Chapter 96: Change
“Fuck!” the captain punched the outer wall of the fortress fiercely, bent over gasping for breath.
“The front line has collapsed, at least a hundred Multi-eyed Birds of danger level four have gotten in. You’re lucky to be alive.”
A resigned woman’s voice came from the rear of the squad.
Several red-eyed members looked over.
They saw a black-haired woman in a white research uniform speaking.
The woman, calmly smoking a cigarette, watched the sea where the strange birds had disappeared. Ordinary-looking with an average build, dark circles under her eyes, slightly haggard, she appeared to be around forty, with noticeable crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.
...
Had it not been for her researcher’s white coat, anyone would have mistook her for an ordinary housewife.
“Director Yan! Why weren’t we notified! Why nobody informed us when the Multi-eyed Birds broke in!!?” the captain charged forward in anger, grabbing the woman’s collar and hoisting her up.
“Because we couldn’t contact you, the signal interference got worse,” the woman answered calmly.
“I suggest you handle me gently; I’ve been up for three days straight trying to update our communication equipment.”
The captain’s ferocious expression faltered, and despite his boiling anger from the loss of his teammates, his hand unconsciously loosened, gently putting the woman down.
“Why!”
He punched the fortress wall.
“Why did it come to this!? Four squads! Now we’re the only ones left!!”
“Blood Tide has reached a level two danger level, and it’s no longer something ordinary people can handle. Even for you top elites who’ve had partial luminous stone radiation enhancements, you still have to rely on firearms for positional warfare,” Director Yan continued calmly.
“So, from the beginning, your Black Stone’s confidence in handling Blood Tide with your so-called enhanced abilities was a mistake.”
“Starting from level four, small caliber firearms and ordinary explosive shells are also ineffective against these kinds of monsters. They may get injured, but soon recover quickly and return with a vengeance,” she kept explaining.
“What about complete luminous stone enhancements?? Complete body-wide enhancements!? They must surely work!” the captain asked through clenched teeth.
“The latest data shows that in underground experiments, fully enhanced individuals, at the cost of a three-to-one casualty rate, grievously wounded and killed a level three Blood Tide Monster,” Director Yan replied, “But it’s meaningless because the Blood Tide Monsters will revive after a short time. The calculations from the experiments suggest that a level three Blood Tide Creature has already far surpassed human physical limits in terms of strength and constitution—it’s an intrinsic racial limitation. Our body structure, cellular strength, the limit is here.”
“Does that mean level three is our limit!?” the captain asked with suppressed emotion.
“Don’t go throwing lives away anymore. Black Stone’s tests are a waste of resources and lives, nothing else. This is a life principle strictly summed up by Silver Tower after countless sacrifices,” Director Yan finished her statement and turned to leave calmly.
Level three danger is the limit to which humans can cope through physical enhancements alone.
*
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*
In the afternoon, the enhanced red value detector, operating with its LCD display, showed: 15:03.
Inside the cave, after finishing the communication, Yu Hong felt heavy-hearted. After contemplating for a moment and determining the following countermeasures, he stood up, walked to the wooden door, and peered out through the observation window.
Outside in the woods, strands of mist were visible, even more dangerous and mysterious than before.
‘It seems the red value of the outside environment… might be higher than before…’ he thought gravely. The previously safe daylight hours, was he now going to become extremely dangerous? Recalling Old Li’s warnings, he suddenly felt fortunate that he had prepared to reinforce the safety house beforehand, with the enhancement time fast approaching. Otherwise, the safety issues to follow would indeed be quite troublesome…
He didn’t know the status of the post office, but it was no longer appropriate to venture out to check.
He had to…
Whoosh!
Suddenly, as he was looking outside, something in the forest seemed to notice him at the observation window as well.
A gray shadow burst out of the mist, shooting toward the wooden door’s observation window like an arrow.
The shadow’s speed was so fast that the whistling it made as it tore through the air was painfully piercing to the ears.
Yu Hong’s pupils shrank rapidly, he stepped back, drew the board closed, and rushed to the corner for the Polar Bear Suit.
Boom!!
He had barely left the door when a loud bang exploded from it.
The heavy, reinforced wooden door was suddenly pierced through.
A gray-white spike, as thick as an adult’s forearm with a faint bluish glow at the tip, effortlessly penetrated the wooden door’s observation window.
The spike passed through the wire mesh and the wooden board, easily stabbing half a meter into the cave, then swiftly retracted, creating an air current as it returned to the forest.
Yu Hong quickly donned the Polar Bear Suit and seeing this, felt a chill in his heart.
Had he not left his original position just moments ago, he might have been impaled through the chest and died on the spot.
‘This is what broke in from the collapsed front line?! The combined forces on the front line are fighting these things?!’ He suddenly felt that the previous encounters with Blood Tide Monsters were child’s play. If shadow and Evil Shadow were the unpredictable horrors, then the gray unknown creature before him represented overwhelming power and despair.
‘That thing… too fast, and it can fly!’
Before he could finish his thought, Yu Hong’s expression dramatically changed, he lifted the huge wooden shield in front of him.
