Fortress

This was the first time Xia Leng had seen himself "eat" a person in such excruciating detail.

A body larger than his own melted into a mass of blood surrounded by tentacles in just three seconds, only to be completely absorbed by his own blood in the end...

In the past, he had never actively hunted people, let alone eaten them; as long as others didn't provoke him, he naturally maintained a harmless appearance.

Even when "forced" to kill someone, he would never consume them or dispose of their remains.

Except for the companion who had once betrayed him, whose leg bone he had dismantled and kept as a weapon to serve as a warning to himself.

Perhaps not using his own kind as food was the only thing Xia Leng believed proved he still possessed the rationality of a human...

But now, whether he liked it or not, that biker had been devoured right before his eyes until not even his clothes remained.

Yet, he felt no discomfort; on the contrary, after consuming the man, he felt a sense of pleasurable satisfaction!

It was as if the other party wasn't human at all, but simply born to be his prey!

Where the lucky guy's head had just rolled, a pale blue crystal lay quietly on the ground, surrounded by a faint energy that kept the dust floating in the air at bay.

That biker was indeed a Baptized One, and a Mystic Scholar at that—a mediocre ability with hit-or-miss luck...

But after witnessing what just happened, Xia Leng didn't think this ability was mediocre at all.

Throughout the battle, the man had saved his own life multiple times by sheer coincidence and had nearly killed Xia Leng.

How could such an ability be called mediocre?!

It was just that the trigger probability and duration were baffling; otherwise, he wouldn't have been counter-killed by Xia Leng at the very last moment.

He picked up the pale blue crystal, feeling the residual warmth in his palm.

Three seconds later, the warmth vanished, and Xia Leng knew this crystal had also been consumed by him.

However, unlike the first blue crystal he had consumed from that leader, it didn't bring any obvious changes to his legs or grant him an agility-type enhancement from an Apocalypse Hunter.

Having consumed this Mystic Scholar, he wondered if he could also obtain that ethereal luck of his...

Xia Leng stood up. The shotgun pellets that had been embedded in his body rolled off onto the ground, and the surface of his skin had already recovered without a single trace of injury.

Passing by the corpse of the biker boss whose throat he had slit with a glass shard, he felt no urge to consume him.

Perhaps the Blacklight Virus within him was already full, and all the wounds that needed repairing had been mended.

Or perhaps this virus was only interested in those Baptized Ones infected and strengthened by the Black Rain; he naturally had no appetite for these tasteless ordinary people.

Because the Blacklight Virus instilled in his subconscious that these so-called Baptized Ones were invaders who had to be completely eliminated from Earth or devoured by him!

When Xia Leng walked out of the grocery store, he had two extra shotguns in his hands and had retrieved the pistol he had thrown; these were "wealth" that could be exchanged for precious resources, and as someone who had always been frugal, he naturally wouldn't waste them.

Besides that, he also saw the three modified motorcycles the bikers had parked a few hundred meters away, thinking that these guys were truly treasure boys, sending him exactly what he needed...

With a means of transport, the remaining half of the journey would save him a lot of stamina and energy.

After siphoning the fuel from the three motorcycles into one, Xia Leng straddled the wild-looking bike, loaded up his spoils, and drove toward his next destination.

As for the biker's corpse left in the abandoned grocery store, the blood pooling out filled the entire shop with a thick, pungent stench.

Gurgle~ Gurgle~

About five minutes after he left, several withered figures emerged from the dark storage room in the back, making strange, skin-crawling noises...

Lai City was once one of the most developed cities in the country.

Steel skyscrapers that pierced the clouds rose up like a primeval forest, and high-altitude overpasses as dense as spiderwebs ensured that traffic within the city would never be congested.

Green City, Civilized City, Model City—all sorts of prestigious titles known across the globe were bestowed upon this super-metropolis.

But that was all before the Black Rain broke out five years ago.

Today, the once-towering skyscrapers had long since lost their gleaming silver outer glass due to years of neglect and extreme, volatile weather; only sporadic shards remained, clinging to the lifeless steel skeletons like psoriasis.

As for the network of high-altitude overpasses, they had long been clogged with all manner of abandoned vehicles, and many cars had even smashed through the guardrails, dangling precariously in the air, ready to fall at any moment and crush some lucky passerby to death...

In short, during this era, all the super-cities in the world had turned into primeval jungles, only with towering trees and dense bushes replaced by abandoned high-rises and low-lying building complexes teeming with monsters.

By day, the entire city lay deathly still under the scorching sun, with thick smoke rising continuously from various parts of the city, proving that new fires were constantly breaking out.

At night, the city came alive, but it was a parade of ghosts and a dance of demons; all kinds of terrifying, bizarre mutant creatures crawled out from the buildings where they had hidden from the sun, beginning their bloody, savage hunt and filling the city with bone-chilling roars.

But there was one place whose style was completely out of place with the other dangerous forbidden zones.

That was the massive shopping mall occupied by the Komodo Mercenary Company and transformed into a fortified stronghold.

Located in the golden district of the city center, the super-mall covered an area of nearly dozens of hectares, its towering buildings forming a perimeter like a massive iron fortress so airtight that not even a fly could get in!

The Komodo Mercenary Company deployed its branch here not only for the natural protection it provided but also because the various resources remaining inside the mall were a major factor.

However, during the initial reclamation phase, they had sacrificed a large number of personnel and soldiers to clear out the vast quantity of mutant monsters and living corpses hiding from the ultraviolet rays, paying a heavy price before finally seizing this massive fortress from the monsters' hands.

After their subsequent modifications, the mall was no different from a true steel prison fortress.

High walls were erected to surround it layer by layer, and electric fences carrying high-voltage current were fixed atop the walls, extinguishing any thoughts mutant creatures might have had about sneaking in for a meal.

The only entrance left into the fortress was also packed with guards armed to the teeth, with anti-aircraft machine guns mounted at the main gate, ready to tear any monsters or enemies attempting to invade into shreds in a storm of bullets!

At this moment, two soldiers on sentry duty stood on the high wall, idly bragging to each other; the heavy sniper rifles in their hands, filled with violent intent, could blast any creature within their field of vision to pieces.

Suddenly, the roar of a motorcycle engine approaching the fortress immediately alerted them.

One of the sentries raised his high-powered binoculars and looked toward the source of the sound, only to see Xia Leng, carrying several conspicuous shotguns on his back, riding a flashy motorcycle that emitted a deafening roar, kicking up thick dust as he drove toward them...