17: Chapter 17 An unexpected encounter with two men and one woman, Shen Wanxing's first time...

Less than twenty minutes after the RV turned onto the branch road to the right, a glaring yellow warning popped up on the dashboard.

[Warning: All-terrain tire wear has reached 60%! The current vehicle's curb weight severely exceeds the load limit of the original tires; continuing to drive at high speeds will accelerate wear. It is recommended to reduce speed or replace with high-strength tires.]

Chen Chen cursed.

A 7.8-ton iron beast pressing down on four stock rubber tires was like making a 100-pound girl run a marathon in stilettos—it was bound to collapse sooner or later.

He reduced the speed from 120 to 60.

The engine's roar turned into a low, muffled hum, and the exhaust fumes from the tailpipe subsided significantly.

Saving the tires meant spending more time, and spending more time meant having to account for the Black Fog.

Fortunately, the buffer distance was sufficient.

The branch road was a notch narrower than the main highway.

The road surface was riddled with potholes, and on both sides, the Gobi desert transitioned into withered scrub and scattered sandstone.

Visibility was limited, and road conditions had worsened.

But there were clearly more supply crates by the roadside.

It was probably because fewer players took this side road.

Black iron crates and wooden crates appeared every three to five hundred meters; some were just sitting on the shoulder, not even guarded by associated monsters.

Chen Chen hit the brakes, and the vehicle slowed down and pulled over.

"Get out and get to work."

Shen Wanxing had already developed a conditioned reflex.

She slowly stepped down in her high heels, her footsteps clicking away, but it was still better than walking barefoot on the sandy ground.

She opened the car door, jumped out, crouched beside the crate, and pressed her palm against it.

A flash of white light.

"Double."

Another one.

"Five times."

The next one.

"Ten times!"

Chen Chen stood by the car door, counting and storing the items.

Purified water, high-calorie compressed rations, and basic hygiene supplies were poured into the storage space batch after batch.

After looting a dozen or so crates, the supply reserves in the rear compartment were approaching the level of a small stronghold's warehouse.

What made him the most envious was the two 10L barrels of bulk diesel he opened in a row.

Shen Wanxing's hand touched the surface of the oil drum.

The system notification popped up.

[Triggered ten-fold reward probability! Obtained: 100L of pure fuel!]

[Triggered ten-fold reward probability! Obtained: 100L of pure fuel!]

Two hundred liters.

Added to the seventy-plus liters left in the car, even after filling the fuel tank, there would be a significant surplus.

Chen Chen decanted the extra fuel into metal drums and stacked them in the corner of the rear compartment as strategic reserves.

Fuel consumption anxiety?

It no longer existed.

This branch road was practically a buffet tailored just for him.

Shen Wanxing was crouching by the fourteenth crate on the side of the road, her knees covered in dust and her ankles chafed bright red.

She looked up at the three unopened crates in the distance and muttered with a slumped face:

"How many more..."

"Just three left." Chen Chen handed her half a bottle of water,

"If you miss a woman, you can still chase after her, but if you miss a supply crate on the side of the road, it's just going to feed the Black Fog."

Shen Wanxing chugged the water, rolled her eyes at him, and scrambled up to continue working.

The sixteenth crate was Bronze-tier.

The crate body was two sizes larger than the black iron ones, and the latch on the front bore a dull, verdigris rust.

Before opening this kind of crate, Shen Wanxing had already learned to rub her hands together—

She rubbed her palms vigorously seven or eight times and stretched her fingers by interlocking them, looking as if she were about to step onto an operating table.

She pressed her palm down.

A streak of gold was mixed into the white light.

[Triggered 1% quality upgrade probability! The original item has undergone a qualitative change!]

The moment the crate lid popped open, two extremely ferocious-looking hand crossbows materialized out of thin air.

They had black carbon-fiber crossbow bodies, folding limbs, and an infrared sight the size of a red bean embedded at the front.

The bowstring was made of twisted metal wire and came with an automatic cocking mechanism—pull the trigger once, and the limbs would reset and draw the string on their own, saving the effort of manual cocking.

Underneath lay a box of twenty-four armor-piercing bolts.

The arrowheads were tri-pyramidal and ground extremely thin.

[D-Grade Adaptive Tactical Repeating Crossbow * 2 (Includes Infrared Sight and Automatic Cocking)]

Chen Chen picked one up and weighed it.

