Ch.9696. The Road to Ulsan (3)

An unstoppable momentum.

The advance team’s liberation of villages and towns had been proceeding with unstoppable momentum.

However, there was one problem.

“They’re all empty villages and towns.”

The villages liberated by the advance team were uninhabited areas with neither people nor zombies.

In other words, even though they liberated the villages, there were no residents at all, making the situation essentially useless. Still, liberation was liberation.

The advance team led by Jeong Dong-geon dutifully searched every corner of the villages and their surroundings for anything suspicious and prepared to secure the villages’ safety, but…

“…There are no threats in the vicinity.”

The disappointing part was that there was truly nothing.

There were no zombies around the villages. Just to be sure, they carefully examined the nearby reservoir, farmland, and the town situated in the surrounding area, but despite such thorough searching, the advance team found no traces of zombies or survivors.

It was another waste of time on a meaningless search, and Jeong Dong-geon’s expression wasn’t particularly pleasant.

“Captain. We’ve searched thoroughly, but found no zombies or survivors.”

“I’m not detecting anything either.”

Reports were coming in through the communication channel from soldiers confirming the absence of survivors and zombies, and Son Sang-hui, who had been prepared for this situation, also had no findings.

If there was one common thread…

“Here too, there are no precious metals or food. Everything unnecessary for survival has been discarded like trash.”

“So basically, everything except essential items for living is gone?”

“Yes. Just to be sure, I checked the reservoir where water could be secured, but there are no survivors settled there either.”

At least there was evidence that survivors had once lived in the villages and towns.

Based on the traces left in the villages, it was possible to estimate when the survivors had disappeared, and from that, they could predict that the survivors hadn’t vanished suddenly.

The fact that there were traces of survivors having lived in the villages meant that at some point, the survivors had reason to leave and seek refuge elsewhere.

“So it’s evacuation, as Son Sang-hui said. Really.”

“Then there should be people coming to Gyeongju, right?”

He recalled the evacuation that Son Sang-hui had first mentioned.

But this was contradicted by the fact that there had been no news from the Balhut Cult located in the north, when there should have been.

‘Even if the Balhut Cult is notorious as a pseudo-religious cult, when lives are at stake, people would need even a cult’s protection.’

At first, he speculated that the refugees might have avoided the Balhut Cult due to its negative public reputation, but Jeong Dong-geon remained pessimistic about this theory.

In life-threatening situations, people rarely make rational judgments and naturally prioritize immediate survival.

Whether the other party was a cult or not, human survival instinct would lead people to seek help without hesitation if it meant saving their lives. Geographically, it would be faster and safer for people from this village, which was close to Gyeongju, to flee there rather than to Ulsan, which required passing through several villages.

Moreover, at that time, there had been an expedition force to greatly expand South Gyeongju’s influence, so anyone paying attention to outside news could have easily learned that the expedition was liberating villages.

“Have you searched the nearby mountains?”

“There are monsters there. We haven’t searched yet due to the danger.”

“It’s fine to just check if there are traces of people entering the foothills. No need to climb to the middle of the mountain where you might encounter monsters. Ah, Son Sang-hui, please go with them since you have detection abilities.”

“Understood.”

Feeling he lacked sufficient information to make a judgment, Jeong Dong-geon ordered Son Sang-hui and some soldiers to search the nearby mountains.

With Son Sang-hui present, they could roughly determine whether there were people inside the mountain and check for the presence of monsters.

If there were no monsters in the mountains, Jeong Dong-geon was prepared to consider the situation abnormal, halt the current expedition, and report directly to Yu-na, but…

“There are monsters present.”

“I see.”

The report that came back was ambiguous.

Son Sang-hui reported that while there were no zombies or survivors, monsters did exist inside the mountains.

Jeong Dong-geon could feel the situation becoming increasingly puzzling.

If the monsters had completely disappeared too, he could have considered it an abnormal situation and retreated without hesitation, but the fact that monsters remained intact made it difficult to declare a retreat.

He was hesitant to withdraw because it might truly be a coincidence upon coincidence.

“Sigh. Then we have no choice but to establish an outpost here and mark it as Balhut Cult territory.”

“Understood. Should I contact headquarters and request more soldiers?”

“Yes. Please ask them to send mostly experienced soldiers.”

“Understood.”

In the end, Jeong Dong-geon prioritized securing safety by deploying manpower.

To demonstrate that the village had been liberated, Jeong Dong-geon chose to build a surveillance outpost outside the village and raise flags in visible locations displaying the cult’s symbol.

For this purpose, he requested soldiers from headquarters to staff the detection outpost, and the cult promptly sent soldiers, construction materials, and manpower to build the surveillance outpost.

“The personnel dispatched now will build a surveillance outpost here. We’ll continue advancing.”

“Yes, sir!”

Since they already knew the village was secure through reconnaissance, once Jeong Dong-geon confirmed the surveillance outpost was being built, he advanced the advance team across the village bridge to check another village on the opposite side.

Thinking that if refugees had headed toward Ulsan, traces should remain in other villages, Jeong Dong-geon and his advance team arrived at a village larger than the one they had just left, but…

“It’s quiet, Captain.”

“I know.”

This village was quiet too.

If the villagers had reclaimed the village on their own and set up defenses, Jeong Dong-geon would have understood and accepted it.

However, when Jeong Dong-geon and his advance team arrived at the village entrance, they saw nothing.

There were no barricades for defense, nor any signs of road control.

Roads were crucial for transportation, so controlling them would be essential from a defensive standpoint, yet there was no control.

Or perhaps…

“There’s no one in this village. I can’t sense anything.”

Maybe there was no one to control it in the first place.

