Chapter 34: Path Of Fury
After Zhou Chu took over command of the squad, the action style became even more aggressive. Seven modified mice were released to scout and warn ahead, and the young monk only needed to identify the direction and lead the way.
The team’s forward speed increased dramatically, while the captain trailed behind, looking relaxed like he was on a sightseeing trip enjoying the scenery.
The monotonous trek through the forest lasted for over half an hour. Apart from the harsh natural environment, the team encountered almost no dangers or obstacles. They didn’t even encounter any large beasts, only birds and various insects. In the layer of fallen leaves underfoot, soft-bodied creatures or lizard crawlers were hidden…
Yuan Zhu adapted very well to this forest environment. Even without mice warning him nearby, he could always sense ambushes from poisonous insects, leeches, and poisonous snakes in advance and quietly avoid them.
“Why are there no traces of wild animals in this forest?” Meng Xi asked aloud. “Young monk, you said you couldn’t find large animals for food at first. But not long ago, you suddenly suffered a beast attack and lost quite a few people, right?”
Ku Cao replied: “That’s right. At first, we could still hunt wild boars, deer, and other animals, but these beasts disappeared one after another in a very short time. About ten days ago, the squad responsible for finding food was suddenly attacked and severely injured by a ferocious beast, with heavy casualties. It was dark at the time, and the beast moved too fast. The survivors didn’t see it clearly, only confirming it had sharp horns. After that, no one wanted to take the risk to go out hunting.”
Zhou Chu commented: “This beast that suddenly appeared is also worth vigilance. It has horns, moves swiftly, and is aggressive. What species is it?”
Yuan Zhu joined the discussion: “Could it be related to that [Yellow Springs] that comes back from the dead?”
Ku Cao shook his head: “I don’t know. I haven’t seen that kind of monster. But a few days ago, before I got separated from my companions, the gathering place was successively attacked by mysterious beasts. Unlike the undead that attacked the Buddhist Kingdom. We were extremely scared at the time and scattered to escape.”
“The situation in this world is a bit complicated, with Buddhism and Yellow Springs. Now a group of ferocious beasts has emerged, rising suddenly under the erosion and spread of Yellow Springs Death Qi?”
The team was getting closer and closer to Ku Cao’s former gathering place. From afar, they could see it was a cliff valley. Not only was there flowing fresh water, but there were also many naturally formed stone caves for people to live in and hide.
The squad approached bit by bit. The air was extremely quiet, the atmosphere oppressive, with not a single flying bird. There were occasional traces of human activity on the ground, along with crude alarm traps that had been triggered. But no one could be seen.
Zhou Chu suddenly became alert and warned aloud: “Everyone, be careful. My mice have sent a warning—there’s movement in the north direction.”
Yuan Zhu raised his gun and aimed: “I sense it too. There are a lot of them, and they’re approaching quickly.”
Because the [Immortal Scripture] acted as interfacing software, his remote control of the mice was stronger than others’, with a wider and clearer sensing range.
At this time, the mice sent back fuzzy information through the mental connection. There were a large number of moving individuals exceeding the safe (pollution) threshold, quickly approaching the squad’s direction. They moved extremely fast and ignored the mice sneaking in the grass. They sped past above them, heading straight for the squad.
Not long after, they could clearly see from a distance with the naked eye what the group of things was that was charging toward them. So the miss shouted a warning: “Stop! Otherwise, we will attack!”
But the group of creatures had no intention of stopping. Instead, they tacitly spread out, vaguely encircling everyone in an arc, preparing for a hunt.
The captain, who had been watching the excitement, reminded them: “These comers are not friendly. Those things are not humans, so no need to harbor kind thoughts.”
Zhou Chu decisively ordered: “Aim, wait for the timing. Don’t fire randomly. Wait until they get a bit closer… Now, open fire! Fire at will!”
The distance kept shortening. Yuan Zhu clearly saw pairs of eyes glowing with eerie green light. Then he saw a group of structurally deformed beasts: wild boars, sika deer, goats, wolves, lynxes… Herbivores and carnivores mixed together, as if they had undergone some kind of pollution and transformation.
Their bodies were twisted and bloated, with deformed muscle overgrowth full of power. The skin under their heads was covered in cracks filled with blinking eyeballs. The monsters’ mouths were universally grown with sharp tusks, bone spurs protruded from the joints of their limbs piercing the skin, and their heads and backs sprouted clusters of sword-leaf-like sharp bone plates… They looked extremely dangerous.
Bang bang bang bang…!
Boom boom boom…!
Zhou Chu took the lead in pulling the trigger. Her marksmanship was very accurate; a three-round burst hit the foremost beast. The high-speed spinning bullets blew off the monster’s skullcap, and a spray of dark green viscous blood exploded in the air, splashing onto nearby vegetation.
Yuan Zhu clearly saw the thing’s brain shatter and fly apart, but this empty-skulled monster didn’t fall. Instead, it continued leading the charge without any deviation in direction, driven by strong obsession.
Bang bang bang…!
He quickly raised his hand and fired at the monster’s front leg. This body seemed divinely assisted; with just a few continuous adjustments of position, he easily mastered the predictive skill of shooting, grasping distance and direction, breaking one of its legs and making it lose balance, tumbling to the ground.
“Roar!”
The black butcher in the rear fired frantically, emptying his magazine at light speed. He roared angrily, threw the firearm on the ground, and then yanked a grenade from his waist.
