Inside the canyon, monstrous shapes loomed in the darkness. Each creature was bloated and rotting, their bodies crawling with nests of bugs. They looked like mutated hippos and rhinos, huge and unstoppable, rampaging through the swampy pit. The sniper bullets slammed into their eyes and skulls, bursting open bloody sprays, but it didn't do a damn thing to stop them. It was like throwing pebbles into a pond, all splash and no effect.
One of the rhinos' eyes exploded, spraying green fluid and chunks of white eyeball. The beast next to it immediately turned its head and bit down, swallowing the gooey mess whole. These things even ate their own eyes.
Ling Ling fired one shot after another, blasting out every single eyeball in sight, but it didn't slow them down at all. These creatures hunted purely by smell, and worse, they didn't even feel pain.
Jing Shu and the others finally got a clear view of what was happening inside the canyon. There weren't any traps at all. The moment you stepped inside, it dropped straight into a huge swamp pit. Seven massive, rotting beasts were rolling through the muck, chasing Monkey and Ah Huang. Even in the mud, Monkey's speed as an assassin was terrifyingly fast.
Unfortunately, he lost his footing and fell into the swamp. With nothing to brace against, he couldn't move. One of the monsters charged right at him, its jaws snapping shut around him. Monkey's scream tore through the night.
"Shit, what the hell are these things?! Guns don't work! Help me, someone get me out of here!"
It was brutal. His whole arm was inside the creature's mouth, flesh and bone crunching. Jing Shu thought back to that one-armed man she'd seen in the black market. He must've been bitten the same way.
"Hang in there! I'll break through the gate! Ling Ling, cover him! Snake Spirit, quick, use your poison and see if it works!"
The whole team jumped into action, tense and frantic.
Monkey, trained as a professional scout, wasn't the type to die easily. With his free hand, he grabbed a three-bladed weapon that looked like a fan and jammed it into the monster's jaws. Before Jing Shu could even process what he was doing, the weapon roared to life.
The blades spun wildly, shredding everything inside the beast's throat. Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed everywhere as the weapon tore through its insides, grinding from mouth to stomach like a blender gone berserk. In seconds, the giant was reduced to mush from within, and Monkey had turned its death into a live-action gore show.
He scrambled free, shaking and covered in blood, staring in horror as the shredded monster—its entire torso hollowed out—still twitched and tried to crawl after him like some undead nightmare.
Terrified, he fired a grappling dart and hauled himself toward the iron gate, clutching his mangled shoulder with one hand. Ah Huang was still bouncing up and down in the swamp, barking furiously to distract the beasts.
Jing Shu finally realized why those monsters looked familiar. Of course. These were the mutated descendants of the zombie deer virus that had first spread from Australia during the early apocalypse. Its second evolution had fused with the red nematode plague that wiped out half the world.
Now, it had completed a third mutation—turning beasts into fearless, death-defying survivors. It was the ultimate "species invasion."
By the fifth year after Earth's Dark Days began, the world was crawling with these blackened, rotting creatures, all mutated from animals. In just a few short years, evolution had leapt forward by centuries, even millennia, all in the name of survival.
But despite their horrifying appearance, the ones before them weren't the worst of the lot. They hadn't yet reached the third generation. Sure, bullets and blades couldn't pierce their hides, and they didn't have weak spots like zombies—shooting their heads did nothing—but if you chopped them into pieces or threw a grenade at them, they still died.
Jing Shu sighed. "Guess we really did sink in the gutter this time." She rolled her shoulders. "Alright, time to get serious."
"My venom doesn't work!" Snake Spirit shouted, panic edging into his voice.
Tank roared and kicked the gate open, swinging his massive iron ball straight at a hippo's head. The blow hit like a freight train, caving in the skull, but the creature barely flinched.
At the same moment, Ah Huang was cornered, whining and barking helplessly while Monkey screamed, "Ah Huang, run! Run!"
The monster lunged, jaws wide—
—but Jing Shu was faster. She flicked a grenade into her hand, took aim like a quarterback, and hurled it right into the creature's gaping mouth.
Boom!
The explosion tore the hippo apart, showering the swamp in gore. Ah Huang tumbled free, soaked but alive.
Jing Shu drew her steel blade, slipped it through the mud, and said calmly, "You guys ever heard of joints? Forget hitting the head, aim for the joints instead. If you can't kill it, then cut it apart. Like this."
She swung the blade in one smooth motion, slicing clean through the hippo's knee joint. The massive leg, easily a hundred kilos, dropped instantly.
In a few swift strikes, she hacked off all four of its limbs, drove her blade into its backside, and carved outward in a clean arc. In no time, the raging monster was reduced to neatly arranged chunks of meat. Every piece was perfectly even, lined up like art.
Perfection.
The pieces still twitched, but after a while, the movements slowed, then stopped altogether.
In this life, Jing Shu had often wondered what she'd do if she ever faced one of those terrifying beasts again. Turns out, slaughtering pigs had taught her plenty.
Under the harsh light, she looked like a demon god—methodical, efficient, unstoppable—as she dissected the massive creature alive.
"This woman… she's scary," someone whispered.
"Yeah… did we misjudge her?"
Tank scratched his head, dumbfounded. By pure destructive power, he was supposed to be the strongest one here, but his iron ball had done nothing. Those monsters didn't break like the ones on TV.
Jing Shu, meanwhile, had already finished dissecting three more. The meat piled up into a small mountain beside her. She glanced at it and sighed. "Shame, really. If it weren't infected, rhino meat tastes way better than hippo."
Before anyone could respond, the sound of boots and shouting came from outside. Within seconds, more than twenty people stormed in, armed to the teeth with advanced weapons and heavy firepower.
And among them, looking miserable and bound, was Xiao Hei.
Trouble never came alone.
To make things worse, Jing Shu felt feverish again, like her body was floating right out of itself.