The last leader of the world starts with an elite infantry squad!

Just as Gu Chengyun's gaze swept across the desolate left flank defense zone, and his peripheral vision caught sight of the boundless, fluorescent tide resurfacing on the horizon—

A deeper, more eerie tremor gripped the hearts of all the survivors.

It's not sound, it's not light or shadow.

It was a sudden change in air pressure, mixed with a kind of cold, viscous malice that directly affected the instincts of life, like a real tide, crashing down from the direction of that deep purple sky that had been hovering and rolling in the west!

“Buzz——!!!”

The emergency lights on the city wall, the searchlights that were not yet damaged, and even the tactical lights on the soldiers' helmets all experienced extremely brief, yet clearly discernible, flickering and distortion of light and dark at the same instant!

The electronic device is emitting a faint, unsettling electrical noise.

Even the strong smell of gunpowder, acrid odor, and blood in the air seemed to be forcibly suppressed and covered by a suffocatingly sweet and rotten odor that suddenly became ten or a hundred times stronger!

Countless people, regardless of whether they had symptoms of infection, instinctively and in fear turned their heads to look at the western sky.

This includes Gao Cheng, who had just found a communicator and was shouting to the brigade headquarters about the infection situation, and Gu Chengyun, whose heart was pounding in his throat.

Then, they witnessed a scene that froze their souls.

The dark purple spore cloud that had been "stagnant" and "slowly crawling" was now as if it were being violently stirred by an invisible giant hand, or as if some enormous will within it had finally awakened from its dormancy!

The clouds began to churn, contract, and condense at an unprecedented speed!

No longer a loose, cloud-like substance, but rather like a living, sticky gel, it collapsed inward, with more dazzling and ominous fluorescent veins of dark red and eerie green flowing across its surface!

These veins flickered and throbbed wildly, like the ferocious blood vessels on the surface of a giant beast!

The overall height of the clouds was rapidly decreasing, pressing down heavily on the western wall of Gucheng Lake from thousands of meters above with a terrifying force like Mount Tai pressing down!

Its speed was astonishing, far exceeding the previous "drift," and it was more like a premeditated pounce!

At the edge of the clouds, countless thick, viscous, fluorescent "slurry"-dripping tentacle-like structures began to stretch out, like the mouthparts or pseudo-feet of a monster, extending and reaching towards the city wall!

Even more terrifying, as the cloud layer lowered in height and rapidly approached, an indescribably dense buzzing sound, like the simultaneous flapping of wings of billions of tiny insects, began to faintly appear and quickly amplified!

That wasn't a sound, but a mixture of biostatic electricity generated by the high-speed friction and movement of countless active spores and air vibrations!

In just a few breaths, the leading edge of that condensed, compressed, and tentacled cloud of spores had already approached the airspace less than a kilometer away from the western wall!

Below the clouds, the high-speed winds whipped up burning ash, the remains of fungal beasts, and the still-burning fluorescent slime from the ground, forming turbid dust storms that emitted a foul stench and an eerie glow, which were the first to slam against the city walls!

"pat...pat..."

Some sticky, shimmering "raindrops" began to pelt the soldiers' helmets, shoulder armor, and crenellations.

That wasn't rain; it was a spore aggregate so concentrated that it began to liquefy and settle!

"Spore cloud! The spore cloud is pressing down—!!!"

A piercing scream, almost breaking the voice, drowned out the rising and falling cries of infection and exploded once again on the city wall!

This fear was more primal and more desperate than the endless tide of fungal beasts!

"boom--"

Soon, the viscous sea of ​​life, brimming with billions of active spores, carrying the twisted malice of the entire city of Jinling, slammed down from a height of a thousand meters onto the invisible barrier above the west wall of Gucheng Lake!

The spore rain suddenly poured down, like the most violent thunderstorm in summer!

Each "raindrop" is the size of a soybean, encased in a viscous fluorescent gel, with countless frantically wriggling spores curled up inside—a concentrated death!

“Crackle!!!!”

The raindrops hitting the crenellations of the city wall, sandbags, weapons, and protective suits and helmets no longer made the sound of water, but rather a strange, teeth-grinding sound, like concentrated acid dripping with a sticky elasticity.

Each drop leaves a small, rapidly spreading, dark, damp stain emitting wisps of white smoke on the contact surface, along with an even stronger, pungent, sweet, rotten odor.

"Ah—!!! My face! My face!!"

A drop of "spore rain" hits the filter canister of a soldier's gas mask right in the middle.

The gel instantly eroded the rubber seal, and the active spores, as if they had found a breached dam, rushed in frantically!

The soldier screamed and instinctively covered his face. His fingers touched the wet, sticky gel on the outside of his mask, and more spores invaded through the gaps in his gloves!

His screams turned into a hissing sound within seconds. Inside the mask and goggles, a thin, pale film of mycelium rapidly thickened, blocking out all light.

He staggered, scratching futilely at his neck and mask, then collapsed heavily to the ground, his body beginning to convulse and swell erratically.

sizzle-

More commonly, this is seen on the surface of chemical protective suits.

Standard general-purpose chemical protective suits, capable of withstanding certain concentrations of biological and chemical warfare agents, quickly succumbed to this high-concentration, highly active, and highly corrosive rain of spores.

Shoulders, back, arms... wherever the "raindrops" keep dripping, the protective coating loses its luster, softens, bubbles, and then erodes through at a speed visible to the naked eye!

The viscous spore gel, mixed with the active spores inside, came into direct contact with the combat suits and even the skin.

"It itches! It itches so much!! They've burrowed inside! They've burrowed inside!!!"

A machine gunner leaning against the rampart suddenly dropped his gun and frantically scratched his arms and back. Through the torn fabric of his protective suit, one could clearly see that his skin was rapidly developing abnormal dark red rashes. In the center of the rashes, tiny white hyphae were stubbornly breaking through the skin and growing out like body hair!

His scratching became stronger and stronger, his fingernails tearing through his combat uniform and his mutating skin. What flowed out was not bright red blood, but a viscous liquid mixed with fine fungal hyphae, dark red and greenish!

"Ugh...cough cough...vomit—"

As another soldier ran to deliver orders, a few drops of spores splashed into the back of his protective suit through a tear in the side of his neck.

He initially felt a chill, followed by a burning pain and an uncontrollable, violent cough.

As he coughed, he suddenly bent over and vomited not stomach contents, but a large clump of pale, blood-streaked mycelium that looked like wet cotton wool!

The mycelial clumps fell to the ground, still wriggling slightly, as if they possessed an independent life.

He stared in horror at his vomit, wanting to scream, but found his throat blocked by more proliferating hyphae, only able to utter desperate gasps of "ho...ho..." as the whites of his eyes were quickly filled with spiderweb-like blood vessels and tiny white spots.

despair!

Like the viscous rain of spores itself, it is all-pervasive, seeping into every crevice of the defenses and eroding every surviving life.