When Huang Tian picked up his axe and Lao Gao cheerfully hauled the carcasses of the green-eyed cat and the other mutant fierce beasts into the car's trunk, the bullet comments in the livestream poured down like a flood.
"Unbelievable. According to the official beast compendium, the green-eyed cat is an extremely agile fierce beast, and yet the boss beat speed with speed and killed it in a single blow!"
"Why is Boss Huang Tian's combat skill so high? Is he born with it?"
"No need to wonder—it's talent, martial arts talent! Didn't the boss say he's been mentally sharp since he was small? Maybe that's the reason: it keeps him exceptionally calm and clear-eyed in a fight."
"The times make the hero. In this Great Evolution era, Huang Tian's special talent has suddenly come to the fore—"
As the comments refreshed one after another, someone suddenly posted several in a row: "Help! Help! My home is only one li from where the boss is, next to the Haoyouduo Supermarket. I was sneaking a look outside from the second floor just now and a fierce beast spotted me. I think they're getting ready to ram my front gate. Boss, please save me!"
At first Yang Qiu, who was in charge of filming the livestream, did not notice it, until quite a few netizens copied and sent it together and the screen was filled with that one comment. Then he reacted and shouted, "Mr. Huang, someone's calling for help! It's about five or six hundred meters from us, next to the Haoyouduo Supermarket."
"I know exactly where that is!" Liu Yang spoke up quickly. "I know this area well—I used to serve in the street patrol detachment around here."
"Let's go!" Huang Tian was brief. He jumped into the car, and Lao Gao leapt up with equal agility.
Bang! The doors shut and the car sped off at once. Liu Yang did know the roads—no navigation needed; a few turns left and right and the supermarket called Haoyouduo came into view.
The supermarket was not large, about the size of an ordinary convenience store. Someone unfamiliar with the roads would never find it in a short time.
Diagonally opposite the supermarket were five wild boars. The lead boar had a black horn growing from its head and was nearly twice the size of a normal pig. Of the other four ordinary mutant boars, two were charging side by side at an iron gate, and with a single impact the door panel bent deeply inward!
On the second floor, a pale, gaunt young man caught sight of the Patrol Bureau vehicle racing up. His expression eased, but he did not dare shout; he only waved at the car through the glass.
"One Beast Soldier rank one-horned boar, four ordinary mutant boars—not easy to handle, with hides that thick—" Lao Gao gripped his gun, frowning.
Screech! The car braked and the door opened. Two throwing axes shrieked out in an instant, tore the air, and buried themselves precisely in the skulls of the two boars charging the gate. Screams burst out; their forelegs buckled and they dropped to their knees, bodies twitching.
And almost at the same instant the axes flew, Huang Tian shot out of the car!
One push of his feet cracked the ground and sent gravel flying. In a blink he crossed dozens of meters, his black hair whipping like dragons and snakes in the wind, his clothes snapping.
The fire axe he carried reversed in his right hand was like a streak of gold in the sunlight; its blade cut the air and slashed savagely at the lead one-horned boar!
"Grrr—"
The one-horned boar's pupils shrank. It knew it was not fast, that it could not dodge in time, so its ferocity rose and it viciously flicked the black horn on its head upward to meet Huang Tian's descending blade head-on!
"Bang!"
A ring of air burst outward and the dust on the ground leapt half a chi into the air.
The black horn snapped at the blow; half of the tip flew off and drove into the concrete several meters away. The boar roared in agony, twisted its neck, and its tail, like a steel whip, lashed over with a whistling wind!
Huang Tian calmly turned sideways, pivoting on his left foot, and drifted like a falling leaf to the boar's right side, the fire axe sweeping across with him!
The blade split the hide on the boar's flank and sank into flesh. A wound over a meter long ran across its ribs, and scalding blood sprayed into the air.
"Roar!"
Before the boar's scream faded, Huang Tian had already leapt up, his figure rising a meter in an instant. The fire axe swung in a full arc, glinting gold, and came down on the back of the boar's neck with tremendous force!
"Pff—"
The blade bit straight into its neck. Most of the head was severed, held on only by a strip of skin so that it did not roll to the ground, and blood gushed from the cut!
Its forelegs gave way and the massive body crashed down, raising a cloud of dust.
Seeing this, the two remaining ordinary mutant boars trembled all over and bolted for their lives. Huang Tian grabbed the fire axe, swung, and hurled it, pinning one boar dead. At the same time he leapt, starting after the other yet reaching it first, seized its tail with his right hand, and hauled it back so hard it could not advance an inch.
