42: Chapter 42 Is the ground still alive? A counter-attack against the enemy!

The world outside the car window had changed.

The asphalt road was gone.

The ground beneath them was a dark brownish color, resembling air-dried flesh and blood.

As the B-grade tires rolled over it, an incredibly eerie sensation was transmitted through the chassis—it wasn't the hardness of gravel, nor the softness of soil.

It was an elastic, fleshy feedback.

Like rolling over a giant piece of dried-out leather.

The smell of the air had changed as well.

The life support system's advanced air circulation filtered desperately, but that thick, putrid stench still seeped through the cracks.

Shen Wanxing covered her nose.

Jiang Yanxue stood by the firing port and looked out.

The dark brown ground stretched all the way to the horizon.

Occasionally, strange fleshy lumps could be seen bulging from the ground, their surfaces covered in parched, cracked patterns.

The sky was a sickly reddish-brown.

There was no sun, and the light source was unknown, uniformly illuminating the entire wasteland.

"Something is wrong with this place," Jiang Yanxue frowned. "The ground is alive."

Her SS-grade Aberration Domination could perceive extremely faint bioelectric signals—coming up from the 'ground' beneath their feet.

It wasn't an illusion.

This wasteland itself was part of some gargantuan organism.

The RV pushed forward at full speed across this eerie flesh-and-blood ground.

The B-grade tires' grip remained steady, but they left two shallow indentations where they passed, which the 'ground' self-repaired and leveled a few seconds later.

They traveled less than twenty kilometers.

The radar warning module lit up.

"One kilometer ahead."

Shen Wanbing reported the data. "Large man-made structure. Metal construction, spanning the entire passage."

Chen Chen slowed down.

The scene ahead gradually became clear.

A four-meter-high steel cheval de frise blocked the center of the road, its top wrapped in heavy barbed wire.

Extending from both sides of the cheval de frise were temporary barriers made of stacked abandoned shipping containers, sealing the entire passage tightly.

Behind the barriers was a vast complex of abandoned buildings.

Corrugated iron roofs, leaning chimneys, and beams hanging with iron hooks—a slaughterhouse.

In the very center of the cheval de frise, a gap just wide enough for one vehicle was left open.

Six things stood on either side of the gap.

Calling them 'people' wasn't quite accurate.

Their builds were human, but their skin was an uneven grayish-white, and metallic-textured bone spurs protruded from their joints.

Their left arms below the elbow had been replaced with some kind of mechanical construct—some were welded steel claws, others were crude chainsaws, and one had replaced his forearm directly with a sharpened steel pipe.

Alien Cyborgs.

The six cyborgs were fully armed, wearing crude armor sewn from aberration hides.

The leader was the largest, over two meters tall. His left eye was covered by a riveted iron plate, and his right pupil was vertical, glowing with a murky yellow light.

A wooden board hung from the steel claw of his right hand.

On the board, several words were crookedly written in a dark red liquid—most likely blood.

[Toll: 50 units of purified water per vehicle + all weapons.]

[Refusal equals death.]

Chen Chen reduced his speed to twenty kilometers per hour and slowly approached.

The lead cyborg raised his steel claw and slammed it heavily onto the cheval de frise.

The sound of metal clashing echoed far across the empty Flesh Wasteland.

"Stop. Pay tax."

Chen Chen stopped the car fifty meters from the cheval de frise.

His right hand rested on the red weapon activation button to the left of the dashboard.

"Shen Wanbing."

"Six cyborgs. There are twelve more inside the slaughterhouse behind the barrier. Two of them are far larger than the rest, likely Elite-class."

Shen Wanbing's voice was steady. "The structural strength of the cheval de frise is low, and there are numerous cold welds at the container barrier's joints."

She paused for a beat.

"We can ram through it."

Chen Chen pressed his thumb against the weapon activation button.

The two hemispherical weapon bay covers at the front and rear of the roof opened simultaneously. Two C-grade twin-mounted vehicle heavy machine guns rose from the roof, their electrically driven rotating chassis completing calibration.

Four 12.7mm barrels were aimed at the six cyborgs behind the cheval de frise.

