"The military had entered the Infected Zone. Elizabeth Greene... the source of all this. She had become the virus's host body. We had to find her and kill her to stop the virus from spreading!"
Li Wei nodded, drove his claws through an infected's chest, and assimilated it.
Alex stomped his feet anxiously where he stood, but he had no way to make Li Wei move any faster.
He kept saying that if they were not strong enough, they would have trouble stopping Blackwatch's conspiracy. Then he could only stand there and watch Li Wei leisurely devour the infected wandering nearby.
"If you wanted to get stronger, you could look for Hunters in heavily infected Hives. Those monsters would give you a lot of energy. But we really didn't have time now. I needed to destroy all the contaminated water towers in Manhattan. If the Hunters inside those towers finished developing, everyone in the city would be infected!"
After waiting for quite a while longer, Alex finally lost patience and grabbed Li Wei's giant claw as it reached for another infected.
Li Wei looked reluctantly at the remaining infected, re-formed his arm, and nodded. "Fine. We could split up. I'll go to Lower Manhattan, and you go to Upper Manhattan."
Hearing Li Wei finally agree, Alex released his hands and nodded solemnly. "No problem. We'll meet on top of the tallest TV tower when we're done!"
With that, Alex eagerly leaped onto a tall building and flew toward Upper Manhattan.
Once Alex had left, Li Wei killed two more infected that emerged from a corner, then ran up the outer wall of a building. He kept moving between skyscrapers, searching for contaminated water towers on their rooftops.
The contaminated water towers were obvious targets, and Blackwatch soldiers guarded the areas around them.
When Li Wei spotted the first water tower, his left hand transformed into an absurdly huge blade.
Claws and blades worked on similar principles. With a little guidance, they could be formed. Li Wei gathered strength in his knees, shattered the floor beneath his feet, and sprang more than thirty meters into the air...
"Alert! Airborne target at twelve o'clock!"
"Damn it! It's Mercer!"
"13th Squad requesting support! We've spotted Alex Mercer!"
"Fuck, Mercer's in Upper Manhattan? Are you saying every one of us is blind?!"
The ten Blackwatch soldiers beside the water tower saw Li Wei leap into the air and cried out in alarm. Their call for support was sent back to headquarters, and every gun in their hands was raised toward Li Wei.
Hundreds of bullets struck Li Wei every second, but they failed to drive him back. Once they entered his body, they were quickly forced out by regenerating flesh.
After cutting through the air with a violent shockwave, the raised blade cleaved down toward the pointed water tower over three meters tall. The ten Blackwatch soldiers could do nothing but be thrown away by the impact of Li Wei's descent.
The water tower's metal shell, covered in fungal fibers, was torn apart by the sharp broad blade. The crimson tentacles inside, along with the Hunter still developing there, were sliced cleanly in half by the strike from above.
The ten Blackwatch soldiers on the rooftop were blasted several meters away by the shockwave. A few unlucky ones were thrown straight off the roof, their screams trailing after them.
The high-pressure airflow created by the sudden shift from extreme motion to complete stillness was enough to ram a tank into scrap metal or blast a car several meters away. Even with a drop of only forty meters, Li Wei's impact had already left the ten Blackwatch soldiers incapable of fighting.
Seeing the barely living Hunter fall out of the water tower, Li Wei stabbed it with the blade on his left arm. His assimilation ability activated, and the Key's energy suddenly increased by 5%!
Seeing the Key's energy rise so much at once, Li Wei grinned. Ignoring the Blackwatch soldiers whose internal organs had been injured by the shockwave, he quickly left the area to see whether there were more contaminated water towers for him to farm.
There were many contaminated water towers in Lower Manhattan, and all of them had been placed under strict Blackwatch surveillance. Blackwatch had discovered what was developing inside the contaminated towers through various scanning devices. They had not destroyed them because they wanted to capture more Hunters for experiments.
After the virus was extracted from those captured Hunters, it would be purer than the virus taken from ordinary mutants. Most of GENTEC's current experiments used virus extracted from Hunters.
Li Wei's figure moved between buildings like a giant flying squirrel, limbs spread as he glided between skyscrapers.
He occasionally encountered Blackwatch helicopters, but he ignored them every time.
Below him were the most densely populated streets. Shooting down an armed helicopter would cause at least ten casualties when it crashed.
And Blackwatch soldiers did not dare risk the damage their cannon rounds might cause if they struck the streets or buildings. If they enraged a nation's people, whoever held power would be ruthlessly overthrown.
Li Wei could destroy those helicopters circling overhead, but he did not think he was some bastard who could casually take other people's lives.
He liked Batman and admired him greatly, but he would not imitate his no-killing rule.
As long as the Blackwatch helicopters did not attack, he would not bother hauling up something heavy to smash those steel birds.
Each contaminated water tower contained a Hunter. Those Hunters were already in a dormant activation state. Without Li Wei and Alex's interference, the Hunters inside might tear through the water towers and escape after nightfall.
The blade came down again. Li Wei destroyed another contaminated water tower and assimilated the Hunter inside. Blackwatch soldiers once more lay scattered all around him.
The helicopters in the sky were still turning their guns toward him. For the clumsy helicopter cannons to hit the agile Li Wei was no easier than hitting a fly with a bullet.
Blackwatch command had already realized the problem. They began withdrawing the Blackwatch squads guarding the contaminated water towers, deciding not to keep sacrificing people for nothing.
That made Li Wei's later destruction work much easier. There were twelve water towers in Lower Manhattan. By the time he had dealt with all the contaminated towers and arrived at the top of the TV tower where he had agreed to meet Alex, Alex was already waiting there.
"Were all the water towers destroyed?" Upon seeing Li Wei again, Alex's first question was whether the water towers had all been taken care of.
Li Wei gave him a reassuring expression and answered, "I checked back and forth several times. I wouldn't miss any~!"
Although Li Wei had said the water towers were destroyed, Alex still intended to check again that night, because Li Wei seemed especially unreliable.
He was clearly discussing something serious, yet he still gave off an unserious feeling. This concerned the lives of millions. Alex would not so casually trust someone he had only just met.
So, after agreeing to meet here again the next morning, Alex glided away.
Li Wei watched Alex leave, then turned and headed back into the Infected Zone.
He could tell Alex did not trust him, but what did that have to do with a passerby like him?
The Key's energy had already reached 63%. At this rate, he could leave this world in no more than three days!
...Provided his guess was correct!
Before you continue