27: Chapter 27: Intense Vehicle Combat! The Tyrant-Level Monster "Sewaged Tyrant"!

Speed: 120 km/h.

The eleven-ton armored fortress carved two deep white tracks into the branch road.

Chen Chen steered with one hand, his gaze passing through the metal protective mesh outside the windshield, fixed on the gray-white road stretching straight ahead.

The fifty-kilometer high-speed dash passed in the blink of an eye; the route was so clean that not even a scrap of rusted metal remained.

On the cockpit panel, the radar warning module suddenly lit up with a blinding red light.

"Beep—beep—" The urgent alarm shattered the silence inside the vehicle.

In the passenger seat, Shen Wanbing opened her eyes, golden light swirling within them.

"Two kilometers straight ahead. Three high-heat moving targets, speed eighty. They are occupying the road in a triangular formation."

Chen Chen didn't hit the brakes; instead, he pressed the accelerator down another half-inch.

At the edge of his vision, three modified heavy off-road vehicles appeared on the horizon.

They were all painted in a matte black finish, with thick, heavy rebar plates welded onto the exterior of the bodies.

The most disgusting part was the rear of these three vehicles, which were densely welded with half-meter-long triangular military bayonets, looking like three steel hedgehogs with their bristles raised.

They had completely blocked the already narrow branch road.

Not only had they snatched up all the supply boxes along the way, but they had also set up this formation, clearly intended to prevent any vehicle behind them from overtaking.

Typical cutthroat behavior.

The two-kilometer distance rapidly shrank under the RV's high-speed charge.

The off-road convoy ahead noticed the behemoth closing in from behind.

The lead vehicle in the middle lowered its window, and a man wearing a gas mask leaned half his body out, holding a high-power megaphone.

"Vehicle behind! Listen up!"

The voice from the megaphone, mixed with the static of the microphone, was arrogant and overbearing.

"We are the First Vanguard Team of the 'Blood Moon Guild'! This road is chartered by our guild!"

"No matter what kind of vehicle you're driving, if you want to pass, leave behind eighty percent of your supplies as a toll! Otherwise, I'll scatter caltrops on the road right now, and we'll all die together!"

Inside the vehicle, Jiang Yanxue leaned against the armored wall and scoffed.

Threatening an armored RV equipped with B-grade all-terrain self-healing tires with caltrops?

These people didn't even understand how to spell the word 'death'.

Shen Wanxing hugged her repeating crossbow, nervously staring at Chen Chen's back.

Chen Chen's expression remained completely unmoved.

Negotiation? Rules?

The only rules in the wasteland were caliber and armor.

He didn't even bother to slow down; his right hand slapped the red physical button on the left side of the dashboard.

At the front of the roof, the hemispherical weapon hatch slid open smoothly.

A robotic arm lifted a C-grade dual-mounted vehicle heavy machine gun out of the hatch.

The electric rotating chassis emitted a very faint "hum," and the two thick 12.7mm caliber barrels automatically calibrated their pitch and elevation, the crosshairs on the operation screen locking firmly onto the middle off-road vehicle that was broadcasting.

"Fire." Chen Chen spat out the word.

His thumb pressed the firing button on top of the joystick.

A metal storm descended.

The sound of the heavy machine gun firing was incomparable to conventional weapons.

The deafening roar tore through the wind of the wilderness.

The half-meter-long muzzle flashes merged into a blinding wall of fire.

12.7mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds poured out at a rate of six hundred rounds per minute.

The arrogant shouting from the megaphone came to an abrupt end.

The lead heavy off-road vehicle's welded steel plates were as fragile as a layer of window paper in front of the heavy machine gun's barrage.

The warheads easily tore through the armor, drilled into the vehicle's interior, tumbling and shattering.

The bulletproof glass turned into white powder dancing across the sky.

The man wearing the gas mask had his upper body hit by three large-caliber bullets within a tenth of a second, instantly evaporating into a cloud of red blood mist.

The entire off-road vehicle was riddled with holes, the fuel tank ignited by incendiary rounds, and flames shot into the sky.

One vehicle, three seconds, totaled.

This was a one-sided physical transcendence.

The people in the remaining two off-road vehicles went completely insane.

Where had they ever seen such a formation?

They originally thought they could walk sideways during the novice period relying on modified cars, but they ended up running into a mobile arsenal armed to the teeth.

The two vehicles spun their steering wheels desperately, attempting to escape into the Gobi desert on both sides.

"Want to run?"

Chen Chen slammed his hands on the steering wheel, and the eleven-ton RV, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, crashed directly into the off-road vehicle on the left.

The reinforced heavy serrated bumper cut into the side door pillar of the off-road vehicle.

Under the massive weight difference, the off-road vehicle was flipped over onto the ground, rolling four or five times.

The RV didn't pause in the slightest; the all-terrain tires rolled over the deformed roof of the off-road vehicle, pressing the bones and internal organs inside along with the steel into a two-dimensional plane.

The vehicle on the right, panicking, plunged headfirst into a deep pit on the side of the road, its front axle snapping on the spot.

Chen Chen hit the brakes, and the RV stopped steadily at the edge of the pit.

The gun barrel lowered, and a short burst of fire followed.

The last vehicle fell silent.

The vehicle door pushed open.

A thick smell of gunpowder smoke mixed with the scent of blood rushed into his nostrils.

Chen Chen jumped out of the vehicle, carrying a thirty-six-slot storage backpack in his hand.

Shen Wanxing and Jiang Yanxue followed behind.

"Get to work."

On the wreckage of the three vehicles, loot light orbs appeared in numbers far exceeding the norm.