It was lightweight, suitable for women to use.

The red dot from the infrared sight hit the sandstone ten meters away, glaringly bright.

He carried the two repeating crossbows and the bolt quiver back to the vehicle, shoved one to Shen Wanbing in the passenger seat, and tossed the other to the back row.

"Learn how to use it."

He adjusted the safety catch on the side of the crossbow and demonstrated the process of loading the bolts and aiming,

"When I'm not in the car and you run into something that doesn't have eyes, shoot it right through the head. Don't hold back."

Shen Wanbing took the repeating crossbow, her slender fingers fiddling with the automatic cocking mechanism, and within seconds, she had figured out the operating logic.

The grip felt good, and the recoil was almost zero.

Shen Wanxing held the other one, her eyes looking a bit nervous.

In her entire life, let alone killing a person, she hadn't even slaughtered a chicken.

"Just hold onto it for now; we'll see if you need to use it later." Chen Chen didn't force her and turned back to the driver's seat.

The car continued to push forward.

A cruising speed of 60 yards was already fast enough on this pothole-ridden branch road.

The scrub began to thin out, and patches of gravel piles and the remains of rusted barbed wire began to appear on both sides of the road.

The air took on the dry scent of metal oxides.

They were about fifteen kilometers away from the military factory.

Out of the corner of his right eye, Chen Chen caught a sudden change in the road conditions ahead.

The road narrowed into a single lane 150 meters ahead.

Two abandoned civilian cars were blocking the middle of the road, completely sealing off the already narrow path.

On both sides were waist-high piles of gravel, and the RV's chassis couldn't get past.

A roadblock.

A man and a woman were standing in the middle of the road, waving.

The man was in his early thirties, lean, wearing a dirty camouflage jacket, with his left hand tucked into his sleeve.

The woman was about the same age, with remnants of heavy makeup on her face, and the already thin garment on her chest was deliberately pulled open halfway.

"Shen Wanbing."

Not a single extra word needed to be said.

Shen Wanbing had already closed her eyes.

Three seconds.

She opened her eyes, speaking at a rapid pace:

"The man in the middle of the road is hiding a boning knife in his left sleeve, blade facing up. There's someone lying behind the second abandoned car on the right with a homemade double-barreled shotgun loaded with iron shot. All three of them have a black dragon-patterned cloth tag sewn onto the inner lining of their clothes."

Black Dragon Society.

Chen Chen slowed down, letting the RV glide slowly toward the roadblock.

From 60 yards down to 30, then down to 15.

The distance closed to ten meters.

The woman in the middle of the road saw the sheer scale of the vehicle—full iron-plated exoskeleton, serrated collision bumpers, dense rivets, and an oppressive, sky-blocking presence of steel.

Her eyes darted around twice, and she plastered a professional fake smile on her face.

She hurried up to meet them.

Her gait was deliberately exaggerated, swaying her hips to flaunt her only remaining assets.

She pressed up against the metal protective mesh on the outside of the car window, hooked her chipped-nail fingers into the grid, and tilted her head to peek inside.

"Big brother, our car broke down. Can we get a ride?"

Her voice was affected, shrill and coquettish, "I can do anything, I promise to satisfy you..."

Chen Chen sat in the driver's seat without moving.

He glanced at the passenger seat.

Shen Wanbing's profile was cold and stern, the stunning curve accentuated by the seatbelt rising and falling with her breath.

Looking into the rearview mirror, Shen Wanxing was curled up on the new mattress, clutching her windbreaker, her eyes, clear to an excessive degree, staring straight ahead through the aisle.

The pinnacle of pure desire.

Chen Chen mentally pulled up the Hongyan System, and a semi-transparent evaluation panel unfolded above the woman's head outside the car window.

[Target: Nameless Woman]

[Attractiveness Rating: 78 points]

[Talent: D-Grade (Silver-tongued)]

[Binding Benefit: Green Entry]

Seventy-eight points.

You need at least eighty-eight points to get on this RV.

Chen Chen lowered the outer protective mesh of the car window a crack, revealing a palm-width gap.

He turned his head and looked at that face caked in cheap foundation.

"With nothing but that silicone to your name, you dare to come out and block the road?"

"Even the dog bowl in my car is cleaner than you. Get lost."

The smile on the woman's face froze.

The air was quiet for two seconds.

