Before Li Lei’s roar had even faded into the wind, Buzhou Outpost had already erupted into complete chaos.
“Charge, charge, charge! Steal the mobs!”
“Snooze you lose! For the contribution points!”
The base gates slammed open, and over a hundred players surged out like a bursting dam.
They looked less like they were going to war and more like elderly shoppers rushing a supermarket sale for discounted eggs.
Written across every single face were three words: *cause some chaos*.
Hardcore Lao Wang led the charge at the very front, carrying his smoking modded rifle over his shoulder and striding with total swagger.
Construction Site Palu dragged his 1.5-meter door-breaker gun, its muzzle plowing a deep trench in the sand and kicking up sparks.
Breaking Bad had his belt draped with glowing green corrosive rounds, his whole body radiating a chemically hazardous smell that screamed *keep away*.
Li Lei stood at the head of the formation, armor-piercing rifle raised high, his voice booming through the loudspeaker: “Listen up, everyone! Five-man squads, set up interlocking fields of fire! Dying just means waiting in line for three hours, but if anyone turns coward, you’re embarrassing the entire server!”
“Let’s gooo!”
As the words landed, the hundred-strong army stepped into the blood-red sunset, howling as they charged toward the brownish-grey wasteland.
The line advanced two kilometers out.
Flanking the side, Kindergarten Boss suddenly stopped, his ears twitching.
“Hold on, quiet down guys, listen—”
*Click-clack…
click-clack…*
The sand beneath their feet vibrated, as if countless dense bone blades were grinding together, or like something was moving at extreme speed right along the surface.
The next second, the ground exploded.
Dozens of dark figures burst forth wrapped in a sandstorm, scythe-like forelimbs slicing through the air with a chilling glint, aiming straight for the crowns of the front-line players.
“Holy shit! Face-checking the bush went wrong!”
Before the words fully registered, the surrounding dunes burst apart simultaneously.
Swarms of pitch-black Zerglings surged out from underground, the red glow of their compound eyes linking into a solid sheet.
There were at least a hundred of them, completely surrounding the entire team.
“Spread out! Don’t bunch up! Spread out the line of fire!” Li Lei screamed until his voice cracked.
But how could newbies have ever seen a scene like this?
The reeking stench and terrifyingly realistic pressure caused several of them to freeze on the spot.
A Zergling lunged through the air at Keyboard Warrior #2.
Before the guy could even raise his gun, he was swiped off his feet by a claw.
The crude iron plate armor on his chest shredded like paper, blood spurting everywhere, and he turned into a beam of white light while still mid-air—dying on the spot.
Chaos spread.
The shrieks of the Zerglings, the crunch of shattering bones, and the screams of players tangled together, turning the scene into a living horror movie.
“Don’t panic, damn it! This is just a game! What the hell are you scared of?!”
Li Lei blew off the head of a Zergling that leaped at his face, stinking green fluid splashing across his visor.
Without even taking a second to wipe it off, he roared into the comms channel: “Lao Wang! Palu! Set up shields and form up! Three-row volley fire! All newbies pull into the center, don’t feed!”
Hardcore Lao Wang reacted the fastest, kicking aside a trembling newbie beside him.
The quality of veteran players showed brilliantly at this moment.
Over a dozen hardened veterans who had survived the first alpha test quickly crouched into a line, their pitch-black muzzles aiming in unison at the bug tide.
Li Lei’s eyes narrowed, his arm sweeping down sharply.
“Free fire—blast ’em!”
*BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM—!!*
Explosive blasts shattered the desert silence.
Over a dozen modded weapons spewed tongues of fire at the same time, orange-red muzzles weaving a death net in the dusk.
High-caliber rounds poured out like a torrential downpour, blowing clouds of blood mist out of the Zerglings upon impact.
Facts proved that these homebrew weapons, designed purely for extreme kinetic impact, were the absolute bane of light-armored units.
Those chitinous carapaces that were unstoppable in melee combat turned out to be as brittle as potato chips against high-velocity, steel-core rounds at close range.
A Zergling had just leaped up attempting to flank the backline when it was hit by three rounds simultaneously.
With a wet *pop*, its body was blasted cleanly into two halves, its organs and green fluid raining down like hail.
Breaking Bad’s corrosive rounds were even more insidious.
A single shot hitting a Zergling’s abdomen caused the concentrated acid to instantly burn through the carapace.
The monster issued a harrowing shriek as its entire body began to melt and smoke like a candle, rolling frantically on the ground and blocking the path of the bugs charging behind it.
