Mutant Tribe!

Before leaving Wetland Park, Chu Guang first took Ye Shi on a detour to the mutant leech nest near the parking lot. "Those mushrooms—we found them inside there," Ye Shi said, pointing toward a broken concrete pipe not far ahead. "Good thing you didn't go in." Chu Guang clapped a hand on Ye Shi's shoulder. "Let's go. That's not our target today." He had heard ordinary leeches could be used in medicine, but whether mutant leeches held any medicinal value was anyone's guess. The two carefully skirted the mutant leech nest, avoiding the dense vegetation and concrete ruins to stay in the sunlight as much as possible. They walked eastward for a stretch. Looking at the elevated highway and apartment blocks ahead, Ye Shi, trailing beside Chu Guang, could not help asking, "Aren't we going hunting?" "We are." "Then why are we getting further and further from the forest?" "What lies ahead is the real forest." "?" Without elaborating, Chu Guang quietly unslung the iron pipe rifle from his back and chambered a round, his entire demeanor sharpening. Not far off was a collapsed elevated highway. On the moss-covered concrete pillars, the scars of passing time lay concealed beneath the shadows of creeping greenery. A rat the size of a washbasin was lapping up muddy water from a hollow in a ditch. Upon detecting the two uninvited intruders, it darted into the nearby weeds with startling speed. Ye Shi looked up, his pupils widening slightly in sheer awe. Beyond the severed overpass stood cluster upon cluster of high-rises swallowed by vines and moss. Thick roots had burst through the cracked concrete ground, and massive tree trunks rose right out of the center of roads, overturning bus stops and vehicles that had long since decayed into iron scrap. This green hell brimmed with vibrant life, yet harbored deadly perils ready to consume everything. The vista was overwhelmingly striking—every frame looked like a piece of post-apocalyptic concept art, so much so that Ye Shi momentarily forgot he was in a "game world." In that moment, he finally grasped the meaning behind Chu Guang's words. This was the true forest... "We need to be careful from here on out," Chu Guang cautioned, flicking off the safety of his iron pipe rifle as he advanced step by step, scouring the area. Although this was merely the far northern outskirts of Qingquan City, nowhere near the urban core, they still could not afford to drop their guard. High-rise residences, storm sewers, multi-tiered gardens, parking garages, drone hives, automated cultivation towers, maglev stations, and the darkness behind every single window... Every man-made marvel, once abandoned by civilization, had become a natural greenhouse and breeding ground. After the nuclear war, a prolonged winter had indeed gripped this land, but it had lasted for less than half a century. The power of nature had reversed everything. The high-rises were the first to fall; moss crept up from their sunless faces, corroding upward until it enveloped the entire structure. Nor were the lower buildings spared. During the decades of human decline, it took only a few torrential downpours and a sweltering summer to transform the city into a paradise of rampant fungi and angiosperms. They provided an abundance of food for wildlife. Once the city's drainage systems collapsed, the freshwater reserves inside the urban ruins became even richer than those in nearby Lake Linghu. Wild animals and feral livestock migrated from forests, lakeshores, and farms toward the far more hospitable city. Under the triple crucible of radioactive fallout, genetic weapons, and time, they evolved into ferocious, bloodthirsty mutative terrors. They were collectively known as mutants! Of course... The hazards here went far beyond wild beasts. After creeping cautiously along the curb of 76th Street for some distance, the surroundings remained deathly still. Just as Ye Shi was wondering where all the mutants had gone, Chu Guang's voice came from beside him. "Hold up." Before a rusted-out car, Chu Guang had abruptly halted. Ye Shi snapped back to reality and stopped dead, looking around nervously, yet he saw nothing unusual. "What happened?" Chu Guang's expression turned grave. "Traces of survivor activity." "Other survivors?!" Ye Shi blinked, lowering his voice to match Chu Guang's, though he could not mask the excitement in his tone. "Are they wasteland natives?" He was finally going to see other NPCs! He had waited for this moment for ages! Chu Guang shot him a glance, knowing full well what was running through his head. "You don't need to be so thrilled. This isn't good news." "Why?" "Because in a place like this, strangers are far more dangerous than mutants." Without explaining further, Chu Guang crouched down and found a string of beverage cans bound together by iron wire behind one of the scrap car's wheels. The aluminum cans had burst outward. From the jagged edges, it looked