Everything Like Beasts

In the end, Xia Heng still escaped.

All the newcomers ultimately fell into these people's hands and were locked in wooden cage carts.

As for the Wa people, they had suffered heavy losses. Only thirty remained; they had lost seventy percent!

Those who survived were all skin and bones, like starving ghosts.

Everyone could see that Tianshe Rokuro, their leader, had a terrifyingly dark expression.

It made sense. These warriors who feared no death must have been very valuable. They had come to receive newcomers, only to lose over half their own people. That was surely unacceptable.

This made the remaining people behave themselves, not daring to provoke him in the slightest.

Being a slave was still better than dying. Any one of these Wa people could easily deal with all of them.

They obediently huddled in the cage carts like pigs being transported to slaughter, unaware of the fate awaiting them.

Besides the sobbing around him, Gaoxin could also hear Luo Yan's faint, dying breaths.

His injuries were too severe. His teeth had been smashed out, his body was covered in bloody wounds from being caught in the fighting, and one of his arms had been cut off.

He had lost too much blood and was already close to death.

Yet Gaoxin still tore off a corner of his prison uniform, wrapped Luo Yan's severed arm, and stopped the bleeding.

"Thank you," Luo Yan said in a low voice.

Gaoxin shook his head. "What did you do to end up here?"

Luo Yan immediately began to cry. "I found a loophole in Emperor Penguin Group's network and used it to add two million book coins to my own e-book platform... I got twenty years..."

The people around them all looked over. Well damn, no wonder he was an intellectual. Even his crime had been committed for the sake of reading.

Emperor Penguin was one of the top three among the twenty major mega-corporations. It had built over a hundred metropolises. Trying to fleece them was practically asking for death.

"You love reading that much?" Gaoxin asked.

Luo Yan forced himself to perk up. "Knowledge can change one's destiny!"

Gaoxin's eyes widened. Change his destiny?

"Then can you teach me knowledge?"

Luo Yan looked at Gaoxin in surprise.

At that moment, Liu Di beside them growled, "Change your ass! What's the use of reading so many books? Can it get you a job?"

Luo Yan shook his head. He did not have a job either.

Liu Di sneered. "Exactly. No matter how well you study, can you outperform AI? Studying is useless in this era. What matters is money and power."

Luo Yan said calmly, "If it is useless, why do the children of wealthy families still study? If it is useless, why is knowledge sold at such a high price?"

Liu Di froze, unable to respond. Embarrassed and enraged, he snapped, "If it were useful, would you have ended up like this? No matter how educated you are, you're still no match for someone with bigger fists!"

Gaoxin sighed. "Stop it. Aren't we all the same? Like he said, we're all fallen people at the ends of the earth."

"Who's the same as him?" Liu Di said angrily. "If I had a family as good as his, I wouldn't have committed a crime and fallen to this place."

Gaoxin said faintly, "Do you think you won't end up here if you don't commit a crime?"

Luo Yan, meanwhile, said bitterly, "So you all think my family was well-off? You're mistaken. I came from an ordinary family. My parents died long ago. Only my older sister raised me."

Liu Di looked unconvinced. Cao Yang, Chengmen Lixue, and the others beside him also did not believe it. "How is that possible? If your family was poor, how could you afford vocational school?"

Luo Yan said in a low voice, "If my family had been well-off, why would I be neither a Radiation User nor a Cyborg?"

Everyone was stunned. He had a point.

It was indeed strange. Even if someone was not especially rich, they should at least have gotten themselves a powered exoskeleton, right?

"Then how could you afford vocational school?" Gaoxin asked.

Luo Yan did not want to say. It seemed there was something he could not bring himself to discuss.

Chengmen Lixue mocked, "Doesn't he have a sister? Maybe she sold herself to pay for it!"

"Fuck you!" Luo Yan was first stunned, then flew into a rage. He tried to lunge at him, but he was far too weak. Even as his wound split open from agitation, he could do nothing.

Gaoxin held him down. "Enough. We're all slaves now, so what are you fighting about? Think about what we should do from now on..."

Luo Yan spat out another bloody tooth and said weakly, "What else can we do? We'll take it one step at a time. I don't dare make any judgments now."

