“Nobody wants to kill me.”
As Ston uttered those words, the interior of the vehicle instantly plunged into a dead silence. Everyone involuntarily held their breath, then simultaneously tilted their heads upward to cast their gazes toward the vehicle roof.
The armed squad leader dispatched by the judiciary, seated in the front row, turned back and gestured to Ston, indicating that they were about to come to a halt and advising Ston to prepare himself.
Ston nodded lightly, then swiftly and nimbly disengaged the safety on the weapon in his hand and chambered a round.
Both parties inside and outside the vehicle temporarily fell into a deadlock where nobody dared act rashly. Slowing his respiration, Ston watched as the armed personnel in the front row silently and swiftly prepared their weapons, while even Xiao Chen beside him imitated his actions, aligning the muzzle of his service pistol toward the roof.
Nobody spoke. Ston gestured to the squad leader, signaling that upon counting to three, everyone would open fire on the roof in unison. The squad leader nodded in agreement.
Then, the squad leader extended three fingers and began his countdown.
Three, two…
However, just as the squad leader prepared to press down his final finger and push the countdown to one, their vehicle roof was suddenly smashed heavily by a tremendous force, creating a massive dent, while the vehicle chassis violently plunged downward.
Immediately afterward, the entire vehicle was jerked abruptly into mid-air by an immense force, hanging suspended at an elevation of over three meters above the ground and continuing to ascend.
The occupants inside the car were tossed about in disarray by the momentum, dizzy and disoriented, failing to execute any tactical reaction for a brief moment.
Leaning against the door frame and struggling to steady his footing, Ston immediately shouted at the top of his lungs to the others inside the vehicle: “Open fire!”
Then, before anyone else could react, he had already taken the lead in pulling the trigger.
Bullets darted rapidly out of the barrel, only to embed themselves into the thick iron plate of the vehicle roof, completely incapable of piercing through. Looking somewhat vexed, Ston shouted toward the squad leader in the front row: “What are you staring at! Open fire!”
The rest snapped out of their daze, hurriedly raising their weapons to commence shooting at the roof. In an instant, the cramped cabin echoed with a successive, deafening barrage of gunshots and the muffled impacts of bullets attempting to penetrate the roof, ringing so intensely it made their eardrums ache.
The assault rifles wielded by the armed squad were naturally far more powerful than the standard judiciary-issue sidearm Ston was holding. Very quickly, they blasted several holes through the vehicle roof.
Glancing briefly at the ceiling, Ston resolutely gripped his pistol handle and smashed out the window glass on his side with two swift, sharp strikes. Thrusting his pistol out of the window, he discharged several rounds in rapid succession toward the direction of the roof.
Whether it was the gunfire from the armed personnel inside the vehicle or these few shots from Ston that hit the mark, when Ston emptied his magazine, pulled his pistol back inside the vehicle, and swiftly prepared to swap in a fresh magazine, the vehicle body which had been continuously ascending abruptly came to a halt.
Then, a sudden gust of violent wind assailed Ston from his left side. Sensing danger, he swiftly struck the butt of his gun against his wrist to eject the empty magazine, but before his right hand could manage to shove a fresh, loaded magazine into the grip, the door on his side was torn completely off its hinges from the outside by a horrifying, monstrous force!
The howling wind in mid-air, mixed with coarse, abrasive sand, poured violently into the vehicle cabin. The deafening gunfire ceased, and everyone, consumed by curiosity and astonishment, stared with wide eyes toward Ston’s side.
A pair of scarlet, alluring, terrifying pupils slowly emerged from above the vehicle roof, looking upside down into the interior.
“Zhuang… Zhuang Xingyu!”
“How come his… his eyes… both of them have mutated?”
The armed personnel inside the car momentarily forgot to counterattack, muttering and murmuring in bewildered succession.
Ston was equally startled. Back in the prison, only Zhuang Xingyu’s left eye had mutated, while his right eye retained its normal human appearance; yet right now, both of his pupils had transformed into a luminous scarlet.
This was not a favorable omen, because accelerated mutation over a short timeframe signified only one thing: the pollutant’s human characteristics were receding, while correspondingly, the animalistic ferocity and certain yet-unknown mutant abilities within his body would surge exponentially.
Crouching atop the vehicle roof in this fashion, Zhuang Xingyu inverted his head to gaze down at the shocked occupants inside, finally locking his gaze onto Ston’s face.
“Before the trial, nobody wants to kill you.”
Zhuang Xingyu repeated Ston’s opening words to him syllable by syllable, then sneered: “Justice, when you opened fire on me just now, you truly didn’t hold back an ounce of mercy.”