“Second row! Suppress! Don’t stop!”
Li Lei’s commands were as cold and unfeeling as a killing machine.
The backline players immediately stepped up, seamlessly transitioning into another volley of fire.
The proud charge of the Zergling swarm was forcefully shattered.
The front-row monsters fell like wheat before a scythe, their corpses quickly piling into a small mountain.
Construction Site Palu shouldered his absurdly large door-breaker gun, grinning wickedly as he aimed at the densest cluster of monsters and pulled the trigger—
*BOOM!*
The massive recoil knocked him back two steps, nearly causing him to land flat on his ass.
But the fan-shaped flame spewing from the muzzle instantly swallowed five Zerglings.
The shockwave of the explosion kicked up a cloud of dust mixed with pulverized flesh.
“Hahaha! Awesome! This hit feedback is insane!”
Palu laughed aloud as he racked the bolt.
A scalding hot shell casing dropped to the ground with a metallic *clink*, drifting blue smoke.
The smell of blood, far from driving these players back, completely ignited the violent tendencies coded into their DNA.
Panic vanished, replaced by faces flushed with fanaticism.
“Kill! The EXP is running away!”
“That mob is mine! Don’t steal it!”
Half an hour later, the last Zergling twitched and collapsed into a pool of blood.
The battlefield was a total mess, strewn with severed limbs and green alien blood, the air heavy with a sickening stench.
Yet the players showed no intention of resting, looking even more energized than during the actual fight.
Hardcore Lao Wang was the first to rush forward, drawing an industrial cutter from his waist.
His movements were as practiced as a butcher with thirty years of experience under his belt.
“Only take carapaces with intact backs! Be careful with the poison sacs, don’t puncture them! Strip the bones clean—they’re great materials for gunstocks!”
The other players snapped out of it, instantly transforming into a swarm of locusts as they pounced on the pile of corpses like madmen.
“Holy shit! I saw this piece of carapace first!”
“Get lost! Finders keepers!”
“I’m taking this leg! I just happen to be missing a melee weapon!”
“Who has empty bottles? These poison sacs sell for 50 points! Don’t let them bleed out onto the ground!”
The entire battlefield turned into a noisy open-air market in seconds.
The players were like refugees who hadn’t eaten in three days stumbling into an all-you-can-eat buffet, even digging out the Zerglings’ internal organs to check if they were useful.
Dragon Seeker, the geology expert, took it to a whole new level.
Taking advantage of everyone else fighting over the corpses, he led a few players with relevant majors to sweep the surrounding battlefield with scanners.
His eyes lit up instantly.
“Brothers! The ground here was loosened by the bugs—we’ve got mineral vein readings! Start digging!”
“The composition of that blood-stained rock over there is great, high titanium content! Haul it away!”
“Don’t just look for big rocks, the sand on the ground here has high silica content! Grab sacks and pack it up! Don’t leave a single grain of sand for these aliens!”
In less than half an hour, the ruined battlefield was stripped completely bare.
Forget corpses—these guys dug the top layer of soil three feet down.
Under the setting sun, players carried massive bags of loot, marching back toward the base like they were moving house, every face beaming with the joy of a bountiful harvest.
Tens of thousands of meters in the sky above, Yao Qian watched the swarm of “locusts” on the surveillance screen, his mouth twitching uncontrollably.
The system notifications in the background flashed wildly, chaining into a continuous line:
[Received Biomass × 1,247 units]
[Received Iron-Rich Ore × 340 units]
[Received Rare Metals × 89 units]
[Current Energy Point Balance: 2,847]
“These guys…” Yao Qian rubbed his chin.
“Not only do they clear mobs for me for free, but they also bring their own rations to mine for me. Are these players? No, these are my blood relatives!”
Night fell completely as the two suns dropped beneath the horizon, causing the temperature to plummet.
Dragging their exhausted bodies, the players returned to Buzhou Outpost.
Although everyone had made a fortune, the fatigue that settled in after the adrenaline wore off was painfully real.
“Holy crap… this map is way too big. It’s realistic to a fault.”
“I ran five kilometers just to chase that low-HP bug earlier. I feel like my legs are gonna snap. I’m definitely building up lactic acid tomorrow.”
“Is the dev online? Can we get mounts in the next patch update? Even a shared bike to scan would be fine!”
Complaints rose one after another, yet not a single person wanted to log off.
At their current efficiency of exploring the map on two feet, fully clearing this territory would probably take until pigs flew.