Son Sang-hui, seemingly having an ominous thought, stated that there was no one inside the village.

In other words, there were no zombies or survivors in this village either.

‘The village we just liberated was quite large. But even this larger village has no survivors or zombies. That’s strange.’

It was strange.

If survivors from that village had arrived here, there should be traces.

“There are no signs of battle either.”

“Really?”

There were no traces at all.

In this apocalyptic era where Awakened individuals with superhuman strength appeared by hunting zombies, battles between Awakened naturally caused tremendous damage to the surroundings.

Knowing that destroying a building or two was nothing in such conflicts, if Awakened had clashed, there should be evidence of that battle, but there was none.

“Instead, looting… or rather, all supplies necessary for survival have been collected. Same as before.”

Of course, there were traces of village supplies being collected for survival, but that was something everyone did.

Witnessing the same phenomenon and situation as in the village they had just passed, Jeong Dong-geon spoke up with a hopeful thought.

“Then let’s search the nearby town and factory.”

“Understood.”

There was a possibility that the village community had moved elsewhere for evacuation.

In reality, there were places that were easier to defend than villages with open surroundings on all sides, and there were such defensible locations nearby.

If they had gathered at such a place for evacuation and were holding out there, it would sufficiently resolve the questions so far.

They could be convinced by the logic that both villages had come together, sympathized with the hardships of the apocalypse, and cooperated to fight against it.

‘But that’s not an easy thing.’

However, Jeong Dong-geon knew well that this wasn’t easy.

Starting with leadership issues, then distribution problems and resource issues.

In fact, the strategy of holding out in an easily defensible location also meant giving up farmland, which was the village’s advantage as a source of food supply.

As someone who had faced many conflicts over food issues when he was a survivor camp leader, Jeong Dong-geon was convinced that despite the risks, people would never abandon farmland where food supply was possible.

“…There’s no one, Captain.”

“I see.”

And the answer from the returning soldier was that they had found no one.

One by one, the soldiers who had gone out to search began to return, reporting that they had found no survivors or zombies.

If there had at least been corpses or traces of zombies, one could reasonably think that survivors and zombies had mutually destroyed each other, but there wasn’t even a trace of that.

All Jeong Dong-geon and the advance team could see were empty buildings that looked like eerie abandoned houses where no one had lived.

“No traces of refugees, and the traces of residents who lived here have disappeared.”

“At least there are monsters in the mountains.”

“Haha. Could the monsters in the mountains have kidnapped the residents?”

Since they couldn’t find any survivors or zombies, one soldier suggested the possibility that monsters from the mountains had kidnapped the residents.

In fact, cases in America had hinted at the existence of monsters that took residents hostage or enslaved them for hellish urban warfare, and there had been reports on community forums about residents living near mountains in Korea going missing, so it was a plausible speculation.

“…I don’t think that’s it. If that were the case, there should be the distinctive magical energy of Awakened in the mountains, but I don’t sense that.”

“Then the possibility that everyone fled to Ulsan…”

“…We set up a gateway near the Donghae Expressway, so wouldn’t they have seen our highly visible gateway first?”

However, Son Sang-hui, with her detection abilities, said she couldn’t sense the presence of Awakened in the mountains if people had been kidnapped.

Another soldier then suggested that everyone might have fled to Ulsan, but then why hadn’t they turned to the Balhut Cult, which had established a highly visible gateway?

Why would they head to Ulsan instead of Gyeongju when there was a sturdy, highly visible gate?

“Captain. While searching near the farmland, we found a suspicious object partially buried in the field.”

Just as their concerns were deepening, a soldier reported via communication that they had discovered something suspicious near the farmland.

Unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion despite continued speculation, the advance team welcomed this communication with relieved expressions, and Jeong Dong-geon put the communicator to his mouth and spoke.

“A suspicious object?”

“There are bodies buried in the ground.”

“Bodies? Wait, bodies buried in farmland? Not lying in the streets or buried in graves?”

Finding bodies buried somewhere was actually quite common even in modern times, with illegal graves sometimes discovered deep in national parks or local mountains.

Especially in this zombie apocalypse era, bodies lying in the streets were so common that there was hardly any need to report it.

However, if bodies weren’t lying in the streets but buried in the ground, specifically in farmland, that was a different story.

Bodies being buried meant someone had deliberately buried them in the farmland.

“And it’s not just one, but appears to be several bodies buried. We can’t determine precisely whether they’re zombie corpses or survivor corpses. All the bodies buried in the farmland have decomposed to bones with all flesh gone.”

Upon hearing the soldier’s report that the bodies were all reduced to bones and buried in farmland, Jeong Dong-geon expressed his confusion to the others listening to the report.

“Really? But that’s strange. If they were thinking about next year’s farming, why would they dump bodies in the farmland instead of burying them in graves or cremating them?”

“That’s… I don’t know. Maybe they were in a hurry?”

He asked those around him why the bodies would be dumped in farmland rather than in graves or cremated, but the responses were only puzzled voices.

For farmers, farmland was important property for producing crops, so wouldn’t it be normal to properly dispose of bodies in graves or cremate them rather than dumping them on such land?

‘No, because it’s the apocalypse, the value of farmland that can produce food would only increase. They couldn’t not know that.’

Even though there was a possibility they were in a hurry due to the apocalypse, Jeong Dong-geon thought they wouldn’t have recklessly dumped bodies on farmland without considering the future.

“There might be an unknown force in Ulsan. Let’s proceed with that in mind.”

“Understood.”

If it wasn’t the work of farmers who valued their land, but rather a force that had taken the civilians elsewhere, they could certainly have buried bodies in the farmland.