This time, they had no way out. Ferocious beasts on all four sides, the roads blocked by the beasts too.
And they had run out of ammunition and supplies.
No reinforcements.
No air rescue.
No communications to use.
And no means of escape.
The vehicles they’d ridden in had, on the fifteenth day of the fighting, after they’d pushed deep into the heartland of Zhaoqi Mountain—”vanished” beyond the vast mountains.
Don’t ask how they knew: every vehicle had a locator, and once the cars pulled far away, the locators on their persons had sounded an alarm.
The ones left to guard the vehicles had, without a moment’s hesitation, driven them out of Zhaoqi Mountain’s range, heedless of whether the rest lived or died.
To say no one was directing all this from behind the scenes, not one of them would believe it.
But there was no strength left to spare on hunting for that person, because in this life they could no longer walk out of Zhaoqi Mountain.
If they didn’t fight, these beasts would go beyond Zhaoqi Mountain, and the surviving humans out there would be devoured clean.
If they hardened their hearts and abandoned those survivors, perhaps they’d still have a sliver of a chance to live.
But none of them could do it.
Yang Zengyue had asked everyone, and every one of them chose to fight to the end.
The ones who’d driven the vehicles off had violated the Mid-Dimensional Realm Treaty, which had become law after the apocalypse, so they knew plainly: this person was brazenly leaving them here to wait for death.
They weren’t fools, tonight the number of beasts on Zhaoqi Mountain would peak.
Everyone knew they wouldn’t survive the night, all they could do was fight, fight until their strength gave out, fight until death. That was a warrior’s glory.
Yang Zengyue turned her head. The faint firelight lent the others a bit of color, giving their utterly exhausted faces a trace of blood.
“Alright. Everyone be careful. Jiang Huiyong, Chen Jia’er, and I are one group. Brother Tiankun, you take Sister Huishu and Qu Fengtong.”
There was nothing else that needed saying.
For the few of them left, years of combat experience meant they already knew one another’s temperaments through and through.
No need to say goodbye.
Just think of it as going home.
Just think of it as riding off into the depths of the jianghu, galloping free, carefree and unfettered, vanishing without a trace of where they’d gone. [1]the wandering martial world jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2943110_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2943110_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
“One more thing, the weapons each of us brought, take five apiece, it’s just enough. As for how you use them, that’s up to you.”
When they’d come out, they hadn’t reckoned on danger this dire, by their past combat experience, five spent weapons were more than enough.
Because sometimes battle didn’t call for such high-destruction ordnance at all.
Since it had come to this, then let’s play a little bigger.
This was—
Hearing that, Chen Jia’er’s eyes went wide and round. Zengyue was deciding to go down together with these beasts?
Right, though, better than having their corpses devoured.
Even if it was the same “dying without a whole body” either way.
At least this way they wouldn’t be swallowed into the bellies of these revolting things.
Just let her become the most brilliant flower blooming in the sky, together with Zengyue.
Cheerfully, Chen Jia’er settled on her own way of dying, hoisted her weapons onto her back, and stood resolutely at Zengyue’s side.
“Captain, brothers—Tiankun goes on ahead. In the next life, we meet again.” Han Tiankun was the first to charge into the night.
Yu Huishu turned her head, forcing back the tears in her eyes, and followed after with Qu Fengtong, silently bidding Zengyue and the others farewell in her heart.
Everyone dies, she told herself, after the apocalypse, to be alive at all was already luck, and besides, they’d lived seven years longer than so many others. That was enough.
On the road to the underworld, with Zengyue and Chen Jia’er and the rest for company, she wouldn’t be lonely.
In the distance, the sound of heavy bodies barreling across the ground was already drawing near, these beasts, tramping toward them with the footfalls of death.
After Yu Huishu and Qu Fengtong left, Yang Zengyue led Chen Jia’er and Jiang Huiyong and also plunged into the boundless dusk.
