Chapter Ninety-Eight: Night Vision

The big gun held five rounds at a time. Apart from the one he had just fired, those four were all the bullets he had left, and Liu Chang emptied them all in one continuous burst.

He had done that for a reason. Although the gene-composite humans had slowed down, those beasts were still enormous—an emaciated camel is still larger than a horse—and in speed they still had the edge over him, making them hard to hit. On top of that, the constant aerial attacks from the spiders above made shooting even harder.

So of those four shots, two were fired simply to seal off their escape routes.

Even under that sky-and-earth of webwork, only two bullets struck the synth-human bodies, but they caused enormous trouble: one punched a clean hole through a chest and sent him crashing to the ground; the other hit a thigh, knocking the other one off-balance so he tumbled down as well. Seeing their two prey lie in the undergrowth, the canopy spiders sprang to action. They dropped from the trees in waves, pouring spider silk over the pair and charging, one batch after another, like fearless suicide commandos—never giving the synthetic men a single chance to stand.

In no time, both became wrapped into something like silkworm cocoons, and no matter how much strength they had, they could only writhe helplessly.

As Liu Chang saw this while running, he finally understood why, a month earlier, that man Ma Lu—who had blundered into the spider jungle and was trapped by incoming waves of spiders until he was wound up as a cocoon—had gone into that wild, bitter roar before he died. Even with every ounce of strength, he had no place to use it, until he was strangled to death by being buried alive in silk.

Seeing those two synthetics now in a noose, like a turtle in a jar, Liu Chang knew they were done. There were a hundred ways the spiders could deal with them next.

Even so, although the immediate threat was gone, his heart still would not settle. After taking care of the spiders nearby, he turned back along the path he had taken and looked for the woman with the hooked nose. If she were not neutralized, Liu Chang could not find peace.

After all the chasing and running, he already knew exactly who had the ability to track him. If he did not kill her, there was no telling how many more would come with her next time.

In truth, escaping this time already felt like an extreme stroke of luck. If he ever faced that “superman” type of synthetic again, he would rather die than go near it.

So capturing that woman became his top priority. Three synthetics and an army unit were already in custody. This ringleader could not be allowed to escape.

He doubled back by the same route, but where he had fired earlier there was no sign of her now. He could guess she had sensed the danger and fled at once.

He hurried after her, and to his odd amusement, after only a few steps he found her. The moment he appeared, the woman did not even flinch—her body was already stuck fast to a web.

“Ha,” Liu Chang said with a bitter laugh, looking at her arm hanging in the silk. He glanced over at the spiders that had not yet reached them. “I was going to chase you down and kill you. It looks like I won’t need to. Leave you here, and those spiders will handle it.”

He hated her so deeply. Because of her, Xiao Jing had been taken, her life hanging by a thread; because of her, he had fled into this death jungle and nearly died a dozen times, and his own face bones had been shattered by the synthetics—half-crushed, and even if the wounds ever healed, his face was ruined forever. Everything she caused him to endure. After living through that, no one can feel any affection for the enemy before them.

He lifted his foot as if to kick her entire body into the web so the rushing spiders could tear at her, then halted himself mid-motion. Too cruel—that was not for her to bear. Compared to Zhao Zhuo, who was behind all this, she was merely a tool, a subordinate. And he could never forget the last look in the eyes of a woman he once saved in this place. So he lowered his foot and drew his dagger.

“Tell me where you abducted the little girl, and I’ll give you a quick end,” he said, pressing the blade to her throat.

“Otherwise,” he continued, his voice hard as steel, “those spiders will show you what hell really is. They will not kill you quickly. They will numb your body first, then puncture little holes in your flesh, lay their eggs there, and once the baby spiders hatch, they will feed on you. Then you’ll understand how pleasant my single cut would have been.”

The hooked-nosed woman swallowed painfully, and her throat worked before any words came.
“Don’t think you can kill yourself by biting your tongue. Li Qingshui told me those tricks won’t kill you instantly—you still have to enjoy the spider banquet.”

“Speak quickly,” Liu Chang said, his ears straining. He could already hear the last, desperate cries of the gene-composite humans behind them, sounds drained of all strength.

