Blacklight Virus

The leader tried to break free, but he couldn't shake the grip even in the slightest!

The fingers Xia Leng used to pinch his wrist were as cold and hard as iron pliers; there was not a trace of the body heat one would expect from a living person.

Snap~

With an expressionless face, Xia Leng applied pressure as if it were a casual gesture, and instantly, a crisp, ear-piercing sound of bone shattering echoed out.

The leader's remaining left wrist bone was thoroughly crushed into powder by the overwhelming force...

"Ah!!! I'm going to slaughter you, you bastard!!"

Driven insane by the excruciating pain, the leader roared like a frenzied beast.

After all, without his hands, survival in this world was impossible; he might as well use his final ounce of strength to drag his enemy down with him!

But he had no way left to inflict damage; his pride and joy—his legs—were still paralyzed, and his hands were completely ruined...

Having lost his sanity, he opened his mouth and lunged to bite like a rabid dog!

"Urgh..."

However, the moment he opened his mouth, he felt a hard object shoved inside.

Looking closely, he saw that Xia Leng had jammed four of his own fingers into the leader's mouth, while his thumb pressed against the chin, pinning the man's entire lower jaw in place.

"You..."

Crack!!

Squelch!

As Xia Leng exerted force with the wrist holding the chin, he tore the Baptized One's entire lower jaw clean off!

A massive spray of blood instantly splattered onto his face and body!

But soon, the blood from the opponent that had splashed onto Xia Leng miraculously seeped into his skin and vanished.

The leader, having lost his entire lower jaw, finally suffered a total collapse. He rolled frantically on the ground in agony, his viscous blood mixing with the dirt, while muffled, painful groans emanated from the remaining half of his oral cavity.

The era in which he reigned as king over this wilderness had come to an end...

Xia Leng remained as cold as frost, his dark, deep eyes staring coldly at the writhing, mangled remains on the ground.

The deformed scavengers hiding in the surrounding tents huddled together, too terrified by the scene outside to even breathe deeply.

Xia Leng walked over, extended his fingers—hard as steel rebar—and gripped the blood-drenched leader by the neck, hoisting the completely crippled man into the air.

"Ugh... spare... spare me..."

The intense desire to survive ultimately overcame everything else; the leader began to beg Xia Leng in a slurred, incoherent manner. Even without his arms or jaw, he still wanted to cling to life in this apocalypse.

But in the leader's desperate eyes, the only response he received was Xia Leng's clenched fist, which came crashing down...

Bang!

With just one punch, the leader's head was smashed open like a watermelon struck with violence; bone fragments, brain matter, and scalp splattered in every direction!

His limbs went limp and fell, leaving only residual nerves to cause the body to twitch slightly.

At this moment, inside the fist Xia Leng had just thrown, there appeared a translucent blue crystal. Only the skulls of Baptized Ones contained such stones...

This crystal, which he had once swallowed and been unable to digest no matter what, was now held in Xia Leng's palm, where it was being enveloped by tiny, fine tendrils extending from his skin!

In less than five seconds, the crystal seemed to be digested, disappearing into his palm!

At the same time, the muscles in Xia Leng's legs began to ripple at a visible rate until they became more defined, simultaneously enhancing his explosive speed!

Finally, the pitch-black, void-like color in Xia Leng's eyes began to fade, gradually returning to their original state, and his consciousness seemed to recover along with them.

He looked around in astonishment at the unfamiliar environment, seeing the deformed scavengers in the crude tents staring at him with fearful eyes, and the headless corpse lying on the ground.

From the attire and the severed right arm, Xia Leng could tell that this was the Hunter-type Baptized One he had fought earlier!

The images from just a moment ago—they weren't a dream?!

Did I create all of this in front of me...

I killed a Baptized One?!

And the green canisters, the doctor, the test subjects, the modifications—all of which existed in my subconscious...

They drifted through his mind, blurry yet impossible to shake, like fragments of long-sealed memories leaking out, though they were incomplete...

Only one word remained clear, a term deeply imprinted in his mind: [Blacklight Virus]...

Through these residual memory fragments, the coordinates of some distant and mysterious locations began to vaguely emerge in his mind.

In those places, there seemed to be a voice constantly calling him to go forth and unlock the mystery of his own origin...

Ever since Xia Leng could remember, around the age of five or six, he had wandered through various city landfills, scavenging food scraps to fill his stomach, sleeping in discarded cardboard boxes at night alongside cockroaches and flies, and fighting stray cats and dogs for territory.

The words "father" and "mother" were completely foreign in his memory, as if he had simply popped out of a rock.

It wasn't until one day, when people discovered this thin, dirty, yet resilient boy and sent him to an orphanage, that his "fulfilling" childhood finally came to an end...

"What are these broken memories..."

Xia Leng desperately tried to recall the nightmare he had experienced after losing consciousness, but suddenly, a splitting headache tore through him, as if his subconscious were forcing him to go there himself and seek the clues to his own identity...

"Land of Corpse Cold, coordinates 4559, 40 meters underground."

This coordinate information suddenly burst into his mind like a pre-programmed computer sequence, a reminder serving as a hint that he absolutely had to visit this place.

"Then I shall go and see."

Xia Leng muttered expressionlessly to himself, as if his day-to-day life of desperate hunting just to fill his stomach had suddenly gained a purpose, leaving him with an indescribable feeling in his heart.

However, he did not know what the Land of Corpse Cold was, nor had he ever heard of it; perhaps the comfortable residents living inside the fortresses would know.

Thus, Xia Leng had his first goal: to set off for the nearest fortress city within a hundred kilometers, Komodo Fortress.

While gathering information, he could also replenish his supplies for the long, unknown journey ahead.

At that moment, Xia Leng also recalled that after blasting the head of the Baptized One to pieces, he had seized a valuable light blue crystal.

Yet, it had inexplicably vanished from his palm!

Xia Leng stared at his palm in disbelief; the warmth of that blue crystal seemed to still linger there, but now there was clearly nothing. Had it permeated into his own body?!

To verify this bizarre situation, he instinctively reached into his pocket to pull out the black crystal he had obtained earlier for testing, only to realize he was completely naked, his already tattered clothes having been shredded by those deformed drifters.

Just as Xia Leng prepared to strip the animal hide off the leader's corpse nearby to wear for himself, countless black tentacles suddenly began to extend from the surface of his skin!

These tentacles were as slender as threads, rhythmically crossing and weaving together, and in less than a few seconds, they had woven an animal hide garment identical to the one on the corpse, draping it over Xia Leng's body...