"Whee—hiss—" The boar squealed again and again, four hooves stamping the ground as it tried to break free.
But Huang Tian pulled back slightly, dragging it toward him, and then—one punch!
"Bang!!"
The fist smashed into the side of its skull. With a bang, the boar's whole body convulsed, its squeals cut off at once, blood welled from its gaping mouth, and it collapsed limply to the ground.
"Hiss—so brutal! So satisfying!" Yang Qiu, in charge of the filming, sucked in a breath of the bloody air, his eyelids twitching, hot blood surging in his chest.
Lao Gao was excited too, but he kept a cool watch on the surroundings in case something unexpected happened.
Liu Yang, meanwhile, ran over eagerly, pulled the horn tip out of the ground, carefully wiped the blood from it, then looked around and voiced a pleased sort of worry: "So many beast carcasses—we'll have a hard time carrying them."
Huang Tian unhurriedly retrieved his three axes. "Just take the most valuable parts—the horn, for instance; put it in the car. As for these carcasses, if we leave them they'll likely be eaten by other fierce beasts. Better to notify the Patrol Bureau or the school to send people to drag them back."
Liu Yang replied, "We're close to the school. I'll have Xiao Song drive over and take them back to the school."
Xiao Song was a patrol officer who had come with Liu Yang to reinforce Experimental High School. This time, while Huang Tian and his three companions went out to "hunt monsters," Xiao Song and several others had been left behind to keep guarding the school's teachers and students.
"Fine." Huang Tian nodded, and Liu Yang began calling Xiao Song.
"Thank you, boss, for saving my life! Thank you—thank you—" The gaunt young man from the second floor came thumping down the stairs, opened the deeply dented iron gate, and bowed to Huang Tian in thanks, his face filled with relief and excitement at having survived.
"A small matter," Huang Tian said with an indifferent wave. "After we leave, you'd better reinforce that gate, and try not to show yourself, so the beasts don't fix on you again."
The young man nodded repeatedly. "Don't worry, I understand. I won't gamble with my life—"
After a few more words, the young man went back inside and hastily reinforced the gate. A few minutes later two small trucks drove up and several people jumped out—Xiao Song and a few of the stronger PE teachers from the school.
Xiao Song gave a salute, then led them in quickly loading the beast carcasses onto the trucks.
"Let's continue." Huang Tian walked to the car.
"Right!" Liu Yang and the other two answered, and the car rolled smoothly forward—
The whole day passed in a flash. They killed so many fierce beasts that day—pigs, dogs, cats, rats. The rats were the weakest but the most numerous and the hardest to clear: the moment they sensed danger they burrowed into the ground and fled far away. Only because Huang Tian was so fast could he kill most of them before they slipped away.
"Most of a day's work, and our district's much more stable." As the sun sank in the west and only red clouds and silver light remained at the horizon, the car returned to Experimental High School. Stepping out, Liu Yang was in high spirits.
Lao Gao happily agreed. "It's mainly because Huang Tian killed so many Beast Soldier rank monsters that the situation has settled down."
To the Shangyuan City Patrol Bureau and its hundreds of thousands of citizens, unranked ordinary fierce beasts were not so frightening; their strength was not great, and with enough people they could be handled even with clubs.
The real threat was the Beast Soldier rank beasts. They were strong; several armed patrol officers might not beat one.
The green-eyed cat, for instance, was extremely fast, crossing twenty or thirty meters in a second—before you could fire, it was already in your face. And the one-horned boar, huge and thick-hided, charged like a tank: truly, to be touched by it was to be hurt, to be grazed by it was to die!
It was precisely because of these Beast Soldier rank beasts that the Patrol Bureau had trouble stabilizing the situation and was taking no small losses of its own.
Humanity needed more martial artists. Modern weapons were strong—even a Beast Soldier rank beast could not take a rifle bullet without harm—but the point was to hit. An ordinary person's nerves and reflexes were too slow; before they could aim, the thing was in their face— Liu Yang mused silently.
When the four walked into the school, many teachers and students were waiting near the gate. Seeing them return, the crowd burst into warm cheers.
Luo Xiong and Fang Hao grinned and gave Huang Tian a thumbs-up, while Li Guanglin and other classmates shouted "Old Huang's a badass!" and "So cool!"—clearly they had all watched the livestream, and even those who hadn't could tell what had happened just from the truckloads of carcasses brought back.