as if something had detonated inside them, and a faint lingering stench of rotten eggs still hung in the air. "Sulfur-heavy gunpowder, plus thumbtacks and scrap metal..." Chu Guang's brow furrowed. Mutants? Or marauders? Ordinary survivors wouldn't plant tripwire mines near their settlement. Such crude devices could hardly injure mutants with their sharp sense of smell; in other words, they were meant for people. Judging by the lingering odor, the explosion must have occurred recently—at most five hours ago, perhaps even less. Chu Guang looked back and asked, "When you came up from underground, did you hear an explosion coming from the east?" Ye Shi shook his head nervously. "No." "Wait for me here." Seeing Chu Guang put down the can and rise to his feet, Ye Shi asked anxiously, "What are you going to do?" "Scout out the situation ahead." "I can come with—" "You stay right here." Ye Shi had wanted to insist, but the moment he met Chu Guang's eyes, the words caught in his throat, and he slowly nodded in the end. The intimidating aura of a privileged server admin made him realize that this man was not messing around; cross him, and he might genuinely get kicked offline... After telling Ye Shi to stay concealed beside the scrap car, Chu Guang put away his rifle, drew the sharpened steel pipe from his back, and slipped into a building along the street while keeping low. Though he had indeed planned to use the player as bait when setting out, the situation had changed. Ahead were other survivors, and very likely marauders or a mutant tribe. A decoy was pointless now and would only alert the enemy. Chu Guang's face was grim as his grip on the steel pipe tightened. In a straight line, this place was at most one kilometer from Wetland Park—far too close to Shelter 404! Especially now that the players were ramping up production. Even if the smoke and noise were partially dampened by vegetation and concrete rubble, given enough time, whoever occupied this area would inevitably discover them. Leaving such a hazard unchecked was an ongoing liability. Chu Guang was already prepared to kill. Once he determined that the other party posed a threat, he would strike first without hesitation. Inside the ten-story roadside building, the emergency stairwell was narrow and overgrown with moss. Fortunately, there were no exceptionally dangerous mutants lurking inside. Around the fifth floor, there were several plump mutant rats that, perhaps emboldened by their numbers, bared their teeth at Chu Guang. Had he turned and fled, they surely would have swarmed him, but this uninvited guest showed no fear whatsoever. Their timid instincts kept them from acting rashly, leaving them only to hiss shrilly and make tentative lunges. Long used to such vermin, Chu Guang didn't waste a second. He thrust the pipe straight forward, skewering the nearest mutant rat on the spot. Seeing how vicious he was, the pack scattered in panic, scurrying into floor openings and vanishing into the shadows. "Doesn't look like a rat nest. Probably just ten or twenty of them..." Any more, and they would become difficult to handle. A full swarm of mutant rats would give even heavily armed mercenaries a headache, let alone someone armed with only a single iron pipe rifle. Chu Guang exhaled, gave the pointed pipe a sharp flick, and flung the impaled rat and its blood aside. He climbed straight to the tenth floor. Using the steel pipe as a crowbar, Chu Guang pried open the rusted door and stepped out onto the rooftop. The wind blew hard across the roof. He moved behind a rusted water tank and looked out toward the residential complex to the east. What met his eyes confirmed his suspicion. In an open clearing among the concrete structures stood a palisade fort built of crude timber, shielded from outside view by rags and construction debris. Survivor strongholds on the wasteland fell roughly into two categories: those who lived directly inside pre-war buildings that hadn't collapsed, and those who built anew in open clearings or amidst the ruins, depending on local conditions. Marauders living in urban areas usually occupied apartments; they rarely constructed such primitive shacks and fortifications. Only mutants—with an average height of two meters and weighing upwards of 300 jin—would erect crude wooden huts when perfectly usable buildings stood right beside them. The wooden stakes flanking the fort's entrance were sharpened like wild beast fangs, haphazardly impaled with severed limbs and mutilated corpses, over ground stained with dried blood. They ate anything. Not just fungi and wild fruit, but the flesh of mutant flies, rats, and cockroaches. And of course, their favorite meal was their former kin— Two-legged humans. Scanning along both sides of the street, Chu Guang indeed spotted a mutant sentry carrying a metal longbow atop a roadside shop at the end of 76th Street. Its greenish skin closely resembled an orc from a