Apocalypse King: Recruiting S-Tier Beauties With My Ruler System
Chapter 142: Noise Wakes the Deep

Chapter 142: Noise Wakes the Deep

March 20th, 8:31 AM — Longwan Mall, Second Floor – North Wing branching into Service Tunnels -> Central Atrium Overlook

John Wang POV

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Dozens of flickers became hundreds as they filled my sight... if not for the situation, it might be a beautiful moment as the fluttering colours entered my view.

I smashed another screamer’s face with a brutal hook, its brains exploding into a grey mush, before another appeared near Shen Yifei, who was standing near the escalator, stabbing at the group of zombies desperately.

"Damn it!"

The monsters’ disorientating voices caused my head to throb, rattling with their layered screams, driving me mad. If I suffered this much with over six times the spirit of a normal human, then how were the others?!

Da-Deng!

With a burst of light, super-heated shotgun shells spread into the distance, popping the brains of several screamers.

My only goal was to stop their voices.

More figures dropped from above — lean bodies folded over like skin-wrapped insects, their limbs too long, elbows and knees bending in unnatural directions. They scrambled over the broken ceiling beams and signage, then lunged. I twisted in time to catch one on my forearm shield. Its jaw scraped against the steel, teeth grinding against the reinforced surface as it hissed and clawed.

I twisted my wrist, powered the gauntlet’s vent to max, and let the shell blast straight through its torso. The thing popped like overripe fruit.

More were coming. Fast.

"Fall back to the corridor!" I shouted. "Yifei, move!"

She spun her spear in a wide arc, taking two of them in the gut before they could flank her, then jumped down the broken edge of the escalator, landing hard and rolling toward me.

Jiang Roulan sprinted in the opposite direction, covering Tang Wei as they tried to regroup near the central information desk. Their path was already blocked — more of the things poured in, some crawling along the walls like centipedes. Their feet made no sound, but the screaming didn’t stop.

One slipped between me and the others — a skinny, twitching figure with arms that reached almost to its knees. It darted into the gap between our formation.

"John!" Tang Wei called.

I turned and caught it mid-lunge — grabbed its neck with my left gauntlet and slammed it into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Bones snapped beneath the pressure.

Then the light above me blew out with a loud pop.

Another screamer stepped forward from behind the counter.

It opened its mouth.

I didn’t let it finish.

DA-KUNK!

The gauntlet burst flared again, shredding its head in a wave of force. Muck hit the tiles. Black strands twitched like worms across the ground.

I stepped back to check the left corridor. The thing I’d slammed into the wall was gone. Not a smear. Not a trace. Just an empty tile and a hairline crack running down the plaster.

It hadn’t died.

It had just stopped.

"How... I broke its spine!?"

That’s when a hand grabbed me, it was Shen Yifei who reached me, panting, bleeding from her cheek.

"We’re cut off!"

I looked past her toward the service corridor — dark, narrow, but clear.

"This way!"

We pushed through just as another one dropped behind us. I felt the heat of its breath. Shen Yifei turned mid-step and stabbed upward, the spear piercing its chin and skull in one clean motion.

She kicked it off the blade and ran with me.

The hallway swallowed us in the dark.

Shen Yifei and I ran through the service corridor, our boots hammering broken tile and dust-coated concrete. The flickering lights above us hummed and spit sparks. The screeching behind us had changed pitch — it wasn’t calling anymore. It was chasing.

"They’re faster than before," Shen Yifei hissed between breaths, sweat clinging to her jaw. Her cheeks were streaked with ash and blood, and her grip on the spear was tight enough that her knuckles had paled.

"We’re not faster," I muttered back, vaulting a pile of collapsed signage as something behind us skittered through the dark like wet claws on steel.

One of the things lunged from behind the shattered vending machine ahead, not one of the shriekers. This one was broader through the shoulders, moving on all fours like it hadn’t stood upright in days. Its limbs hit the ground out of sync. The bones in its arms looked longer than they should’ve been, elbows angled backwards. Flesh peeled across its back like it had been dragged over metal too many times.