He was mentally exhilarated and blood surging, his entire right arm muscles tensed, gripping the grenade tightly after pulling the pin, then throwing it out with all his strength.
While he instinctively performed this series of actions, he didn’t notice that inside the uniform he was wearing, countless undetectable transparent threads emerged, piercing into his pores and burrowing into his skin, connecting with his superficial nerves into one body.
As he instinctively made the full-force throw, the clothes on his body further stimulated his bodily functions, assisting him in unleashing power, amplifying action power, adjusting distance and angle, forcefully turning the grenade into the striking effect of a professional pitcher.
Boom!
The metal grenade directly smashed into a deer-like monster’s mouth, shattering its mouthful of sharp teeth and embedding deeply like a cannonball. The deer-headed beast’s head and neck jerked back, nearly flipping over. Before it could remove the foreign object from its mouth, the grenade exploded on the spot, blowing apart that bizarre and ferocious head.
Boom! Boom!
With the butcher taking the lead, Lu Rang, who had emptied his magazine and was fumbling without knowing how to reload, also yelled strangely, pulled the pin on one, and threw it toward the clustered monsters.
After two misses from mistakes, his uniform also drove his body to cooperate with his own consciousness, quickly improving throwing accuracy, with power increasing significantly. In just five grenades, he transitioned rapidly from a novice unable to grasp distance and direction to a veteran pitcher who could accurately hit moving beasts.
Seeing ferocious beasts exploding into clouds of dark green blood mist and shredded meat in his hands, adrenaline surged in his body. An inexplicable stimulation and thrill continuously impacted his brain. He felt no fatigue or fear, his eyes red as he howled madly, wanting to slaughter more.
Compared to Black Uncle and Lu Rang, Bread Girl shrank back directly from excessive fear. She hugged the firearm to her chest, crouching on the ground in a ball, not daring to look up. Instead, the old woman decisively raised her gun and, under the uniform’s assistance, quickly familiarized herself with the firearm’s usage in no time.
A scrawny little old woman who seemed ready to keel over at any moment used standard non-common sense movements, her physical body enduring the recoil, gasping rough breaths near suffocation, firing accurately and quickly, her eyeballs filled with bloodshot veins, blood pressure and heartbeat exceeding the limits for her age.
Her style was so outrageous, like a fierce old bandit granny who had to rob a gold shop one last time before dying to live up to her years.
“Baa baa baa! Baa baa baa!” The old woman’s sheep was also stimulated, breathing in the pervasive gunpowder smoke and bloody smell in the air, bleating madly and wanting to charge over for a feast. Fortunately, the young monk timely throat-locked and tackled it, controlling it with ground techniques.
The two beside Yuan Zhu needed no mention; they quickly adapted to the battle rhythm. They instantly got used to and mastered the uniform’s usage, steadying the gun muzzle accurately, quickly reloading, throwing grenades, turning the fearless charging beasts into piles of still twitching green shredded meat and tissue one wave after another.
Yuan Zhu even added the uniform to the [Immortal Scripture]’s external equipment whitelist, authorizing the game sprite for safety monitoring, receiving the conclusion: ‘Neural interference reinforcement, overall physical quality amplification 40-80%.’
When a person is highly focused and concentrated, they subconsciously form a neural connection with the clothes.
This piece of clothing has no intelligence but can read the host’s thoughts, following the host’s subconscious to change and adapt, ultimately making your wishes come true, allowing your body to quickly adapt and proficiently do one thing, saving a lot of mechanical repetitive training.
For example, in a desperate situation, shooting and throwing grenades—just simple grind—and this clothing becomes part of your nature, helping you quickly master the knack. At the same time, this clothing secretly stimulates the body to secrete hormones, suppressing fear and tension, boosting dopamine… bringing exhilaration and pleasure.
The changes in Yuan Zhu’s body were all under the game sprite’s monitoring.
She deemed this change within the safe range. The pollution contained in the clothing itself had not eroded or transformed Yuan Zhu. He was just using an item with extraordinary properties, not yet at the level of fusion and transformation.
“Roar roar roar!” Meng Xiyue nearby emptied all her magazines, threw away her last pistol, and turned to grab Yuan Zhu’s handgun.
But Yuan Zhu dodged at light speed: “Go to the side, I haven’t had enough fun yet!” With that, he precisely headshot a six-legged wild boar. Then he broke one of its legs, looking at the densely blinking eyeballs on its chest, really wanting to toss a grenade to completely destroy it.
Clearly, it was an assessment investigation of the otherworldly business investment environment, but inexplicably switched to a death space, biohazard mode brutal path. Everyone was now mindlessly killing, dominated by slaughter instincts.
Gunfire, explosions, monster roars mixed into a cacophony. Watching monsters shatter and explode one after another before their eyes, their brains were exceptionally exhilarated—not feeling disgusting or terrifying, but immensely thrilled.
Yuan Zhu’s performance was upper mid-tier among the group, but his kill efficiency was still not as good as Zhou Chu, who had received professional training, or Meng Xi, whose reaction speed was clearly beyond ordinary.
The latter, paired with the uniform, showed reaction speed, computational power, and precision even more exaggerated than Yuan Zhu this ordinary human, making people suspect she had special abilities in this area.
Seeking support: follow-up reading, recommendations, monthly tickets…