The one-eyed cyborg leader's vertical pupil constricted sharply when he saw the heavy machine guns rise.

He had lived for an unknown amount of time and had intercepted countless vehicles on this road.

He had never seen a loadout like this.

Chen Chen rolled down the car window.

He leaned halfway out, looking at the wooden board marked 'Toll' fifty meters away.

"I'll give you three seconds to clear the road."

His voice was very flat.

But the hum of the heavy machine gun barrels slowly rotating was more persuasive than any words.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

Chen Chen's thumb pressed down.

The red firing button was pressed to the bottom.

The electric rotating chassis hummed as the barrels began to spin.

"Click."

The crisp sound of a motor idling.

On the ammunition readout panels of the two C-grade twin-mounted heavy machine guns, four zeros were lined up neatly.

Half had been used on the Tyrant, and the rest were spent on the Black-Robed Apostle.

Two hundred and thirty-seven armor-piercing incendiary rounds—not a single one left.

Chen Chen's facial muscles didn't twitch.

His finger remained pressed on the firing button.

He tilted his head and stared through the windshield directly at the six cyborgs fifty meters away.

Thirteen and a half tons of mobile armor. This was his trump card.

The cyborg leader looked at the four slowly rotating 12.7mm barrels on the roof.

The black muzzles were aimed right at his head.

He had been in the wasteland long enough to have seen many times the effect of armor-piercing rounds of this caliber.

Three rounds could punch through a heavy off-road vehicle welded with steel plates.

If they hit a physical body, not even bone fragments would be left.

The rotation continued.

The hum of the motors pierced the cold air, drilling into every cyborg's ears.

The leader's vertical pupil darted back and forth between the muzzles and the cockpit.

He couldn't see the facial details of the human behind the bulletproof glass, but he could feel an extremely oppressive silence.

Within three seconds, the survival instinct completely crushed the greedy instinct.

Bang—

The leader slammed the wooden board marked 'Toll' in his hand heavily onto the ground.

His knees buckled, and his over two-meter-tall frame knelt straight down.

The five cyborgs behind him followed suit and knelt.

Steel claws, chainsaws, and sharpened steel pipes all dropped to touch the ground.

"Spare our lives, My Lord! We'll dismantle the roadblock immediately! Immediately!"

The leader's voice squeezed out of his throat, coarse and trembling, his vertical pupil narrowing into a slit.

Chen Chen didn't move.

The car window was halfway down.

He rested one hand on the window frame, looking down at the kneeling cyborgs from above.

The wind blew across the Flesh Wasteland, carrying a sweet, sickly smell of rot.

"You block my car, and you think kneeling twice is enough to settle it?"

The leader buried his head even lower.

"Since you've started this business, you have to pay some tuition."

Chen Chen tilted his chin toward the slaughterhouse. "Bring over all the cores, fuel, and those few boxes of special goods from your camp. Consider it compensation for mental distress."

The leader shuddered.

He tried to play poor: "My Lord, we only have a few worthless lives..."

"In the back of the second container, there are fourteen Mid-grade Vehicle Cores hidden in a steel compartment."

An icy female voice came from the passenger seat.

Shen Wanbing's finger pushed up the non-existent glasses frame on the bridge of her nose.

Her voice was the kind of indisputable monotone used in business negotiations.

"At the bottom of the third container, two fifty-liter barrels of refined fuel are covered with tarpaulin. On the iron shelf to the left of the cold storage on the second floor of the slaughterhouse, there is an Aberration-grade Treasure Chest emitting a red glow; you can't open it, but you've been reluctant to throw it away."

A beat of silence.

Shen Wanbing opened her eyes. There was no warmth in her pitch-black pupils.

"Do you need me to continue listing them?"

The leader fell flat on the ground.

Even the iron plate covering his left eye was knocked askew by the force of his forehead hitting the ground.

This feeling of having his secrets stripped bare completely shattered his psychological defenses.

Resist? Thirteen tons of steel were blocking the way, with four barrels mounted on top, and a human X-ray machine sitting in the passenger seat.