Chaos was like a stone cast into still water; the ripples it stirred up swept through the entire little group in an instant.
It was not fear, nor panic, but a habitual instinct. The moment the clustered scavengers confirmed that someone had set their sights on them, they immediately scattered like birds and beasts. Even their heavy packs could not slow them down. Under the crushing pressure of survival, the weight that represented money was nothing at all.
Feng Xue blended into the crowd as well, charging headlong toward the extraction point. There were still more than four hundred meters to go. As long as he reached that place...
Facts proved that Feng Xue had still underestimated how practiced these gang members were. Among a dozen or so scavengers, he was locked onto with ease. He had not even made it fifty meters before a gunshot rang out from behind him!
Duang!
As though struck by an iron hammer, Feng Xue staggered two steps, his heart still pounding with lingering fear. The armor formed by the counterweights had blocked the treacherous shot from behind, but the impact that rigid protection could not disperse still spread through him.
It was in that brief instant of imbalance that the sound of something cutting through the air came from behind. Feng Xue’s body abruptly dropped, and relying on his superhuman reflexes, he narrowly avoided the attack aimed at his head!
Old Man Jiang’s training showed its results at this moment. In that awkward crouching posture, Feng Xue had already drawn the handgun at his waist. Without the slightest hesitation, a rapid series of gunshots followed.
The gang member whose sneak attack had failed fell in response, but Feng Xue’s movement had ultimately been delayed. By the time he tried to continue fleeing, several burly men had already come cursing as they surrounded him.
“This kid’s got subdermal armor! Aim for the head!”
At the leading burly man’s order, his underlings immediately raised their guns. But Feng Xue, who had already realized he could not escape, moved first.
His excellent dynamic vision allowed him to judge where the bullets would land from the direction of the muzzles before the underlings pulled their triggers. At this moment, Feng Xue was extremely grateful that these gang members were holding proper firearms, rather than the kind of things casually cobbled together from iron pipes like before.
Three shots missed. Feng Xue issued the command without hesitation—
Legs, [Might], activate!
His legs, which had originally only been a little stronger than an ordinary person’s, instantly erupted with astonishing power. Feng Xue found it hard to describe the sensation of his muscles contracting like hydraulic rods, his blood vessels roaring as though injected with high-pressure steam. But the instant his toes pushed off the ground, he only felt as if he had turned into light!
“Chh!”
The tip of the dagger transmitted the sensation of striking solid matter. Ignoring that scream, Feng Xue’s figure abruptly sank lower. He slid past the side of the burly man blocking the front, fired several shots with pinpoint accuracy to blow out the heads of the gun-wielding underlings, and with a reverse swing, drove his dagger toward the axillary artery beneath the burly man’s arm!
Duang!
A violent recoil traveled back through the dagger. Feng Xue had no time to consider the fact that his opponent actually had subdermal armor as well; his brain had already issued the order to evade. But this time, the distance between them was simply too close. The result of failing to kill with one blow was the tremendous force that slammed into his body!
The force dispersed by the exoskeleton seeped into every limb and bone. Even though this body was a “game character” assembled from prosthetics, the feedback from being struck after assimilation by the flesh-and-blood ability was still transmitted clearly into Feng Xue’s consciousness.
Intense pain came with deadly risk. Feng Xue barely managed to raise his handgun and empty the magazine, forcing back the pursuit as he exerted strength through his feet again and widened the distance.
From start to finish, it had been less than two seconds. Only now did the gun-wielding gang members collapse to the ground, while the duration of [Might] in his legs still had eight seconds left.
Eight seconds of overclocking, two enemies remaining. He could win!
The confidence that he would not truly die allowed Feng Xue to erupt with a forcefulness at odds with his personality. With acceleration that defied human physiology, he rapidly retreated while suddenly changing direction.
The gang member, who had originally intended to give chase because Feng Xue was retreating, had only just taken a step when he saw Feng Xue already charging back at him. He could only raise the machete in his hand in an attempt to block.
A fierce light shone in the gang member’s eyes. His arms were 3-star strength-type prosthetics. As long as he could block this sudden strike, he could easily...
