The unknown behemoth seemed to have steadied itself on the vehicle, and the armored car soon stopped shaking violently.
From the cockpit, just a wall away, came the driver’s cries of alarm and curses. Fortunately, the vehicle hadn’t stopped moving.
“What is that thing!”
“It… it got… it got in…”
The tall, thin man closest to the observation window was splattered with blood from his companion’s bisected corpse. He was the first to react, turning the muzzle of his gun from Chai Yuening toward the slimy tentacle right before his eyes, his hands trembling.
But before he could even pull the trigger, he was snatched up high by the tentacle.
The gun in his hand fell to the floor. The tentacle’s sharp barbs pierced his skin.
“Help me! Help me!”
Before anyone else could react, the tentacle began to thrash wildly, repeatedly slamming its prey against the vehicle’s walls, the cabin door, and the ceiling.
For a moment, fresh blood sprayed in every direction.
His panicked teammates scattered.
Some were caught in the fray, knocked to the ground by the immense force with a sound like cracking bone.
Others fled to a corner, raising their guns with trembling hands, but they couldn’t get a bead on the frantically waving tentacle.
A series of gunshots at close range, accompanied by desperate wails, rattled their eardrums.
In the chaos, bullets flew wildly.
The man caught by the tentacle was hit by two shots. The tentacle was also grazed by a bullet, and a viscous, dark green fluid oozed from the wound.
Enraged, it snapped the man’s body in two.
The entire armored car began to shake violently once more as two more tentacles dropped down from the observation window.
The swaying cabin filled with terrified cries, and the fury on Luo Kun’s face instantly turned to fear.
He clutched the gunshot wound on his right arm and collapsed to the floor.
Suddenly, a bullet streaked past his eyes and struck one of the tentacles.
The next second, a figure rushed to his side, rolled on the ground, and scooped up the gun he had dropped.
Chai Yuening knelt on one knee to steady herself, raised her hand, and fired several consecutive shots, instantly emptying the magazine.
As dark green slime splattered around, the tentacles suddenly retreated, as if fleeing, back out the observation window.
Chai Yuening tried to stand, but the vehicle was shaking too violently. She staggered as she rose, her side slamming into the wall.
“It’s still on the roof!” someone shrieked.
They either hid in corners or stumbled into the rest cabin, as if it were any safer than the compartment behind it.
A trembling voice came from the cockpit. “Brother Luo! It… it… it’s blocking my view!”
“Open the cabin door!” Chai Yuening endured the pain and ran to the cockpit door, pounding on it twice.
This kind of expensive, military-grade armored vehicle was not something ordinary people could use. Not only was it built tough, but each internal compartment had its own door and connecting lock, which could be used to isolate danger in a crisis—or even to “sacrifice the chariot to save the king.”
The cockpit was the most critical compartment; no one but the driver could open its door.
Chai Yuening’s command clearly made the person in the cockpit hesitate.
This was not the person he was sworn to obey.
Judging by the commotion in the rear cabin, this woman had been on the “boss’s” kill list just two minutes ago.
“Open it! Fucking open it for her!” Luo Kun yelled at the top of his lungs.
The cabin door opened. Chai Yuening steadied herself against the frame and glanced at the front windshield.
There were at least three tentacles on the windshield. Two were clamped tightly to the glass with countless small suckers, while the remaining one repeatedly hammered the window, which already showed several cracks.
The driver was clearly terrified by the sudden encounter with an unheard-of giant mutated beast. Not only was his vision obscured, but his hands could barely keep a steady grip on the steering wheel.
Forget those ordinary mercenaries who only ran supply missions in low-risk zones; even Chai Yuening, who had ventured into high-risk zones several times, had never seen a scene like this.
“Magazine!” Chai Yuening shouted.
Luo Kun’s attitude was as compliant as if he’d just found his savior. “Give it to her! Give it to her!” he agreed repeatedly.
But in the panic, no one’s mind was working properly. They couldn’t find their magazines. The quicker ones could only hastily hand over the guns they were holding.
Amidst the violent shaking, Chai Yuening aimed. A few gunshots seemed to tear through the air, piercing the cracked front windshield and causing the massive tentacle to recoil in haste, leaving only dark green fluid on the glass.
