Night of Despair

Chapter 100: Strength II

Immediately, Yu Hong placed the Wolf Fang Club on the ground, then rummaged through a corner to gather various weapons he had collected from killing people before.

Steel pipes, machetes, daggers, and the like were the most numerous, followed by a few small alloy shields.

He stacked all the metal items together with the Wolf Fang Club, picked up a submachine gun he had confiscated earlier, thought about it, and put it down again. This thing was really no better than a club in close combat.

He pressed one hand on the surface of this pile of metal items and chanted under his breath,

“Enhance weapon. Direction…”

Yu Hong envisioned the weapon form he needed in his mind.

...

Soon, black lines flowed out, merging into the Wolf Fang Club.

“Confirm enhancement?”

“Yes!”

A countdown appeared: 3 hours 09 minutes.

***

***

***

Post office.

Two Multi-eyed Birds stumbled away from the stone house, flying off into the distance.

Their bodies were covered with burns from the explosion, one of them even had its head blown off, with the flesh on its neck moving rapidly, growing, sprouting a new head.

Inside the stone house.

A team led by Ge Shenghao had bloodshot eyes, five had joined the battle, two had lost an arm, one had a crushed shoulder, barely breathing, and another lay on the ground with broken legs, wailing.

Ge Shenghao propped himself up from the ground; his back was bleeding, but it was just a minor injury, the result of being hit by the Multi-eyed Bird’s great force and smashed against a rock.

“We’ve run out of grenades, if that monster comes again, we’re dead for sure!”

“Let’s send Ah Dong on his way,” whispered a man with sideburns who had lost an arm.

He was talking about Ah Dong, the one with the crushed legs. In this environment, one could run without arms, but without legs…

Thump.

Someone stepped forward, slapped Ah Dong unconscious, didn’t lay a hand on him, just refrained from stopping his bleeding and gently laid him flat.

“How long till the rescue team gets here!?” Ge Shenghao asked in a low voice, standing up to tend to everyone’s wounds.

“They said today,” the sideburns man replied. With one hand, he bit down on a cigarette and lit it with a lighter, his head bowed. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see his doomed companion.

“We can’t hold out, we’ve got nothing left that can threaten the Multi-eyed Birds,” said Ge Shenghao as he bandaged the man’s arm stump.

“There’s nowhere to run, we’d be killed halfway there,” replied the sideburns man dispassionately.

“There’s one more way!” Ge Shenghao paused, then described the situation he had seen at Yu Hong’s place.

“There were no explosions there, and one person was keeping those two women safe alone; he must have a secret. There must be a way to repel the Multi-eyed Birds!”

After hearing the description, hope reignited in everyone’s eyes.

“What do you want to do?” The sideburns man looked at Ge Shenghao. He was accustomed to life and death, but naturally, it would be best to survive.

“Seek life from death!” Ge Shenghao turned to look at Li Rushan, who was not far away, emerging unscathed from the basement entrance.

The man looked shamefaced, holding some medicine and clean water. Obviously, during the chaos of the battle, he had hidden in the basement at some point.

***

***

***

Evening was coming on, and the sky was darkening.

In the yard, Qiu Yanxi and her daughter were chiseling luminous stones into small pieces. @@novelbin@@

But what both of them hadn’t noticed was that, outside the wall of the courtyard, deep within the thin mist, two broad gray-white shadows were silently staring at them, and at the cave safe house.

Yu Hong stood inside the safe house basement, holding a Vortex Rune board he had just discovered some secrets of.

“Vortex runes need to be drawn with Inner Qi to produce an effect successfully. Once successful, the negative Red Value no longer radiates outward but concentrates inward, accumulating within the rune, especially at its very center which is the core of the Red Value concentration,” Yu Hong summarized.

“Crushing the Vortex Rune in an instant releases the negative Red Value stored inside, creating a short-duration, small-area high-concentration radiation effect. Perhaps it could be used as a negative Red Value grenade.”

“Looking at it this way, the main function of Vortex Runes is probably to store radiation energy.”

Storage…

Thinking of this, Yu Hong suddenly remembered if Vortex Runes are for storage, then why does the subsequent burst produce such large numbers?

“Is it the Large Pyroxene Stone powder itself that possesses so much negative Red Value radiation??”

Yu Hong shook his head.

It was possible, after all, the radiation from luminous stones is continuously maintained; to concentrate every moment of radiation into one point for an explosive release, it would be surprising if it wasn’t powerful.

“But from over a hundred negative Red Values to seven or eight hundred, that’s a bit excessive…” He clearly remembered that after being used three times by a “shadow,” a Large Pyroxene Stone would completely exhaust its energy and turn to powder.

This meant that the radiation energy of a Large Pyroxene Stone couldn’t possibly be as much as seven or eight hundred.

“But why…” His brow furrowed deeply, the biggest conjecture slowly surfaced in his mind.

“The only possibility is… this Vortex Rune… isn’t simply storing radiation energy…”

He picked up the rune board, carefully touching the fine lines on it.

“It’s more likely to be… absorbing external radiation energy, then storing it inside!”

“If it really is absorption, then by varying the length of time I place the Vortex Runes before using them, I could possibly test the difference in the negative Red Values they release upon bursting.”

The longer the rune is placed after creation, the larger the negative Red Values it may release when crushed.

Revelling in this thought, Yu Hong set this newly created rune board against the wall, temporarily ignoring it.

Then went to the middle of the basement and started to train.

These days, as he progressed to the second level of the Heavy Leg Skill, his bodily strength had stopped increasing; instead, his skin’s keratin layer had grown thicker, and he felt lighter and more agile.

