Chapter Ninety-Six: The Duel Grounds

Chapter Ninety-Six: The Duel Ground

Liu Chang fled at once. He was not only afraid of the soldiers opening fire and the insects swarming after him; there was another reason as well. He was afraid the synthetic men trapped by the insect horde would come to their senses.

After all, the predators he had drawn here were not especially advanced. The greatest threat to him, the synthetic men, could be delayed by them, but not harmed in any real way. So he ran hard, fearing that once those monsters shook off the swarm and found his trail, they would be on him in the blink of an eye. In matters of speed, he was no match for them at all. His only advantages now were his familiarity with this forest and his hard-earned understanding of the danger animals posed. He had experienced all that himself, and because of it he also knew far better how to use animals to defend himself.

As for everything else, he could only hope that the commander’s recklessness and the barbaric stupidity of the gene-bred men would bring him some unexpected good fortune.

So he raced through the jungle without pause and vanished into its depths.

On the other side, the massed soldiers, upon the arrival of the flying insects, also found themselves in a living hell.

The beetles that came hurtling in could do no real damage to the synthetic men, but to ordinary soldiers they were a true catastrophe.

The sky was blanketed with tiny beetles, each one venomous. A single bite would numb a patch of flesh; ten or eight of them at once could kill a healthy young man with poison. And the soldiers facing them now were not dealing with ten or eight. Tens of thousands of beetles left them with no direction from which to strike. The smarter soldiers dropped their rifles and fled the instant they saw the swarm. The slower ones were quickly overtaken by the droning tide, and beneath the countless bites they turned instantly into a sheet of blood.

With nothing more than this simple insect swarm, the so-called regular armed soldiers were easily scattered. Faced with an enemy they had never fought before, these inexperienced men revealed the panic humans feel in the face of the unknown. Some ran screaming with their heads in their hands. Some, once surrounded, tried in despair to shoot into the black cloud, but all to no avail.

Against creatures like this, if they came in such numbers, a flamethrower might have been a good answer. But no one here had been issued such cumbersome gear, so unsuitable for urban combat, because their mission had been to hunt down two people in the city. No one had imagined the battlefield would end up shifting here.

And so the formation was instantly shattered. Some fled, some died, and the scene descended into utter chaos, like a slaughterhouse from the underworld.

In the uproar, because they had remained farther from the troops, the hawk-nosed woman and her aide escaped disaster. Once they had put the swarm behind them, they found the three synthetic men who had also shaken off the insects. With lingering fear, the woman led the remaining four people away from this place of trouble.

"Damn it. A little trap nearly wiped out our entire force. Just how dangerous is this jungle?" the aide muttered after they had put some distance between themselves and the swarm. "With so many soldiers dead, those deserters definitely won’t go back to report either. Count the losses, and we’ve really botched this one."

"Yes. Even if we catch that man now, we’ll still be facing trial when we return," the woman said with a worried expression. "And besides, we still don’t even know where he’s hiding."

"If that’s the case, then maybe we should also..." the deputy began, then lowered his voice. "Maybe we should abandon the mission and run too. With your abilities, it would be very hard for the military to capture us. Anyway, that man..."

Bang!

Before he could finish, a fist came crashing down with terrifying speed and smashed into his head. The force of the blow split his skull apart in a single strike, cutting off his voice in an instant. Brain matter sprayed everywhere, and the headless body flew more than ten meters before slamming into a tree and falling to the ground.

"What are you doing?" The woman screamed when she saw the synthetic men beside her suddenly lash out and smash her aide’s head to pieces. "What are you doing? Didn’t Zhao Zhuo tell you that you were to obey my command on this mission? What the hell do you beasts think you’re doing?"

Her eyes reddened as she looked at the brain matter splattered across the ground. Clearly, she and the tall aide had been on very good terms.

"Mission... abandon... die..." The three synthetic men seemed not to hear her roar. At the same time, all three revealed ferocious expressions, and their vicious eyes fixed on her.

"No, I didn’t say abandon it! No!" Feeling those three savage gazes, the hawk-nosed woman was instantly chilled to the bone. Terrified that these monsters might not understand her words and do the same to her, she hurriedly waved both hands and shouted, "I didn’t say abandon it! Do you understand? I did not!"

At her words, the three synthetic men gradually withdrew their ferocity and then stood there blankly again, like three posts of wood.

Seeing them grow still, the woman let out a breath of relief and then sighed helplessly. "Just how many hard-coded commands did Zhao Zhuo cram into your heads? Why did you suddenly understand that phrase?"

After sighing, she turned and walked back toward the direction where the aide’s body had been flung. She found it, stood in silence for a few seconds to mourn him, and then, fearing the bloodshed might attract even more trouble, left the area.

Leading the three monsters behind her, the hawk-nosed woman searched for Liu Chang’s trail like a hunting hound, while Liu Chang in turn kept creating trouble for her.

The jungle was dangerous. Afraid of getting lost, Liu Chang dared not venture too deeply, and he dared not slow down either, so he kept circling along the forest’s edge.

Because he was slower than Liu Chang, the woman, even while guiding the three synthetic men and doing everything she could to hurry, still could not catch even a shadow of the man ahead.

Thus the two chased and fled, and in the blink of an eye the afternoon was gone.

Those few hours also gave the hawk-nosed woman a full taste of the jungle’s terror. In just one afternoon, she came close to death several times: blood flukes burrowed into her body, vines hidden in branches attacked her by surprise, some nameless venomous insect that emerged from the ground stung her ankle, and once she nearly had half her head sliced away by a strange animal so well concealed it looked like dead wood.

A single afternoon of pursuit left her bruised and battered, exhausted to the point of collapse. If the three synthetic men had not been with her, she would already have died several times over.

Liu Chang was no better off. During his flight, he also encountered danger many times. Fortunately, his precise calculation ability was still intact. Combined with luck that was not too bad, it allowed him to survive to dusk.

But dusk was already his limit. The jungle was hard enough to cross by day; at night, the hope of survival would be even slimmer. Liu Chang knew he could not drag this out any longer. If he did not force a decisive battle now, he was certain he would not endure this long black night.

And after fleeing all this way, he had already made up his mind: the duel would take place at another place he knew well, among the spider nests he had just discovered. He thought that perhaps those spiders, which could even trap centipedes, might bring an unexpected surprise to those low-intelligence synthetic men...

And so on.