A series of loud bangs suddenly erupted from the roof; the mutated beast was furiously pounding on top of the armored car.
Chai Yuening glanced at the rearview mirror. In the thick night fog, black vines with a faint reddish-purple glow swayed in the wind.
In the darkness beyond her line of sight, it seemed many pairs of eyes were staring at this human armored vehicle.
They came rushing out of the thick fog, getting closer and closer, the sounds growing louder and louder.
“A beast tide.” Chai Yuening couldn’t help but suck in a cold breath. “The beast tide is here!”
“Wh-what do we do…” Luo Kun stared blankly at Chai Yuening, his gaze already somewhat dazed. “Can… can we fight them?”
“Fight? You want to be a snack for the horde?” Chai Yuening rolled her eyes, took a few steps to get behind the still-shaken driver, and gritted her teeth. “Stop gawking! Jettison the weight, accelerate, and run!”
“Jettison… the weight?” The driver looked astonished.
“Then I’ll have come for nothing!”
Chai Yuening had no time to worry about that. She glanced back and saw that everyone from the rear cabin had entered the rest area. She quickly leaned forward, reaching for the large panel of buttons in front of the driver’s seat.
Luo Kun cursed and lunged forward to stop her.
Furious, Chai Yuening swung her right arm back with force, slamming him against the vehicle wall.
“Then you can be buried with those severed limbs yourself!”
As she spoke, she pressed the red button to jettison the cabin, giving no one a chance to react.
“No!”
With Luo Kun’s furious roar, the connecting lock between the rest cabin and the rear cabin instantly began to separate.
The open door had no time to close. The moment the two cabins successfully detached, the view to the rear opened up. Aided by the dim light between the two sections, everyone saw the behemoth perched atop both cabins in the night fog.
With the rear cabin gone, the armored car instantly accelerated, stretching the behemoth’s body out.
Perhaps because most of its body was on the rear cabin, the behemoth could no longer hold onto the roof of the front section. Its tentacles, stretched to their limit, fell heavily to the ground, along with the severed limbs that had been loaded on the roof.
The moment the armored car stabilized, the ground shook from the creature’s fall.
It quickly rose from the ground. Its two hind legs, covered in hard scales, were as thick as an elephant’s. Standing up, it was about three or four meters tall, no smaller than the invertebrate arthropod beast they had brought back earlier.
Only now did everyone get a clear look at the giant mutated beast.
It had two forelimbs like a mantis and an indescribable head. There was no mouth on its head; instead, a giant maw full of fangs gaped open on its chest and abdomen. A dozen tentacles extended from the giant mouth—they must have been its mouthparts.
The giant mutated beast, left behind by the armored car, stood up straight and emitted a strange, piercing sound, waving its mouthparts as if in a show of force.
“What the fuck is that goddamn thing!” Luo Kun shrieked.
The words had barely left his mouth when the giant beast bent down and gave chase, each step shaking the ruined landscape.
Chai Yuening turned and ran back to the rest cabin, frantically pressing the door switch to try and close it, only to find that the door’s retractable mechanism had been smashed by the tentacles that had reached in from the rear observation window earlier.
The air seemed to freeze for a moment.
The massive mutated beast had already caught up. At the same time, a pack of smaller beasts pounced from both sides, causing the armored car to lurch once more.
Those that landed on the vehicle couldn’t maintain their grip due to the high speed and were thrown backward. Those that missed fell in behind, giving chase.
The whistling wind outside and the sight of the ruins rushing past on either side made everyone’s heart pound.
The mercenaries Luo Kun had hired began firing wildly outside.
Chai Yuening took two steps back, scanned her surroundings, and asked with a frown, “Don’t we have anything with a little more stopping power?”
“…This is it!” Luo Kun said through gritted teeth.
“You must have a sniper rifle, right?” Chai Yuening asked again.
“You jettisoned it!”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“Did you give me a chance to speak?” Luo Kun’s eyes were red with anger.
Chai Yuening was momentarily speechless, her mouth slightly agape, unable to utter a single word.
