Mutants 2

Li Qinwu's furious cursing silenced the entire scene. His underlings stared at him in disbelief, never expecting Boss Li to be this aggressive.

The Mutants he had cursed at stood frozen in place as if their souls had suffered a devastating blow.

With a clatter, one Mutant threw the machete in his hand to the ground, covered his eyes, and burst into loud sobs.

Crying as he went, he swung his four legs around and ran off. His sobs gradually faded, leaving everyone with the sight of a pitiful, frail, and helpless back.

Everyone fell silent. Li Qinwu shouted furiously, "At least that bastard had some sense of shame and knew when to back down. What about you? What the hell do you want? Draw the line!"

The two-mouthed Mutant at the front panted heavily, clearly on the verge of exploding with rage.

"The land ahead belongs to our Blackwater Tribe. You are not allowed to pass!"

What the hell was the Blackwater Tribe? Li Qinwu had never even heard of it, but the name alone sounded extremely Warhammer 40,000.

Li Qinwu had once read a little Warhammer 40,000 story about a group of people who believed a Nuclear Reactor was some divine creation. They knelt before it every day and eventually formed an Atomic Sect.

Anyone mutated by nuclear radiation was considered blessed by the Atomic God. It was hard not to laugh at that.

He figured this fucking Blackwater Cult was probably the same sort of thing. He did not care; he only wanted to clear a cargo route to the surface.

"Move aside. I just want to pass through here quietly. That way, there won't be any conflict, and nobody will get hurt.

"I'll handle my business and leave. You can keep playing your evil little games here. It's none of my fucking business, understand?"

After Li Qinwu finished speaking, the other side fell into hesitation.

Food was extremely scarce at the barren edge of the Lower Hive, and eating people was their greatest means of obtaining it.

The only reason they had been talking shit with Li Qinwu's group for so long was because the Little Train's main headlight had been shining directly into their faces.

All these Mutants had night vision. With the headlight on them, they were practically blind. They could not see anything, not even how many people Li Qinwu had brought. They could only smell that there were quite a few people on the other side from the powerful scent.

After weighing things for a while, the two-mouthed man ultimately chose to retreat.

"The Divine Blackwater Domain lies ahead. If strangers dare disturb Black Water, they will surely bear Black Water's wrath!"

After saying that, the bastard silently turned around and led nearly a hundred Mutants back into the darkness.

Li Qinwu let out a breath of relief and had his underlings continue repairing the rails. He was not afraid of these Mutants; his side had two Autoguns. One pull of the trigger could drop half of them.

What he feared was not being able to recoup the cost of the bullets. These Mutants were covered in scrap metal. What was there worth taking?

More than ten minutes later, the tracks were repaired, and the Little Train set off again. This time, everyone was far more alert. There were Mutants ahead, after all. Little Knife controlled the locomotive, ready to accelerate or reverse at any moment.

After traveling for over ten minutes, they found many branching passages on the left side of the tracks, with signs of human activity inside them.

Li Qinwu held a High-Intensity Flashlight and shone it into those branches, seeing one mind-numbing scene after another.

This was where the Mutants gathered. There were no lights at all, and several hundred Mutants lived in the pitch-black darkness.

The Mutants here were even more grotesquely twisted. The ones who had been able to wear armor and carry weapons out to confront Li Qinwu's group earlier could practically be called handsome compared to them. The Mutants here were fucking spectacular!

Some Mutants no longer even resembled humans, having turned into huge balls of flesh. Others had simply grown into the walls.

There were even fused creatures like something from a monster movie, with two or three people merged together and sharing one body.

Li Qinwu could see the bones of many unknown animals, as well as the tents they lived in. Those leather coverings were unmistakably Human Skin!

It was hard to call these terrifying creatures human, yet they existed openly, just like the miserable state of this universe.

Li Qinwu's light startled these monsters, but they did not go mad and attack. Instead, they cried out in panic and fled deeper into the darkness.

Perhaps in conventional movie stories, these heavily mutated Mutants would all be bloodthirsty monsters with overwhelming aggression and so on.

But in reality, their bodies were deformed into such a state. What fighting strength could they possibly have? They were probably struggling just to stay alive.

Human internal organs would have a hard time metabolizing the waste produced by such enormous, deformed bodies. If the creatures before them had their blood tested, every indicator would probably be hundreds of times above normal!

As the Little Train advanced, Li Qinwu's flashlight kept sweeping through those dens of horror. Little Knife suddenly warned, "Boss, look over there!"

Li Qinwu looked where Little Knife pointed and saw a massive pipe in one of the dens, spewing out an unknown black liquid as viscous as oil.

Near the pipe were several severely deformed Mutants, like writhing mountains of flesh. They wore ceremonial robes, held staffs pieced together from garbage, and knelt before the black liquid in endless prayer.

More Mutants knelt around them, praying to the pipe that spewed the unknown black liquid.

When the ritual ended, the most deformed Mutants at the front scooped up the unknown black liquid with their hands and distributed it to the other Mutants, making them swallow it.

Li Qinwu felt a chill run down his spine. Little Knife explained beside him, "Boss, I know that black stuff. Isn't that the wastewater discharged from our Chemical Plant?

"It's not just us. There's also the Chemical Gang, the other gangs—every gang's pollutants are sent to one place for treatment.

"After being processed, the pollutants turn into this black, sticky liquid. It gets sent straight through pipes into the earth's crust to be burned off. I never thought people here would actually eat this stuff!"

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue, withdrew the flashlight, and let that filthy, foul scene be swallowed by darkness once more.

What he needed to consider now was finding a way to organize an armed merchant caravan he could trust.

Mutants on this route meant danger. He had to find some fighters to escort the Little Train.