Chapter 173: Showing Off Might
“Keep it for now, it’s not like it’s missing those two ounces of meat. Does the chick show any signs of mutation?”
Su Huan asked as he walked forward.
“Somewhat, it’s growing faster, muscles are more compact, but to see the specific difference clearly, it needs a few more days to grow bigger.” Huang Hai stepped ahead of Su Huan and opened the car door.
His assistant Xiao Wang was over there feeding the chicks.
Not the fluffy yellow kind from memory, but a warm orange color, and each one was the size of a palm, blinking their big eyes at them, showing no fear of strangers at all.
Su Huan’s fingertip sparked with electricity, and he gently poked one.
The chick actually flapped its wings and glided away.
The hen behind them, hearing the noise, puffed up its feathers and charged toward the carriage bridge door, flapping its wings.
It glared fiercely at Su Huan.
“Interesting. Later, have Xiao Ba weld a few cages to limit their activity area, so it doesn’t turn into chaos.”
Su Huan smiled.
The chicks had indeed mutated, but far from reaching Tier 1 level. Perhaps after a few more iterations, they could raise Tier 1 mutated chickens, which would add a stable channel for acquiring materials.
“By the way, take good care of those two iron-eating trees; they might be very useful later.”
After Su Huan finished speaking, he led the group to carriage number 9.
While the train conductor was studying the train’s next evolution direction, two temporarily assembled core teams had fully bared their fangs.
Qu Hang still roamed outside the convoy, quickly shuttling between rooftops and buildings.
He didn’t look down at the convoy’s position below but firmly locked onto the convoy’s direction of travel, appearing just right in front of the convoy each time to clear some trouble.
Suddenly, Qu Hang paused his steps and changed direction, dropping prone to the ground.
His sniper rifle also appeared in his hands.
The licking rabbit following closely behind knew he had spotted the target and stayed silent, quietly crouching at the corner of the wall to assess the surroundings, preventing any sudden danger while Qu Hang focused on the target.
“Mutated beast nest in the large supermarket on the left front, already alerted, will encounter us in thirty seconds.”
After observing for a moment, Qu Hang shouldered his rifle and stood up, using the wind to pass the information to He Jie below.
“Received, continue advancing.”
He Jie’s thick voice surged up from below.
Qu Hang frowned.
This wasn’t his ability at all; it was purely He Jie that bastard shouting it out with his powerful lungs.
It could be heard clearly within several hundred meters.
This easily exposed the sniper’s position. Although they were facing only brainless mutated beasts, this practice made him feel very insecure.
He signaled to the licking rabbit, stepped on the edge of the rooftop, and leaped down.
His body was buoyed by the wind, slowing his descent, then he tucked and rolled into the balcony of another building.
The licking rabbit behind him didn’t have his exquisite technique.
It estimated the distance and directly sprinted and jumped over.
In the lead personnel carrier of the advancing convoy below, He Jie spat out the cigarette butt from his mouth, gestured to the vehicles behind to continue advancing, then pointed his thick finger at the “Huahan Supermarket” sign ahead, “Park the vehicle across the doorway.”
“Yes!”
The soldier driving the vehicle responded crisply.
Low roars like warnings were already coming from inside the supermarket.
A pitch-black gluttonous pig over a meter tall with fangs in its mouth waddled out from the supermarket.
Before it could even see the situation clearly, it was sent flying by the extended and widened armored personnel carrier.
It angrily tried to get up, but was nailed to the ground by a burst of 12.7mm armor-piercing rounds.
Bullets of this caliber would make even carbon-based lifeforms tremble, let alone cement pillars that would shake three times from one hit.
The gluttonous pig, not even Tier 1, was killed on the spot.
The personnel carrier was perfectly positioned across the front of the supermarket. He Jie’s thick arms supported the sides of the personnel carrier roof as he leaped out directly, then pulled out two heavy machine guns from inside. Without using the armored vehicle for support, he held one in each hand, braced on his hip bones, and unleashed firepower on the surging group of gluttonous pigs.
Lv2 “Dual-Wield Guns” steadily activated, shoulder muscles bulging.
Under the two ammunition belts’ slaughter, the narrow supermarket doorway became a slaughterhouse, with roars and wails rising together.
The convoy behind didn’t slow down at all and continued charging forward.
He Jie kept calculating the remaining ammo in the two heavy machine guns.
He casually tossed the smoking heavy machine guns to the soldiers beside him.
