Chapter 503 - Gaze in the Darkness
Chapter 503: Gaze in the Darkness
Once Meng Chao thought of that, he did his best to stretch his limbs. He used the pulses in his muscles to search for the tough and weak spots around him.
Spirit energy gushed out of his pores, and like a radar reflector, it scanned the structure of the ruins around him. It also created a small, virtual ruin in his head.
With the nourishment from the spirit energy, his brain cells worked over their capacity, and his calculation abilities increased by several levels.
He repeatedly created simulations in his head and calculated the results of punching through certain parts of the ruins or kicking down certain steel beams.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ruins in his head collapsed repeatedly, and the broken walls fell like an avalanche once more to crush him into a thin layer of meat.
He remained patient and continued the exercise. He did not spare a single piece of reinforced concrete and did not overlook any crack, even if they looked strange and were so small that no human could possibly pass through them.
Approximately half an hour later, the virtual ruins in his head swayed a little before stabilizing in a precarious position.
‘It’s this place!’
Meng Chao was definitely not the only survivor in the depths of the ruins.
He was calm, but that did not mean that others would not do anything stupid.
Before the overall structure of the ruins changed, Meng Chao swiftly came to his decision. He dislocated 70% of his joints and used the pulses of his muscles to reduce his size to the minimum. Then, like an aquatic dragon lurking in the abyss, he carefully crawled to a crack to near his right leg.
The narrowest part of the crack was only wide enough to fit a fist.
The crack was also filled with broken steel beams and needles, so it looked like a mouth with intersecting fangs.
Normal people would not choose to escape through such a place.
Even if they did, it would be difficult for them to quietly crawl into it without destroying the structure that was barely stable around it.
But Meng Chao could sense fresh air coming out from within the depths of the crack.
He moved through the darkness with everything he had.
When necessary, even if it meant that he had to let broken steel beams exposed from the reinforced concrete cut so deep into his flesh that his bones could be seen, he did not stop.
Soon, he saw rocks blocking the path ahead of thim.
They should be the structure that supported the underground shelter.
Meng Chao looked around. First, he used the gentlest movements to draw two broken I-beams and moved them so that they formed and inverted V on top of the structure.
Then, he placed his palms on the stone that blocked his path. The muscles on his palms started trembling at super high speed. He used Ripple Force to its maximum potential and pushed some spirit energy out of his body into the rock blocking his path.
The rock shattered quietly.
It was still dark ahead of him, but the airflow became much faster.
The structure remained still. It did not collapse.
The ten thousand tons worth of ruins above his head did not fall down either.
Meng Chao sighed in relief and moved past the rock.
At that moment, he was already more than twenty meters deep underground. He was now around five floors below the surface.
The area was affected by the explosion and the ruins pressing down on it. Meng Chao could see broken walls that were at their limit.
But due to the constructors putting into consideration the possibility of zombies and monsters completely taking over the surface when they built this place in the past and that humans might have to hide underground to continue fighting, this shelter was connected to many places and was abnormally sturdy.
Some parts of the floor had collapsed, but an escape tunnel wide enough for an adult was still around. One could crawl into it and escape to a relatively safe space.
Meng Chao slithered forward like a snake through the twisted escape tunnel.
He perked his ears so they worked like a radar. He listened to all the sounds in the area.
First, he heard weeping and screams of pain.
The explosion had not just engulfed the hunting squad and the armed forces from the clubs in the lair.
It also affected the villagers, whose numbers were hundreds of times larger than those of the hunting squad and armed forces combined.
Most of the villagers knew nothing about the Vortex’s scheme. They were just living their normal but difficult lives, and now, while ignorant, they were ruined by the explosion.
The villagers who were not dead yet could not be considered lucky.
The broken walls had squashed their bodies to the point that they were bent out of shape. It was likely they were envious of the people who died painlessly in an instant.
There were flames too.
The super crystal bomb had destroyed all the spirit energy ducts in the building.
And since the villagers were at the bottommost level of society in Dragon City, the spirit energy they could afford had a lot of impurities in it. Hence, it was also the most unstable, most inflammable, and most explosive spirit energy.
Because of it, after the major explosion, all sorts of minor explosions followed it.
Once they subsided, flames traveled everywhere, and they contained chemicals and spirit energy, so they could not be put out with water and foam.
Quite a number of Leprosy Village villagers living nearby came forward to put out the fire.
But in the face of the burning flames, the poisonous smoke, and the ruins that could collapse at any moment, they were helpless. There was nothing they could do without serious firefighting equipment.
They could only do their best to pull away the broken walls at the outermost layer before the flames and explosions completely destroyed the ruins to save some of the survivors.
Then, they would set up barricade tapes to prevent the flames from spreading to other buildings, but that was all they could do.
The huge explosion was the worst disaster Leprosy Village had encountered over the past few decades.
A number of villagers cried, screamed, and shouted in anger. Judging by the sounds, they were about to descend into a frenzy.
Meng Chao could guess even with his toes that the Vortex would use the hunting squad as a scapegoat and trick the villagers who did not know the truth.
For example, it could tell the villagers that the hunting squad from outside did not care about the lives and deaths of the villagers in their quest to capture the robbers and wanted criminals. So, they used destructive, large-scale weapons to attack the place, or something along those lines.
