After the firecrackers sounded, due to their excellent hearing, Gu Qingcheng and Gu Chaobei could clearly hear the "rustling" sounds coming from all around. Although the sounds were faint, they converged in their ears, forming a subtle trickle and then a torrent of sounds.
"This is bad!" Gu Qingcheng exclaimed, "We need to retreat quickly. It's zombies. The noise has alerted them."
As they spoke, they suddenly saw hordes of zombies appearing from all directions in the village, then charging towards them.
Gu Qingcheng and Gu Chaobei stood back-to-back, drew their knives, and vigilantly watched the approaching zombies.
The peddler, still unaware of what was happening, was relieved to see the villagers suddenly appear. He put down his carrying pole and said with a smile:
"Good heavens, I thought they had all moved away. So they were just hiding? What kind of custom is this? Are there new rules in Jiren Village now? No one seen during the day?"
It had to be said that the peddler had a very large heart.
He still hadn't understood what was happening.
Gu Qingcheng shouted at him, "Be careful, these villagers have turned into monsters."
Before the peddler could react, Gu Qingcheng had already chopped off the head of a zombie lunging at him from behind.
The peddler stared at the head that had fallen to the ground, its bloodshot eyes staring at him. He was stunned.
They really are monsters!
How could human eyes be like that?
He then realized that Gu Qingcheng had saved him.
"Ah? What, what is going on?"
The peddler felt a warm flow slowly running down his leg; he had wet himself in fear.
"The villagers have turned into monsters."
Gu Chaobei replied, and then casually chopped off another villager charging at him.
At this point, the father and daughter were basically certain that all these villagers had turned into zombies.
The zombified villagers acted no differently from Prince Xia.
Their eyes were blood red, they had sharp canine teeth, claws as sharp as a cheetah's, and they craved the flesh and blood of living things.
Because Gu Chaobei had studied them before and determined that Prince Xia had eaten various elixirs, causing neurological changes in his brain, the father and daughter were clear that the only effective way to subdue zombies was to chop off their heads.
Once the connection between the brain and the body was severed, they were finished.
Gu Qingcheng easily accepted her father's viewpoint, as she had seen in zombie movies that decapitation was the only solution.
Fortunately, although these zombies looked ferocious, their strength had been enhanced by the Great Strength Pill, not ordinary human strength. As long as they didn't panic and aimed true, they could slice off the zombies' necks as easily as cutting through winter melon, one strike at a time.
In the blink of an eye, they had already decapitated over 20 zombies.
The peddler, having recovered somewhat from his shock and fear, dodged and weaved as the zombies charged, naturally staying behind Gu Qingcheng and her father.
He realized that following Gu Chaobei and his daughter was his only way out.
So, he took out the carrying pole from his stall and followed closely behind the father and daughter, afraid of losing them and his life.
Gu Qingcheng and her father couldn't bring themselves to abandon him, so they fought their way and retreated.
The wedding procession at the village entrance was also startled by the zombies that suddenly rushed out. Some people in the procession had already been attacked, letting out cries for help.
The groom on the donkey never imagined that the joyous occasion of his wedding would bring not surprise but terror.
Was this still the Jiren Village of the past?
The village was grand and imposing, and the villagers were kind and polite.
Among the villagers running towards them, he could vaguely see a few familiar faces, all with ferocious expressions, looking extremely abnormal.
No, he even saw a familiar person!
It was the bride he was about to marry!
The groom jumped off the donkey excitedly and ran towards her.
Gu Chaobei and his daughter were surrounded by the zombified villagers. They fought and killed their way towards the village entrance, their long knives dancing like fans. They ran and killed, leaving behind many zombie corpses.
During the fight, Gu Qingcheng discovered that although these zombies had mutated and become abnormally violent and fierce, and their strength was slightly greater than that of ordinary people, their strength did not surpass theirs. Her confidence and courage surged.
She and her father fought and retreated towards the wedding procession.
Gu Chaobei even shouted at them, "The villagers here have all turned into monsters. You should run away quickly."
The wedding procession then realized what was happening, and everyone screamed in terror and ran out of the village.
However, their screams attracted the attention of some zombies, and a few of them ran after them.
At this moment, Gu Chaobei and his daughter were drawn to a young man.
The young man was the groom in his red robe. He was running towards a group of zombies, unarmed and with an anxious expression.
Gu Chaobei cursed, "Does this idiot want to die?"
With that, they rushed forward, covering the distance to the groom in just a few steps.
A female zombie was pouncing on the groom. Gu Chaobei didn't think twice and chopped off the female zombie's head from behind.
Unexpectedly, the groom froze. The next moment, his anxious expression turned to grief. He picked up the woman's head from the ground and cried, holding it:
"Xiao Fen, Xiao Fen, how did you become like this? We pledged to be together forever. We finally reached today, and I came to marry you. Why have you become so terrifying?"
Gu Chaobei, upon hearing this, realized that he had just decapitated the bride. He felt deeply apologetic.
However, if he hadn't killed the bride, the groom would surely have been bitten by her and turned into a zombie as well.
Gu Chaobei "whooshed" and killed the dozen or so zombies in front of him. Seeing the groom still crying while holding the woman's head, he said faintly:
"I'm sorry. The bride has turned into a monster. If I hadn't killed her, you would have been bitten by her and turned into one of them."
The groom looked up and suddenly saw zombies running from all directions, their eyes blood red, their teeth like beasts, and sharp fangs in their mouths. He then looked at the bride's head he was holding, which was the same, and her corpse lying on the ground had sharp claws for fingernails.
The groom came to his senses, was startled, dropped the bride's head, stumbled back a few steps in fear, and stood there tremblingly.
Gu Qingcheng looked at him and said, both amused and exasperated:
"You all need to get out of the village quickly. The villagers have all turned into monsters."
The groom wailed.
Gu Chaobei observed that the reason they were able to withstand this wave of zombie attacks was not that he and his daughter were so powerful, but because these zombies were slow-moving and sluggish, not as ferocious and swift as the ones they had seen the previous night.
By this time, most of the zombies that had come out to roam the village had been killed by them. Therefore, Gu Chaobei had the leisure to tell his daughter his observations.