The pursuit of the giant beast and its pack was clearly not being hindered much by pistol fire.
As they drew closer, Chai Yuening couldn’t help but suck in a cold breath.
“Chai Yuening, think of something! If I fucking die, you’re coming with me!”
“Shut up,” Chai Yuening said, turning to glance at the young girl in the corner who was watching her.
She was such a young girl, the same age as Ren Dong when they had first met years ago.
Someone so young shouldn’t die in a place like this.
“They’re about to catch us!” someone shouted in despair.
“We need to jettison more weight! There’s still stuff on the roof!” Chai Yuening said with a frown.
“Jettison… the roof? How do we jettison the roof?”
The voice that spoke was trembling violently, its owner’s sanity clearly on the verge of collapse.
“It’s crawling with mutated beasts out there! Who can climb up? It’s a death sentence!”
Chai Yuening clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, and made up her mind. She pulled the dagger from her waist and shouted, “Find me a rope! I’ll go up and unload it!”
No sooner had she spoken than someone quickly rummaged through a box in the rest area and produced a climbing rope.
But just then, the driver in the cockpit began to scream like a madman.
He yelled, “I don’t want to die! I’m sorry, I don’t want to die!”
The next second, Luo Kun roared a curse in Chai Yuening’s ear: “Fuck! You son of a bitch, I hope you die a horrible death!”
As he finished speaking, the cockpit door slammed shut.
With a series of clicks, the connecting lock between the two cabins began to disengage.
They had all been abandoned.
Luo Kun charged forward like a madman and, just before the two cabins completely separated, threw himself at the closed door.
Blood streamed from his wounded arm, but he desperately clawed at any handhold he could find on top of the door.
Chai Yuening instinctively moved to do the same, but as she stepped forward, she caught sight of the young girl beside her, who had pulled herself up by the wall.
The girl looked at her, a hint of hope in her eyes.
She clearly didn’t want to be left behind, but she didn’t voice this hope.
In that single moment of hesitation, Chai Yuening missed her best chance.
Just as the cockpit was about to pull away, someone took a great leap, lunged forward, and viciously grabbed Luo Kun’s leg, getting dragged along behind the vehicle.
Chai Yuening heard Luo Kun’s furious curses and saw him desperately kicking the man in the face.
Soon, he kicked the man off forcefully. In an instant, the man was swarmed and devoured by mutated beasts pouncing from both sides.
The few remaining people abandoned in the rest cabin screamed and jumped from the vehicle, scattering in all directions, only to be quickly pounced upon and brought down by the beasts.
Chai Yuening subconsciously picked up a dropped pistol, hesitating between making a desperate last stand or using the remaining bullets to give herself and the girl beside her a quick end.
But a cold hand suddenly grabbed her own sweaty one, pulling her into a corner of the cabin and covering her mouth and nose.
“Shh.”
Hiding. It was the simplest, and also the most foolish, method humans used to evade predators.
It wouldn’t work.
She wanted to tell the girl this, but as she turned her head slightly and met those reddish-brown eyes, she found herself hesitating.
If she was truly going to die here, then at the very least, in her final moments, she shouldn’t extinguish the innocent and pure hope for survival in a young girl’s heart.
She held her breath, huddling together with the small, thin girl in the corner of the cabin.
In the hopeless ruins, she heard the girl’s heartbeat, felt the rise and fall of her soft chest.
Chai Yuening suddenly felt a pang of bitterness.
She never would have imagined that a stranger she had casually saved would become her final companion at the end of the road.
The abandoned cabin came to a stop, and the wind died down with it.
After devouring the “prey” on the ground, the beast tide behind them rushed off in the direction the cockpit had fled.
The behemoth approached them, step by step.
Chai Yuening closed her eyes, quietly awaiting the arrival of death.
The heavy footsteps, each one like a countdown on the clock of life, were accompanied by a human heartbeat.
Thump—thump-thump—
From far to near, and then, in the midst of endless despair, they gradually faded into the distance.
Author’s Notes:
Chai Yuening: Huh?
Author: Aren’t you curious about what’s going on? So what exactly is going on? To be honest, this little editor is also very curious about what’s going on [gets slapped and sent flying]!
