139: Chapter 139 The World I Hate Most, the Person I Love Most

The abandoned city was like a massive graveyard, with broken walls and ruins standing silently like rows of tombstones amidst the debris.

The wind whistled through twisted rebars, letting out a wailing cry.

Li Taiping and Su Jie moved one after the other, weaving through the jungle of steel ruins.

The asphalt beneath their feet had long since cracked, with weeds growing wildly from the fissures.

They kept their steps light, yet in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, they were still clearly audible.

"Roar..."

A low growl broke the suffocating silence.

Immediately after, a swaying dark shadow emerged.

It was an Infected.

Its clothes had long since shredded into rags, dried dark-red blood covered its body, and its skin had an unnatural gray pallor, like rotten pork left out for half a month.

Its pupils were completely unfocused, its mouth hung open unnaturally wide to reveal sharp, yellow-black teeth, and thick saliva dripped from its chin.

The scent of a living person.

To it, this scent was the most lethal stimulant.

Its originally sluggish movements suddenly halted.

In the next second, it let out a roar and lunged at Li Taiping and Su Jie on all fours.

It was incredibly fast, bringing with it a nauseating, metallic stench.

"Watch out!"

Su Jie let out an instinctive cry of alarm.

Her muscles tensed as she suddenly raised the [Otherworldly Good Grade AK-47].

However, Li Taiping, who was walking in front, was a hundred times faster than her.

He didn't even turn his head.

Without stopping, he casually flicked his right hand backward.

The dark muzzle, as if it had eyes in the back of his head, locked onto the mid-air Infected with unerring precision.

Bang!

A crisp, cold gunshot rang out across the silent street.

The Infected's head exploded mid-air.

Red blood, white brains, and black flesh splattered backward in a fan shape, coating half of the brick wall behind it.

Carried by its immense momentum, the headless body lunged forward two more steps.

Thud.

It collapsed limply a few meters from Li Taiping's feet, its limbs twitching neurotically twice before falling completely still.

The entire process took less than two seconds.

It was clean and efficient, without a single wasted movement.

Su Jie froze in place, still holding her gun up, staring blankly at Li Taiping's back.

The man didn't even blink; he casually swung the muzzle back to his front and flicked the white smoke from the barrel with his fingertip.

"Don't be careless."

Li Taiping's voice drifted back, low and calm, carrying a rare hint of concern and warning.

"In a place like this, any lapse in concentration will turn you into a pile of rotten meat on the ground."

"Oh... okay."

Su Jie swallowed hard, her voice trembling slightly.

She quickly regained her composure, gripped the gun handle tightly with both hands, and looked around warily.

A gunshot is the loudest rallying cry.

The journey that followed completely tore away the facade of the "Peaceful Period".

The Infected who had been hiding in the shadows, moving sluggishly, now emerged from all directions like sharks scenting blood.

They were impossible to guard against.

From behind a rusted, abandoned car on the left, three legless zombies crawled out, dragging themselves forward desperately with their hands.

From the second floor of a collapsed mall on the right, several hunched, agile Mutants leaped down.

Even the manhole covers beneath their feet were pushed open, as bloated monsters dripping with foul-smelling sewage crawled out.

They were surrounded on all sides.

If it were the old Su Jie, her only fate in such a situation would be to be torn to shreds, with not even a bone fragment left.

But now.

Standing before her was a Living Yama wielding an AK-47.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The crisp gunshots formed a rhythmic line, becoming the only—and most lethal—accompaniment on this road to the truth.

Li Taiping didn't retreat a single step.

He held the gun with one hand, the stock pressed firmly into his shoulder, his eyes as cold as if he were looking at a pile of dead objects.

Every time he pulled the trigger, the muzzle spat out a blinding orange-red tongue of fire.

Every flash of fire inevitably caused an Infected's head to explode like a rotten tomato.

His precision was horrifying.

Moving targets? One shot, one headshot.

Stationary targets? One shot, one headshot.

Close-range ambushers? He shoved the barrel directly into their mouths and blew them apart.

Those trying to flank from a distance? A three-round burst took them down instantly.

There was no gap in his firepower.

This AK-47, bolstered by the treasure basin's infinite ammunition production, displayed a terrifying suppression far beyond common sense in Li Taiping's hands.

It was a one-sided slaughter!

Following behind him, Su Jie went from initial tension and fear to a state of near-numbed shock.

She watched the man's back.

She watched his arm, steady as a rock and without the slightest tremor every time he fired.

She watched as the monsters that were terrifying to her, the ones that used to give her nightmares, were effortlessly dispatched by him like he was chopping vegetables.

Was this... really her "ordinary" husband, who needed her care in the apocalypse and would even wake up from nightmares?

This decisive aura, this coldness that viewed monsters as mere weeds—this was clearly a true God of War from the apocalypse, one who had crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood!

She suddenly remembered what Li Taiping had said before.

"My name is Li Taiping. My woman is named Su Mei."

"I am Number One on Both Leaderboards."

"I am Bullseye, Far Ahead."

When she heard those words at the time, she only felt heartache and despair, thinking her man had been driven mad by the pressure and was talking nonsense.

