Chapter Ninety: Shattered on the Ground

Watching the automatic gun barrel flying toward him after being ripped free, Cao Fusheng clenched his teeth and yanked the wheel hard, barely managing to avoid it head-on.

Even so, it punched a hole straight through the rear compartment.

At last, Cao Fusheng’s vehicle drew alongside the one ahead. He turned his head and looked at the monstrous thing clinging to Shen Dong’s car, and the five hundred glances of longing had finally led to a nightmare reunion.

“What kind of monster is this?” Even Chu Wei paled in shock. In the pale blue glow, everyone could see the creature clearly.

Xiao Ye was barking furiously from the cabin, baring its teeth again and again.

“Is that... a monkey? Why would there be monkeys in a place like this...” Han Shuqing tightened her grip on the gun in her hand, her voice trembling.

Of course Cao Fusheng recognized it as a monkey, but this monkey was nearly as big as a car. And its body was utterly rotten, one of its eyeballs hanging out.

Most horrifying of all was the gaping wound along its back, nearly half a person in length, from which blood and pus streamed without end.

Embedded in the center of the wound was a large electrical box, as if fused with its body, sunk deep into the flesh.

Cao Fusheng could not tell whether it was a pure aberration or a corpse that had transformed. If it was an aberration, how could it possibly survive such grievous injury?

So the thing interfering with the signal earlier had to be the electrical box grafted onto it. It must have sensed the fluctuations in the walkie-talkie frequency and come charging after them.

No wonder Shen Dong could not shake it off. The moment he had spotted the fast-moving giant monkey, it had latched on. This thing was like the Monkey King; without the tail-jet booster, they would not outrun it at all.

The giant monkey slapped wildly at the vehicle. After ripping away the gun barrel, it tried to tear at the body of the car, only to be jolted the instant it touched the electric net on the vehicle’s exterior. The electrical box buried in its flesh suddenly spat a shower of sparks.

“Shut down the rooftop fire net...”

Seeing this, Cao Fusheng retracted the gun barrel at the front. This was the last gun barrel they had left; it could not be snatched away by the monkey again.

Shen Dong’s vehicle had also sprayed out a burst of bullets earlier, but judging from the monkey’s condition, it had hardly been wounded at all. It was still full of vigor.

A harsh metallic screech rang out.

The sound of metal being torn apart made Cao Fusheng shudder all over. Such a noise was truly lethal to the nerves.

The giant monkey, enraged to the point of madness, as if provoked by the shock, began pounding with both fists. Then it drove one claw through the roof of Shen Dong’s car and tore open three gashes several feet long.

By now, Cao Fusheng had already swung around behind the giant monkey. The vehicle’s electric net had been activated, and he accelerated, ramming straight into the monkey’s backside.

“Fusheng! You can’t touch a monkey’s backside!” Han Shuqing’s terrified cry reached Cao Fusheng’s ears.

The last thought in Cao Fusheng’s mind was: damn it!

If this hit did not kill it or electrocute it, then they were probably finished.

Duaaang! Splat.

The armored vehicle, howling through the air, smashed hard into the monkey’s rear and violently drove its backside forward, pinning the lower half of the creature between the front and rear vehicles.

There was also the sound of something breaking.

Cao Fusheng had just begun to feel something was off when—

Squeee...!!

Squeee...! Roar...! Squeee...!!

The giant monkey, driven to frenzy, hammered Shen Dong’s car, while its tail slapped against the windshield of Cao Fusheng’s vehicle.

Bang!

Cao Fusheng cursed inwardly. One sweep of that tail had shattered the windshield outright; if it struck a person like that, they would be sent flying several yards, and if they landed at all, it would surely be with broken bones and snapped limbs.

The electrical box on the monkey’s back, agitated again by the electric net, burst apart once more in a spray of sparks. Sparks fell across its back, and the smell of singed hair spread at once.

Cao Fusheng reversed the car, trying to put some distance between himself and the monkey’s tail.

But the monkey refused to let it go. Abandoning Shen Dong’s front car, it roared and leaped toward Cao Fusheng instead.

“Damn it! A rear-end collision really caused a real accident! Everyone hold on tight, we’re running for our lives!” Cao Fusheng bellowed, then drove the vehicle crashing into the nearby fields. Fortunately, the car’s front-mounted clearing device swept many obstacles out of the way.

The monkey, in fury, abandoned Shen Dong. Through the rearview mirror, Cao Fusheng could even see the sole remaining crimson eye, as if it were about to shed bloody tears.

It was not hard to imagine that if it caught them, the end would be especially miserable.

“Brother Cao! I, Shen, have come to lend you a hand! Don’t panic!” With the pressure on his side easing, Shen Dong rolled down his window and shouted toward Cao Fusheng as if afraid nobody could hear him.

The situation on the field had reversed. Originally, Shen Dong’s car had been in the lead, the giant monkey hanging off its rear, and Cao Fusheng had been last.

Now it was the exact opposite. Apart from the monkey’s position, which had not changed, Cao Fusheng and Shen Dong had effectively switched places.

“Shen Dong! Don’t hit its backside!” Cao Fusheng replied with the window down. No sooner had the words left his mouth than he heard a dull thud.

Oh no...

A howl burst forth.

The giant monkey’s cry had already broken the bounds of its kind, transforming from a chitter to a thunderous roar.

Taking advantage of the monkey’s hopping fury, Shen Dong drove over and pulled alongside Cao Fusheng in the open field.

And that brat, with perfect timing, stuck his head out and raised his middle finger at the monkey. Cao Fusheng nearly wanted to strangle him on the spot.

As expected, the giant monkey sprang high into the air, glaring furiously at Shen Dong, then let out a wild howl and crashed heavily to the ground.

After quite a while, Cao Fusheng had driven far enough that it was barely within sight, yet it still did not rise up roaring and give chase.

“Brother Cao, did it die? That giant monkey is gone just like that? It was insulted to death by my middle finger! Damn! I’m amazing!” Shen Dong laughed so hard that, even through the car window, he seemed on the verge of dancing with delight.

Cao Fusheng’s furrowed brow finally smoothed out. He chuckled and cursed, “Look at you, don’t get too smug. Something still feels wrong. How could an aberration die this easily?”

“That’s hard to say. Didn’t you see the state it was in? A huge electrical box jammed into a massive wound like that—I’m guessing its insides were smashed to pulp already. Before it chased us, it was probably already at the end of its rope,” Shen Dong said carelessly, with a heart big enough to match.

“Oh no! Brother Cao! You called it! The giant monkey isn’t dead. The heat signature’s back... Huh? Why is it so strange? The heat seems to be fading... but it really hasn’t slowed down.”

A wave of unease began to brew in Cao Fusheng’s heart. He lowered the window, leaned out, and looked. Sure enough, it was that giant monkey!

As for why the heat signature was fading, Cao Fusheng guessed that at this moment the giant monkey was nothing more than a corpse.

What heat could a corpse possibly have?

So the thermal reading was weakening little by little.

“Shen Dong! Speed up! Run! This time, whatever you do, do not let it catch up again! It has already lost consciousness. That thing is half-dead now—a corpse-transformed aberration!” Cao Fusheng roared into the walkie-talkie, while at the same time switching on the rooftop firepower. A string of gunfire and cannon blasts erupted, hammering the corpse-monkey aberration racing up behind them.

“Chu Wei! Have you ever heard of aberrations turning into corpses?” Cao Fusheng asked as he accelerated nervously onward, casually posing the question to this “high-civilization” human who had come from the Pillar of Heaven.