RotA – Chapter 35

“What is that…” Ren Dong stared blankly.

No one could answer her question.

The behemoth before them was beyond humanity’s understanding of the word “creature.”

The Base’s researchers always said that the more advanced a mutated beast, the more dependent it was on the black vines. But in all these years, no one had ever seen a mutated beast heal its wounds by absorbing energy from the black vines.

This bizarre scene undoubtedly sent a chill through everyone’s heart.

The surrounding black vines gradually lost their light.

Lu Qi couldn’t help but mutter, “Is it sucking out its soul?”

Sucking out its soul? The idea was rather fantastical. If black vines had souls, this did indeed look like a large-scale soul-sucking ritual…

Wait, Chu Ci was also a black vine!

Chai Yuening endured the pain and got to her feet, running to the rear of the vehicle. She instinctively pulled Chu Ci’s hand and shielded her behind her back.

She saw Chu Ci staring blankly at the giant mutated beast, at the night sky where the fog had been blown away, at the wisps of light surging toward the creature.

She couldn’t help but ask anxiously, “How do you feel?”

Chu Ci came back to her senses, frowning slightly as she shook her head.

“Look, those black vines have withered.”

Her tone was calm, showing no signs of fatigue.

Despite also having a significant connection to the black vines, she seemed completely unaffected by the giant beast.

Chai Yuening: “You…”

Chu Ci: “If we can lead it back…”

Chai Yuening: “Back?”

Chu Ci: “Lead it back to the area above the Base, and then wound it severely.”

Chai Yuening couldn’t help but swallow hard.

She knew what Chu Ci was planning.

The idea was so insane it made her gasp. At the same time, like a madwoman herself, she couldn’t stop calculating the feasibility of the plan in her mind.

“Lao Xiang! Can the vehicle still move?” Chai Yuening turned and shouted.

Although he had slammed on the brakes, the beast’s roar had still swept the vehicle a short distance like a small typhoon, causing it to crash into an abandoned building.

Fortunately, the military-grade armored vehicle was extremely sturdy. Aside from the windows, it didn’t appear to have sustained any severe damage.

Lao Xiang forcefully tore away the airbag in front of him and gritted his teeth as he checked the dashboard’s basic functions.

His left forehead near the end of his eyebrow had been cut open by something, and his left arm and waist were gashed by shattered glass.

Blood oozed from the wounds, dripping down with the rainwater that leaked into the vehicle.

Lu Qi, who had just helped Ren Dong sit up, hurried into the cockpit. “Lao Xiang, are you okay?”

“What could happen to me?” Lao Xiang wiped his blood-blurred left eye and shouted back, “The vehicle can still drive, but the windshield is shattered and the left fog light is out. We probably can’t go fast.”

“Let me do it, you rest…”

“Half the console is damaged, the automatic transmission is shot. You think you can drive this big thing on manual, kid?”

“…”

“Then just watch from the side.” Lao Xiang laughed nonchalantly. “Don’t let those little darlings jump in through the opening.”

He fumbled in a small box next to his seat, pulled out a pair of goggles, and with one hand, put them on his blood-covered head under Lu Qi’s worried gaze.

The fog ahead was thin, so the yellow fog lights were switched to clear high beams.

The moment the vehicle started up again, Lao Xiang turned his head and shouted, “What’s the call? We’re taking it back?”

Chai Yuening took a deep breath. “Take it back.”

As soon as she spoke, the tires screeched. The armored vehicle spun around in the downpour, and with a stomp on the accelerator, it charged into a nearby alley with fewer mutated beasts, speeding toward the sandy plains outside the ruins.

Beyond the view blocked by the tall buildings, the giant beast’s form was too large to ignore.

As if affected by that strange sonic wave, the surrounding mutated beasts snapped out of their daze. From the ground and from above, they pounced on the battered armored vehicle one after another.

Gunshots rang out again.

This time, they were attacked from both front and rear.

Chai Yuening immediately shouted, “Tighten the defensive perimeter!”

