118: Chapter 118 One Wave Subsides, Another Rises

Fatty landed and face-planted straight into the dirt, taking a huge bite of mud.

Without even looking back, he swung his arms and ran wildly.

He knew in his heart that with Chen Ze's strength, self-preservation shouldn't be much of a problem; as long as he left safely, it would be the greatest help to Chen Ze.

"Ptooey! Brother Ze, spit, spit, spit! Run!"

Seeing Fatty running extremely fast without many mutant birds chasing him, Chen Ze instantly let out a sigh of relief.

In this short span of time, he had already been attacked more than a dozen times again.

Fortunately, with his mastery-level saber technique to rely on, retreating while defending, he managed to barely block them.

The place where the trunk fell earlier was in complete chaos.

Although Fatty had taken away the entire trunk, the apples scattered all over the ground were still there, a sea of red numbering at least over a hundred!

Countless mutant birds swarmed together to frantically grab them, biting and pouncing on each other. Feathers and bloody froth flew everywhere, and the entire open space completely degenerated into a quagmire of melee combat.

Precisely because these flocks of birds were infighting, they had no extra combat power to attack Chen Ze, which disguisedly helped him share a lot of pressure.

Chen Ze continuously waved the longyin saber, but his footsteps did not continue to retreat backward.

He swept his gaze across the mutant bird corpses all over the ground, a flash of shrewd glint sweeping across the depths of his eyes.

"You guys fight over the mutant apples, me picking up a few corpses shouldn't be a problem, right?"

As he spoke, the corpse of a crow over one meter long flashed with white light and completely disappeared.

"Not bad!"

Chen Ze grinned and continued approaching the next corpse.

Like this, he kept wandering on the edge of the battlefield, collecting the corpses of the mutant birds one by one.

"23, 24, 25!"

In a short amount of time, the f-grade backpack was already stuffed with a full 25 of them!

Moreover, these mutant birds were all huge, each weighing dozens of catties. For a long time in the future, he probably wouldn't have to worry about lacking meat to eat.

"The fruits are almost all snatched up, it's time to go!"

Finding that the surrounding mutant birds were getting fewer and fewer, Chen Ze noticed that those scattered apples were already very few left.

He turned around and ran, preparing to leave this place quickly.

But just after rushing out a few steps, he suddenly saw a familiar figure in the distance, currently running frantically toward this side like crazy.

"Holy crap! Fatty, is your brain fried, why are you running back?"

"Squeak squeak squeak! Squeak squeak squeak!"

Responding to him was not Fatty, but Xingzhe Sun on his shoulder.

"(There are Mutant Ant behind! Extremely, extremely many, run!)"

Mutant Ant? Weren't those guys heading to the survivors' area?

The doubt in his heart flashed past, and a scalp-tingling rustling sound came over.

Chen Ze narrowed his eyes and looked up at the woods behind Fatty, only to see a pitch-black wave surging forward rolling.

Those dark shiny carapaces and sharp mandible pincers, what else could it be if not a Mutant Ant!

"Damn it! Why are these guys back again? Aren't they afraid of that large anteater?"

Just at this moment, Chen Ze suddenly felt that the sky seemed to darken a lot all at once.

He abruptly raised his head and froze on the spot.

In mid-air, flying ants were buzzing and beating their wings everywhere. The leading few were outrageously large, completely not inferior to mutant birds.

[System Prompt: D-grade mutant flying ant detected!]

[Three-dimensional attributes: Strength 65, Agility 77, Physique 53.]

[System Prompt: D-grade mutant flying ant detected!]

[Three-dimensional attributes: Strength 58, Agility 69, Physique 51.]

...

A series of prompt tones sounded, and Chen Ze's breathing became a bit heavier.

These flying ants had advanced! They were here to retake their own territory!

"Damn! Let's go!"

Chen Ze no longer dared to stay for half a moment, turning his head and sprinting wildly deeper into the forest.

Fatty gritted his teeth and followed closely behind, while Xingzhe Sun clung tightly to his shoulder, its small claws gripping the clothes tightly, squeaking and screaming incessantly.

Running non-stop for five or six minutes until the tall mutant apple tree could barely be seen, the two men and one monkey finally dared to stop and catch their breath.

"Brother Ze, those guys don't seem to have chased after us!"

Fatty sat down against the tree trunk, panting heavily.

Chen Ze patted Xingzhe Sun.

"Climb up the tree and take a look!"

Hearing this, Xingzhe Sun immediately complied, scrambling up a towering ancient tree beside him with hands and feet in a few strokes. Its agile figure went all the way up along the branches, quickly climbing to the highest point of the tree crown.

It squatted among the thick branches, cupped its hand over its eye to shade it from the light, looked toward the direction of the apple tree behind, and constantly looked left and right.

After quite a while, it finally came down from the tree.

"Squeak squeak squeak!"

"(They stopped not far from the apple tree, didn't continue forward, and didn't start a fight with the birds!)"

"Stopped?"

Chen Ze furrowed his brows slightly.

He originally thought that the Ant Swarm's strength had greatly increased, and perhaps they would think about occupying the entire apple tree.

In that case, the mutant bird swarm and the Ant Swarm would inevitably have a fierce battle, and maybe they could still fish in troubled waters and kill one or two D-grade Mutant Ant.

But seeing it now, the Mutated Ant Swarm didn't seem that stupid.

"Fatty, how is your injury?"

Fatty leaned against the tree trunk, his heavy panting not yet subsided, and lowered his head to glance at his chest.

"It's fine, just a scratch!"

"Just a scratch? You brat really want money more than your life. If it were a few seconds later just now, your brat's belly would have been gouged out into a big hole, you know?"

Chen Ze said angrily.

"Hehe, isn't it because I trust you, Brother Ze?"

Fatty scratched his head and grinned.

Seeing his shameless appearance, Chen Ze was both exasperated and amused, reaching out to tear open the tattered lapel in front of his chest.

Several deep claw marks were strikingly revealed, the flesh and skin rolled outward, and dark red blood was still continuously seeping out, dyeing a large area of skin crimson.

But fortunately, the fat on Fatty's belly was thick enough, and even the most serious spot didn't injure his internal organs.

"You know what, this body fat of yours is really quite useful at a critical moment!"

"Haha, of course, this was eaten bite by bite by me!"

Fatty smugly patted his belly, accidentally pulling on his wound and making him bare his teeth in pain.

"Alright, stop acting tough, hurry and apply the medicine. If you get infected, you'll be hurting soon enough!"

As Chen Ze spoke, he took out a bottle of trauma medicine from the backpack and handed it over. This was something Li Mengmeng had deliberately asked him to bring along earlier, and he didn't expect it to actually come in handy.

Fatty applied the medicine and changed into a new leather armor, making him look less terrifying.

"Brother Ze, guess how many apples I picked up just now?"

"How many? Forty or fifty?"

Chen Ze had been fully protecting Fatty before, and as for how much was harvested in total, he really had no idea in his heart.

"No, no, no! With my hand speed as someone single for twenty years, how could it possibly be just this little?"

Fatty started showing off again.

Seeing this, Chen Ze also became interested.

"How many are there really?"

"Haha, Brother Ze, see for yourself!"

This time Fatty didn't keep him in suspense and directly handed the backpack to Chen Ze.

Chen Ze took the backpack and looked inside, immediately couldn't help but gasp a breath of cold air.

"Good grief! A full 158!"