616: Chapter 616 Native Humans, Battles in the Wasteland

Fang Cheng sat by the campfire and did not get up to chase.

His gaze penetrated the leaping flames, looking calmly in the direction where the human figure had disappeared.

Judging from the figure and voice, the other party seemed to be just a child.

Moreover, the moment the figure darted into the darkness, Fang Cheng's acute vision captured a bizarre phenomenon.

On the surface of the other party's clothes, a ripple-like distorted gloss seemed to ripple outward.

Immediately after, that living figure completely merged with the contours of the surrounding ruins and vanished into thin air.

"Optical camouflage? Or some kind of creature's mutated invisibility ability?"

A trace of a guess flashed through Fang Cheng's mind.

He threw the leftover monster leg bone into the campfire, splashing a string of sparks.

Then he raised his right foot and stamped out the newly lit campfire with one stomp.

The surroundings instantly plunged into darkness.

Fang Cheng closed his eyes, no longer relying on his limited vision, but pushed his auditory and olfactory sensory perception to the extreme.

Under this gravity more than twice that of Earth, the movement of any entity could not achieve true leaving no trace on the snow.

Gale-force winds shuttled between broken walls and ruins, emitting a shrill wail and bringing different smells.

Fang Cheng's ears twitched slightly, filtering out the sound of the wind and the rolling of tiny pebbles.

Two seconds later, he locked onto an extremely slight yet rhythmic "creak" two hundred meters ahead.

That was the subtle sound produced when the soles of shoes crushed the volcanic ash on the surface, unable to bear the gravity.

Although the other party tried their best to lighten their footsteps, to Fang Cheng, it sounded simply like beating a drum right next to his ear.

He suddenly opened his eyes, golden luster faintly flowing deep within his pupils.

Then he completely restrained his own violent Qi and blood, forcefully lowering his heart rate to less than ten times per minute.

The whole person was like a ghost black panther blending into the night, the muscles of his legs tensing and then quickly exerting force.

Swoosh!

Without stirring up any excess wind, Fang Cheng's body rose directly from the ground, lightly leaping onto an inclined concrete broken wall.

He jumped and shuttled silently between the dilapidated building frameworks.

Like a ghost blending into the night, he precisely controlled the force of every landing.

He always maintained a safe distance of about one hundred meters from the invisible figure that made the faint movement, quietly following behind.

The tracking lasted for about a few minutes.

The deeper they went into the city ruins, the taller and denser the surrounding building debris became.

Thick volcanic ash, like a layer of black frost and snow that could never be washed away, covered every twisted piece of rebar and dilapidated wall.

The temperature in the air had dropped below freezing.

In the pungent smell of sulfur, a foul stench of fermented sewage began to mingle.

The hurried footsteps ahead continued to drift over.

The invisible child was obviously extremely familiar with the terrain here.

He stopped from time to time to look back, or decisively changed his forward route.

Fang Cheng's gaze swept across below, and he immediately understood the reason.

In the shadows of the surrounding ruins, many demon-like mutated monsters were dormant.

Relying on his instinctive intuition of danger, the child was carefully threading through the cracks.

He quietly avoided those nests exuding dangerous auras without alarming any of the monsters inside.

Finally.

That string of footsteps stopped in front of a huge collapsed pit resembling an old-era subway station entrance.

Using both hands and feet like a gecko, Fang Cheng silently pressed against a thick load-bearing pillar more than ten meters high, overlooking the deep pit from a commanding height.

Below, three vague human figures were squatting behind a pile of rusted automatic ticket machine wreckage.

A cold light tube emitting a faint green light was thrown on the ground, barely illuminating an area of several square meters around it.

Accompanied by a wave-like distortion of the air, the invisible child shed his disguise and revealed his figure at the edge of the green light.

He panted violently, his chest rising and falling like a broken bellows.

Taking advantage of the faint cold light, Fang Cheng saw the attire of these people clearly, and a trace of surprise could not help flashing in his heart.

These four people were all wearing extremely bloated jumpsuit outfits.

The material of the clothes looked like it was forcibly sewn together from some kind of mutated animal skin and industrial canvas, the surface smeared with anti-radiation black grease.

They also wore heavy suede gloves on their hands, and gas masks with bulky filter canisters tightly buckled on their heads.

The glass of the goggles was covered with scratches and dust, faintly revealing the eyes hidden behind them.

This was obviously a primitive and crude survival armor tailored entirely for the wasteland environment.