Slender vines dragged the most practical gun and ammo supplies from the rear cargo bay, tossing them all into the passenger cabin like garbage.

Ren Dong grabbed a rifle and, using her arms, pulled herself to the cockpit entrance. She sat leaning against the doorframe, her muzzle aimed out the front-left window.

The cockpit’s windshield was broken and had to be defended. With insufficient firepower in the rear, mutated beasts were constantly climbing onto the back of the vehicle.

Chai Yuening glanced at the supplies they didn’t have time to move and shouted, “Jettison the rear cabin!”

As she finished speaking, the locks connecting the passenger cabin and the rear cargo bay slowly began to disengage.

Firing two last shots over her shoulder, Chai Yuening reached out, grabbed Chu Ci beside her, and leaped onto the passenger cabin, which had now completely separated from the rear.

All of this, from start to finish, happened in the blink of an eye.

“Haha!” Lao Xiang laughed loudly. “How much do we owe Boss You for this round?”

Lu Qi: “If the owner’s still alive, we’d have to work for half a lifetime without eating or drinking, right?”

Lao Xiang: “That’s a debt for you young folks. I can’t work that long.”

Ren Dong: “I don’t even want to calculate this bill. The thought alone is despairing…”

“Don’t despair,” Chai Yuening said. “If we can reclaim the signal tower, the Base will naturally help us pay this debt. And what’s more…”

As she spoke, she fired a shot, knocking back a mutated beast that was trying to leap into the window.

The cold rain beat against everyone’s strained sanity.

Chai Yuening stood up straight, watching the towering beast grow closer.

She gritted her teeth and said, “Not only will the Base have to pay our debts, they’ll have to give us a bonus! Once we find Du Xia, we’ll all move into the main city and eat meat and fruit every day!”

Lao Xiang: “Then we can’t afford to bite the dust here.”

Although the armored vehicle was taking a detour, turning back meant it was getting closer and closer to the giant beast.

The giant beast suddenly stopped absorbing energy. Its ethereal, jellyfish-like body, which had been floating in the rainy night, now contracted back to its original form.

It lowered its head, its large, empty, blood-red eyes slowly turning toward the armored vehicle’s location.

Although they had maintained some distance, it was far too short for a creature of its size.

As short as a human wanting to crush a small cockroach a meter away.

Just then, a mist began to rise inside the vehicle.

The mist wasn’t widespread; it merely enveloped the armored vehicle, which was now just two small cabins.

The slowly approaching giant beast showed a strange hesitation at that moment.

It slowly raised its head, its vacant eyes looking elsewhere.

The mutated beasts that had been relentlessly charging the vehicle also froze in place, looking around, unable to find their target.

In that instant, everyone unconsciously held their breath.

The battered armored vehicle, amidst the cold and oppressive downpour, successfully sped past the giant beast, just a few hundred meters to its side.

“We’re past it?” Ren Dong’s eyes were filled with disbelief. “They let us pass!”

“What happened? Did the big one and the little ones all go stupid at the same time?”

Lao Xiang said, glancing at the half-cracked rearview mirror.

Lu Qi was the first to realize, shouting excitedly, “It’s Chu Ci Jie! Chu Ci Jie concealed our presence!”

Chai Yuening was momentarily speechless. The kid was quick to claim kinship; he was calling her Chu Ci during the day, and by night, he’d switched to calling her “Jie.”

After hearing this, Lao Xiang let out a huge sigh of relief and joked, “Why didn’t you use a trick like that sooner?”

As if in answer to Lao Xiang’s jest, Chu Ci’s body went limp, and she swayed, slumping to the side.

Chai Yuening quickly reached out to support her.

Holding Chu Ci’s hand, she found it was unnaturally cold.

Perhaps deceiving a giant mutated beast that had evolved to this extent was too draining for Chu Ci.

Without Chu Ci’s concealment, the mutated beasts that hadn’t been left far behind began roaring and chasing them again.

