Qiao Xiao and Qiao Sheng spearheaded the frontal engagement, Qiao Sheng protected the team’s flanks, while Jin Chao cleared the path ahead while deploying his mental perception to disrupt the mutants’ sensory tracking.
The squad functioned like a finely tuned machine, every gear meshing with absolute precision.
Xia Qing was fighting as well.
Rather than charging at the very front line, she stayed positioned near Little Chubby and Xia Ran, specializing in picking off lone mutants that breached their outer perimeter.
Her blade technique was clean, efficient, and lethal, aiming every blow straight at critical vulnerabilities:
—Necks, eyes, and joints, without a single wasted movement.
While attacking the mutants, Xia Qing was simultaneously carrying out another task.
Charm.
Targeting a medium-sized male mutant directly in front of her, she deployed her Charm skill, attempting to alter its core attribute.
The mutant’s movements stiffened noticeably for a brief second, and then—success took hold.
Whenever Xia Qing channeled her Charm, her eyes shifted to a vibrant purple.
She could sense the attribute of its energy core changing in real time.
Slicing the creature down with a swift strike, she blew a low, quiet whistle.
The little mouse in her pocket moved immediately.
Darts out from her raincoat pocket, it scrambled rapidly down Xia Qing’s arm onto the ground, its movement so fast its body was barely a blur.
Sprinting straight toward the felled mutant, it wriggled into the crack in the creature’s split skull, emerging a few seconds later carrying a pink energy core in its jaws.
The mouse scrambled up her trouser leg, wriggled back into her raincoat pocket, and curled up tightly.
The entire process took less than ten seconds.
Repeating the same technique, Xia Qing altered the attributes of three mutants in a single breath.
With every successful alteration, she commanded the mouse to retrieve the core.
Three cores, all pink, sat neatly aligned inside her pocket.
However, upon attempting a fourth, a wave of sudden dizziness washed over her.
The purple glow in her pupils dimmed rapidly, fading into nothingness.
Deploying the Charm skill consumed far more energy than she had anticipated.
Three targets represented her absolute current limit; if she attempted one more, she would pass out cold on the spot.
Taking a deep breath, Xia Qing withdrew her Charm skill and focused entirely on blade combat.
Three pink cores were more than enough for her to absorb and level up.
Yet, as the commotion on her end grew louder, more mutants were drawn to their location.
This was a defining trait of mutants—they were exceptionally sensitive to movement and noise.
Especially the stench of blood.
The fiercer the combat and the stronger the energy fluctuations, the easier it became to draw surrounding mutants over.
Like throwing a stone into a still pond, ripples expanded outward until they encompassed the entire body of water.
This was precisely the crisis facing them now.
What started as barely a dozen mutants had multiplied into over twenty mid-fight.
More creatures surged in from every direction, as if summoned by an invisible, commanding force.
This city harbored a massive population of hidden mutants.
Their reproductive speed was inherently terrifying, and their growth rate was equally rapid.
If not resolved immediately, they would swarm in numbers that would pin everyone down permanently.
Jin Chao clearly recognized this reality as well.
Hacking down mutants while making a rapid tactical assessment, he ordered sharply:
“Qiao Sheng, take Lin Yao and fall back first!”
As a speed-type user, Qiao Sheng’s sprint speed post-awakening had increased exponentially, allowing him to outrun a car at full sprint.
With his capabilities, he could rapidly break away from these mutants and pull someone out of the encirclement.
The catch, however, was that his current capacity allowed him to carry only a single person.
Even carrying just one person would reduce his top speed and elevate the risk of being overtaken by the pursuing horde.
“Understood.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Qiao Sheng grabbed Lin Yao’s arm.
Before Lin Yao could process what was happening, Qiao Sheng dragged her into a stumble.
“Wait—” She managed to utter a single word before the rushing wind cut her off.
Qiao Sheng activated his ability.
Shooting forward like a bullet leaving a barrel, he kicked up massive sprays of standing water, practically skimming across the surface of the floodwaters.
Dragged along to the point where her feet barely touched the ground, Lin Yao gripped Qiao Sheng’s arm with everything she had, terrified of being thrown off.
Within seconds, both figures dissolved completely into the rain curtain.
Jin Chao’s tactical call was correct—Lin Yao was their spatial storage user and had to be evacuated first.
She needed to transport the vital equipment from the research facility along with the bulk of the team’s supplies.
If anything happened to her, the entire mission would fail instantly.
More and more mutants converged around them.
Surging in from every direction, their snarls and roars echoed one after another.
The remaining group had no choice but to split up and run.
Little Chubby followed tightly behind Xia Qing at all times.
His running pace wasn’t fast, but every step landed firmly.
Despite his compact build, his physical strength was shockingly immense.
When a mutant lunged at them from the side earlier, Little Chubby had unexpectedly sent the creature flying with a single punch, slamming it against a roadside wall with a heavy thud.
Xia Qing glanced at him, secretly astonished inside.
Is this Little Chubby’s awakened ability? Super strength? No, not just strength—
—The power and velocity behind that punch far exceeded the baseline metrics of a standard strength-type user, resembling a explosive physical enhancement skill instead.
Yet now was not the time for deep reflection.
Xia Ran hacked down a mutant, flicked the black blood off his blade, and shouted to Xia Qing through tightly furrowed brows: “Why are the mutant numbers spiking like this?”
“We need to fall back.”
They couldn’t stay out on open streets—it attracted mutants far too easily.
His voice reached her in broken fragments through the heavy rain, but Xia Qing caught every word clearly.
Swish—!
A sharp whistling sound cut through the air directly above them.
Xia Qing snapped her head up, her pupils shrinking to tiny points.
Dropping down from the fourth-floor wall of a roadside residential building, a mutant a full size larger than any they had encountered so far plunged toward them.
Its limbs clung tightly to the exterior wall like a massive lizard before it launched off, leaping straight toward the center of their group.
This mutant was fundamentally different from every creature they had met before.
Its scales bore a deep, obsidian black hue, glinting with a metallic sheen under the downpour.
Its eyes were a vivid crimson, its pupils slit into razor-thin lines that radiated a bone-chilling, predatory aura.
Its size was at least double that of a standard mutant, its muscles bulging as if forged from solid steel.
Its strength was clearly on a whole different level.
Xia Ran’s eyes widened in sheer shock.
The spot where the mutant landed happened to be directly behind Su Bai.
Su Bai was fully focused on handling two standard mutants right in front of him, completely unaware of the threat looming behind his back.
His entire focus was directed forward, driving his blade up and down, dropping mutants one after another in the heat of battle.
“Su Bai—!” Xia Ran screamed frantically.
It was too late.
Hearing the shout, Su Bai instinctively attempted to spin around, but his reaction came a second too slow.
The giant mutant’s razor claws punched straight through his chest from behind.
Splat—!
A dull tearing sound echoed—resembling cloth being violently ripped apart, yet sounding unnaturally sharp against the heavy rain.
Su Bai’s entire body froze instantly.
Lowering his head, he stared at an arm coated in dark scales protruding clean through his chest, holding something tightly in its palm—
A still-beating, crimson heart.
The mutant jammed the organ straight into its mouth, devouring it whole before ruthlessly consuming the rest of his torso.
In a matter of seconds, a human being was swallowed down as food.
Blood mixed with rain, pooling into massive crimson stains across the asphalt.
Water splashed everywhere.
Vivid red blood expanded slowly through the murky floodwaters.
This was an entry-level mutant!