Liu Bing's revenge

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The deafening sound of pounding on a door came from ahead.

Several survivors were frantically hammering at the supermarket's tempered-glass doors. Whether they punched or kicked, the doors would not budge.

Shen Ye looked over, his pupils suddenly contracting.

At some point, someone had locked the doors from outside.

And not with just one lock, but several, as though determined to make sure none of them escaped.

An assortment of steel locks and chains wound layer upon layer around the exterior handles, securing the two tempered-glass doors tightly together.

But none of that mattered most. A strange membrane covered the glass.

The membrane was white and nearly transparent, invisible unless one looked closely. It resembled the protective lining inside an eggshell, except that it gave off traces of the same eerie aura as the snake demons.

Without that membrane, the glass could never have been so sturdy.

He had not considered that when he came in.

Shen Ye and Song Lei both immediately tried to get to the doors, but the snake demons had fixed their attention on them and surrounded them completely.

Every step they took toward the entrance brought snake demons charging at them with reckless abandon, leaving them no chance to act.

The man standing outside the glass doors was none other than Liu Bing.

He stood in the sunlight, an undisguised smug smile curling his lips.

His wife and Old Mrs. Zhao stood behind him.

By now, all trace of the grief from noon had vanished from Old Mrs. Zhao's wrinkled face, leaving only a twisted, almost maniacal delight.

"Can't get out, can you?"

Liu Bing's voice carried through the glass.

"Shen Ye, you never imagined your death would come so soon, did you?"

His gaze settled on Shen Ye, and his lips curled high, revealing two rows of yellow teeth.

"I might as well tell you-I knew something was wrong right from the start!"

Liu Bing stepped back and spread his arms, as though presenting the entire sealed supermarket to those inside, eager to deepen their despair.

His voice was a little hoarse from going so long without water.

"I saw those eggs when I came in! I knew what was inside them, too! But I didn't go upstairs. Know why?"

Chuckling, he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and casually tossed it aside.

"Because I knew my chance for revenge had come."

"Even heaven is on my side."

"Heh heh heh..."

Liu Bing let out a bizarre laugh, his voice growing more deranged until it became an almost hysterical tirade.

"That's right, you lot, too." He pointed at the people pounding on the doors, his words growing colder as he snarled through clenched teeth.

"Didn't you all think my son deserved to die?! Didn't you say Shen Ye acted in self-defense?! Didn't you all take his side?!"

"Then you can die with him!!"

"Look at yourselves, begging so pathetically. Aren't you just as wretched as I was back then?"

"But that's not enough. I want to watch those horrors tear every one of you apart while you beg me for mercy with despair written all over your faces."

He slammed a fist against the tempered glass and pressed his contorted face close, his nose almost touching it as he stared fixedly at Shen Ye.

"Shen, take a good look! You forced me to do this! You killed my only son, and I'll make every one of you join him in the grave!!"

Old Mrs. Zhao came forward from behind him, pressing her deeply wrinkled face against the glass, tears and malice gleaming in her cloudy eyes.

"My precious grandson is watching from heaven... watching how you people die... none of you will get away... not a single one..."

Liu Bing's wife stood at the back, clutching the hem of her clothes, her disheveled hair covering half her face.

Her eyes were bloodshot and her lips trembled, but her face bore the same twisted satisfaction of revenge fulfilled.

"Dead... all dead... my son is dead, and you have to die, too..."

She muttered to herself, her voice rising and falling. She had clearly lost her mind.

Inside the glass doors, the blood drained from everyone's faces in an instant.

"Liu Bing, you bastard! Let me out if you've got the guts! I'll fucking kill you!!"

"Liu Bing, I'm innocent! I even brought your son food yesterday! Please, open the door and let me go! I don't want to die!"

"Brother Bing... no, Lord Bing! Please, have mercy and let me out! Take revenge on the person responsible! I'm innocent!"

Some cursed viciously and kicked the doors in a frenzy, while others begged abjectly, kneeling and knocking their heads hard against the floor.