Gaoxin knew he had been dealt a heavy blow and did not say anything more.

Chengmen Lixue mocked him again. "Who would trust your judgment? So what if you've read a lot? You even said there was no one nearby. What a joke."

Luo Yan retorted, "Some parents learn an idiom and use it to name their child, thinking it will make them seem cultured. Yet they have no idea how to raise a child and end up raising something like a dog."

Chengmen Lixue froze. Only when he saw Luo Yan staring at him did he realize it. "Are you insulting me?"

Luo Yan laughed. "You dare mock people for studying? Do you even know what your own name means? It's hilarious."

Chengmen Lixue threw a furious punch, hitting Luo Yan hard enough to make him spit out another bloody tooth. He barely had any teeth left.

"M-My name was modeled after Admiral King of Glory, one of the founding fathers! What the fuck do you know?"

"If I hadn't listened to your bullshit on the beach, I would've left long ago! How could I have been captured and made a slave? It's all your fault!"

At his words, the eyes of the people around them lit up.

That was right. Those Wa people had not been there at first. They had had a chance to leave.

Gaoxin shielded Luo Yan and said angrily, "Enough! The place and time of our exile were decided by them. The navy had sold us off long ago. What does it have to do with Luo Yan?"

Chengmen Lixue glared. "Then why did they arrive late? Shouldn't they have been waiting for us here?"

Gaoxin knew it was precisely because these people had arrived somewhat late that Luo Yan had had time to briefly organize everyone.

"...They sped up," Gaoxin sighed.

Sped up? Oh! Everyone suddenly remembered. The warship had accelerated and arrived ahead of schedule.

And the reason it had accelerated was because an officer had killed an R-Type on the way, then said it was a pity and wanted to hurry up and deliver them.

Put that way, what the officer had meant was that one of the R-Class Radiation Users they were supposed to deliver had died, which likely meant he would receive less money.

That was why he had said he truly did not want to kill anyone and told the prisoners not to seek death. At the very least, they should not die in his hands. After all, once they got off the ship, they were no longer his responsibility.

"We prisoners are cargo the navy is using to make some extra money..." Gaoxin clenched his fists unwillingly.

Chengmen Lixue finally understood what they meant, but he only said excitedly, "Right! So when we first arrived, that was our only chance to escape?"

"Damn it, it's all your fault, Luo Yan. If not for you, we wouldn't have fallen into their hands."

He punched Luo Yan in the chest, nearly making him pass out.

Seeing Luo Yan was close to death, Gaoxin hurriedly said, "You can't blame him either, can you? Didn't you hear this was the Yamato Territory?"

"This is their territory, and they were specifically targeting us. Even if we had left earlier, we still wouldn't have escaped."

But Liu Di, Chengmen Lixue, and the others were furious. They continued beating him. "Maybe we could have escaped! If not for him, we wouldn't have been cornered here."

"He even lied to us that he was a Radiation User, that bastard!"

They no longer had the meek appearance they had shown behind Luo Yan before. They blamed their current plight entirely on Luo Yan and wished they could beat him to death.

Gaoxin struggled to shove them away, taking two punches himself. Enraged, he fought back.

The already cramped cage cart instantly descended into chaos.

"Baka!"

The commotion here had clearly alerted the Wa people. The man called Sasaki rushed over furiously and tore open the cage cart with one grab.

Riiip! Wooden bars as thick as arms were ripped apart by him just like that.

The Wa people driving the carts also stopped the oxen, and several prisoners rolled off the vehicles.

This was bad! Everyone panicked. They had carelessly become too loud and actually drawn the attention of these fiends.

Sasaki was skinny as a skeleton, yet he could still tear wood apart with his bare hands!

"It has nothing to do with me! It was all Luo Yan and Gaoxin, they were making noise and fighting!" Chengmen Lixue and the others were terrified and hurriedly defended themselves, pointing at Gaoxin and Luo Yan.

Liu Di and Cao Yang also chimed in, believing that their greater numbers could twist black into white.

Sasaki's bloodshot eyes turned toward Gaoxin and the others. Gaoxin was just about to explain.

Luo Yan secretly grabbed him and shook his head.