Fang Cheng carefully observed the other three adult-sized figures.

Two of the taller ones were holding weapons in their hands.

That was not some high-tech beam gun, but a firearm cobbled together and modified from steel pipes, springs, and crude receivers.

Another figure, whose build was slightly slender and judging from the standing posture should be a woman, was holding a sharpened solid steel bar in her hand.

"Hoo... Hoo..."

A burst of panting muffled inside the gas masks drifted into Fang Cheng's ears with the night wind.

The child seemed to have been frightened, or perhaps ran too hurriedly.

He bent over, supporting his knees with both hands, muttering something indistinctly in his mouth.

Fang Cheng pressed against the concrete pillar, his thoughts moving slightly.

The talent of the Omniscient Language was instantly activated.

The syllables that originally sounded like garbled code in his ears, after a brief in-brain translation, instantly turned into clearly recognizable dialogue content.

"Pike, control your breathing frequency! Your filter canister is about to run out!"

The most stalwart man holding heavy modified firearms lowered his voice and issued a stern reprimand.

The voice under the mask exuded a weathered calmness and sophistication.

He grabbed the child's shoulder, dragging him into the illumination range of the cold light tube:

"I asked you to be responsible for outer reconnaissance, how did you get scared into this state? Did you run into a Black Monster?"

"Black Monster?"

Fang Cheng in the darkness heard this word, his brows raising slightly.

Judging from this man's tense figure and the subconscious raising action of the muzzle,

the so-called "Black Monster" in this wasteland world was definitely some terrifying existence that made people pale at the mention of it.

"N-No Black Monster, Uncle Kyle."

The child called Pike shook his head desperately, the filter canister of the gas mask making a clicking collision sound with the movement.

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his voice carrying an obvious tremble:

"It's a person... A person who looks very strange!"

"A person?"

The slender woman standing nearby holding the steel reinforcing bar spear upside down leaned over.

Her voice transmitted through the mask, carrying a bit of chill:

"Pike, did you inhale sulfur toxic gas and hallucinate? In this depth of radiation zone, besides us hunters coming out of Iron City, where else would any living person dare to act alone at night?"

"It really is a person, Sister Ira!"

Pike eagerly gestured with both hands, trying to describe the scene he saw:

"He's not wearing a protective suit, and he's not wearing a mask! His skin is very white, and he's much taller than Uncle Kyle."

"And... When I saw him, he was sitting by the campfire, eating meat!"

When speaking the two words "eating meat", a swallowing sound came from Pike's throat.

Even through the mask, Fang Cheng could feel this child frantically secreting saliva.

"Not wearing a protective suit? Eating mutated beasts in the radiation zone?"

The third man, who hadn't spoken all along, let out a low, cold sneer.

He was holding a long rifle equipped with a crude scope, leaning against the wreckage of the ticket machine:

"Pike, even if you want to make up a story, make it sound a bit more decent."

"Not to mention what would happen if you randomly eat those radioactive poisonous meats before processing them. Even standing on the surface without a mask for half an hour would burn your lungs into a pool of blood with sulfur gas. I think you brat have starved out of your mind?"

"Roken is right."

The woman called Ira patted the back of Pike's head:

"You might have encountered a monster with hallucinogenic abilities and saw things."

"I didn't see things!"

Pike stamped his feet in anxiety, turning to look at the leader:

"Uncle Kyle, he really was eating meat! A very big piece of meat, roasted until oil was dripping!"

"Could he be... Could he be from other survivor tribes? Or is it the legendary..."

"Shut up!"

Kyle rudely interrupted Pike's words.

He gripped the heavy machine gun in his hand tightly, a trace of cold hardness flashing in his eyes beneath the mask:

"Regardless of whether that's a lunatic from another tribe or a hallucination you starved up, our only goal right now is prey."

Kyle glanced around at the other three people, his voice heavy:

"Everyone, Iron City has been eating fungal mush for half a month in a row. Old Gregory's body won't make it through this winter. Who knows which lifetime the Savior's light will shine into this Hell, we can only rely on ourselves."

"Tonight, if we can't bring back enough meat for the whole family to eat for a week, none of us hunters can think about going back..."

High up in the darkness, Fang Cheng quietly listened to the dialogue among these otherworldly humans.

"Iron City", "fungal mush", "Savior", "hunter"...

Fragmented information entries were quickly pieced together in his mind, roughly outlining the survival status of these indigenous humans.

