"It shouldn't be about him coming to join us, right? I think he seemed to be living quite comfortably in that strange city."
Lin Mancha disagreed, saying, "I saw him rescue a few people before and take them back with him. He must have come to save us this time."
"If he really is here to save us, should we go with him to that bizarre city?"
The girl who first noticed Alex approaching asked timidly, "He seems quite powerful. Following him might increase our chances of survival."
"Us, joining him? That's wishful thinking! Only if he's willing to join us and follow my orders!" Shen Jiabin said arrogantly. To him, joining a loser he looked down upon was worse than death. In his eyes, only someone as noble and perfect as himself was fit to be a leader. Only he could lead others. No one could lead him.
Meanwhile, Alex had already arrived outside the gymnasium. As for his purpose, Shen Jiabin and the others' speculations were just a joke to Alex. He didn't care at all about the fate of the survivors on the gym's rooftop. His only reason for coming to the gym was to find a few mutated zombies. That was it.
Alex found a high platform outside the gym to rest for a moment. He looked around; the gymnasium was about nine meters tall and was a simple rectangular building. Alex had been to the gym a few times before the apocalypse, so he was somewhat familiar with its layout.
The last time he saw the mutated, burly zombie, it appeared in the corridor leading to the rooftop balcony on the third floor. If there were no surprises, that zombie should still be in the corridor on the third floor.
Alex did not know if there were any special zombies inside the gymnasium, but his primary target now was the burly zombie. Of course, if he encountered a few more special zombies along the way, Alex would be more than willing.
After drinking some water and taking a brief rest, Alex picked up his Knife again and cautiously made his way towards the gymnasium. It was noon, and there weren't many zombies on the large square outside the gymnasium. Even the few remaining zombies seemed lethargic due to the sunlight, so Alex didn't have to exert much effort to reach a wall of the gymnasium with a drainage pipe.
With his Mo Dao on his back, Alex began to climb up the drainage pipe. "Hey, kid! What do you think you're doing?" Just as Alex had climbed halfway, several heads peeked over from the rooftop, watching him warily. These people were Shen Jiabin, Tang Jingyan, and others who had just been observing Alex from the rooftop.
Alex looked up expressionlessly at them for a moment and continued climbing, completely ignoring them. There is no love or hatred without reason in this world. Although Alex considered himself a villain, he wasn't deranged enough to kill innocents without cause. As long as these people didn't provoke him, Alex had no interest in dealing with them.
"Hey, kid! I'm talking to you! Didn't you hear?" Shen Jiabin shouted at Alex somewhat angrily, "We don't welcome you here! If you dare to come up, don't blame us for being rude!" As he spoke, Shen Jiabin waved a baseball bat around on the rooftop.
"If you want to join us, you can, but hand over your food and water to us, and we'll take you in," Gu Fanghua said with a sense of superiority.
The two of them had a strategy: one to intimidate and the other to entice, using the domineering attitude they had developed on the basketball team to subdue Alex and make him work for them.
Alex looked up again, casting a cold glance at Shen Jiabin, and quickly climbed to the third-floor corridor, then leaped onto the corridor with a powerful jump. Seeing Alex's bizarre actions, Shen Jiabin and the others were completely baffled.
They had prepared to negotiate with Alex, but they never expected that Alex would completely ignore them. Moreover, Alex had even directly jumped onto the third-floor corridor swarming with zombies! What exactly was he trying to do?
"Look, he's killing zombies!"
"It seems he really is here to save us! He must be planning to clear out the zombies below so he can take us to his city!"
Tang Jingyan, lying prone and looking down at the third-floor corridor, screamed this to the others.
"It seems he wants to showcase his abilities in front of us, to have more leverage when he joins us!" Shen Jiabin arrogantly said, "But it's useless. To join us, one must follow my orders! Only I can lead everyone to survive in this apocalypse!"
"But he has a knife! And the way he's killing the zombies, it seems like he's very strong in combat! We might not be able to beat him..."
Zhuang Qiang, with narrowed eyes, spoke coldly, "Maybe, he's not here to save us but wants to get something from us."