The foundation that this "cutthroat" convoy had scavenged along the way was indeed substantial.

Shen Wanxing walked forward with practiced ease, placing her fair, delicate hands on the light orbs.

[Lucky Critical] triggered.

Gold and purple intertwined light flashed one after another in the center of the road.

The basic supplies hoarded in the trunks of the off-road vehicles, under the multipliers of two times, five times, and ten times critical hits, directly turned into a small mountain.

[High-Quality Military Rations—Triggered 10x reward probability! Obtained *500!]

[Pure Fuel—Triggered 5x reward probability! Obtained *1000L]

[Rare-Grade Titanium Alloy Plates—Triggered 2x reward probability! Obtained *100!]

[Primary Vehicle Core—Triggered reward advancement probability! Obtained Intermediate Vehicle Core *10]

...

Crates of canned meat, stacked cold-weather supplies, barrels of fuel.

The resources they had risked their lives to snatch all ended up becoming Chen Chen's wedding dress.

With a thought, Chen Chen swept all these supplies into his backpack.

The thirty-six-slot capacity filled up rapidly.

This haul was insanely fat.

Just as Chen Chen finished counting the last titanium alloy plate, a sound of extremely suppressed groaning suddenly came from inside the vehicle.

Chen Chen turned back abruptly.

In the passenger seat, Shen Wanbing was curled up in her seat, her hands tightly covering her eyes.

Dark red blood continuously overflowed from between her fair fingers, dripping onto her tattered high-end professional attire.

"Sister!"

Shen Wanxing was so scared her face turned pale; she didn't even bother to put on her high heels properly before stumbling onto the vehicle.

Chen Chen strode into the cockpit, grabbed Shen Wanbing's wrist, and forced her hands away.

Her eyes were tightly shut, bloodshot tears tearing at the corners of her eyes, and her body was trembling violently from extreme pain.

"Don't look... don't use the radar to scan..."

Shen Wanbing grabbed Chen Chen's arm, her fingernails almost digging into his flesh.

Her face, usually icy and frozen, was filled with an emotion called "instinctual fear."

"Ahead... three kilometers away..."

She panted heavily, "There is an energy source. My talent just touched the edge, and my mental energy was drained dry. That thing... is beyond the analysis limit of the current stage."

It could cause a divine-level radar to suffer a backlash.

Chen Chen narrowed his eyes, shook off her hand, and turned to look outside the windshield.

He pulled down his multi-functional tactical goggles from his neck and switched to maximum-power long-range thermal imaging mode.

Following the direction Shen Wanbing indicated.

Three kilometers away.

An abandoned elevated bridge spanned directly above the road.

In the shadows beneath the bridge arch, a massive, suffocatingly hot signal was coiled.

It wasn't just normal red, but red turning purple, and even presenting a blinding, scorching white in the core area.

The green vision of the goggles zoomed in to the limit, finally revealing the outline of that shadow.

It was a monster.

To be precise, it was a mountain of flesh pieced together from countless severed limbs.

Its size was even a full circle larger than Chen Chen's eleven-ton mobile fortress.

Seven or eight thick, deformed arms extended from different positions on its torso, frantically grabbing surrounding low-level Aberrants and stuffing them alive into the huge, tooth-filled maw on its abdomen.

It was feeding.

Or rather, merging.

With every chew, the volume of that mountain of flesh would expand, and the calcified bone armor on its surface would grow a layer thicker.

[Warning: Extremely dangerous target detected!]

[Target Identity: Stitched Tyrant (About to complete second-stage evolution)]

[Threat Assessment: Tyrant-Class. Immediate evacuation recommended!]

(Note: Aberrant monster levels from low to high are: Normal, Elite, Aberrant, Tyrant, Lord, Calamity, Progenitor!)

The system's red warning text flashed frantically on his retina.

This guy had blocked the only path to the Altar of Flesh completely.

Any vehicle trying to pass under the bridge would be crushed into scrap metal by its thick arms.

Jiang Yanxue had walked up behind the driver's seat at some point.

She looked in the direction of Chen Chen's gaze, and with her SS-grade [Aberration Domination] perception, she also sensed that disgusting, terrifying pressure.

"This thing cannot be bypassed."

Jiang Yanxue gritted her teeth and offered the most rational judgment.

"It is about to break through to the second stage. Even if your armor is thick, heavy machine gun bullets hitting it will probably just make a noise. Let's take a detour."

A detour?

Both sides of the branch road were steep rock walls and soft quicksand pits.

Once the RV got stuck, it would be a sitting duck.

Even taking a step back, even if they could detour, by the time they added the extra distance, the top-tier rewards of the Altar of Flesh would have long been snatched up by others.

Chen Chen took off his goggles and tossed them onto the dashboard.

He looked at the constantly expanding mountain of flesh in the distance; his eyes didn't hold the gravity Jiang Yanxue expected, nor the fear of Shen Wanbing.

Instead, they revealed the fanaticism of a hungry wolf seeing fresh meat.

The system quest stated clearly: The higher the level and grade of the sacrificed monster, the higher the ranking obtained. The more generous the rewards.

Taking a few ordinary elite monsters to sacrifice would at best get them into the top ten.

But what if they slaughtered this Tyrant that was about to evolve to the second stage and threw it onto the Altar of Flesh?

Chen Chen reached out and entered a command on the control panel of the weapon maintenance console, lifting the rate-of-fire limit on the heavy machine gun.

He turned his head and looked at Jiang Yanxue, his tone so calm it was frightening.

"I was just worrying about not finding something of enough weight to knock open the gates of the Altar of Flesh."

"And now it has delivered itself to our doorstep, hasn't it?"