Chapter 591: Wandering Specter Under the Blade
Chapter 591
Before the former Reaper Squad members could stimulate their muscles to squeeze out the destructive shrapnel from their bones, a b.l.o.o.d.y saber thrust through the chest of a Reaper at the end of the squad. It looked like it was decorated with loads of fangs and was burning.
The glare of the saber was as red as blood, and it instantly spread from the Reaper’s chest to his entire body.
The Reaper screamed shrilly in pain before he was devoured by the raging, b.l.o.o.d.y flames.
A thunderous roar rang out.
The b.l.o.o.d.y flames on the saber exploded like fireworks.
They cut the Reaper and the armor in half.
The Reaper’s two halves fell limply on the floor.
Only a ball of b.l.o.o.d.y fog was left, which came from the Reaper’s blood being evaporated by spirit flames. It remained where the Reaper once stood in the shape of a shuddering human.
Between the fog and smoke was the G.o.d of Death who had killed the Reaper. He carried b.l.o.o.d.y Soul on his shoulder, and his right arm was bound by a chain that shone with runic symbols as he strode over.
With each step he took, it looked like he was stomping on the Reapers’ chests.
It made the former Reaper Squad members’ hearts and lungs shrink to the max, and they felt like they were suffocating.
The Reaper Squad’s leader coughed up blood while he howled, “Meng! Chao!”
But it was not just Meng Chao that had come.
Two former Reaper Squad members moved too close to the wall because they were now covered in blood and were feeling dizzy from the flames, shockwaves, and destructive shrapnel.
While their attention was drawn by Meng Chao, more than ten spikes and stone snakes suddenly shot out from the walls of reinforced concrete.
The spikes had rebars, and they pierced the gaps and steering gear of the motorized armor.
Stone snakes bound the two’s limbs and necks.
Before they could react, they were already pulled over.
The two Reapers were shocked. They struggled with all their might and tried to activate their vitality magnetic fields to crush the reinforced concrete, but a lot of their spirit meridians were cut by the destructive shrapnel mixed with monster bone and crystal powder.
They were now like punctured rubber pipes. Their spirit energy gushed out from all over their bodies, and they could not create sufficient pressure.
And while they were struggling, the spikes crawled through the gaps in their motorized armor into their armpits, abdomen, crotch, and all sorts of soft but vital areas.
Their struggles dwindled in intensity.
Very soon, they simultaneously heaved a long sigh and stopped moving, letting the stone snakes pile on them and bind them in a frenzy. Their bodies, motorized armor, and reinforced concrete blended together and turned into a post-modern art work made of blood, torn flesh, broken bones, cement, and rebars.
Behind the two b.l.o.o.d.y and deformed statues was Lu Siya. She drifted over slowly and stood beside ith Meng Chao.
Meng Chao, Lu Siya, and Xiong Wei’s presences were like a collapsing cliff that covered the remaining ten or so former Reaper Squad members.
Behind the trio came gang elites, and they were several times the number of the trio. They appeared from behind the rolling smoke, and hundreds of black gun muzzles pointed fiercely at the ambushers who thought that they had victory in their grasp.
Even if the former Reaper Squad members had personally witnessed the gates of h.e.l.l slowly open in front of them in the depths of the wild, they had never felt such despair before.
“Retreat!” The Reaper Squad leader immediately made his decision.
The former Reaper Squad members had managed to flee from death in the wild, and they were modified by the monsters before they were sent into the lair to carry out secret missions. They were naturally not ordinary people.
When the Reaper Squad leader realized that the situation was not going as planned, he immediately released a large amount of thick, slightly black, and bitter-smelling blood-red fog from the gaps of his motorized armor.
The blood-red fog moved as if it possessed a life of its own. It kept spreading and splitting up like frenzied vines, and in an instant, it filled up the entire tunnel.
“Careful, it’s poisonous!”
Meng Chao’s nasal mucosa was stimulated. His expression changed, and he immediately told the normal gang members to retreat. They were to absolutely not get touched by the blood-red fog.
But Phantom Bear Xiong Wei did not care about it and delivered his second punch.
However, the Reaper Squad leader had already used the blood-red fog as a cover to lead all the former Reaper Squad members to crash into the wall beside them, which had become really brittle after the anti-monster mine blasted it.
With a loud crash, the seemingly st.u.r.dy wall gained eight large holes.
Due to their desire to survive, the former Reaper Squad members ignored the destructive shrapnel that dug into their flesh and bones. They drained their life force to make their spirit flames burn while they charged forward.
“It’s really him!”
Xiong Wei’s attack missed. When he came in contact with the Reaper Squad leader’s bitter blood-red fog, his palms instantly let out sizzling sounds, as if they were immersed in concentrated sulfuric acid. Right away, a layer of greasy white bubbles appeared on his skin due to the corrosion.
He quickly pulled his hands back and circulated his spirit energy to repair his damaged flesh.
Meanwhile, his expression became unprecedentedly grave. “He’s Wandering Specter Zhong Li!”
“Is he the person who once escaped from Saber Jin Wanhao?” Meng Chao c.o.c.ked his eyebrows.
By then, they had already learned half of the former Reaper Squad members’ names, characteristics, and weaknesses through Su Lun.