The behemoth, less than a thousand meters away, slowly turned around.

Chai Yuening helped the pale-faced Chu Ci into a back seat, then stood up, moved to the rear, and raised her gun to aim at the giant beast’s weak point.

They had to wound it severely again. Only then would it once more draw life from the surrounding black vines.

The reason the black vines could disrupt the signal tower was that they contained some kind of energy, still inexplicable to humans, that could interfere with many things to varying degrees.

Without the influence of that special energy in the black vines, even if the signal tower was still covered in withered vines, the Base could restore at least some of its signal.

But this time, the giant beast didn’t just let them attack as before. It no longer advanced at full speed; instead, it used half of its soft legs to chase and the other half to slam against the ground.

Its body glowed with an eerie reddish-purple light, and the small and medium-sized mutated beasts scattered, hiding in the darkness.

The dull, terrifying slapping sounds were accompanied by the ground shaking again and again.

Even though they were driving on flat ground, the vehicle shook so violently with the earth that it was impossible to stand steady, let alone aim a gun even once.

The bullets they fired seemed to have no direction. They could hit the giant beast, but they couldn’t hit its true weak points.

Lao Xiang: “Fuck, this thing is too damn clever!”

Chai Yuening: “Can we go any faster?”

“In a situation like this, what’s there to hold back for?” Lao Xiang gritted his teeth and replied. “Everyone sit tight and buckle up!”

Chai Yuening stumbled over to Ren Dong, lifted her onto a seat, and fastened her seatbelt. Then she turned back to Chu Ci’s side and buckled up both Chu Ci and herself.

Lu Qi braced himself in the front passenger seat.

“Here we go!” Lao Xiang yelled in a hoarse voice, slamming the accelerator to the floor.

The armored vehicle, now lighter and without a windshield, began to race at full speed.

The howling headwind, mixed with a downpour as heavy as hail, stung their faces.

But the unceasing, terrifying commotion behind them left no one with the mind to care about the minor pain.

The dense fog ahead obscured their vision, and the high beams were switched back to the yellow fog lights.

In the desperate, rainy night, humanity ran along the edge of life and death.

Seeing its prey no longer fighting back, the giant beast behind them stopped slamming the ground and gave chase at full speed.

The sound of the wind, the rain, the friction of the tires on the ground, and the shuffling sound of the giant beast slithering at full speed behind them.

Every single sound was like the tolling of a bell, rung by Death on this night.

The beast behind them drew closer and closer. They tried to turn and fire at it, but no one spoke anymore.

The armored vehicle arrived directly above the Base’s main city.

The Base entrance was sealed shut.

With nowhere to run, they brushed past their only path to survival.

No one cared about the time. No one hoped for the dawn.

The last vestiges of their survival instinct drove them numbly forward.

Despair was like a collapsing sky, trying to crush the last remnants of human reason without any logic.

Suddenly, someone whispered a single word beside her ear.

“Listen.” Her voice was so soft.

Listen?

Chai Yuening closed her eyes, trying to calm her heart.

Amidst the countless despairing sounds, she heard a low hum, coming from the distant horizon, beyond sight, beneath the dense fog.

Accompanied by a series of tremendous booms, several small missiles streaked across the sky like shooting stars. They flew over their heads and struck the giant beast, which was now less than three hundred meters behind them.

The night lit up the instant the missiles exploded in a shower of sparks.

The giant beast staggered backward, propping up its battered body and letting out a series of furious roars.

Once again, it unfurled its tattered, jellyfish-like body, absorbing the life from the surrounding black vines, repairing its mangled form at a visible speed.

Several more missiles flew in, knocking it completely to the ground.

It roared and struggled in fury. Its body, floating in mid-air, still greedily snatched at the power of the black vines.

On the distant horizon, countless fog lights pierced through the dense mist, like the sun, moon, and stars.

Illuminating the deepest darkness before the dawn.

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Author’s Notes:

Do you believe in light? (Heavy fog)

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