In this completely destroyed doomsday world, they hid like mice in an underground shelter called "Iron City".

Twice the gravity of the surface, highly toxic air, and energy radiation forced them to wear heavy protective suits before they could go out for activities.

And the extreme scarcity of food forced these "hunters" to risk their lives to hunt down those monsters mutated in radiation.

"Pike, report coordinates, where is the prey you scouted?"

Kyle then asked again.

"At... At the intersection two streets away to the north."

Pike finally calmed his breath, lowering his voice to report:

"There's a Spiked Boar foraging for moss in the ruins over there. It's very large in size and enough for us to eat for several days."

"Spiked Boar? Good stuff."

Kyle pulled the bolt, emitting a crisp metal collision sound.

He quickly entered a combat state, issuing corresponding commands:

"Old rules, Roken, you go lure that beast near this subway station. Ira, you are responsible for controlling its movement trajectory, don't let it scatter our formation."

"As for little Pike, re-stealth, hide further away, and watch our rear."

"Does everyone understand? If you understand, get ready to move!"

"Understood!"

The three of them quickly dispersed.

Fang Cheng still lay prone in the shadow of the load-bearing pillar, not even changing the frequency of his breathing in the slightest.

His deep gaze locked onto the hunter named Roken.

Roken hunched over, taking advantage of the cover of the ruins, quickly shuttled northward.

After just a few minutes, a crisp sound of glass bottles shattering came from afar, followed by two short flashes of muzzle fire.

Roar——

An extremely harsh roar suddenly sounded two streets away.

Heavy footsteps resembled dense drumbeats, stepping on the volcanic ash on the ground so that it fluttered upwards.

Fang Cheng's eyes narrowed slightly, feeling the slight tremor transmitted from the load-bearing pillar.

Under twice the gravity, a monster capable of creating this kind of commotion definitely couldn't have a small tonnage.

"It's coming, get ready!"

Kyle crouched behind a stone pillar, resting his heavy rifle on the gravel, his muzzle firmly aiming at the corner of the street.

Roken's figure was the first to dart out from the corner.

He ran extremely disheveledly, the heavy protective suit obviously slowing down his speed.

The moment he lunged into the edge of the collapsed pit,

a Mutated Wild Boar with a body length of over four meters and covered all over with black sharp bone spurs appeared.

Like an out-of-control armored vehicle, it smashed through the half-brick wall at the corner, roaring as it rushed out.

Its eyes flickered with bloodthirsty red light, and fragments of an unknown creature's flesh hung on its tusks, making it look exceptionally ferocious.

"Fire!"

Kyle roared angrily and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The crude self-made firearm instantly erupted with a deafening roar.

The muzzle spat out half-meter-long crimson flames, the huge recoil shaking Kyle's shoulders to constantly jerk backward.

Several finger-thick bullets tore through the air, accurately hitting the Spiked Boar's head and chest.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Sparks splashed and spewed in all directions.

This kind of bullet, which was enough to pierce ordinary steel plates, unexpectedly only shattered a few cracks on the Spiked Boar's bone spur shell, failing to cause a fatal injury at all.

The intense pain instead completely enraged this monster.

Its front hooves fiercely scratched the ground, crushing a large area of cement ground, directly changing the charging trajectory, and fiercely crashing toward Kyle, who had the most intense firepower.

"Ira! Control it!"

Kyle roared loudly, not dodging because of this, his hands still steadily pressing down on the barrel, continuing to pour out firepower.

Ira, hiding on the other side, immediately stood up straight.

She dropped the steel bar in her hand to the ground, fiercely tearing off the heavy gas mask on her head, revealing a pale face covered with cyan blood vessels.

Then, her eyes kept staring at the oncoming Spiked Boar, her hands making an empty grip in front of her chest.

Hum——

Fang Cheng, standing in the distance, clearly perceived that a strange high-frequency distortion appeared in the air around the collapsed pit.

This was not True Qi, or other abnormal energies.

Rather, it was psychokinetic power capable of interfering with the physical Law of reality.

But under the suppression of twice the gravity, wanting to use psychokinesis to confront out of thin air a Mutated Wild Boar weighing several tons and charging at high speed...

How easy was that said, it was simply like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

Seeing this, Fang Cheng's eyes shone brightly, watching the situation in the battlefield with great interest.

What on earth was the power system of this world like.

Perhaps, one could catch a glimpse of it right now.

(End of Chapter)