They were old that the former Reaper Squad’s leader was Wandering Specter Zhong Li, someone who was extremely difficult to handle.
Ten years ago, he was a robber who committed every act of evil conceivable.
He was evil, but he was also really smart. He never went to the outside world to burn and pillage. Instead, he stayed in the lair and targeted the gangs, black market guests and merchants, and the guests of the monster coliseums.
With this model of crime, he managed to temporarily be free of being hunted by the secret police, but he did not manage to run away from the wrath of Saber Jin Wanhao, the master of the lair and the Underground Emperor.
Jin Wanhao released a kill on sight order and ordered all the gangs to kill Zhong Li.
But this audacious person was already used to a world where evil ruled, so he had some deviant methods that made him really hard to deal with.
Even if Saber Jin Wanhao personally took action, he did not manage to kill him with just one slash.
He only managed to cut his face apart with an astonishing saber glare.
When Zhong Li was heavily wounded, he realized that if he continued staying in the lair, he would be crushed by Jin Wanhao and the gangs.
So he decided to flee from the lair and surrender to the secret police. He also requested that he join the Reaper Squad.
The Reaper Squad carried out suicidal missions with a mortality rate that was nearly 100%.
Naturally, they would not mind an increase in members.
Besides, even if Jin Wanhao could rule over the lair and was the Underground Emperor who could do whatever he wanted, he seemed to have reached some sort of agreement with the nine great mega corporations, which resulted in him never leaving the lair .
Zhong Li managed to stay alive through sheer luck.
Since he was the only person who managed to run away from the Saber, he did not regard this as something shameful, but as a glory, so he decided to call himself the Wandering Specter, because he moved like a specter and managed to escape from the Saber.
No matter how lucky the death row convicts who joined the Reaper Squad were, they would usually be unable to carry out more than ten missions.
Wandering Specter Zhong Li was the same. On his seventh mission, he ran into a monster horde, and his entire squad was wiped out.
When the reinforcements cleaned up the battlefield, they found a lot of corpses. After some DNA tests, they found half of Zhong Li’s heart, and with it, they announced that he was dead.
They did not expect that he would still be alive and had turned into a member of the monster civilization’s special forces.
No one knew what sort of thing was pulsating in place of his heart.
“After them!” Meng Chao, Lu Siya, and Xiong Wei shouted together.
The trio led a large group of gang members after them.
The former Reaper Squad members led by Wandering Specter Zhong Li used every trick at their disposal to slaughter their way out.
They were completely different ent.i.ties compared to the normal robbers who took in too many Deification Capsules.
While they fled, they continued disa.s.sembling their twisted motorized armor, because it was now just a burden.
They then stuffed their motorized armor full of grenades, crystal bombs, and all sorts of despicable items before throwing them at their pursuers.
Then, in the midst of the explosions, flames, smoke, and continuously collapsing walls, they minimized their breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, and scent wafting out of their pores to become really elusive, just like wandering specters.
The gang members and the trio could not figure out where they were as the former Reaper Squad members kept appearing and disappearing from their sight.
Since Zhong Li had managed to survive Saber Jin Wanhao’s attack, he was definitely a first-cla.s.s escape artist.
He had also been targeting bad folk in the lair for years, but was never caught by the gangs. He had great understanding of the terrain in the lair and knew how to turn it into his best “weapon”.
Meng Chao and the others only had a limited time to set up their trap, so their encirclement was made in too much haste.
Besides, the borders were currently on fire. They could not bring all the elites back to the coliseum.
With their current manpower, while they could deal a heavy blow to the former Reaper Squad members, killing all the monster puppets, including Wandering Specter Zhong Li, was beyond their power.
During the chase, Meng Chao, Lu Siya, and Xiong Wei managed to kill some more of the former Reaper Squad members.
Meng Chao swung b.l.o.o.d.y Saber and cut another former Reaper Squad member’s spine. The person fell limp on the floor and was captured alive by the gang members.
Lu Siya’s spike also thrust into the crotch of a former Reaper Squad member. That person had to depend entirely on his luck to survive.
Xiong Wei spread his fingers wide open and slammed a former Reaper Squad member’s head and helmet into his body. There was no way the man could survive it.
Unfortunately, the three were just mooks who trailed behind the squad.
The real target was Wandering Specter Zhong Li, but he moved like he was soaring through the clouds in the blood-red fog. With just a few jumps, he rushed to the borders of the coliseum.
A few gang members who were guarding the coliseum risked their lives to stop him, but they were all shrouded by the blood-red fog that Wandering Specter Zhong Li released.
It corroded their bodies, mottled their motorized armor, and deep red rust covered the armor’s surface.
Their skins also became covered in a series of red, shiny, and terrifying pustules.
Pain and fear overcame them, so there was no way they could stop the frenzied Wandering Specter Zhong Li.
“Move!” Zhong Li roared, and the gang members became his stepping stone. He stepped on them, and they flew into the audience seats.
He cackled, and like a bird soaring in the sky, he jumped over the border of the coliseum.
Behind the wall was a densely populated residential area and the hive-like buildings, which made the place as complicated as a 3D maze!