Shen Feng surveyed the surrounding terrain, but found no suitable ground for dealing with the zombies. The city was situated in a flat plain, with only small hills and no exceptionally high mountains. There was a small river bordering the city, but it was clearly impossible to drown around 400,000 zombies with such a meager waterway.
Thus, Shen Feng could only say with a sigh, "It seems we'll have to engage in a full-scale battle to deal with the zombies in Liancheng. I wonder if it will go smoothly."
It was already evening. The group had set up camp on a small hill outside the city. From here, they could see the city's interior, but only the constantly shambling zombies. They had no idea how the survivors inside were faring, or if there were many of them.
After dinner, Shen Feng convened a meeting with his key personnel. "Everyone, let's discuss how we should retake Liancheng. After all, we need to conserve our ammunition."
Guo Pinming offered his suggestion: "I propose that during tomorrow's battle, we use rifles to eliminate large groups of zombies and cold weapons for smaller numbers. Many zombies are actually hiding inside houses, unable to even open doors. If there's no food inside, they'll likely starve to death."
Yu Renshu also chimed in, "To eliminate zombies on a large scale, we must rely on heavy firepower. Unfortunately, we only have rifles and grenades at the moment. I suggest we find low-lying areas to lure the zombies, gather a large horde, and then throw grenades. Grenades have a significantly larger kill radius."
"Alternatively, we could mobilize more people to join the army. Even without rifles, they can use cold weapons," suggested Chu Zhaoyan.
Shen Feng nodded, agreeing with the suggestions of the three. However, Yang Chang interjected at this point, "What if the zombies run away?"
Hearing Yang Chang's question, everyone paused. It seemed no one had considered this possibility. However, in the past two months, they hadn't heard of any zombies running away. Perhaps it was because zombies had always been unintelligent, so no one had thought of it.
"It would be even better if the zombies ran away!" Shen Feng said with a smile. "Our goal is to retake the city. So, if the zombies run, we can seize the opportunity to reclaim Liancheng and then build walls to defend against them!"
Yang Chang also realized, "That's right! If the zombies run, wouldn't we have already retaken the city?"
Afterward, they discussed tomorrow's operation in detail and decided to engage the enemy on the west side of the city. The south side led to Luzhou, and it could not be blocked. The east side was the route to other county towns, which also could not be obstructed. Therefore, the best battlefield location was on the west side. As for the north, a small river passed through there, making combat inconvenient.
The next day, Shen Feng announced the start of the battle. The troops immediately began their orderly deployment. Li Xiang led his men in setting up obstacles in the farmlands west of the city, creating a "V"-shaped defense line with the opening facing the city. As long as the zombies were lured, they would enter this pre-arranged battlefield.
The defense line was like an open sack, with the mouth facing the city. Once the zombies rushed out, they would immediately be drawn into the sack. Soldiers, armed with rifles and cold weapons, crouched behind the defense line, waiting for the order to commence the fight.
Shen Feng picked up a grenade, activated it, and threw it instantly. Although grenades had a delayed fuse, Shen Feng didn't want to experience the sensation of having his hand blown off. So, he activated it and threw it. Eight seconds later, a massive explosion echoed from the city entrance in the distance.
"Boom..." The grenade didn't land directly in the zombie horde, but the tremendous noise still attracted the zombies' attention. Consequently, many zombies charged towards Shen Feng's position. Unfortunately, the number of zombies was clearly insufficient; there were only a little over a hundred, and they could be dealt with using swords and knives.
Shen Feng could only wave his hand helplessly towards the rear. Li Xiang immediately found the best weapon for attracting zombies from the truck: a bronze bell manufactured by the steel plant. Although it was only half a meter tall, it produced a very loud sound when struck. Shen Feng remembered that when he was in elementary school, there were frequent power outages. Since he attended school in a small town, the school used a bell to signal the end of classes during power outages.
Once the power went out, the ringing of the bell became the signal for dismissal. Shen Feng recalled a brave senior student who, under the pretext of going to the restroom, rang the bronze bell. As a result, all the students rushed out of their classrooms, and the entire school was dismissed twenty minutes early. Because of the power outage, the surveillance cameras were also down, and the student was never caught by the school. He became a hero to the entire school!
"Hurry up and ring it!" Shen Feng urged Li Xiang.
Li Xiang hung the bell on a tree and began striking it with a hammer. "Clang, clang, clang..." The sound of the bronze bell traveled far into the distance, immediately attracting more zombies. Those near the bell had to cover their ears; the sound was so deafening that after a short while, their heads felt like they would explode. The feeling was indescribable; they simply didn't want to hear the bell.
Clearly, everyone disliked the noise, as it wasn't a signal for dismissal.