Clearly, the main improvement on the second layer lay in defense and agility.

And as Yu Hong persisted in his daily training, he faintly felt that the second strand of Inner Qi was about to coalesce.

He stood in the center of the basement, concentrated, and began to repeatedly practice the Heavy Leg Skill, visualizing the accompanying patterns.

Time trickled by.

Suddenly, a shrill scream echoed from outside the safe house.

Swish.

Yu Hong, who was visualizing, abruptly opened his eyes, quickly donned the Polar Bear Suit, and went up a level.

As he passed by the Wolf Fang Club, he noticed that it had been successfully enhanced. He grabbed it without hesitation, brandishing it as he rushed to the door.

Pulling open the barricade, the darkness outside the reinforced glass windows was complete.

The moonlight was beautiful, like gauze or mist, blending into the thin fog, indistinguishable from each other.

Two of the same huge Multi-eyed Birds as before were circling and emitting strange cries similar to toads above the forest outside the cave.

These two monstrous birds circled with flapping wings, their howling carrying through the air, and the two rows of small red eyes on their heads shone with a faint red glow in the night, like the laser sights of sniper rifles.

Yu Hong observed carefully and noticed that on one side of one of the Multi-eyed Birds, there were still large scars from being hit by the Wolf Fang Club.

‘That one from the daytime…’ he took a deep breath.

He had nearly been injured by just one bird before, and now two had come at once…

And his huge wooden Shield had been destroyed and wasn’t yet repaired…

“We’re in trouble,” he observed the yard and saw that Qiu Yanxi and her daughter had disappeared, obviously they had already hidden themselves, either in the wooden house or the newly dug stone cave.

Roar!!

At that moment, the two Multi-eyed Birds also noticed Yu Hong. One circled overhead, while the other dived one after another, charging towards the cave entrance like arrows.

The whistling screeches in the night were like ghostly cries, grating and unpleasant to the ear.

Realizing something was wrong, Yu Hong quickly retreated, holding the gun in one hand and the club in the other, increasing their distance.

Instead of rushing out, he decided to first assess the protective state of the main door.

One second.

Boom!!! Boom!!!

Two loud bangs followed one after another.

It seemed as if the entire safe house cave trembled violently, at the door, the thick wooden door now had two bulges smashed into it from the outside.

But it was just those two bulges—nothing else.

‘It held!’

Yu Hong’s spirits lifted, as the door that had previously not been able to withstand an attack from the Multi-eyed Bird had now managed to block two hits from them in succession.

This test was sufficient. Relying entirely on the door to block enemies was unrealistic unless it could self-repair. Regardless, he had to go out and repel the enemy.

With the realization that the door was much stronger than before, Yu Hong’s tension eased. Standing in his spot, he didn’t move forward to open the door but instead raised the Wolf Fang Club with one hand and quietly waited.

Boom!!

Boom!!!

Boom!!!

Rumble!!

The door finally shattered, and a white bird’s head charged in, continuing its momentum, stabbing towards Yu Hong.

“Die!!!”

In an instant, Yu Hong roared angrily as he stepped forward, his figure blurring like a shadow, smashing the ground beneath him, and he dealt a powerful blow with the club to the bird’s head.

The Wolf Fang Club cut through the air with a shrill sound, driving a sharp howl, carrying all of Yu Hong’s accumulated explosive power, and heavily struck the bird’s head.

Boom!!

Caught off guard, the Multi-eyed Bird’s head was hit hard by the club, its head and most of its neck instantly burst open, turning into a gray and white shower of blood.

The rest of its body was hit by the tremendous impact and flung out of the cave at an angle, shooting into the nearby forest with a plop.

Roar!!

The second Multi-eyed Bird took the opportunity to lift its head and hammered its beak down with great force.

It gripped the door with its talons, its wings madly flapping for leverage, its beak sharp as a spear, creating a similarly piercing screech, fiercely stabbing at Yu Hong, who was standing by the entrance.

This sudden attack came just as Yu Hong was off-balance from the inertia of his swing.

The Multi-eyed Bird was already incredibly fast, and now, seizing the opportunity for a sneak attack, it was impossible to dodge.

Pffft!!

This blow struck hard against the alloy plate on Yu Hong’s raised arm.

The alloy plate bent again, twisting the face of Yu Hong inside.

But even though the hit was heavy, it was blocked by the transparent keratin layer that had grown on Yu Hong’s skin, and it caused no harm—only pain.

And this sudden pain induced a violent fury in Yu Hong’s heart.

His blood rushed furiously, flooding his entire body in the moment he was hit by the beak. He staggered back two steps and fired the gun without aiming.

Bang bang bang bang bang!!

Five consecutive shots.

The enhanced bullets blasted five bloody holes in the body of the second Multi-eyed Bird. It nearly tore its upper body apart, leaving even the basic skeleton unable to hold up.

Yu Hong took the opportunity to lift the Wolf Fang Club, roaring as he smashed it forward wildly.

The enhanced Wolf Fang Club was much heavier than before, now weighing over a hundred pounds, and its surface covered with a multitude of barbed spikes. Once embedded in flesh, it would be extremely difficult to pull out.

As Yu Hong lifted it for a ferocious smash, the top end of the club barely hit the neck of the second Multi-eyed Bird and hooked onto it. With one pull back,

Yu Hong’s immense strength countered the Multi-eyed Bird’s attempts to struggle, and with one yank, the latter’s neck was ripped and part of its flesh torn, hanging from the Wolf Fang Club, unable to shake free.