“Don’t kill me,” she blurted. “I’ll lead you to the girl. I’m the only one who knows where she is, and I know a lot of other useful things too. Even if you kill me, the military still has other trackers. But if you spare me and let me join you, my sense of smell can help us track in reverse.”

When she said that, she saw him weigh the choice and pressed on. “You have no reason not to believe me. You must have heard what kind of temper Zhao Zhuo has. Tell me—do I still have any place to go back to?”

At that moment the synthetics let out one final roar. Then a flood of spider force poured out from there, hundreds leaping from the ground and surging toward them in a dark, rolling wave.

“Fine,” Liu Chang said abruptly. “You’ve convinced me. Do you have any fire on you?” He turned, checking the nearest spiders already at the edge of his vision. “Come on—fast. Do you?”

“I don’t, I don’t smoke,” she cried, terrified, as more spiders leapt. “And even if I had a lighter, I couldn’t light anything right now. Do something!”

“There’s no other way,” Liu Chang said. He kicked one attacking spider away, then drew his dagger and slashed across the woman’s forearm. Blood fountained; he severed half her arm clean off from the webbing, leaving the rest stuck there for good. He scooped up the gushing officer and ran toward the edge of the forest.

As he ran, the pursuing spiders were slower than him. Outside the spider jungle, they had no chance of catching anything that could run several times faster than they could, let alone two people. In Liu Chang’s eyes, webs were obstacles to dodge, and the convoluted terrain of the forest meant nothing to his precise calculating mind. Holding the officer close, he did not lose speed. In moments, he had shaken off the bulk of the pack and, as he had escaped once before, headed toward Zhengzhou City.

This time he ran several times faster than before. Before long he crossed the jungle boundary and reached the relatively safe world beyond.

“Blood… stop it,” the officer with the severed arm groaned weakly in his arms. “Help me stop it or I’ll bleed out.”

“Mm.” Liu Chang glanced at her as her face turned waxy with blood loss. He set her down, tore a strip of cloth, and tied it tight around her arm to stop the flow.

“That’s enough for now,” he said. “You’ve got strong vitality; you won’t die from this.”

He pointed to his own face, wrapped in bandages like a mummy. “First we find Xiao Jing, then we find a doctor. Neither of us will be badly off for long.”

“Mm.” She looked at the fresh wounds on his face and nodded. “Xiao Jing—is that the girl’s name?”

“It is,” Liu Chang said. He shifted and looked up into the black sky, his one eye catching the dark. “She is my kin.”

“You are a vision-type mutant?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he answered, helping her stand. “You’re a scent-type mutant, right?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “My sense of smell is over a thousand times sharper than a normal human’s. I can track ordinary people across a long distance with ease.”

“What’s your name?”

“Zhe Zhe He.”

“That’s a delicate name,” Liu Chang said, brushing her shoulder. “I expected something rougher, more hard-edged.”

“Mm,” she replied, and led the way with hard realism in her eyes.

They headed back the way they had come to the same neighborhood from which Liu Chang had fled. Though the sky had darkened completely, One-Eye could still see clearly ten meters ahead. He noticed, and could not help but feel a flicker of joy, that his night vision had improved compared to before—whether from his eye, the injury, or a second mutation. It was the only cheerful thing those days had offered.

With that small comfort, he allowed He Zhizhi, the hooked-nosed woman, to lead him into an underground parking garage they had once escaped through, and outside he saw two soldiers posted at the entrance.

“That’s it,” the officer said, pointing.

“Mm.” Liu Chang nodded behind her, then knocked her down with one palm.

After that he primed his crossbow and slipped forward in silence. A small team of ordinary soldiers, asleep and unprepared in the middle of the night, posed almost no challenge for Liu Chang. He shot the two sentries at the gate with crossbow bolts, then used the night’s cover to slip inside.

From a rifle lying near the entrance, he swept through the garage and fired into the interior at ten soldiers.

With bursts of staccato fire, once the magazine was empty, none of those ten were left alive. His calculations had been exact. The gunfire also woke the sleeping little girl. She opened half-lidded, drowsy eyes and saw a blood-soaked, bandage-wrapped figure moving toward her, looking more like a demon than a human.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” the demon-like figure said in a voice warm enough to comfort her, then lifted her and stepped out into the dark.

To be continued.