But now.

Looking at the severed limbs and broken bodies covering the ground, and that rifle that seemed to never run out of bullets...

Could it be... everything he said was true?

That so-called "Seafaring World," that "Many Children, Many Blessings" ship that crossed the ocean—it wasn't his dream.

But his... actual experience?

This thought was like a seed quietly sprouting in Su Jie's heart, instantly growing into a towering tree.

"What are you dazing for? Keep up!"

Li Taiping's cold, sharp voice interrupted her thoughts.

"Ah? Oh!"

Su Jie snapped back to her senses and quickly jogged over the corpses on the ground to catch up.

At this moment, the way she looked at Li Taiping changed slightly; it was no longer just simple love and worry.

Instead, it was filled with something she couldn't quite describe—an extreme awe and deep admiration.

The two of them fought their way through.

Behind them on the street, they left the remains of one Infected after another.

Dark red blood pooled into small streams, flowing along the cracks in the ground.

The air was thick with the inseparable smells of blood and gunpowder.

The scent of blood drew in even more troublesome problems.

This time, what blocked their path were no longer ordinary cannon fodder.

Three massive Mutants slowly emerged from the mist at the end of the street.

The one in the middle was nearly three meters tall, with knotted muscles and skin of a metallic iron-blue; its massive arms hung to the ground, resembling a mutated silverback gorilla.

The one on the left crawled on all fours with its body inverted, much like the Infected from Korean films; it was incredibly fast, moving across the dilapidated walls as if they were level ground.

The one on the right had a jaw split open to its ears, with a constant "gurgle-gurgle" sound coming from its throat; a drop of green liquid fell from its mouth, instantly corroding a hole in the asphalt that hissed with white smoke.

Good Grade Lifeforms! Elite Mobs!

Su Jie gasped, her heart instantly leaping into her throat.

Any one of these monsters alone would be enough to wipe out a small, fully-armed survivor camp.

They not only possessed terrifying strength and staggering speed, but even special abilities.

In Su Jie's understanding, encountering monsters of this level left no choice but to close one's eyes and wait for death.

"Hubby..."

Her voice trembled as she instinctively hid behind Li Taiping.

"Don't be afraid, I'm here."

Li Taiping surprisingly offered her a word of comfort.

He stopped, showing no fear; instead, a spark of excited frenzy ignited in his eyes.

"good grade, huh?"

"Today, I'm going to cure you of your 'insufficient firepower' phobia!"

Before his voice even faded.

He gripped the AK-47 with both hands and flipped the selector switch straight to full-auto.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!

The violent gunfire instantly tore through the air of the entire street.

The muzzle spat out a searing tongue of fire nearly half a meter long.

The value of infinite ammunition was displayed in its full glory at this moment.

The Tumorous Mutant on the wall was about to pounce when it was intercepted mid-air by a dense hail of bullets.

Bullets tore through its skin and exploded the tumors on its back, sending foul-smelling fluids flying everywhere. It didn't even get a chance to scream before it was pounded into a mess of rotten meat.

The monster that spat corrosive liquid had just opened its mouth.

Li Taiping's muzzle had already shifted.

A string of bullets drilled precisely into its split jaw, exploding wildly inside its mouth and throat.

Green corrosive liquid mixed with shredded flesh erupted from the back of its head as its massive body crashed to the ground.

Finally, only the Iron-blue Beast with the strongest defense remained.

It roared, braving the hail of bullets as it charged like a heavy tank.

When the bullets hit its skin, they only produced a series of sparks.

"Bulletproof? You think your toughness is infinite?"

Instead of retreating, Li Taiping advanced, his finger clamped firmly on the trigger.

One magazine isn't enough? Then two!

Two not enough? Then ten!

As long as I have infinite ammo, even if you're made of iron, I'll turn you into a sieve!

The dense stream of bullets was like a metal storm, pouring relentlessly onto the beast's chest, with the same spot enduring hundreds and thousands of impacts.

Quantity leads to quality change.

Crack.

A tooth-aching sound of bone snapping rang out.

The iron-blue skin was finally torn open, and the bullets drove deep inside, shredding its muscles, puncturing its internal organs, and stripping its entire exoskeleton of its defensive power.

The beast's charging steps came to a sudden halt.

It looked down, staring in disbelief at the bowl-sized bloody hole in its chest that was still expanding.

Then, its mountain-like body fell heavily to its knees before Li Taiping.

Boom—

Dust billowed.

The gunfire came to an abrupt stop.

Li Taiping lowered the hot barrel as a wisp of blue smoke curled upward.

He stepped expressionlessly over the beast's corpse without a second glance.

Brutal, simple, and absolute.

This was the charm of overwhelming firepower.

Su Jie followed behind him; from start to finish, she had only provided finishing shots and covered the rear.

She looked at Li Taiping's back—not particularly broad, yet exceptionally upright and reliable—her peach-blossom eyes shimmering with unmistakable starlight.

Her sense of security was at its peak!

In this shitty, hopeless world,

her husband was the person she loved most in the world she hated most...

...