She stepped back, her mouth twitching, and cursed, "You motherf—"

She didn't finish the profanity.

A figure sprang up from behind the abandoned car on the right.

A bald, burly man was holding a crudely welded double-barreled shotgun, aiming it at the driver's seat window.

"Bang!"

Iron pellets poured out.

The pellets struck the bulletproof glass of the Lv.5 RV and the outer metal protective mesh, exploding into a harsh screech of metal friction.

Sparks flew everywhere.

A few white scratches appeared on the surface of the glass.

That was it.

Not even a single crack had formed.

The three people inside the car were completely unharmed.

Shen Wanxing was startled by the gunshot and instinctively shrank her neck.

Shen Wanbing was sitting in the passenger seat, her hand already gripping the tactical repeating crossbow, her posture calm.

Chen Chen reached out and closed the gap in the car window.

"I gave you a chance, and you threw it away."

He shifted into drive.

The turbocharger emitted a sharp whine at high RPMs.

The 7.8-ton steel beast shot forward as if launched from a standstill.

The all-terrain tires crushed the gravel on the road, and the serrated collision bumper slammed head-on into the abandoned car where the man was hiding.

Metal struck metal.

The shockwave shook the leaves off the bushes within a fifty-meter radius.

The sheet metal of that civilian car was no different from paper in front of the serrated steel plate.

The car body was sent rolling sideways by the immense kinetic energy, parts scattering everywhere.

The armed man hiding behind it didn't even have a chance to stand up and run—the entire car, along with the wreckage, crushed over him, blending flesh and steel together.

The knife-wielding man in the middle of the road reacted quickly, rolling toward the pile of gravel on the right.

He was half a step too late.

The armored skirt panel on the side of the RV grazed his ribs.

The crisp sound of breaking bones was clearly audible inside the cabin; he was flung five or six meters away, slamming into the gravel pile, his boning knife flying far away.

Chen Chen hit the brakes.

The RV came to a stop amidst the wreckage of the roadblock.

He turned the steering wheel half a turn, angling the front of the car slightly to align the rear window with the only target on the road still breathing.

The woman who had tried to seduce them was sprawled in the middle of the road, trembling like a leaf.

Chen Chen turned his head, looking past the partition to the back row.

Shen Wanxing was holding the tactical repeating crossbow, her face pale.

"Open the window. Shoot her."

The three words landed heavily.

Shen Wanxing froze completely.

The repeating crossbow in her hand felt burning hot with weight.

The power switch for the infrared sight was right next to her thumb, but her thumb wouldn't obey her.

"She... she doesn't have a weapon anymore..."

Chen Chen's expression was serious: "Three seconds ago, her accomplice fired a shot at you."

"If the iron shot had pierced the window, guess whose face would have shattered first—yours or your sister's?"

Shen Wanbing sat in the passenger seat without turning back.

She spoke, her voice very soft:

"She wanted to kill us just now. If you don't kill her, there will be even more people blocking the road next time. News travels faster on this road than the Black Fog."

Shen Wanxing's hands were shaking.

She pressed the infrared switch.

A red dot shot out from the front of the crossbow, passed through the gap in the window, and landed on the forehead of the woman ten meters away.

The woman saw the red dot.

She kowtowed like a madwoman, her forehead slamming against the gravel road, drawing blood.

She was crying and screaming, saying things like "I was forced to do it" and "Spare my life."

Shen Wanxing bit her lip.

Her index finger hooked onto the trigger, pressing with such force her knuckles turned white.

She pulled the trigger.

The sound of the bowstring releasing was short and sharp.

The tri-pyramidal armor-piercing bolt flew out at a speed the naked eye could barely track, piercing through the woman's skull.

A burst of red and white matter exploded from the back of her head.

Her body fell forward, twitched twice, and then went still.

The cabin was very quiet.

Shen Wanxing put down the repeating crossbow and rested her hands on her knees.

She didn't cry, she didn't vomit, but there wasn't a trace of color left on her face.

Chen Chen walked to the back row, reached out to pull the repeating crossbow from her stiff fingers, and set it aside on the edge of the mattress.

He pressed his palm against the back of her head, pushing down slightly, letting her forehead rest against his chest.

He didn't say anything.

Ten seconds later, Shen Wanxing gripped the strap of his tactical vest at his waist.

She gripped it very tightly.