Huang Tian smiled at the sight and waved to them, and the cheering grew louder still.
After the excitement, everyone headed eagerly for the cafeteria, where the smell of meat was rich enough to make mouths water. They found their seats and fell to their dinner.
Huang Tian ate the one-horned boar's meat at a leisurely pace and nodded slightly. The meat of a Beast Soldier rank beast did hold richer spiritual energy; eating and refining it was considerably more efficient than simply drawing spiritual energy from the void—
Dinner lasted nearly an hour; only after eating a good deal of one-horned boar meat did Huang Tian return to the dormitory the school had prepared for him alone, to refine and absorb the spiritual energy and continue cultivating.
The night flew by and daylight rose. After a night of cultivation Huang Tian was still full of vigor. He walked out of the dormitory toward the cafeteria, but saw that the teachers and students along the way all wore worried frowns. His eyebrows lifted slightly; he entered the cafeteria, got his food, walked to where Liu Yang was eating, sat down opposite him, and said, "Everyone seems down today."
Liu Yang paused, then understood, and his voice was a little heavy. "You haven't seen the news, have you? Something's happened somewhere else—"
Huang Tian understood and took out his phone. Many news alerts popped up; two of them read plainly: "Marfu Falls—Nearly Six Hundred Thousand Dead in the Jaws of Sea Beasts—" and "Tianhai City of the Great Yan Federation Invaded by Sea Beasts—"
Marfu was an island nation, a famous tourist destination known around the world.
Late the previous night, Marfu had suddenly come under attack by hundreds of millions of sea beasts. By 6:42 this morning the whole country had fallen; not a single survivor remained—and even anyone who survived by luck would not last more than a few days. That place now belonged to the sea beasts.
And Tianhai City was the economic center of the Great Yan Federation—
Huang Tian opened the second news alert and found a video:
On Tianhai City's east shore, the once quiet sea surface suddenly churned, and a boundless black line came surging out. A closer look showed it was countless fierce beasts crawling up out of the ocean.
Among the endless beasts were some of enormous size. There was a jellyfish towering above the water, its transparent bell over thirty meters across, tentacles hanging beneath it like whips and lashing through air and sea.
There was a mutant octopus whose arms were as thick as old trees; it climbed ashore and with one casual sweep of a limb smashed the buildings near the coast to rubble. There was a giant turtle nearly forty meters long, seaweed tangled on its shell, its legs thicker than pillars, and every step it took made the ground tremble—
The Great Yan authorities must have detected the beasts' attack in advance, for the people living along the shore had been moved out ahead of time. And when the sea beasts surged up, the cannons roared!
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Smoke filled the air, the volleys of cannon fire like thunder!
Thousands of shells fell among the beast tide and burst, blowing many beasts to pieces, flesh and blood raining down!
A tearing sound came from the sky, and missiles with trailing flames streaked toward the giant beasts!
Three missiles struck the mutant octopus's head, and the fireball of the explosion swallowed its body instantly. Five more fell on the giant turtle's shell and blew the shell open—
Every second, thousands upon thousands of beasts died; their bodies piled into mountains on the beach.
But there were far, far too many beasts in the sea, and the black tide kept spreading.
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly, with a shriek, a nuclear bomb came flying from the horizon, and then a blazing white light burst alight in the air above the beast tide!
"Rumble!!!"
White light filled heaven and earth; a fireball over a kilometer across swelled in midair and bloomed like a flower, and every beast around it was vaporized in an instant, without even time to scream.
The violent shockwave spread rapidly outward, flattening everything in sight. Buildings collapsed, beasts were torn to shreds and scattered—
Seeing this, the sea beasts in the distant waters, untouched by the blast, finally withdrew in fear. The beast tide dispersed, and the surface of the sea was covered in ash.
Great Yan had won.
But clearly, to Liu Yang and the others—or rather, to countless people—Great Yan had merely survived one round of the beasts' assault; victory was far off.
Because the ocean was boundless, and no one knew how many times the sea beasts outnumbered humanity. Humans could hardly kill the countless beasts in the sea, while the sea beasts could bide their time and launch a new raid at any moment—
At the very bottom of the video, a line of bold text caught Huang Tian's eye: "Where is humanity's way out? Is there any real chance for humans to win?"
Chapter 258