Gaoxin was instantly enlightened. These fiends were angry right now. They could not be bothered to listen to explanations. Those who obediently kept quiet would be fine instead.

He immediately looked at his nose, then at his heart, sitting blankly with a numb expression.

As for Luo Yan, there was no need to mention him. He was sprawled there covered in blood, unable to move.

Sure enough, after Sasaki glanced at them, he ignored them and instead looked toward the people still chattering away.

As Chengmen Lixue spoke, his throat was suddenly seized!

His eyes bulged in terror. He raised his hands but did not dare strike back, only flailing desperately.

Sasaki's other hand, shaped like a chicken claw, grabbed his face and dug in hard before violently pulling!

"Riiip!"

A huge patch of facial skin was torn off by his bare hand, leaving flesh and blood exposed.

"Urgh! Urgh! Urgh!" Chengmen Lixue's throat was clutched shut, and he could not even scream. The pain made him forget everything as he crazily hammered Sasaki.

The people beside them were petrified, collapsing to the ground and wetting themselves on the spot.

But the nearby Wa people all cheered, letting out cruel laughter. Every last one of them was like a beast.

Sasaki's eyes reddened further. His shriveled claws tore again and again, and he actually skinned Chengmen Lixue alive with his bare hands!

The mangled corpse had long since stopped moving. Blood pooled across the ground, and the air was filled with a thick stench of blood.

Sasaki casually tossed the corpse into the woods and turned to look at Liu Di.

Liu Di was so terrified that he pissed himself, trembling too hard to speak.

But at that moment, Tianshe Rokuro called out, "Return first."

Sasaki obeyed, tossing the man back into the cart before continuing onward.

The convoy of cage carts fell completely silent. Everyone was trembling.

The convoy continued onward. No one dared say another word, and an atmosphere of terror lingered in everyone's heart.

Gaoxin swayed with the bumpy road, his eyes fixed on the corpse in the woods as it gradually receded into the distance. An oppressive anger filled his chest.

Although that man had been hateful and had even punched him twice, all Gaoxin felt now was the sorrow of one creature mourning another's death.

It was as if he had seen his own future.

"We have to escape..." Though no one had dared speak along the way, Gaoxin was the first to break the silence.

Especially in an environment where no one even dared breathe loudly, his words sounded all the more piercing.

Everyone looked at him in horror, then glanced at the Wa people guarding the front and rear of the convoy. Radiation Users had powerful senses as well. Though they had caused trouble earlier because they were too loud, that did not mean these people could not hear quieter voices.

But everyone quickly realized that Gaoxin was speaking Chinese.

Although the common language was the world's mainstream tongue, every ethnic group still had its own language. The Han people spoke Chinese, for instance, while those Wa people had their Wa language.

"Even if we escape their control, there will be others," only Luo Yan responded, also speaking Chinese.

Gaoxin said resolutely, "Then we'll leave Sin Prison Island. I was framed. Am I supposed to let these beasts torture me to death for the rest of my life? I have to get out."

After saying that, his body stopped trembling. His fear had been driven away, replaced by a kind of grim resolve.

Fear came from the unknown. But he now knew exactly what awaited him and understood precisely what he wanted. There was nothing left to be confused about.

Luo Yan saw his determination and said weakly, "Fine. If I survive these injuries, we'll look for an opportunity together!"

Gaoxin nodded slightly to show that he understood.

They discussed escaping so openly that the other people in the cage cart were horrified.

Liu Di could not help saying, "Do you want to die? Aren't you afraid I'll report you?"

Gaoxin stared at him and raised his voice. "Go ahead and try!"

Liu Di shuddered in fright and hurriedly looked outside. Sasaki had indeed looked over, and their eyes met. Liu Di's heart nearly stopped from terror!

But Sasaki only glared at him, did nothing else, and continued onward.

Only then did Liu Di breathe a sigh of relief. He hurriedly waved at Gaoxin. "Shh! Shh! Keep it down! Are you crazy?"

Gaoxin glanced at his crotch. "Your shit stinks. Don't shit yourself next time."

Liu Di's face twisted. He had lost control of his bowels earlier, both shitting and pissing himself, and his pants were still filthy.

P.S. Sorry.