Astonishing Speed

A piercing screech suddenly rang out.

A pair of scarlet eyes abruptly lit up.

In the darkness, an enormous Red-Haired Killer Rat lunged out, a foul, bloody stench wafting from its gaping maw as it opened its jaws impossibly wide and snapped at Cheng Qi's head!

A dagger gleaming with cold light flipped out from the wrist of the Extreme Warrior Armor.

Cheng Qi's eyes hardened, and a thought formed in his subconscious.

-Top speed!

The muscles in Cheng Qi's calves bulged, then unleashed their power in an instant. He shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, scattering garbage across the ground and warping thinner pieces of metal beneath his feet.

In a flash, Cheng Qi crossed paths with the Red-Haired Killer Rat.

At that very instant, he ducked slightly and slipped beneath the belly of the leaping red-haired rat!

Roar!

The red-haired rat missed its target, landed, and swiftly wheeled around with a beastly howl.

Then the Red-Haired Killer Rat leaped another three or four meters, pouncing at Cheng Qi.

But this time, Cheng Qi did nothing. He simply stood where he was, a cold gleam in his eyes.

Squelch!

The red-haired rat first felt its abdomen go numb, then its scarlet eyes widened.

At some point, a crimson line had appeared across its belly. With a wet ripping sound, it burst open!

Blood sprayed in every direction. Its internal organs had also been sliced apart, and some pressure within made them rupture one after another, scattering across the ground.

Thud!

The enormous red-haired rat hit the ground. Black blood trickled from its mouth, and the red light in its eyes slowly faded.

Cheng Qi's pupils contracted.

In that brief instant, he had charged, engaged, slashed, and withdrawn!

All of it had probably happened within half a second.

He glanced at the data provided by the Extreme Warrior Armor.

Movement speed: 28 m/s

Cheng Qi did the math in his head.

That was roughly the speed of a cheetah in the old era.

Even the fastest-running animal on Earth could only reach that speed during a brief sprint, not sustain it for long.

Twenty-eight meters per second.

At that speed, something passing before human eyes would look like a stick being swung sharply. The brain had no time to analyze or process it in detail, leaving only a brief, indistinct impression.

That was what people called an "afterimage."

"A C-Level Gene can improve the human body this much?"

"I knew I was fast, but I never imagined I was this fast!"

"The explanation I heard on the radio before didn't seem to describe this!"

Cheng Qi was puzzled, but he had nowhere to turn for answers.

From what he had previously understood, a C-Level Gene offered only limited physical enhancement.

Yet the increase in his speed was so tremendous that it almost felt as though he had crossed the boundaries between species.

"Do I have some kind of hidden attribute?"

Cheng Qi froze for a moment. "Am I the chosen one?"

The beastly growls around him grew increasingly dense.

Cheng Qi prepared for the next test: how long he could sustain his speed!

Just how long could he maintain twenty-eight meters per second?!

Don't tell me I'll only last three seconds?

Terrifying roars rose and fell as one menacing shape after another sprang from the garbage heaps.

Cheng Qi was clearly receiving VIP treatment. Every rat surrounding him this time was a Red-Haired Killer Rat over four meters in size.

Across the dim ground, Cheng Qi pushed his speed to the limit, moving rapidly over the terrain.

The Red-Haired Killer Rats' brains processed information even more slowly than human brains.

Their vision even experienced "persistence of vision."

Most of the time, Cheng Qi's figure had become a series of black streaks.

Only when he struck to kill did his image linger briefly on their retinas, allowing them to see nothing more than a blurry, overlapping silhouette without any discernible color.

The roars grew louder and louder.

They carried the Killer Rats' anger, but also their fear.

-What the hell is this thing?!

-Is he ever going to stop?

Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Cheng Qi panted, bent at the waist with both hands braced on his knees.

That was his limit-the longest he could maintain his top speed.

A real man for three minutes and twenty-eight seconds!

That was already pretty impressive!

Just a few days ago, Cheng Qi would never have dared imagine possessing such an absurd physique.

He slowly raised his head.

Cheng Qi saw red-haired rat corpses strewn across the ground. By a rough count, there were at least fifty.

The surviving red-haired rats crouched with arched backs, growling, but no longer dared rush forward.

Suddenly.

Cheng Qi noticed something glittering in the abdomen of one Red-Haired Killer Rat corpse.

A glint of light happened to catch his eye.

"No way?"

"An inner core?!"

Cheng Qi froze. "Isn't this a science-fiction world?"

Cheng Qi took a few steps forward, bent down, and picked up the shining object.

It was oval, with an uneven, somewhat translucent surface, and felt like metal to the touch.

Just then.

The Standard Template Construct on his wrist suddenly activated, emitting a fan-shaped blue scanning beam.

[Similar technological constructs detected]

[Synthesize?]

[This item is amorphous alloy containing impurities. Its functional properties and applications are similar to those of amorphous alloy, but its purity is 70%.]

Cheng Qi stared blankly. "This is amorphous alloy?!"

The Standard Template Construct had activated because similar objects lay beneath the corpses of seven other red-haired rats, each resembling a lumpy metal potato.

[Carrion Rats possess extremely powerful chewing and digestive capabilities. Due to mutation, their stomach acid exhibits special molecular corrosiveness. They are omnivores that routinely consume large quantities of garbage, including various alloys.]

[However, their digestive capabilities still have limits. Small amounts of indigestible metallic elements accumulate over many years, gradually fusing inside their stomachs into an alloy with a disordered atomic arrangement: amorphous alloy containing large quantities of impurities.]

Cheng Qi was stunned.

The stomach stones of Carrion Rats were actually amorphous alloy?!

Who could have imagined that!

Once, Hyena and his crew had fought over a single piece of amorphous alloy, even resorting to murder and robbery.

Yet the precious alloy they had dreamed of had been right beside them all along, inside these Killer Rats' bellies-and in such huge quantities!

Of course.

Even if Hyena had learned this while he was alive, he would never have had the ability to venture into the heart of Kyoto, let alone kill red-haired rats.

Cheng Qi surveyed his surroundings.

According to the Standard Template Construct's explanation, forming amorphous alloy required years of accumulation, so only these enormous red-haired rats had any chance of producing it.

The roughly fifty red-haired rat corpses before him had dropped eight pieces of amorphous alloy. That was a drop rate of almost twenty percent.

Cheng Qi couldn't help recalling the enormous Rat Tide that had besieged him a few days earlier.

Rats reproduced incredibly quickly, and they had been breeding for a hundred years.

How many red-haired rats must there be?!

How much amorphous alloy could they drop?!

And with Boss Mo's connections, materials like amorphous alloy and high-entropy alloy were hard currency in Cheng Qi's eyes.

They were silver. They were gold!

Even if Garbage Earth was currently sealed off, the restrictions would have to be lifted someday.

Besides, perhaps Cheng Qi would someday have a chance to leave Garbage Earth and begin a Great Cosmic Era of his own.

Without money, none of that would be possible!

"Hiss..."

Cheng Qi stared at the red-haired rats around him, his expression fierce and his eyes blazing with greed. "I'm. Rich!"

The hundred or so red-haired rats around him trembled.

How had this thing's presence become a hundred times more terrifying than before?

They weren't very intelligent, but at that moment, a sense of danger erupted from deep within their souls.

It was as though a voice inside them was saying:

-Every species has its ultimate fate, and yours is total annihilation.