It didn’t growl.

It didn’t shriek.

It lunged.

I dropped low, let it leap over me, then twisted and drove a hook into its back. The gauntlet flared— Da-KENG! —flesh and cartilage tore free, spraying chunks of rib and spine across the wall.

It hit the floor still twitching.

Another burst of wind passed by me — Shen Yifei vaulted forward and speared one of its companions through the mouth as it tried to flank me. Her blade tore through the base of the skull with a crunch, then she kicked the body aside without hesitation.

More footsteps echoed from behind.

Then another.

Then dozens.

"They’re coming in waves—same spacing, same timing," I said, voice low but fast. "Like a trigger."

She nodded once, breathing harder now.

We reached the turn in the corridor just as another shadow dropped behind us. I turned in time to see two of them—bent, almost crawling, mouths spread wide like frogs. Their jaws opened sideways, bones clicking in a pattern that didn’t sound human.

They moved together.

We couldn’t fight both in this space. It was too narrow. My gauntlets wouldn’t clear the wall.

"Move!" I shouted.

Shen Yifei didn’t ask.

She sprinted into the next hallway, ducking under a collapsed beam and vanishing into the dark beyond. I turned, caught the first one with a shoulder-check, and rammed it against the doorframe. The thing gurgled, jaw still stretching sideways, trying to bite at my throat.

I pulled my left arm back, charged the vent—

Da-THUMP!

Its spine crumpled. Its body dropped like a sack of wire.

But the second refused to die. It clawed its way up the wall, then leapt toward my back.

Shen Yifei’s spear flashed — it entered through the base of the jaw and punched out the skull.

The creature sagged and collapsed behind me.

Yife’s attack was silent and brutal. Each time we fought together, our synergy grew stronger. She just pulled the spear free and looked at me.

We ran again.

Down the hallway, past what looked like a locker room door.

I kicked it open.

And inside...

Warm light. A heater. Open water bottles. A single red jacket hung on the wall.

Someone had been living here.

Recently.

"Haa...Haa..."

Click! I tapped the headset and tried to contact Jiang Roulan and Tang Wei... but the sound of Roulan’s gun and shouting from down the corridor echoed.

They were moving further away from me.

From this point, they were moving further away from me.

The corridor opened into a split-level overlook — glass shattered across the floor, old banners tangled around metal posts, and distant screams threading through the ruined air. Shen Yifei didn’t hesitate. Her spear cut down another infected closing in from the right. I crushed one against the column with my forearm, then turned toward the railing.

Crushing Moon was vibrating — not from heat, but pressure.

The Qi inside me surged upward, spiralling through my wrists. Segments of the gauntlets unlocked, snapped outward, and from beneath the wrist housings, two twelve-inch blades extended — forged steel wrapped in pulsing Earth Qi. They glowed faintly gold, the aura clinging to the metal like smoke in a forge.

I didn’t need to will it.

The weapon responded to the kill count and my instinct. But when the blades locked into place, the shriek came — human, not infected.

I looked up.

Jiang Roulan fell.

Her body twisted mid-air, then slammed into a rusted cargo box on the atrium floor. Steel snapped under her weight. The balcony railing gave way after her, tumbling with a scream of sheared bolts and groaning iron.

"Roulan!" I leapt the ledge, Qi-forged blades flaring.

Shen Yifei followed, vaulting beside me with a sharp breath.

Behind us, Tang Wei shouted, "More incoming!"

I caught her silhouette as she dropped from the upper walkway to our side, shotgun slung over shoulder , blade at the ready.

Jiang Roulan tried to sit up — blood soaked her side. She clutched at the edge of the box, gasping through her teeth.

Dozens of shapes poured out from both ends of the lower atrium.

The horde had found us.

And this time, they weren’t scattering.

They were surrounding.

These damned crawlers... as if the screamers weren’t enough!

"Shen Yifei, grab your Type-9k! Tang Wei, grab this!" I tossed Roulan’s Type-9K and flicked the permission for Tang Wei to reload automatically for ZKP, too.