This tactic was something Shen Feng had learned from a Buddhist temple. Zombies were extremely sensitive to sound. As soon as they heard a noise, they would charge forward. In fact, zombies also had a keen sense of smell, but they couldn't distinguish between different scents. Therefore, if the surrounding scent was slightly stronger, their sense of smell would actually be impaired.
When the bell sounded, all the zombies in the city rushed out, charging in the direction of the bell. Shen Feng issued an order: no shooting until the zombies were close, and they were to be dealt with by grenades first. The soldiers could only nervously face the zombies with cold weapons.
The zombies became more numerous. Once they entered the defense line set up by Shen Feng and his men, they charged towards the bronze bell. The surrounding area was farmland, so the zombies moved quite quickly, at a similar pace to ordinary people. Within a minute, thousands of zombies had entered the encirclement. The soldiers, standing behind the defense line, watched the approaching zombies, their palms sweating, unsure if they could hold their ground. Fortunately, they had rifles, which gave them some confidence.
Seeing more and more zombies entering the encirclement, Shen Feng shouted to Guo Pinming, "Prepare the grenades!"
Guo Pinming, along with over thirty men, was responsible for throwing grenades. Upon hearing Shen Feng's command, he immediately said, "When we throw the grenades later, make sure you throw them accurately. If anyone throws one near a comrade, I'll skin you alive."
Afterward, Guo Pinming directed the men to throw the grenades. During this time, no grenades were thrown near their comrades. However, the soldiers were so terrified that after pulling the pins, they threw them immediately, regardless of whether they landed in a group of zombies, essentially throwing them randomly.
Fortunately, there were too many zombies rushing forward, and the grenades, thrown randomly, could still kill them. The grenades had a large kill radius. After the explosions, zombies within five meters fell. Some lost limbs and collapsed, while others died instantly from shrapnel hitting their brains. Even those who didn't die and fell to the ground were generally unable to get up. Zombies didn't understand how to stop bleeding. As soon as they were hit by shrapnel, they would bleed profusely and die within minutes.
The grenades dealt with most of the zombies, but a few hundred were still active. Shen Feng continued to issue orders: "Teams one and fifteen, open fire to eliminate the zombies that haven't fallen. The rest remain on standby."
Shen Feng divided the hundred men into teams, with each team consisting of ten squads, and each squad having ten men. During combat, they could no longer fight in a broad, sweeping manner; they had to fight with precision. Therefore, Shen Feng assigned the task of eliminating a few hundred zombies to the two closest teams. These two hundred men opened fire. After five minutes, they had eliminated all the zombies that had entered the encirclement.
The sound of gunfire and grenades alerted more zombies, and another large wave of them rushed out of the city. At this moment, Yang Chang was observing the city's movements from high above using a drone. He discovered that most of the zombies in the county town were moving towards the west side of the city. It seemed the plan was successful.
As the battle began on the west side, the people still alive in the city were immediately alerted. They heard loud explosions interspersed with gunfire, which indicated that the army had come to rescue them. Thus, they all rallied their spirits and ran to the windows to look, only to see zombies one by one moving towards the west side of the city, seemingly all attracted. This made them even more convinced that they were about to be saved and that the army had finally arrived.
The people still alive in the city waved small flags they had made from their windows. Many others, seeing this, became even more convinced that they would be rescued.
The people of Liancheng had actually considered escaping before, but only those living on the outskirts of the city could escape successfully. The residents in the city center had no way to get out because the streets and roads were basically filled with zombies. The residents had been saving their provisions and had managed to survive until rescue arrived, but their food supplies were now very low.
In reality, food was a secondary problem. The most pressing issue was the lack of water. After the zombie outbreak, the water treatment plant immediately ceased operations. Therefore, the only water sources available to residents were rainwater and nothing else. Some residents who couldn't even get rainwater were reduced to drinking their own urine. Unfortunately, the more they drank, the thirstier they became.
This time, the zombies that rushed out were not just thousands, but tens of thousands. If Shen Feng had seen such a scene before, his legs would have turned to jelly. After all, he couldn't possibly defeat so many zombies. Once surrounded, he too would die, unless he fled from a distance. Otherwise, he would certainly be overwhelmed and killed.
Seeing this scene, Shen Feng felt a surge of excitement. Now, his three thousand men were fighting against tens of thousands of zombies. Although the ratio of numbers was clearly uneven, the weapons used by both sides were also different. The zombies were unarmed, while Shen Feng's side was centuries ahead in terms of weaponry and tactics. Now, Shen Feng was about to experience facing fearless zombies with modern equipment.