The thought had only just reached this point when the “prey” already right before him suddenly tilted the dagger in his hand by a few degrees. At this distance, there was no longer time for him to make another adjustment!
If anything was to blame, it was the fact that these gang members, in order to enhance their intimidation factor, often deliberately discarded disguises such as bionic skin to show that they were not to be trifled with. While this did indeed tell others that they had installed prosthetics, it also completely exposed their information.
Normally speaking, gang members who scraped by in a dump like this would never encounter an enemy capable of making use of that information. But Feng Xue just so happened to be the exception.
After studying under Old Man Jiang for several months, Feng Xue had come into contact with far too many low-end prosthetics and had dismantled far too many scrap parts. The dagger in his hand embedded itself precisely into a narrow gap. Accompanied by a perfectly timed twist of his wrist, there was a click, and a piece of plating abruptly sprang open.
There was no need to pull back his strength. He only needed to follow the momentum with a slap of his arm, and several rapidly spinning gears flew out with sparks. A shrill noise exploded within that prosthetic arm, but Feng Xue had already thrust his dagger toward the other hand.
At this moment, the [Might] in both his arms had also been activated. Under triple output, the speed Feng Xue’s limbs could unleash finally reached a level worthy of matching the processing speed of the Phantom Dragon Soul Type III. Within a single second of exchange, Feng Xue easily destroyed both arms completely, then just as easily drove the dagger into the burly man’s lower jaw.
“Last one!”
His legs still had six seconds; his arms still had eight.
Feng Xue had no time to delay. Although the man who seemed to be the leader appeared to want to say something, at this moment, all that remained by Feng Xue’s ears was the sound of blood surging madly!
“Bastard!” Seeing his underlings sprawled all over the ground in an instant, the small-time leader had originally wanted to recruit him. But seeing Feng Xue in this state, he decisively gave up on the idea. His already massive body swelled another size, and like a humanoid tank, he knocked aside the scattered junk in his way and crushed toward Feng Xue.
The gangs of the slums were different from those true major gangs. Here, if one wanted to be boss, the only path was being able to fight. As for seniority or experience, such things had no soil in which to survive in a place like this.
Being able to become a gang leader, he naturally possessed fighting power that his underlings did not. As the engine within his body ignited, surging energy transformed into incomparably violent destructive power.
A punch blasted out, bringing with it a howling wind. But in Feng Xue’s eyes, with [Might] fully activated, this punch was not much of anything. Twisting his body to let the heavy, forceful punch pass by, Feng Xue immediately moved to drive his dagger into the man’s arm.
Although he had never seen this model before, for the convenience of repairs, there was not much difference in the underlying design of prosthetics. Without bionic skin to conceal it, as long as one found the right position, one could expose the fragile interior. Only...
“Boom!”
As for why not use cheap goods to create large numbers of expendables... because of practical value.
There are no convenient spatial storage tools in this book. A person’s carrying capacity is limited. That much is understandable, right?
Secondly, no matter how many bullets he carries, whether he can fire them all is another issue.
With ordinary handguns and rifles, the issue of reloading makes sustained suppressive fire impossible. With light and heavy machine guns, you have to consider ammunition feeding. Operating one alone is extremely difficult. As for things like Vulcan cannons and Gatlings, just sorting out the linked belts alone is torture for logistics, let alone using one solo. Even if you really could use it, you still couldn’t carry the added weight of the ammo belts.
And that claim about using one thousand yuan of ammunition to achieve five thousand yuan of results and earn three thousand yuan worth of supplies... That’s a dump! Honestly. It was made very clear: that place is just a pile of scrap. Whether anything valuable turns up depends entirely on luck. It’s not as if killing more people means loot will drop. If you mow people down, the prosthetics on their bodies will be scrapped too, so where’s the profit? For thugs in the dump, even the leader’s entire fortune is only one or two low-end 3-star pieces. You sweep one person dead, and the rest have already run. With dozens of kilograms of load on your back, carrying a Vulcan cannon, are you still going to load up on supplies or not?