To prevent that, Meng Chao had to crawl out in time and tell the villagers the truth so that the order between the lair and the village would be maintained.
Meng Chao gritted his teeth. He ignored the searing pain in his joints and struggled. In a while, he finally crawled out of the last crack.
And fell into a broken escape tunnel.
He lay sprawled out on the dusty floor and quietly enjoyed the feeling of his cells cheering in joy for regaining freedom.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Through the shrinking of his muscles and tendons, the dislocated joints returned to their place.
Aside from temporary stiffness and slight pain, Meng Chao did not experience other difficulties.
He held Bloody Soul’s hilt and the chains carved with lightning and flame runic symbols. He grinned in the darkness and revealed sharp, pearly-white teeth.
“From now on, I am the hunter!” he said clearly and firmly.
He looked around and saw that he was in a garage full of all sorts of things.
There was a long and narrow corridor going into the distance on the other end.
Since a major explosion had occurred above it, the ground had sunken and the ceiling had become distorted. The thick girders everywhere had cracks or jutted out. Bone-chilling creaks could be heard all the time.
It sounded like the place would collapse the next second, and he would be buried by ten thousand tons worth of ruins.
Even though the flames, smoke, and poisonous fog were all going upwards, some of the heat came down through the cracks.
It caused Meng Chao to be unable to help but think that soon, the rebars and girders supporting the building would melt and pour down onto him.
The environment was really bad. Hence, the villagers who had been staying in it had fled long ago.
The Black Soul Meng Chao wore had practically been torn to shreds by the explosion. Aside from a tactical bag made from a Hell Beast’s pelt, his sabers and chains, he could hide nothing else on his body.
He searched quickly in the garage, but he did not find any weapons or ammunition. However, he did find some dirty cloaks that the lair citizens often wore.
He also found half a box of steel balls. They could be used as bearings.
He measured their weight on his palm and found that their weight and sturdiness were quite suitable for him. They could be used to cover up the lack of harvesting knives.
Meng Chao put on the cloak to hide Bloody Soul, the chains, and the steel balls. Then, he touched his face and became certain that he was now so badly battered and wounded after crawling through the ruins and smoke that even his parents would not recognize him.
Then, he pulled the cloak tightly around himself and staggered forward in the direction of the loudest noise.
He went down two more floors before seeing people. They were all villagers living there.
The explosion had not reached them, but the impact waves had created a deafening sound wave that rammed into the people so badly that some of them had blood coming out of their orifices and suffered from concussions. They had unfocused eyes that were wide open and stood in corners like puppets.
Some people had received huge blows to their organs and were curled up like prawns on the ground while vomiting their guts out. A number of them were vomiting blood.
There were also some who were running around like headless chickens and looking panicked.
They were all normal citizens, and the underground shelter was their only home.
They knew that the building was about to collapse, but some of them still wanted to test their luck. They believed that they were deep underground, so they could definitely persevere. Besides, they did not know where they should go if they were to leave the place.
But even if they were willing to leave, they would not be able to part with their belongings. It didn’t matter that most of their “belongings” were trash thrown away by the lair citizens since to them, they were priceless treasures.
For a period of time, the sounds of vomiting, crying, sighing, shouting, and pulling made Meng Chao agitated.
He hid his eyes under the shadow of the cloak and swept his gaze over the villagers.
He saw children with sharp ears holding dirty dolls. Their faces were as dirty as those of the dolls.
He also saw elderly folks covered in scales. Their skulls were deformed to the point that they looked like reptiles. They could not bear leaving the place, so they sat in front of their homes and wept silently.
Other people stood around like black bears. They were giants who weighed around 250 kg and had fists, which looked like iron hammers. But they did not know who were the criminals who caused the explosion, so they did not know at whom they should vent their anger.
Meng Chao also saw a man who had four arms. He was tall and thin and held a pile of cans in his arms. They were all made of earthworms, sandworms, aquatic monster scales and organs, the bone powder from Demonic Halberd Pigs and Iron-armored Rhinoceroses, and all sorts of monster flesh and leftovers of the lowest quality.
It was the crudest form of synthetic food, and even the normal citizens living in Blessed Heavenly Garden seldom ate it. Most of them would process this sort of stuff and turn it into feed.
But the man carefully and greedily insisted on grabbing as many cans as he could from his home, which was about to collapse.
Unfortunately, things did not work out as he wanted. A neighbor crashed into him while panicking, and all the cans he held in his arms fell on the floor, then rolled to a corner with loud clunking sounds.
The four-armed, thin man let out a wail full of despair. He quickly bent down to pick up the cans, not caring whether the place would collapse in the next second and be reduced to ruins.
The sight made Meng Chao sigh.
The people’s deformities were not something they had gotten by themselves. The different appearances also did not prevent them from possessing normal people’s thoughts and feelings.
The villagers were also humans, so Meng Chao should protect his comrades from Earth and citizens of Dragon City!
He squatted down and helped the four-armed man pick up a synthetic food can that had rolled to his feet.
He pulled his cloak tighter around himself and walked to him silently.
Then, a thought rose to his mind. It was only then that he found that he had sensed something really uncomfortable when he squatted down just then.
It seemed like something had stabbed his hand when it came out from beneath the cloak.
It was a gaze.
It came from the darkness in the corner ahead of him and shone with a red light.
It was Bloody Slaughter Gao Yang’s gaze!