Dog Barking

Wu Zhong panted and rested for a while.

His excitement gradually faded, and pain flared up all over his body.

After all that trouble, he was bruised and battered, covered in scratches and bite marks. It had been brutal.

Rip!

He tore off a strip of his tattered clothes and roughly bandaged his wounds.

He studied the smooth vertical pipe wall. Since the military knife was so sharp, he could try carving footholds into it and climbing out.

Clang! Clang!

He kept chopping and gouging at the wall, then stepped on the knife marks and footholds to climb upward, advancing carefully as he struggled to support himself.

"Pain, pain, pain!"

He even fell a few times along the way, but he did not give up. Gritting his teeth and enduring the pain, he spent who knew how long before finally reaching the top of the pipe.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

There was a pipe hatch here. He chopped it open, then slammed into it with all his strength, rolling out entirely.

"Damn... I'm exhausted."

He lay on the cold ground. The surroundings gradually brightened, filled with a foul stench.

This seemed to be a pig farm, with live pigs penned up all around him.

"Good thing it wasn't a cold storage room. So they were feeding living creatures."

Wu Zhong staggered to his feet and followed an exit out.

Before long, he pushed open a small door and stepped out of the vast pig farm.

He discovered that the pig farm was inside an even larger building. However, the building had already been bombed to ruins, with more than half of it collapsed. Purple slurry stains still remained on it.

Endless Summer must have known he would come out here, so he had destroyed this place beforehand and lured the people away.

Rumble!

Outside, wind and rain raged as thunder crashed overhead.

Faintly, there were also gunshots, artillery fire, and indescribable sounds of impacts and explosions.

Wu Zhong was still within the area enclosed by the base's wire fencing. This area was enormous and contained several buildings, the pig farm being only one of them. Watchtowers stood everywhere.

When Wu Zhong saw a large group of people being mobilized, he immediately dropped flat to the ground.

"So I only got out of the underground air-raid shelter. There's still a military base outside... How am I supposed to get out?"

Wu Zhong looked at the military knife in his hand. Even its tip had gone blunt, and the blade was badly bent.

Although the material was exceptionally tough and had not chipped despite all that abuse, it was no longer very sharp.

"Forget it. I'll do my best. Worst case, I get captured again."

After Wu Zhong saw a squad pass in the distance, he sprang up and ran toward the wall.

Sure enough, security at the aboveground base was much looser. Most of the personnel were rushing toward the source of the explosions.

There, a violent wind whipped rain and debris into the air, while purple light swirled within it.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Each blast of purple light caused an explosion powerful enough to blow through metal walls or blast glowing plasma craters into the ground.

"It's Endless Summer... He's still creating opportunities for me." Wu Zhong abandoned the thought of surrendering and ran to the wall while the camp was in chaos.

The wall was very high, with barbed wire on top.

Of course, there probably was no electricity. The power station seemed to have been destroyed by Endless Summer. Along the way, Wu Zhong had seen several underground power cables blown apart and left exposed in a mangled mess.

Endless Summer had probably destroyed all of it on purpose.

However, the main purpose might have been to weaken those Air Shield experts whose powers depended on electrical connections.

"Slash!"

Wu Zhong leaped up and chopped through the barbed wire, then vaulted over the wall and landed in a mountainous wilderness thick with trees.

The base was located in a remote area, having been built around an air-raid shelter in the mountain.

The moment Wu Zhong escaped, he found himself in the middle of nowhere.

The mountain paths were muddy, and fierce winds still howled overhead.

Wu Zhong ran wildly through the rain, but before he had gone far, gunfire sounded behind him.

Bang!

"Stop!"

Someone had spotted him.

He turned and saw that they were not people from inside the wall. There were patrols outside as well!

The forests outside the base were not truly empty wilderness. Numerous hidden sentries were stationed throughout the area!

They had not acted rashly because of the chaos within the base. They had remained on guard around the perimeter and spotted him immediately.

"Don't shoot..." Wu Zhong did not dare run any farther and hurriedly raised his hands.

"Crouch down and put your hands on your head!" The hidden sentry was tall and powerfully built as he slowly approached.

But at that moment, boom!

A huge explosion erupted from behind them, followed by a violent shockwave that threw both him and Wu Zhong to the ground.

"Holy shit..."

Wu Zhong saw a building inside the base collapse outright. A towering blast wave erupted from it, and a golden glow faintly flickered below.

"Th-That's Captain Lu's move, right?"

Sweat covered Wu Zhong's forehead. Endless Summer's energy was purple, while Lu Guangqi's was golden.

Lu Guangqi had also used that soaring explosive beam of light against Ji Meng.

Its power was immense. In the hazy distance, ravaged by wind and rain, only golden light could now be seen. The purple light was gone.

"Endless Summer didn't get instantly killed, did he?"

Wu Zhong grimaced in pain, but he was in no position to worry about anyone else.

Seeing that the fierce battle had drawn the hidden sentry's attention, he suddenly pulled the pin from a grenade and threw it before turning to run!

Boom!

He heard the grenade explode behind him and had thought he would start laughing.

Yet he only heard the hidden sentry laughing. Nothing happened to him.

"Huh? I heard it too, but I'm fine? So it's an area-of-effect infection?"

Wu Zhong turned back and estimated that he was about thirty meters away from the hidden sentry.

That meant only people within thirty meters of the grenade's explosion would be forced to laugh. Anyone outside the range was unaffected.

Wu Zhong settled down and hid his last grenade away.

He bent low and ran through the mountain forest on all fours.

Wu Zhong had experienced the forced-laughter effect before. It was agonizing. No matter how capable someone normally was, their fighting strength would be greatly reduced.

