Chapter 164

The iron gate of the temporary shelter in the east of the city was slammed shut with a loud clang, and the legs of the iron-shelled beetle scratched across the metal protective netting, leaving whitish marks.

Inside the shelter, more than twenty people were crammed into a corner of an abandoned warehouse. The only exhaust fan had lost power three days earlier, and the only way to keep cool was with heat sinks salvaged from a discarded refrigerator. The air was thick with the stench of sweat, blood, and fear. The red numbers on the ground thermometer were stuck at 68°C. Someone had collapsed from heatstroke in the corner, but no one dared to move them.

Everyone is afraid of having their spot taken by someone else, and even more afraid of leaving the shadows of the corner and being roasted by the heat outside.

"Li Hu! Hurry! That beetle is about to crawl in!" someone shouted, pointing at the hole in the protective netting, their voice trembling.

Li Hu gripped the second-tier armor-piercing rounds he'd bought at a high price on the black market, his fingers white with tension. He loaded the magazine into the laser gun, aimed at the metal-shelled beetle's abdomen as it burrowed into the hole, and pulled the trigger—

With a muffled thud, a pale blue bullet hole flashed past as the beetle's abdominal carapace was pierced. It let out a piercing screech and crashed heavily to the ground outside its sanctuary, twitching a few times before going still.

Just as Li Hu breathed a sigh of relief, he heard Xiao Wang's scream from behind.

He looked back and saw that another iron-shelled beetle had somehow broken through the broken window on the other side of the warehouse. Its legs, like sharp knives, pierced Xiao Wang's thigh, and dark brown blood flowed down the wound, instantly congealing into a black scab on the hot ground.

"Help...help me!" Xiao Wang reached out, trying to grab the trouser leg of the person next to him, but was violently pushed away.

Fearing being caught in the beetle's attack, the man scrambled to a more distant corner. Li Hu wanted to help, but found the laser gun's magazine empty. He searched his pockets and found only two ordinary laser bullets. He fired at the beetle's back, but the beams only left a shallow mark on its shell, barely harming it.

"It's no use! Ordinary bullets won't work!" someone shouted in despair. "We've already run out of armor-piercing rounds! 'The Best Shop Under Heaven' is closed again, no one can save us!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the beetle's legs lashed out again, this time piercing Xiao Wang's chest. His body slumped down, his eyes still open, filled with resentment.

As Li Hu watched this scene, the laser gun in his hand fell to the ground with a clatter. He suddenly remembered that three days ago, in order to steal these armor-piercing bullets, he had tricked his neighbor out of half a bag of flour, but now he couldn't even save his own people.

In an abandoned supermarket in the south of the city, Zhang Lei's team was squatting behind the shelves, carefully packing the half-box of mineral water they had found into their backpacks.

They haven't had clean water for two days. Just now, at the back door of the supermarket, they saw someone who had drunk spoiled rainwater, vomiting and having diarrhea, and collapsed on the ground. He died shortly afterward.

"Hurry up and load it! Get out of here quickly, it's not safe here. I just saw the shadow of the Windwing Bird!" Zhang Lei said in a low voice, gripping the machete tightly in his hand—it was his only weapon, as his laser gun had long since run out of energy.

"Leave the water!" A fierce shout suddenly came from the other side of the shelf. Scarface walked out with three men, each holding a steel pipe or a machete, their eyes gleaming with greed.

"Why should we give you the water we finally found?" Xiao Lin, standing behind Zhang Lei, shouted defiantly. Just as he was about to raise his empty laser gun to intimidate, he was hit on the head with a steel pipe by Scarface's accomplice. With a "thud," Xiao Lin fell to the ground, blood flowing down his forehead and into his eyes, staining the cookie boxes on the shelf red.

"Why should we? Because the knives in our hands are harder than yours!"

Scarface walked over, stepped on Xiaolin's back, and reached out to snatch the bottled water from Zhang Lei's backpack.

"Either hand over the water, or lie here like him and wait to be eaten by the monster. You choose!" Zhang Lei looked at Xiao Lin lying on the ground, then at his two teammates trembling with fear behind him, and could only grit his teeth and hand over the backpack—

He knew that in this apocalypse, life was more important than water; without life, no amount of water would be of any use.

In the mountains west of the city, Zhao Wei's team was hiding under a big tree, holding traps made from fishing nets, trying to hunt windwing birds to earn points.

They heard that the demon core of a second-tier windwing bird could be sold for 50 points, enough to exchange for half a box of compressed biscuits on the black market, so they braved the 60°C heat and ran away from their temporary stronghold.

"Look! Three birds are flying over!" Xiao Li pointed to the sky, excitedly lowering his voice, his fishing net already prepared.

Zhao Wei felt a sense of panic—the windwing bird was much faster than they had seen on the monitor, and the mesh of the fishing net was too large; whether it could trap the bird was still a question.

Just as he was about to ask everyone to wait a little longer, Xiao Li had already thrown the fishing net out. Before the net could even be unfurled, the first wind-winged bird swooped down, its wing blades like sharp blades, instantly slicing open Xiao Li's throat. He didn't even have time to scream before collapsing onto the scalding ground. The blood quickly evaporated, leaving only a dark brown mark.

"Run! Run!" Zhao Wei shouted, turning around and hiding in a crevice in the rocks beside him.

The remaining three teammates tried to run after them, but they were spotted by the wind-winged birds. The second bird's wind blade struck Xiao Zhang in the back, causing him to stagger and fall to the ground. The third bird swooped down and pecked through his skull with its sharp beak.

In less than ten minutes, the five-man squad was reduced to just Zhao Wei. He hid in a narrow crevice between rocks, listening to the cries of the windwing birds outside, his ordinary laser gun clutched tightly in his hand, but he didn't even have the courage to take it out.

He knew that he had survived only because the crevice in the rock blocked the birds' view; if he dared to go out, he would be the next to die.

As night fell, the iron-shelled beetles at the East City Shelter finally retreated, leaving only eleven people in the warehouse. Xiao Wang and several others who had been killed by the beetles had their bodies dragged to the open ground outside the warehouse—no one dared to bury them, nor did anyone dare to approach them, for fear of attracting more monsters.

In a supermarket in the south of the city, Scarface's gang was gathered around a half-box of mineral water, taking turns drinking it, while Xiaolin's corpse lay nearby, unnoticed by anyone.

In the mountains west of the city, Zhao Wei poked his head out from a crack in the rocks, looking at the gleaming eyes of a monster in the darkness in the distance, wondering how much longer he could live.

On the communicator, someone sent a video of the northern stronghold being breached by the third-tier monster "Giant Rock Beast". In the video, the Giant Rock Beast's body crashed into an abandoned high-rise building, and people were crushed underneath like ants.

Some say that the rivers in the south have long since dried up, and that someone pushed their companion into a well in an attempt to get a sip of water.

No one knows when this extreme heat and monster calamity will end. Everyone can only desperately search for a glimmer of hope amidst the ruins, fighting, and fear.