The moment the fog receded, the Catastrophe Rats lost all restraint. One of them, a beast the size of a young calf, lunged at Li Xi first in its hunger for flesh, jaws gaping to bare rows of bone-white fangs.
Li Xi was terrified. She had never undergone genetic modification, and bare-handed she stood absolutely no chance against a Catastrophe Rat. Every instinct screamed at her to dodge.
Yet the instant she moved to evade — she couldn't tell whether it was an illusion — the Catastrophe Rat's lunge seemed impossibly slow, playing out frame by frame before her eyes as if in slow motion, and she sidestepped it with effortless ease.
The Catastrophe Rat froze. She dodged?
Li Xi froze. I dodged?
The Catastrophe Rat bared its fangs in a snarl and launched itself again, springing at its prey's throat.
What it didn't know was that its lightning-fast attack looked no faster than a crawl to its so-called prey. Without either of them noticing, hunter and hunted had quietly traded places.
This time, Li Xi didn't dodge. She drove a savage kick into the Catastrophe Rat's belly.
CRACK!
Bones shattered. Her kick had gone clean through the Catastrophe Rat, in at the belly and out the back.
SKREEEE!
The Catastrophe Rat shrieked in agony and flew backward like a cannonball, smashing through a two-meter-tall stone wall and bringing it down in a heap of rubble. Pulverized organs spewed from its mouth. Dead before it hit the ground.
Li Xi's jaw dropped, disbelief written all over her pretty young face. She couldn't fathom that she possessed this kind of raw power.
SKREE! SKREE! SKREE!
The remaining dozen-plus Catastrophe Rats had seen their leader kicked to death with a single blow. Dim-witted as they were, they didn't know the meaning of fear, and they hurled themselves at Li Xi without hesitation, intent on ripping her to shreds.
"So slow..."
Li Xi murmured. To her, the dozen-odd Catastrophe Rats were moving so unbelievably slowly that she actually had time to rub her eyes and make sure she wasn't seeing a mirage.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The girl's long, slender legs sliced the air with razor-sharp gusts: thirteen kicks in one second, swift as a gale and fast as lightning, each one landing square on a Catastrophe Rat.
To the Catastrophe Rats, it felt like being hit head-on by a pile driver. The terrible force shattered their bones in an instant and ruptured every organ inside them. They flew backward and lay twitching in heaps on the ground, clearly beyond saving.
"How is this possible..."
Li Xi was utterly stunned. She couldn't believe she had dispatched fourteen Catastrophe Rats this easily.
Even a genetically modified combat soldier couldn't walk away unscathed from a fourteen-rat ambush while completely unarmed!
Suddenly, Li Xi thought of the game she'd played at Origin Internet Cafe last night — and her stat screen:
Player: Li Xi
Level: Lv. 20
Stamina: 22
Agility: 17
Strength: 19
Intelligence: 29...
Could it be that the stat boosts she'd gained in the game had carried over into the real world?!
The idea was outrageously bold, but the evidence seemed to say exactly that.
Li Xi picked up a stone and gave it a light squeeze. It crumbled to powder between her fingers like tofu.
"Hssss!"
The girl drew a deep breath. She had vastly — vastly — underestimated the supreme power of that internet cafe owner. What she'd played in that virtual world last night was far more than just a game.
"If I've been powered up this much, I can definitely contribute to Jianglin Fortress's fight against the Beast Tide!"
The memory of mowing down countless monsters with a sniper rifle last night set Li Xi's blood racing. She couldn't wait to join the war against the Beast Tide.
***
"Boss, one bowl of guobianhu with large intestine, please."
Liu Haoming called out to the busy proprietress as he walked into the breakfast shop.
"Coming right up! Have a seat!"
The proprietress, an older middle-aged woman, answered with a beaming smile.
Finding a seat, Liu Haoming picked up a fried flatbread from the table and took a couple of bites.
The breakfast shop was only two or three hundred meters from the cafe, and he'd been coming here for breakfast every morning lately. It was always bustling with people coming and going, far livelier than his deserted internet cafe.
"The fox plague in Aozhou has reached catastrophic levels, bringing untold misery to local residents. The situation is now dire, and authorities are considering deploying military forces to suppress the infestation..."
On the wall-mounted television, an anchor was reading the morning news, and Liu Haoming listened with keen interest as he munched his flatbread.
Aozhou's fox problem had been going on for ages. The story went that Aozhou had originally had no foxes at all; wild rabbits were what had overrun the place, so the local government imported foxes from abroad to control them, hoping to restore the ecological balance.
What the Aozhou government hadn't counted on was that the moment the foxes arrived — well, it was like they'd walked into paradise. No natural predators whatsoever, and food everywhere they looked. Within a few short years they'd multiplied even worse than the rabbits and very nearly collapsed Aozhou's entire ecosystem.
"A volcano in Iceland, dormant for a thousand years, is on the verge of eruption. Billowing smoke has blotted out the sky..."
The anchor moved on from the fox plague to the next story, and the screen cut to a volcano hundreds of meters tall. The smoke pouring from it blanketed the entire sky and gathered into something that vaguely resembled the twisted visage of a demonic god. It was a horrifying sight.
"The Yin Nation is experiencing the worst locust plague in recorded history. A million people may face starvation..."
"At two a.m. yesterday, a magnitude-six earthquake struck the Island Nation. This marks the fourth earthquake in the Island Nation this month alone. Experts predict the country may sink within twenty years..."
Story after story went by, and Liu Haoming's brow slowly furrowed. Something felt off.
Why was every single story about some disaster?
"Looks like this Gengzi year was always destined to be turbulent. Disasters everywhere across the globe."
At the table behind him, two old men were sighing over it together.
"Ever since the spiritual revival six years ago, there's been something every year. It's just that this year, there's been a lot more of it."
"At least our Xuan Nation has been peaceful and prosperous."
"Exactly. A thriving homeland is the greatest blessing for ordinary folks like us..."
Bit by bit, the two old men's talk smoothed out Liu Haoming's furrowed brow.
They were right. He was just an ordinary citizen, and all he had to do was live his little life in peace. As long as the sky didn't come crashing down, none of it would touch him. Eat when it was time to eat, drink when it was time to drink, game when it was time to game.
Before long, the proprietress brought over his guobianhu loaded with large intestine.
***
Li Xi sprinted through the streets of Jianglin Fortress. Soldiers hunting down stray monsters were everywhere, and armored vehicles heaped with monster corpses rumbled past.
"Hey, girl!"
The male soldier at the wheel of an armored vehicle had spotted Li Xi. He slammed on the brakes and waved, shouting to her.
Seeing him call to her, Li Xi reached the armored vehicle in a few swift strides.
The soldier blinked, a look of shock and disbelief crossing his face.
Why do I get the feeling you ran faster than an armored vehicle?!
"Hey, could you give me a ride to the fortress walls..."
Halfway through her sentence, Li Xi froze.
She realized, with a jolt of shock, that she knew this soldier!!