Thud!

The round-faced man fell forward onto the ground, one of his front teeth knocked out from the impact.

"Boss?" The round-faced man ignored his flying tooth and exclaimed in surprise.

Scar Tiger angrily kicked the round-faced man, "Don't call me boss! You're the boss here!"

The round-faced man was utterly confused. His own boss was the base leader now, so why was he so afraid of the person before him?

Could it be that this person was sent from the Official Survivor Base?

Then he saw Scar Tiger cautiously saying to Li Xuan, "Boss, he just returned from outside and doesn't know the situation. This has nothing to do with me. By the way, boss, the exploration team brought back a pair of twins. I've sent them to your room."

Li Xuan waved his hand, "Alright, it's not a big deal. Just deal with it."

"Okay, okay, okay, leave it to me." Scar Tiger nodded repeatedly.

Before the Minor Celebrity could speak, Li Xuan had already turned and left.

The Minor Celebrity's jaw dropped, her mind in a daze. There was only one person who could make Scar Tiger show such respect!

Was Li Xuan the Prehistoric Colossus transformer?

Splat!

Several drops of steaming hot blood splattered onto the Minor Celebrity's face. She suddenly snapped back to reality and discovered that Scar Tiger had slashed the round-faced man with his knife.

The round-faced man showed fear, "Boss! Don't kill me! I helped you find mutated zombies! I even brought back a pair of twins for you! You can't kill me!! If you kill me, what will the brothers think of you!"

Splat!

Scar Tiger raised his knife and brought it down hard on the round-faced man's neck. Blood stained the ground red, "Threatening me? Who do you think you are!"

He wasn't stupid—he understood the logic behind what the round-faced man said.

But he understood one thing even better: you don't mess with Li Xuan!

After finishing everything, Scar Tiger smiled at the Minor Celebrity, "He won't bother you anymore from now on."

The round-faced man's eyes remained open, as if staring at the Minor Celebrity, his gaze still filled with lingering fear and resentment.

The Minor Celebrity swallowed hard, "Thank you."

Scar Tiger wiped the blood off his face, "No need to thank me. You're just lucky to have met the boss. He's a kind-hearted person. If it were me, I wouldn't have helped you at all."

The next day, when Li Xuan learned that the round-faced man had died, he raised an eyebrow. He hadn't intended to kill the round-faced man—his meaning was to perform a castration surgery on him and then throw him into a zombie horde. He hadn't wanted the round-faced man to die inside the base.

"You're too bloodthirsty," Li Xuan said to Scar Tiger.

The two were having a meal. The food on the table was simple: rice and canned meat, plus a bag of lemon-flavored potato chips serving as dessert.

Scar Tiger lowered his head, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. How could he be more bloodthirsty than Li Xuan, who killed Sister Hua and Bear Lord at the slightest provocation? Li Xuan's bloodlust was far greater than his.

He suspected that Li Xuan didn't kill him only because Li Xuan looked down on the Black Bear Survivor Base and needed someone to manage it. Sister Hua had jumped out first wanting to escape, so Li Xuan killed her.

If he had jumped out first, he would be the dead one, and Sister Hua would have become the base leader.

"Boss, how should we handle the twins?"

Li Xuan speared a piece of beef with his fork, "Have them join the exploration team. Both of them have considerable courage."

He hadn't enjoyed the twins mainly because they would be burdens. He didn't want to drag two attachments around while navigating the apocalypse.

The twins' potential couldn't compare to Huo Lingling and Yun Xiuzhi. Huo Lingling was the strongest support in the second version, and Yun Xiuzhi was the female emperor in the third version—both had tremendous potential. The twins weren't transformers, and intelligence refresh hadn't revealed any future information about them. They were probably just minor characters in the apocalypse.

He had, however, refreshed intelligence about Scar Tiger.

[Evil Tiger's End: In the second version, Scar Tiger didn't awaken any special abilities. He was betrayed by his subordinates and lost his position as base leader. While fleeing, he accidentally entered a sinister forest and was unfortunately discovered by the Ghost Face Dandelion Tree, transformed into an accompanying evil spirit, and enslaved by the tree.

In the late second version, when the Ghost Face Dandelion Tree was besieged by humans and mutated animals, Scar Tiger seized the opportunity to break free from the tree's control and became a masterless evil spirit, wandering between mountains and rivers. Because his body differed from normal humans, he couldn't join any survivor base.

In the third version, Scar Tiger's body was occupied by an anomaly. In his first battle, he encountered a grand martial arts master and was punched to the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated without leaving even a corpse.]

Scar Tiger had used up all his luck in the first version. From the second version onward, misfortunes kept happening to him—first encountering a mutated tree capable of destroying an entire official survivor base, then having his body possessed, and finally being punched to death.

"Okay."

Scar Tiger ate his rice, rarely touching the meat. He feared that if Li Xuan didn't have enough to eat, he might get angry and eat him instead.

Li Xuan said casually, "Any news about mutated zombies?"

Scar Tiger shook his head, "Not yet. The mutated zombies are all hidden among the zombie hordes, lurking underwater. They're hard to find. But I've observed that the water level outside is dropping rapidly. Maybe before long, the water will be gone, and the mutated zombies will have nowhere to hide."

"The water disappearing isn't necessarily a good thing," Li Xuan said.

Scar Tiger's expression turned serious as he nodded. If the water disappeared and the sun didn't set, with temperatures getting higher and higher, the ground would become a giant frying pan. Whether humans could withstand the continuous high temperatures was one thing, but the zombies—first soaked in water, then exposed to the blazing sun—would definitely experience more severe flesh rot.

It didn't sound bad—if zombie flesh rotted severely, maybe they would lose mobility. But now that some zombies had already mutated, ordinary zombies might not lose mobility but instead evolve, becoming more dangerous than before!

"Since you've realized this, find ways to prepare countermeasures in advance," Li Xuan said.

"I didn't go to school for many years. I can't figure it out," Scar Tiger said with a bitter expression. He hadn't even finished middle school and had never passed a single elementary school exam. Asking him to come up with countermeasures was really too difficult.

"The twins brought back by the exploration team are both top students. You can ask them," Li Xuan suggested.

"Oh oh~ I understand. Thank you for your guidance, boss," Scar Tiger said with an expression of sudden realization.

Li Xuan smiled without speaking. He knew Scar Tiger was acting, but that wasn't important.

He didn't need Scar Tiger's loyalty—just that he could be used for now.

Once he got what he wanted, Li Xuan would leave on his own.

He couldn't stay at the Black Bear Survivor Base forever. Even if someday he really wanted to join a survivor base, he wouldn't choose the Black Bear Survivor Base.

Time passed day by day, with the sun hanging high in the sky and the water level dropping faster and faster.

On the thirtieth day since Li Xuan joined the Black Bear Survivor Base, the water level dropped to three meters. Buildings that had been submerged once again appeared before the survivors' eyes. The remaining water had turned an eerie black color, looking particularly creepy, with zombies lurking within.

If anyone entered the water during this period, they would instantly be torn apart by the hidden zombies, without even getting a chance to turn into zombies themselves.

Several more days passed, and even the black water disappeared. After several months, the ground was finally exposed to sunlight again.

The zombies, having experienced two version updates, became increasingly dangerous. Their flesh had severely rotted, but they moved faster than before. Previously, zombies would only swim slowly, but now when they spotted people, they would run!