But Liu Bing remained unmoved. There was not a trace of pity in his eyes, only the pleasure of knowing his revenge was almost complete.

Shen Ye did not curse. His icy gaze made it seem as though he were looking at corpses.

Before he could move forward, an even stronger oppressive presence surged from the stairway.

Everyone involuntarily turned to look.

A snake demon slowly slithered down the main staircase.

But this snake demon was different from the ones that had appeared before.

It was a full size larger than all the previous green-scaled snake demons. Its tail measured five or six meters long, and each palm-sized scale shone with a luminous green sheen.

Its upper body was no longer grayish-white, either, but a deeper, almost bluish-gray shade, with dark patterns faintly shifting beneath the surface of its skin.

Most striking of all were its serpentine eyes.

They were no longer a murky yellow.

Instead, they were pure, blazing scarlet, lending it an even more imposing presence.

The suffocating, eerie aura emanating from it left Song Lei and Shen Ye absolutely certain.

This was a second-tier horror, an evolved form of the green-scaled snake demon.

After this second-tier snake demon appeared, the smaller snake demons that had just pursued them downstairs actually parted to make way, lowering their heads and hissing softly as though paying homage.

At last, a flicker of fear crossed Song Lei's wolf eyes. He instinctively wanted to charge the doors and smash them open, creating an escape route for the others.

But as though they had anticipated their intentions, the first-tier snake demons had already surrounded Shen Ye and Song Lei, the two who could fight.

It was as if they were saying, "You won't get anywhere near those doors unless you kill us."

"Shiya, stay behind me. I'll draw these damn things' attention. See if there's another way out," Song Lei told Song Shiya quietly.

But the next moment, the snake demon was already slithering toward him and Song Shiya.

He growled, pushed off the floor with his powerful wolf legs, and launched his massive white wolf body at the second-tier snake demon.

He knew perfectly well that he could not run in this situation.

After all, a second-tier horror's strength was on par with that of a Sequence 8 user.

All he could do now was hold it off as long as possible, allowing his younger sister and the others to escape this hellhole.

As for running?

He did not believe that a Ninth-Rank Sequence User like him could outrun a second-tier horror. Exposing his back would only get him killed faster.

"Boom!!"

Wolf claws and snake tail collided in midair.

The shock wave from their clash shook the surrounding shelves.

After Song Lei's all-out strike, only a few scratches too faint to see clearly appeared on the snake demon's scales.

He could not break through its defenses at all.

The snake demon let out a piercing hiss, then swept its enormous tail sideways, moving so fast that it left an afterimage in the air.

Song Lei instinctively turned sideways to block.

But a second-tier horror's strength was far beyond that of a first-tier one.

"Bang!"

The snake tail sent the enormous white wolf flying into the wall. Plaster shattered, leaving a human-shaped indentation.

Song Lei grunted, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

He struggled to rise, red light beginning to blaze in his wolf eyes. His fighting spirit only grew, and his aura became far stronger than before.

This was the second skill granted by his sequence ability-Berserk.

The skill temporarily doubled his strength and speed, boosting his existing combat power.

But once its duration ended, he would suffer a prolonged period of weakness.

In this situation, he could no longer afford to worry about that.

Even with his combat power doubled, Song Lei dared not clash with it head-on again. Instead, he used his speed advantage to circle the snake demon constantly, aiming his claws at the gaps between its scales and its eyes.

For a time, he actually fought the second-tier snake demon to a standstill.

But only Song Lei knew that the snake demon was not using its full strength at all.

Shen Ye, calmly observing from the side, had clearly noticed that its tail seemed to be gathering power.

"Watch out!"

Shen Ye had just cut down a first-tier snake demon when he turned and saw it happen.

Even as his shout rang out, the second-tier snake demon's tail shot forward like lightning.

Song Lei had no time to dodge and could barely twist sideways.

The tail scraped across his ribs, tearing away a large chunk of flesh and narrowly missing his vitals.

Yet this was still only a simple probing attack. Its killing blow followed a second later.

It lunged at Song Lei's right arm with its gaping maw.