31: You're crazy! She's still a human being!

A sense of weightlessness exploded inside the bus cabin, and the screaming threatened to tear the roof off.

Su Chen's fingers were locked tightly onto the edge of the steering wheel, his knuckles turning a sickly pale white from the excessive force.

In his retinas, the horizon outside the windshield was flipping upward at an eerie angle.

The rock walls on both sides looked like a pair of giant black jaws, trying to completely swallow this tin can.

"Everyone get to the back row! Crowd together!"

Su Chen didn't turn his head, but his voice struck the heart of every terrified girl like a heavy hammer.

He felt the front of the bus hanging in mid-air, the front wheels spinning wildly on the edge of the cliff, the screeching sound of metal grinding making one's teeth ache.

"Su Chen, you're going to fall!"

Lin Mengyao screamed, her slender fingers clawing several white marks into the seatback due to her extreme terror.

"Stop talking nonsense. If you want to live, do as I say and use your body weight to pin down the back of the bus!"

Su Chen snorted coldly.

He wasn't as panicked as he appeared.

In fact, he was squinting, his right toe tapping lightly, sending a wisp of extremely violent Sacred Yang Qi through his toes into the floor, where it precisely wrapped around the brake line.

"Szz —"

The intense heat instantly melted the metal, and the brakes failed completely.

Due to the shifted center of gravity and the failed brakes, the bus began to slide violently down the sloping foundation.

This sense of losing control caused the girls in the back row to completely break down, their instincts driving them to frantically seek the only source of support.

The man sitting as steady as a mountain amidst the chaotic gravity.

Lin Mengyao was the first to rush over, her usually proud and upright body now clinging to Su Chen's waist and abdomen like an octopus.

Qin Ya followed closely behind, her warm touch mixed with the faint scent of cold sweat instantly enveloping Su Chen.

【Due to large-area deep body contact, Yang Energy transmission efficiency increased by 200%】

A subtle arc appeared at the corner of Su Chen's mouth.

Under this extreme fear, all their reserve and aloofness were shattered to pieces.

They could only act like frightened kittens seeking the strongest harbor.

"Su Chen... your neck..."

Lin Mengyao pressed against the back of Su Chen's neck, her rapid breathing spraying onto his skin.

Su Chen felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck.

It was the cracking of meridians caused by the excessive output of Yang Energy; brilliant golden light was seeping through the tiny cracks, as if a volcano about to erupt was hidden beneath his skin.

"I won't die."

Su Chen gritted his teeth as he replied, but his vision was indeed starting to blur.

Suddenly, his collar felt cold.

Lin Mengyao had actually pulled off her heirloom necklace that she never took off with one hand; it was an ancient jade pendant that was pure white all over, with only a splash of blood-red in the center.

She quickly wrapped the chain around Su Chen's wrist, which was gripping the gear shift.

"Your life is worth more than mine."

Lin Mengyao's voice was firm, yet carried a hint of trembling.

"Without my permission, you are not allowed to stall."

Hum —

A stream of air, so cool it could almost freeze the soul, surged out of the jade pendant, instantly enveloping the Yang Energy overflowing from Su Chen.

Under the soothing effect of the jade pendant, the originally violent golden light turned into a pale blue transparent shield, steadily protecting the precarious front of the bus.

Meanwhile, Li Sisi, curled up in the center of the aisle, was struggling to maintain her composure.

She clutched the only remaining bottle of pure water in her hand, her gaze landing on Zhao Wanting, who was slumped on the side like a pile of mud.

Zhao Wanting looked terrifying at this moment.

Not only was her face festering, but golden threads had grown from her ten fingers, greedily hooking onto Li Sisi's ankle.

"Give me... half a mouthful of water..."

Zhao Wanting's voice was as hoarse as sandpaper, revealing an inhuman greed.

"I can... smell... the supply crate... three kilometers away..."

Li Sisi tightened her grip on the water bottle.

As the study committee member, her reason was screaming frantically.

She was silent for a moment,

"Hiss —!"

The moment the water touched Zhao Wanting's mouth, it didn't flow down her throat, but was instantly evaporated into a thick cloud of white mist by that strange, golden high temperature.

The mist quickly condensed on the bus windshield, outlining a crude but clear phantom image of the terrain.

"Look ahead!"

Li Sisi exclaimed.

Su Chen looked along the phantom image; a scarlet dot was flickering at the end of the map.

He grabbed Zhao Wanting and yanked her out as if dragging out trash.

Zhao Wanting let out a shrill cat-like cry, but was thrown into the corner by Su Chen.

"Su Chen, you're crazy! She's still a person!"

A girl in the back row shouted, her voice choked with tears.

Su Chen glanced at her coldly.

At this moment, the golden threads on Zhao Wanting's fingertips were vibrating at a high frequency in sync with the approaching monsters outside, very much like some kind of biological radar.

"Put away your cheap sympathy."

Su Chen flipped up the hem of Zhao Wanting's shirt, which had been turned up during her struggle, revealing her originally flat abdomen.

There, a fist-sized cocoon of golden light was squirming frantically under her skin.

"Look closely. In six hours, she will no longer be your 'old classmate,' but a Yang Energy puppet that will suck your brains dry."

Su Chen's voice was devoid of any emotion.

"Now, do you choose to save her, or protect yourselves?"

The bus cabin instantly fell into a deathly silence.

The girls shrank back in terror, as if Zhao Wanting were some kind of plague.

After a violent jolt, the bus finally crashed heavily into a pile of abandoned shipping containers and came to a stop.

Ahead, a giant supermarket ruin covered in purple-black vines stood silently in the mist.

Su Chen jumped off the bus and snapped his fingers, and a torch of Yang Energy shot into the sky.

Under the illumination of the firelight, the right side of his face remained clean and handsome, while the left side faintly revealed a layer of fine golden scales, looking both sacred and eerie.

Lin Mengyao subconsciously grabbed the corner of his clothes, her voice as thin as a mosquito's hum.

"What if... I become like that too?"

Su Chen stopped, reached back to hold the nape of her neck, and pressed her entire body against his strong chest.

"Don't worry."

He felt the trembling of the delicate body in his arms, his eyes as deep as an abyss.

"You have long been a part of me; without my permission, even the King of Hell cannot take you apart."

He raised his head, the firelight illuminating the entrance to the supermarket ruins.

Above the dilapidated automatic doors hung a crooked sign.

The original store name had been erased, replaced by a huge slogan written in some kind of dried brown liquid:

"Welcome Home"

Directly beneath the shadow of that large text, three mummified corpses in extremely twisted states of death were hanging silently in mid-air.

Their toes rhythmically kicked against the broken glass door, swaying with the wind of the wilderness.