Without him saying anything, two soldiers cooperated to remove the scorching gun barrels and swap on loaded ammunition belts. At the same time, soldiers on the other side had lifted prepared heavy machine guns into He Jie’s hands.
Four professional soldiers plus four heavy machine guns serving him alone produced enormous results.
A Tier 1 “firepower specialist” killed two Tier 1 gluttonous pigs and fourteen ordinary gluttonous pigs in one minute.
“Clean the battlefield, dismantle high-value materials!”
As the gunfire ceased, He Jie ordered.
Several assault troopers rushed out quickly to set up defenses around, while collectors advanced with military daggers to dismantle mutated beast materials.
Five minutes later, the personnel carrier was loaded with a pile of bloody fangs, pig trotters, and other materials.
The personnel carrier continued forward, catching up to the slowly moving convoy ahead.
They had just used flamethrowers to drive away a group of iron-eating trees.
The two armored personnel carriers drove side by side.
He Jie poked half his body out of the vehicle, pulling out a freshly color-printed paper map, prepared by Xiao Zhao and the others before departure.
Bracing against the wind, he said gravely, “Old Liang, the automobile manufacturing plant has front and back doors. Later, I need to go to the back to grab people; you and Xiao Ba kill in from the front to give them enough pressure.”
Liang Kuan leaned his body outward, saw the front door position on the map, and said gruffly, “Understood.”
His voice rumbled like two giant stones colliding.
It made He Jie’s chest cavity itch slightly from the vibration.
Soon, the automobile manufacturing plant covering 3 square kilometers appeared ahead of the convoy.
The originally wide driveway was completely blocked by abandoned vehicles; through the gaps, a tall welded steel door could still be seen.
Three-meter-high walls had an additional one-meter-high steel plate installed on top, angled outward to prevent zombies from climbing.
But fortifications of this level couldn’t stop Tier 1 zombies at all. The real defense line was the iron-eating trees planted around the factory perimeter, each with piles of discarded metal stacked at their bases.
Clearly artificially induced to the wall’s edge.
As the convoy turned, a warning voice came from the horn, “This is Shun’an No.1 Automobile Manufacturing Plant. Incoming convoy, please stop advancing. You are not welcome here. If you continue forward, we will take compulsory measures…”
“Bang!”
The driving soldier drew his handgun and precisely shot off the horn and camera.
“Talks too much!” Liang Kuan in the vehicle sneered, “Prepare for battle!”
With the order given, the convoy suddenly accelerated, but the target wasn’t the iron gate stacked behind abandoned vehicles in the distance; instead, it charged straight at the wall.
Who fights a proper battle by going through the door!
Soldiers poked out from the car windows, loaded grenades onto their assault rifles, and fired two rounds at the wall ahead.
“Boom boom—”
After the brief explosions, the wall collapsed with a roar. Iron-eating trees on both sides had most of their branches torn, uprooting with cries and fleeing to the side.
“Bang!”
The armored personnel carrier relied on its tough armor to charge straight into the rubble.
It forcibly created a portal five meters long and wide.
Metal barricades behind the wall flew into the air, then were shoved aside. A burly figure kicked open the car door and dragged a hundred-plus-jin metal shield toward the central building.
The entire automobile manufacturing center had six factory buildings in a long strip shape, squarely in the center, though surrounded by many man-made barriers.
Among the crisscrossing fortifications, there were many bloodstains.
An organized counterattack battle had occurred here, though the corpses had been cleared by survivors.
Distinctive gunshots rang out from the buildings.
Liang Kuan’s burly figure dodged bullets with agile speed and began sprinting toward the foremost building.
“Bang!”
The hundred-plus-jin shield was thrown like a boomerang, embedding deeply into the roller shutter window.
Liang Kuan was like a tiger released from its cage; within a breath, he reached downstairs, leaped up, and kicked the edge of the metal shield with both feet. Man and shield tore through the roller shutter curtain and glass, landing inside the automobile manufacturing plant.
The method was violently outrageous.
The effect was ten thousand times better than He Jie had anticipated!
Which commander wouldn’t like such a fierce subordinate?
He Jie was pumped with adrenaline and roared, “Follow up! Follow up!”
Soldiers had just gotten out of the vehicles when scattered firepower upstairs was pinpoint-cleared by Qu Hang’s sniper rifle. The entire automobile manufacturing plant became a plucked duck waiting for them to feast.
He Jie shouldered two heavy machine guns and led the charge, red light glowing, quickly following through the breach left by Liang Kuan.
