chen Ye only had to fail once to die.

Thick smoke filled the cab, leaking out through the cracks in the windows and coiling around the truck like a protective serpent.

The convoy accelerated. Chen Ye could hear the roar of engines behind him—Chu Che and the pink-haired girl were pushing their vehicles to the red line.

Chen Ye slammed his foot down. The risk of skidding on the ice was irrelevant now. Speed was survival.

Only by reaching the school could they hope to live.

He glanced up.

On the façade of a residential building ahead, a humanoid creature was crawling down the wall.

It moved head-first, limbs splayed like a gecko, descending with unnatural, jerky speed toward the road.

It was… a person.

Long hair hung down, defying gravity. Judging by the frame, it was a woman.

But she was wrong. From head to toe, she was a stark, blinding white. Even her clothes were bleached of color. Against the gray concrete, she looked like a phantom.

If not for his enhanced Cultivator vision, Chen Ye wouldn’t have spotted her until she was on top of him.

And she wasn’t alone.

Another one was clinging to a wall nearby. This one was massive—a 200-pound man, equally pale.

Sensing Chen Ye’s gaze, the creature lifted its head and roared. It wasn’t a human sound. It was the shriek of a monster wearing a man’s skin. The face was blank, void of any human intelligence.

Chen Ye scanned the street. His blood ran cold.

Dozens of white figures were emerging from the woodwork.

No. Hundreds.

They poured out of windows, crawled up from sewers, and swarmed out of the abandoned shops lining the street. Pharmacies, restaurants, hotels—the places where humans once gathered were now hives.

They shared one trait: Whiteness.

Hair, skin, clothes, even their pupils. Bleached bone-white.

These Crawlers didn’t walk. They scuttled on all fours, moving with terrifying speed. They surged toward the convoy like a white tide.

It was a scene straight out of a zombie nightmare.

“Crawlers!” the pink-haired girl’s voice shrieked over the radio. “The cultists mentioned them! These used to be the residents of Rong City!”

“All of them?!” Chen Ye snarled.

If every resident had turned…

Rong City was a metropolis. Millions of people.

“Damn it. Does that mean there are a million Anomalies in this city?”

His voice was dry as dust.

Zzzzt…

Static. Then the pink-haired girl’s voice, trembling. “Chen Ye… everyone… please. You must survive!”

The moment the transmission ended, Chen Ye yanked the steering wheel hard.

He broke formation.

His truck swerved out of the line, the smoke-plow at the front throwing up a wall of snow. He overtook the pink-haired girl’s lead vehicle, gunning for the front.

He needed to break the encirclement before it closed. He needed to get back to the school.

As for the others?

I can’t save them. I can barely save myself.

“Chen Ye! You bastard!” the pink-haired girl yelled as he sped past. “Little Yu, faster! Overtake him!”

“Cousin…”

Before Little Yu could respond, a heavy thump shook their SUV.

Something had landed on the roof.

The pink-haired girl’s eyes narrowed. She formed a hand seal. “Go!”

Her sword, trailing sparks and smoke, shot out the window like a guided missile.

Ahead, Chen Ye was driving like a man possessed. His foot was practically inside the fuel tank.

Yet, the Doomsday Pickup handled with supernatural grace. He felt a profound connection to the machine—Man and Car as one. He could feel the texture of the ice through the tires, the vibration of every bolt.

The vehicle’s hidden attributes were shining.

The studded tires clawed into the ice, finding traction where there should be none. Every time the truck began to fishtail, Chen Ye corrected it with a micro-adjustment that felt instinctive.

ROAR!

A white blur dropped from the sky.

It was the fat Crawler. It aimed directly for the pickup’s hood.

Chen Ye didn’t even look up. He twitched the wheel.

The truck swerved violently, dodging the falling monster by inches. The Crawler slammed into the asphalt where the truck had been a split second before.

More were coming.

Chen Ye wove through the horde, dancing between lunging monsters. He knew that if even one latched onto him, the drag would slow him down enough for the swarm to bury him.

He was holding on. Barely.

Behind him, the pink-haired girl wasn’t so lucky.

The Crawlers that missed Chen Ye turned their attention to the next target.

One Crawler couldn’t stop her modified SUV. But three? Ten?

White bodies slammed into her vehicle, grabbing onto bumpers, door handles, and roof racks. The SUV shuddered and began to slow under the weight of the drag.

Once they stopped, they were dead.

The pink-haired girl watched Chen Ye’s taillights shrinking in the distance.

She gritted her teeth.

“Little Yu! Keep it steady!”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out the window. She moved with the agility of a fox, pulling herself onto the roof of the speeding vehicle in the middle of a blizzard.

She stood up, the wind whipping her pink hair.

“Crimson Flame… IGNITE!”

Her longsword danced around her, cutting through the air. Red fire erupted from the blade, illuminating the gray world. Standing there, bathed in flame, she looked like the protagonist of a shonen anime.

She chanted a mantra, her voice cutting through the wind.

With every syllable, the flames on the sword swelled.

In his rearview mirror, Chen Ye watched, his jaw dropping.

The sword transformed.

The flames coalesced into the shape of a ferocious, majestic fire dragon. Scales of heat rippled along its body as it roared silently.

The fire dragon lunged.

It coiled around the SUV, snapping its jaws at the white Crawlers clinging to the chassis.

It was like throwing snow into a blast furnace.

The Crawlers didn’t just burn; they evaporated.

The SUV burst through the encirclement, wrapped in a protective cocoon of dragon-fire. Behind them, a pile of charred corpses crumbled into black ash, scattered by the wind.

“Holy shit…” Chen Ye muttered, staring at the mirror. “That girl… she was hiding that?”

But the crisis wasn’t over.