Boom!!
At the same time, another loud bang shattered the observation window in the heavy door completely.
A gray-white spike stabbed a full meter into the room.
Then the spike, when it was just over four inches away from Yu Hong, stabbed the air and retracted swiftly, returning to the creature outside the door.
“We can’t keep going like this, or the gate will be completely smashed! Hiding is utterly useless!”
Yu Hong’s heart raced as he made a split-second decision and dashed to the front door, pulling it open.
Raise shield!
“Kill!!!”
With a roar of fury, he sprinted at full speed, leaping to the ground like a heavy black rhino, brutally charging towards the unknown grey creature outside the door.
If the opponent really was a Blood Tide Monster, or some kind of mutated creature, then the basic biological characteristics should still apply. In a confrontation with wild animals, one must burst out with overwhelming force to let it understand that a life-and-death struggle would only bring pain and force it to retreat.
One step out of the gate, and Yu Hong finally saw what the grey creature was.
It was a bald, bizarre bird with two rows of small red eyes.
Its body was grey and white, and without a feather in sight, yet it was capable of the exaggerated speed just witnessed.
Under the skin of the monster bird was a constant undulating movement of small bulges, as if many things were moving rapidly within its flesh.
Upon seeing Yu Hong charging out, it let out a frog-like bizarre croak, and then one wing swung down, striking Yu Hong’s huge wooden shield.
The bird had a slender body over a meter tall, with a wingspan of four meters. When its wing came down like a white shadow slicing through the air, it made a shrieking sound as if it were a sharp and pointed knife fiercely chopping toward Yu Hong’s huge wooden shield.
Yu Hong’s body was also filled with Blood Tide, veins on his face showing fiercely as he roared and charged forward.
“Aaargh!!!”
Bang!!!
A loud crash.
The giant wooden shield bent inward on the spot, as the bird’s wing and the alloy plate of Yu Hong’s white bear suit collided head-on, evenly matched and giving no quarter.
“Go to hell!!” Yu Hong gripped the Wolf Fang Club in his other hand and swung it down fiercely!
His superhuman strength, combined with the thick black Wolf Fang Club and its sharp black spikes, tore through the air and smashed onto the bird’s neck.
At the same time, another wing of the bird also swung down from the opposite side, heavily hitting Yu Hong’s left shoulder.
Both had chosen to attack with their other hand in a sneaky assault.
Bang bang!!!
Two muffled sounds almost occurred simultaneously.
Yu Hong and the bird were both hit by each other’s monstrous strength, tossed sideways through the air.
Yu Hong rolled several meters to the right, crashing against the wall before coming to a stop.
Meanwhile, the bird’s neck turned at an awkward angle, and it fell heavily out of the enclosure, rolling several times on the grass.
Both struggled to their feet with difficulty.
“Die!!!” Yu Hong lifted the Wolf Fang Club, throwing all his energy into swinging it at the bird.
Then, as the Wolf Fang Club became a black blur in mid-air flying towards its target, he drew his reinforced pistol from his lower back and fired a burst at the bird.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!!!
The rapid gunfire sounded like miniature explosions. With each shot, a small ring of white smoke blew out of the muzzle of the gun in Yu Hong’s hand.
Large-caliber bullets flew out at twice the speed of sound and thunderously struck the bird and the ground beside it.
Four shots, two hit their mark, exploding into two plumes of grey and white blood on the bird and creating fist-sized blood holes.
Screech!!!
The bird screamed in agony, flapping its wings and soaring into the air, avoiding the Wolf Fang Club and quickly disappearing into the misty woods.
Grey and white blood rained down beneath it, quickly corroding the grass, forming black pits of various sizes.
“Fuck!” Watching the bird escape, Yu Hong gasped for breath, standing still to quickly relieve the strain on his over-exerted body.
He had really given it his all just now, holding nothing back, even the Inner Qi he had just cultivated was used up in the outburst.
Only that had allowed him to slightly overpower the bird in their collision.
This left Yu Hong, who had been feeling somewhat confident after his breakthrough, with his slight arrogance shattered to pieces in an instant.
Too weak!
I’m damn too weak!! How can I be this weak!!?
He slammed his fist into Stone Wall Mountain with fury, rock dust flying, leaving a shallow dent.
“Just any random monster can leave me in such a sorry state! If two came at once, wouldn’t I be torn apart!?” Experiencing this setback, Yu Hong felt that the intensity of his training was not sufficient!
He had just been tormented by an Evil Shadow Language Person, and now this monster bird with exaggerated strength appeared!
This environment simply left no room for survival.
Wait! Over by the post office…
He suddenly remembered the loud bang he had heard earlier, which seemed to be some sort of explosion coming from the direction of the post office.
If he had the strength to spare, he’d definitely go to support Old Li, but with his Inner Qi exhausted and one shoulder sore and painful, he had no strength left.
Finally, after glancing at Qiu Yanxi and her daughter to make sure they were safe, hiding inside their wooden hut not daring to make a sound, Yu Hong quickly returned to the now broken gate of the cave to check his injuries.