Once the zombies entered the encirclement prepared by Shen Feng, he, in pursuit of maximum damage, did not rush to open fire. Instead, he let all the zombies come in. Only when they were less than ten meters away did he loudly shout, "Kill!"
The soldiers heard the command and began to fire. Each soldier had three magazines, but they still hesitated to fire indiscriminately, only aiming at the vital parts of the zombies for single shots. Basically, one shot could kill a zombie, but the rate of bullet consumption by Shen Feng's side was still very fast. In just a few minutes, fifty thousand rounds of ammunition were fired, but only a little over ten thousand zombies were eliminated.
As long as the zombies entered the encirclement, they faced the attack of bullets. The soldiers on both sides continuously fired at the approaching zombies. As long as they hit a zombie, the zombie would immediately lose its combat effectiveness. Rifles were very powerful; one shot could break a zombie's arm or leg. The zombies that fell to the ground could no longer get up. Their fate was to die from excessive blood loss. As for the zombies whose heads were hit, they were relatively fortunate, as they died without suffering.
The zombies on the west side of the city became more and more numerous. Shen Feng estimated that at least a hundred thousand zombies were crammed into the streets west of the county town. Such a large number would consume an immense amount of ammunition for Shen Feng. He wondered if, after recapturing this city, there would be enough remaining ammunition to recapture a second county town.
Guo Pinming wanted to teach the soldiers staggered firing, otherwise, firing all at once would cause their reloading times to coincide, creating a vacuum period where zombies could rush forward in the chaos. Continuous concentrated firepower was necessary to deal with the human wave tactic, and besides firepower suppression, there was staggered firing!
Unfortunately, Guo Pinming did not have enough time to teach these soldiers staggered firing. Fortunately, the lack of time also led to the soldiers having different shooting speeds. Some shot quickly and accurately, while others took a long time to aim, insisting on hitting the zombies' heads. Objectively speaking, staggered firing was indeed achieved, but it was achieved in a way that Guo Pinming had not anticipated.
Suddenly, a five-meter-tall tank-like zombie emerged from the street in the distance and charged into the encirclement. Subsequently, everyone began to fire, but their targets were all on the zombie's body. Shen Feng had previously instructed that the heads of mutated zombies must be preserved and not shot, as they could be awarded to soldiers as rewards after producing evolutionary serums.
Therefore, everyone focused their aim on the tank-like zombie's torso. After all, even if its vital organs were hit, the tank-like zombie would still die. However, the men below continued to fire, but they were unable to kill the charging tank-like zombie. Shen Feng frowned at this sight and asked, "Why isn't this zombie dead yet?"
No one could answer Shen Feng's question, as everyone was trying their best to shoot. However, even when bullets hit the tank-like zombie, they still failed to inflict effective damage. Yu Renshu was observing with binoculars. She did not have a rifle, so she could only stand by and watch, using the binoculars to examine the tank-like zombie's body.
Under Yu Renshu's gaze, she discovered an anomaly. The bullets did enter the tank-like zombie's body after hitting it, but then the damaged muscles and skin of the zombie healed. This indicated that the tank-like zombie had extremely strong regenerative abilities!
"This tank-like zombie has a lot of fat that acts as a buffer, so bullets at long range cannot penetrate the fat layer and easily damage the zombie's internal organs! Moreover, it has strong regenerative abilities. It can recover quickly from injuries that are not fatal," Yu Renshu told Shen Feng what she had observed.
Hearing this, Shen Feng felt helpless and said, "Even rifles are finding it difficult to deal with zombies now. Will we have to use armor-piercing rounds in the future?"
Yu Renshu replied, "I don't think it will be that exaggerated. The zombies appearing now are likely second-tier tank-like zombies. Only they have such terrifying regenerative abilities. Other types of zombies do not have such monstrous defense or regenerative capabilities, so it's not to the point where rifles cannot deal with them."
As they were speaking, someone aimed at the tank-like zombie's eye socket and fired. The bullet instantly pierced the zombie's eyeball and then the skull, destroying the brain. The tank-like zombie's central nervous system was destroyed, and it immediately collapsed to the ground. Its massive body crashed heavily into the farmland, kicking up clouds of dust.
Shen Feng looked at the young man who had fired the shot not far away and asked Guo Pinming, "What is that person's name? His marksmanship is quite good."
Guo Pinming immediately replied, "His name is Lu Kaiyang. Although he's just an ordinary person, his marksmanship is even better than that of an evolved individual. It seems he's been fond of firearms for a long time."
Shen Feng nodded, remembering the person. Someone with such good marksmanship should ideally become a sniper. It was a pity that he didn't have any sniper rifles to give him at the moment. If he could obtain sniper rifles in the future, he would definitely have this guy become a sniper, specializing in killing mutated zombies.