With that, without waiting for anyone to react, he dropped directly down from the vehicle roof and lunged toward Ston’s side of the car.
Amidst the swirling yellow sand and raging gales, Zhuang Xingyu flapped that pair of wings over three meters in length, his twin scarlet pupils blazing with astonishing intensity, as though blood-tears might burst from his eye sockets at any second.
His unruly black hair whipped wildly in the wind, and upon his handsome face hung a wicked, bizarre smile. Across his muscular, scarred body, a layer of pristine white feathers had mysteriously sprouted at some unknown point, densely coating his physique and concealing those horrifying wounds. A dangerous, primitive, and overwhelmingly oppressive aura radiated from his entire being.
He resembled a flying beast that retained nothing human except its face.
Nobody could equate the Zhuang Xingyu before their eyes with the wretched Zhuang Xingyu trapped inside the prison iron cage just moments ago.
Everyone stared in astonishment at Zhuang Xingyu descending from the sky like a fallen archangel, speechless and oblivious to their own peril, until the commercial vehicle began to drop precipitously due to lacking Zhuang Xingyu’s anchoring grip.
The passengers inside pitched about in disorder, entirely devoid of the bandwidth to aim or shoot. Unable to endure the sensation of weightlessness, Xiao Chen emitted uncontrollable shrieks while clutching his chest with closed eyes, looking like a hapless soul on the verge of fainting at any second.
The howling wind and sand whipped Ston’s stray bangs into absolute disarray. His black hair, black brows, and black feathered eyelashes made his pale, cold complexion appear all the more striking, matched against his flawless facial features and contours he looked quite simply like the most dazzling, peerless pearl amidst this chaotic battlefield.
Pressing calmly against his seat with pursed lips, Ston slotted the magazine into place, raised his hand, and completed his target acquisition in a single second before pulling the trigger directly at Zhuang Xingyu.
He executed this sequence of movements with fluid, agile precision, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to someone currently trapped inside a rapidly plummeting, doorless, wind-drafting vehicle.
Simultaneously, the armed personnel remaining on solid ground swung into position, targeting Zhuang Xingyu to commence fire.
In a flash, a hail of bullets wove through the sandstorms, turning this long-abandoned surface world completely upside down.
Zhuang Xingyu was forced to flap his wings and bank downward toward the ground.
Ston paused briefly in surprise, because he had anticipated Zhuang Xingyu would employ evasive maneuvers to dodge those projectiles, never expecting him to dive straight toward the area with the heavier firepower.
Yet in the next second, Ston acutely grasped Zhuang Xingyu’s intent. Abandoning his gunfire, he braced against his seat to retreat backward, striving to distance himself as far as possible from the open doorway and this massive, drafty breach.
Still, Ston was a fraction too slow, for Zhuang Xingyu closed the distance in the blink of an eye, lunging straight to the threshold and seizing Ston by the arm. With the effortless strength capable of easily hoisting a multi-ton modified commercial vehicle, Zhuang Xingyu yanked him bodily out of the car.
Furthermore, right before launching himself aloft, Zhuang Xingyu delivered a ferocious stomp against the vehicle roof, leveraging that recoil to spring several meters upward and kick the mangled commercial vehicle heavily into the midst of the armed personnel who were firing upon him from the ground.
The colossal force behind Zhuang Xingyu’s kick was utterly beyond human capability. Ston had merely managed a brief, forceful struggle before being clamped tightly against Zhuang Xingyu’s chest, where a pair of iron-vise, powerfully muscular hands banded securely around his slender waist.
“Come on then!” Zhuang Xingyu hovered suspended in mid-air, flapping his massive wings as he roared downward at the armed personnel who had just scrambled in all directions to dodge the falling commercial vehicle. “Your Grand Justice is in my hands. Right now, he is my human bulletproof vest if you want to kill me, kill him first!”
Sure enough, Zhuang Xingyu’s strategy proved effective. The armed forces on the ground, terrified of accidentally clipping Ston, lowered their muzzles in unison and instead scanned their surroundings in search of their commanding officer.
Their captain happened to be one of the occupants sharing Ston’s vehicle, and at present, remained sealed inside the deformed commercial vehicle, life and death unknown.
Held tightly against Zhuang Xingyu’s body, Ston could feel the solid, expanded muscles of the latter’s chest heaving beneath his garments, brimming with coiled, explosive power.
Furrowing his brows, Ston prepared to shout downward, instructing them to disregard his safety and fire directly upon the suspect, when Zhuang Xingyu’s free hand clamped firmly over his mouth.