fantasy film, and in truth, they were every bit as powerful, savage, brutish, and bloodthirsty as orcs. Its two-meter frame and knotty muscles were wrapped in armor pieced together from scrap metal; on the signboard serving as a breastplate, one could even read: "Second One Half Off." The two outward-flaring steel bars welded onto its shoulders were handlebars stripped straight off a bicycle—surprisingly effective against slashes and bludgeoning, capable of jamming a chainsaw or an axe. It was thoroughly cyberpunk, to say the least. Had Chu Guang and Ye Shi kept walking earlier, they would have walked straight into an ambush by that mutant sentry the moment they reached the intersection! A chill ran through Chu Guang's heart. His Adam's apple bobbed slightly as he shifted his gaze back to the mutant fort within the residential compound to the east. Because of the heavy cover, he could not see how many were inside, but judging by the encampment's scale and his own experience, the mutant population was likely between twenty and thirty. "A small mutant settlement..." Chu Guang's expression grew increasingly grim. These brutes were not to be trifled with! Almost at that very moment, a pale-blue system notification popped up in his vision. [Quest: Eradicate the mutant tribe on 76th Street Type: Side Quest Reward: 200 Reward Points] Wait— Quests could trigger outside the shelter?! Chu Guang was momentarily stunned. He immediately tried to summon the system interface, but there was no response. The pale-blue quest window dissolved as if it had never existed. So it was true that the system could only be actively opened near the shelter, but quests could trigger anywhere outside it? Still... Two hundred reward points was pretty damn impressive. Without hesitation, Chu Guang stowed his weapon, turned around, and hurried downstairs, swiftly leading the utterly bewildered Ye Shi away from the area. That was 200 reward points! The side quest to recruit a hundred players had only offered 100 points, yet this one offered 200. Obviously, it was nowhere near easy to complete. There was likely a massive pitfall waiting inside! Chu Guang was no fool. He wasn't about to walk into such an obvious trap. "Manager, sir, what did you see back there?" Ye Shi asked, panting with his hands resting on his knees once Chu Guang finally stopped. Pausing to catch his breath, Chu Guang replied offhandedly, "A mutant camp." "Then we're... just leaving like that?" "What else? Pick a fight with them? Get tossed into a boiling cauldron when we lose?" Chu Guang shot him a glance. "Use your brain. We only have one gun." And only one person who could actually fight. Ye Shi clamped his mouth shut. His gamer brain hadn't made the switch earlier; he had assumed the mutants were just NPCs in the game. Hearing the manager explain it like this, were these mutants a hostile faction? And cannibals at that... Filing this intel away, Ye Shi planned to share it with the other players once they returned. "Picking a fight with those bastards right now is a bad idea. We need better preparation—gather our strength and steamroll them once and for all," Chu Guang grumbled as they put distance between themselves and the camp. "Fucking rotten luck... A mutant camp right on 76th Street, directly across from the park's east gate. In any case, we'll have to watch our backs!" ... The original hunting route had to be altered! Chu Guang led Ye Shi around 76th Street, following the elevated highway out of town north for about one li, where they stumbled upon an abandoned construction site. The site was massive, apparently a residential development that had barely begun before the war. One building had reached seventeen or eighteen stories, while several massive pits were presumably foundations under excavation. Most of the construction machinery had rusted into scrap, and a crane tower had collapsed onto the unfinished building, forming an incline. Evidently, the building's build quality had been quite good. Even though the blast wave of a nuclear detonation had knocked over the crane tower, the concrete structure had merely suffered a chipped opening, its main framework entirely intact. The steel rebar stacked across the site had rusted away, and the bagged cement had long since hydrated and deteriorated, completely unusable. Yet to his pleasant surprise, Chu Guang discovered a massive stash of unused bluish-gray gravel! Chu Guang recognized it at a glance: this was limestone, primarily composed of calcium carbonate if he remembered correctly, the ideal raw material for firing cement. "Good stuff!" Chu Guang rejoiced silently, pulling out his map and marking the location. If all this limestone were processed into cement, building two whole apartment buildings wouldn't be a problem. As long as Fleeting White Horse unlocked the technique for firing Portland cement, they wouldn't have to worry about cement raw materials for a very long time!