The side effects kicked in

"Now that's something you don't hear from you every day," Song Shiya said with a smile.

Shen Ye let that pass and urged Song Shiya to lead him to the remaining two Oil-Shadow Ghosts so he could finish them off as well.

This fight was simpler than the last. Shen Ye cut down the two Oil-Shadow Ghosts as easily as chopping vegetables.

Though the previous battle had been difficult, it had noticeably improved his proficiency with the Butcher Sequence's abilities.

Meanwhile, as his Blood Feast stacks kept increasing, every Oil-Shadow Ghost he killed made him stronger.

He even felt confident that he could take on a Tier Two Eldritch now.

This was definitely not overconfidence. The Butcher Sequence was simply that overwhelming.

Only after checking that no Eldritch remained did Shen Ye breathe a sigh of relief.

"Fill up quickly. We're not completely out of danger yet."

Song Shiya looked at the wounds on his arms and back, which resembled burns, and felt a pang of sympathy.

While they refueled, she made sure to use her ability to heal Shen Ye.

Half an hour later, Shen Ye's handsome face was finally back to normal, and the convoy set off again.

The RV's tank was full. Having learned their lesson, they also stashed two extra cans of fuel in the storage area.

As for the others, the moment they saw Shen Ye finish the fight, they scurried over to fill their tanks.

Song Shiya also found a case of bottled water and some snacks nearing their expiration dates in the payment booth.

Although the snacks were almost expired, the convoy members who had hidden in the back and watched the fight still eyed them greedily. Yet none dared ask for any.

After all, Shen Ye was watching from nearby, and the faint killing intent he had developed during the battle had yet to fade.

The convoy members hiding in their vehicles had seen the entire fight clearly.

They had finally witnessed just how strong Shen Ye was-and how ruthless he could be with himself.

At a time like this, not one of them dared get on his bad side.

Shen Ye sat in the passenger seat, leaning against the window and watching the red-roofed building grow smaller in the side mirror until it vanished into the ink-black night.

He lowered his gaze to his right hand.

Although Song Shiya had treated the blisters burned into the back of his hand by the oily sludge, they still throbbed faintly.

She had wanted to heal him completely, but seeing how drained she looked, Shen Ye had felt an inexplicable reluctance to put her through more.

Besides, he wanted to test just how far his newly improved self-healing ability could go.

He could now feel fresh skin growing beneath the burned layer.

My second sequence really is powerful! he marveled silently.

If Sequence Nine lets me take on four Tier One Eldritch alone at night and come out alive, what will Sequence Eight and Sequence Seven be like?

He suddenly found himself looking forward to it.

Beside him, Song Shiya turned the steering wheel and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Seeing the slight upward curve of his lips, she could not help asking.

"You're hurt that badly, and you're still smiling?"

That reminded her of how he had refused when she tried to heal his hand earlier. A thought suddenly struck her, and she added jokingly, "You're not a masochist, are you?"

Rather than getting flustered, Shen Ye smiled. "Why don't you try and find out?"

Song Shiya's face immediately reddened, and she fell completely silent. She turned away and pretended to focus on driving.

Shen Ye lost interest. He closed his eyes and rested his hand on the windowsill, tapping his fingertips lightly against it as he felt the night breeze blowing in.

Though it was nighttime, the wind blowing against his face was still hot and carried a heavy dampness.

That was the south in May.

As the convoy entered Western Guangxi, that sticky feeling grew increasingly pronounced.

Shen Ye's brow furrowed slightly. He knew summers in the south were rainy and humid, and he had spent plenty of time trekking through rainforests while working as a mercenary in the Golden Triangle.

But even the oppressive heat there had been nowhere near what he was feeling now.

Before Shen Ye could think any further, his awareness suddenly blurred.

Everything in his field of vision seemed to have been washed with a red filter.

The roadside greenery, the outlines of distant mountains, and the vehicles traveling alongside them all turned different shades of red in that instant.

It lasted only a moment.

Shen Ye was not even sure whether his eyes had played a trick on him.

He blinked, and his vision returned to normal.

Yet when his vision had turned red, an intensely primal urge had surged from deep within his chest.

A bloodthirsty, ravenous desire to kill had brought him close to losing control.

The desire had come without warning, as though a beast chained inside him had suddenly snapped one of its chains and growled at the world beyond its cage.

That fleeting sensation proved what he had seen was no illusion.

Shen Ye's breathing stopped for an instant, and his right hand trembled slightly from how tightly he was clenching it.

Knowing his own body as well as he did, he immediately guessed that the sequence had caused that state.

It had to be a side effect of using the Butcher Sequence's skills.

If he did not satisfy his desire once within a day, he would cease to be himself.

A little over a minute later, that hazy sensation struck again.

This time, it hit harder.

His vision turned red again, but the color was no longer as faint as before.

The night outside the window looked as though it had been steeped in blood. Even the beams of the headlights turned a murky dark red.

His heart began racing, his brow furrowed deeper, and the right hand resting on the windowsill trembled uncontrollably.

Worse still, that bloodthirsty urge lasted longer than before.

A full three or four seconds passed before the red world faded back into the normal darkness of night.

A sheen of cold sweat broke out on Shen Ye's forehead.

Clearly, this was not something he could simply endure. What was happening now seemed to be only a warning of what was to come.

He needed to satisfy his desire as soon as possible, or those episodes would grow more frequent and more intense.

It might not even take a day before Song Shiya, sitting beside him, became the first to suffer.

At that thought, Shen Ye stopped hesitating.

He rose and walked to the storage area, where the snacks and bottled water scavenged from the payment booth were piled together with the convoy's remaining supplies.

He grabbed several packages at random and returned to the passenger seat.

Song Shiya glanced at him but thought little of it, assuming he was simply hungry after expending so much energy in the fight.

Shen Ye tore open the first package of compressed biscuits and bit into one without expression.

He ate quickly.

So quickly that it looked less like eating and more like shoveling dirt into a hole.

The first biscuit, the second, the third...

The compressed biscuits were dry and hard, like biting into dry cardboard.

But Shen Ye could not worry about that. Without even taking a sip of water, he forced the dry, hard crumbs down his throat.

Then came the ham sausages.

One, two, three...

He did not count how many he ate. All he knew was that every one he unwrapped went straight into his mouth.

The salty, greasy sausages mixed with the dry, hard compressed biscuits, churning into an indescribable mass in his mouth.