A month earlier, Yang Zengyue and her team had received an urgent mission and been dispatched to Zhaoqi Mountain.
Word had it that the hundred-plus ferocious beasts of Zhaoqi Mountain were stirring, seeking to break through a barrier that had been set up earlier.
Surviving humans lived at Zhaoqi Mountain, and not a small number, it counted as one of the Mid-Dimensional Realm’s larger bases.
Their defensive strength was insufficient, so they’d requested support from Nanyuan. Yang Zengyue had obeyed the order and brought her team here.
After the apocalypse, some people’s physical capacities had evolved, these people formed teams dedicated to hunting and slaughtering the beasts that came up to the surface.
Yang Zengyue’s team was one of them, and currently the best in the Mid-Dimensional Realm, the number-one-ranked team.
Upon receiving the mission, Yang Zengyue had brought thirty of the team’s strongest, most coordinated members, with weapons, and driven straight to Zhaoqi Mountain.
After discussing with the person in charge of the Zhaoqi Mountain base, it was decided that their team would handle going into the mountains to hunt the beasts.
Afterward, their team split off from the Zhaoqi Mountain people, agreeing to rendezvous at the flat terrain of Zhaoqi Mountain.
Because they’d run this kind of mission many times, Yang Zengyue hadn’t suspected there would be any problem this time.
She’d thought it would be like always, wipe out the beasts and head back to Nanyuan. Who could have known…
Thirty people. Now only she, Yu Huishu, Chen Jia’er, Han Tiankun, Jiang Huiyong, Qu Fengtong remained, and one severely wounded man who could no longer fight, Ren Xiyuan.
They’d hidden Ren Xiyuan in a cave, and Yang Zengyue had left him five days’ worth of water and rations.
The rest was up to Heaven’s will.
If anyone among them could survive, that person would only be Ren Xiyuan, and those two “teammates” who’d driven the vehicles off without a backward glance.
Thinking on it, she truly found it ironic.
Yang Zengyue had never imagined that her mere existence could make someone so wary of her, to this extent.
She guessed it was a trap set by the one who’d taken the things from Xingyun Temple and brought harm to Master.
The clues she’d found at Xingyun Temple, together with everything she’d experienced since, all pointed to one person.
She’d originally planned to make her move, never expecting to be sent to Zhaoqi Mountain, no doubt that person had already learned of her plans, and so had meticulously designed this vicious scheme.
Once she was dead, all those things could become his, he might even hypocritically claim they were the keepsakes she’d left him…
Truly, utterly sickening.
But the things of Xingyun Temple were not something an outsider like him could ever comprehend, even having gotten hold of them, they’d be useless. He’d rejoiced far too soon.
She hoped he’d enjoy the gift she’d left him, her fine “grandson.”
……
Han Tiankun, taking Yu Huishu and Qu Fengtong, went west, Yang Zengyue, with Chen Jia’er and Jiang Huiyong, dashed east.
Soon the six, split in two directions, were completely cut off from one another.
The three moving forward quickly ran into ferocious beasts, hideous of form, eyes glowing green, chilling to the bone in the dark.
“Brother Huiyong, I’ll take point, you cover the rear, Jia’er in the middle. Let’s kill as many as we can.” Yang Zengyue decisively set their battle positions.
With their broken bodies as they were now, each of them could kill at most two hundred more beasts.
But the green eyes before them, no need to count to know there were far more than a few thousand.
Jiang Huiyong nodded. “Alright. Zengyue, don’t worry, we’ll hold to the last moment.”
“Mm. Try to wound them first, then we’ll use the weapons.”
They’d brought a truckload of weapons for this mission, thinking it enough, and figuring they could turn back for more if it wasn’t.
But they’d been played.
So each of them had only five violently explosive weapons left.
Tonight, they were fated not to get out.
“Right,” Chen Jia’er and Jiang Huiyong answered in unison.
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