Mutants 2

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

The mutants on the other side stood frozen as well, as though their souls had suffered a devastating blow.

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

Crying as he went, he spun around on his four legs and ran away. His wails gradually faded, leaving everyone with the pitiful, frail, helpless sight of his retreating back.

Everyone fell silent. Li Qinwu roared, "At least that bastard had some shame and knew when to back off. What about you? What the fuck do you want? Draw the line!"

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

"The territory ahead belongs to the Blackwater Tribe. You are not permitted to pass!"

What the hell was the Blackwater Tribe? Li Qinwu had never even heard of it, but the name sure had the distinctive flavor of Warhammer 40,000.

Back when Li Qinwu read little Warhammer 40,000 stories, there had been one about a group of people who believed a nuclear reactor was some divine creation. They knelt before it every day and eventually developed an Atomic Sect.

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

He guessed this goddamn Blackwater Cult was the same sort of thing. He did not care; he only wanted to clear a freight route to the surface.

"Move aside. I just want to pass through 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 edges of the Lower Hive, and eating people was their main means of survival.

The only reason they had been yapping at Li Qinwu's group for so long was because the little train's headlight had been shining straight into their faces.

Every one of these mutants had night vision. With the headlight on them, they were practically blind. They could not see a thing, not even how many people Li Qinwu had. They could only smell that there were quite a few people on the other side from the strong scent.

After weighing his options for a while, the two-mouthed man finally chose to retreat.

"The Divine Blackwater Domain lies ahead. If strangers dare disturb the blackwater, they will bear blackwater'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 and had his underlings continue repairing the rails ahead. He was not afraid of those mutants. His side had two Autoguns; one pull of the trigger could drop half of them.

What he feared was not being able to recover the cost of the bullets. Those mutants were covered in junk metal—what was there to loot from them?

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

After traveling for another ten minutes or so, they found numerous side passages on the left side of the tracks, with traces of human activity inside them.

Li Qinwu held a powerful flashlight and shone it into those side passages, revealing scenes that were deeply unsettling.

This was the mutants' gathering place. There were no lights at all, and several hundred mutants lived in this pitch-black environment.

The mutants here were far more twisted. The ones from before who could wear armor, hold weapons, and confront Li Qinwu's group could practically be called handsome. The mutants here were truly fucking spectacular!

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

There were even fused creatures like those from monster movies, with two or three people melded together and sharing one body.

Li Qinwu saw the bones of many unknown animals, along with the tents they lived in. The leather was unmistakably human skin!

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

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

Perhaps in conventional movie stories, these heavily mutated mutants would have been bloodthirsty monsters with extraordinary aggression and all that.

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 had great difficulty metabolizing the waste produced by such enormous, malformed bodies. If these monsters were taken in for blood tests, every single indicator would be hundreds of times over the limit!

As the little train moved onward, 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 inside one of the dens. It was spewing out an unknown black liquid, thick and viscous like crude oil.

Several severely deformed mutants, resembling writhing mountains of flesh, stood near the pipe. Wearing ceremonial robes and holding staffs pieced together from garbage, they knelt before the black liquid and prayed without pause.

Even more mutants knelt beside them, praying to the pipe that spewed the unknown black liquid.

When the prayer ritual ended, the most deformed mutants at the front scooped up the black liquid with their hands and distributed it to the others for them to eat.

Li Qinwu felt a chill run through him. Little Knife explained beside him, "Boss, I know that black stuff. Isn't that the wastewater discharged by our chemical plant?

"It's not just us. The Chemical Gang, the other gangs—every gang's pollutants are gathered in one place for processing.

"After processing, the pollutants turn into this thick black liquid. It's sent directly through pipes into the earth's crust to be burned. I never thought people here would actually eat this stuff!"

Li Qinwu clicked his tongue, withdrew the flashlight, and allowed that filthy, foul scene to be swallowed by darkness again.

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 hired muscle to escort the little train.