It was even more troublesome than being hit by a flashbang or tear gas. You needed another grenade to break free of it.

And clearly, these perimeter sentries did not have that sort of equipment. They would probably have to wait for specialists from Unit 985 to rescue them.

Using this chance to shake off his pursuers, Wu Zhong got farther and farther from the base, running blindly through the forest.

Mount Lu was a mountain range. Aside from some famous scenic spots and well-known peaks, there was also a vast natural area, including even a nature reserve.

Wu Zhong did not know the way. As he walked, he crossed three mountain ridges without seeing a single road.

"Where the hell did this lead me?"

Completely exhausted, he dropped onto the ground, drank some spring water, and rested for a while.

"Hiss... My whole body hurts..."

"And I'm so tired. My heart's pounding..."

"Could the corpse poison have reached my heart? Am I about to turn?"

Wu Zhong rebandaged his wounds, deeply worried about the consequences of being scratched and bitten by zombies.

Since zombies existed in this world, being scratched badly enough to break the skin by one meant infection. That was practically common knowledge.

"Awooo! Rrruff ruff ruff!"

Suddenly, Wu Zhong heard a wolf howl... No, it was barking.

He looked behind him and saw three massive dogs standing atop distant rocks, staring right at him!

They seemed to be German Shepherds, but they were huge and ran through the mountains like the wind.

"Ah, there really are dogs chasing me!" Wu Zhong hurriedly got up and ran.

He caught sight of collars around the three German Shepherds' necks and realized these were dogs raised by Unit 985.

Probably tracking dogs, like police dogs.

Could a person beat a dog in a fight? That depended.

When Wu Zhong was a teenager, he had once fought a village dog barehanded. He won, but he was bitten badly too.

But the German Shepherds chasing him now were much stronger than that village dog had been. They stood nearly half a man tall, practically like wolves.

And there were three of them!

If it came to a fight, Wu Zhong felt things did not look good.

"Stop chasing me!"

As he ran, Wu Zhong saw the three dogs getting closer and threw a rock over his shoulder.

His aim was perfect. It struck the nearest dog right on the head.

However, with a thump!

The dog simply rammed the rock away. Worse still, its head did not even seem to pause for an instant.

Not a single hair had been damaged!

"Huh? Not even a hair fell out?"

Wu Zhong was stunned and threw several more rocks in quick succession.

But no matter how hard he threw them, the three dogs were not hurt in the slightest, nor did they slow down!

Looking closely, he saw that the dogs had been brushing against rocks and branches repeatedly as they tore through the forest, yet nothing happened to them.

Wu Zhong, on the other hand, had long since been scratched bloody in countless places during his escape.

The fastest dog was already pouncing from behind.

Wu Zhong spun around and slashed at its head!

Bzzz!

The shock numbed the web of his hand, and the knife nearly flew from his grip.

"Huh?"

"What kind of dog is this? It's invulnerable!"

Wu Zhong's scalp tingled as he realized this was no ordinary dog.

That strike could split open a zombie's skull, yet it could not even cut off a single hair from the dog's head?

"Awoo! Ruff!"

Just as the dog was about to bite him, Wu Zhong rolled across the ground, dodged aside, and let out a bark while half-kneeling.

"Woof woof woof! Woo-hah... woof!"

Wu Zhong actually imitated a dog pretty well. He could only force himself to bark insults at the dogs.

He bared his teeth and barked madly with a human mouth!

He had no idea why, but since Endless Summer had specifically told him to do this, he might as well listen.

And strangely enough, the moment he started barking, the three massive dogs froze.

They began pacing in place and barked wildly back at him, but they stopped chasing him.

Seeing this, Wu Zhong slowly backed away while barking back at them!

By the time his mouth was dry and his throat felt like it was on fire, he could no longer shout. But he had also widened the distance, so he turned and ran.

"It actually works?"

"But why?"

Wu Zhong ran with questions filling his head.

He had encountered more bizarre things in the past two days than in the rest of his life combined.

Plum that made anyone who looked at it permanently thirsty, a tangled mess that drew people into obsessively unraveling it, a grenade that forcibly made people laugh within its range, Air Shields linked to electrical energy, a cultivation system that people without money were unqualified to use, and dogs whose defenses could not be broken even with a knife.

The more Wu Zhong thought about all these strange phenomena, the more astonished he became.

Compared to them, supernatural beings like zombies and ghosts now seemed almost commonplace.

He was curious about this world and had a stomach full of questions.

But he could only swallow those questions and curiosity for now, waiting for Endless Summer to explain them to him.

"I've gotten away. You should be able to get out too, right?"

Wu Zhong muttered, but suddenly heard barking again.

"Awoo!"

Wu Zhong turned around in shock. In the end, he still could not outrun the dogs... Damn it, they had caught up again!

There was no choice. He had to bark!

After the three massive dogs caught up to him again, he could only turn around and resume barking back and forth at them.

He barked wildly, and the German Shepherds barked furiously at him without advancing.

"They're good at tracking and invulnerable to weapons, but once they hear the person they're chasing bark like a dog, they stop and bark back... They only continue tracking after they can no longer hear it."

Wu Zhong carefully worked it out in his mind. He had already figured out the German Shepherds' pattern.

By stalling like this and widening the distance, Wu Zhong escaped again.

But a human could not outrun a dog. The dogs could always follow his scent and catch up.

"Will this ever end..."

A third time, a fourth time, a fifth time...

The dogs tracked Wu Zhong all the way, and he knew he could not shake them off like this.

After repeatedly barking back and forth with them, his voice had become extremely hoarse. He knew that if the dogs caught him again, he would be unable to make another sound.

Fortunately, after circling through the mountains for a long time, he finally emerged from them and saw a road.