This battle was getting smoother and smoother!
In the automobile manufacturing plant’s monitoring room, a cry of alarm rang out.
“Are these damn regular army?!”
At this moment, their screen was still frozen on the scene of the personnel carrier crashing through the wall.
A square-faced middle-aged man stepped forward to examine the last frame of the surveillance closely, tugged at his shirt collar, and said confidently.
“They’re definitely not regular army. What regular army follows up with fire trucks? And you know our regular army’s style—no warning and just charge in? These are absolutely a gang of thugs. I’ve seen plenty of such armed forces when doing business in South Asia. Old Yuan, trust me!”
The man called Old Yuan had swollen bags under his eyes; the cigarette in his hand trembled slightly. “We’ve been brothers for so many years, bunkmates even. How could I not trust you? The key is our few guns can’t stop them at all.”
“Can’t stop them and still have to! If we let these guys in, we’re all done! It’s the apocalypse now—who knows what they want?!”
Wan Hao waved his arms as he spoke.
Old Yuan crushed it viciously with his toe. “We’ll do as you say. Us old brothers will fight once more. We’ve got over two hundred evolvers at least. Last night we were talking about making a name for ourselves—can’t shrink back at the first hurdle today.”
Wan Hao laughed boldly. “Let’s go. Back then with the six of us, I knew you’d make it big. Not everyone has that ruthless streak.”
Old Yuan shook his head. “You big tycoon, don’t make fun of me. The villas you bought for your mistresses could buy my entire factory. If you hadn’t come to help me, you wouldn’t be trapped here. Sigh…”
Wan Hao waved dismissively, unconcerned. “Don’t say that—”
A muffled thud from below interrupted their conversation.
The whole building shook.
Wan Hao frowned. “They’re probably blasting open the factory buildings. We need to act fast.”
Bang bang knocking sounded at the door.
A worker burst in and shouted in panic, “Boss Yuan, Boss Wan, the people outside have broken in! They have snipers and killed several of ours!”
The two were startled. “Broken in? What are you guys doing? So many evolvers and you can’t beat them?”
They hurried downstairs and saw a burly man shouldering a shield leap four or five meters high.
He maneuvered deftly inside the factory building, swinging his shield casually.
Their carefully arranged several tons of metal vehicles flew out trailing white smoke.
The fastest evolver among the subordinates ran frantically, almost leaving afterimages. Taking advantage of the big man’s attack gap, he charged with a dagger, only to have his neck locked by a fan-like giant hand, struggling futilely like a chick.
And that man had now locked his gaze on the two of them.
A pair of eyes gleaming sharply.
The terrifying aura made them feel like they had fallen into an ice cave.
“Old Yuan, run!”
Wan Hao roared, whipping up two airflows into blades that swept toward the man, then turned and ran back.
Liang Kuan casually slammed the man to the ground, rendering him combat ineffective.
If he hadn’t held back, the man would have been smashed into a puddle of mud.
Looking at the direction Wan Hao and the other fled, Liang Kuan took a deep breath and hurled the shield in his hand straight at the suspension bridge corridor under their feet.
“Bang!”
The steel plate-welded corridor supports were severed and collapsed with a boom.
But Wan Hao and the other were also evolvers, not about to be killed by a direct fall. At the critical moment, they jumped to the other side and fled rearward in disarray.
“Boom!”
The side window was blasted open again by a high explosive grenade.
A group of armed soldiers stormed in, smoke grenades and flashbangs flying, followed by megaphone shouts of slogans.
“Everyone, hands on head and squat down!”
“Drop weapons and no kill!”
“Think of your families—don’t struggle in vain!”
Hit by this routine, the workers were stunned.
They were just skilled workers, not skilled bandits.
Even bandits would kneel against this group of well-trained elite soldiers.
The same evolutionary ability had starkly different effects in ordinary people versus soldiers—not closing the gap but widening it into an abyss.
Hearing the loud and familiar shouts, most people reflexively put hands on heads and squatted.
Watching rows of tactical boots march past.
Some workers even teared up excitedly.
“This way!”
Old Yuan tugged Wan Hao, and the two climbed upstairs.
Having roamed the business world for years, they were resolute men. After confirming He Jie and company weren’t regular army, they were set on resisting.
Now that resistance failed, they chose to flee.
Who knew if surrendering would lead to being shot?
Especially Wan Hao—he had seen such things happen before the apocalypse!
