Chapter Ninety-Nine: Slaughter

Wang Cheng and Fu Gaobin nearly vomited up what they had eaten yesterday. It was simply too bloody, too terrifying, especially those mournful shrieks, enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end.

“There are still at least seventy or eighty of them left, and we have fewer than eighty explosive talismans remaining. We have to charge into the battlefield; explosive talismans alone are useless!” Yang Fan realized that the effect of the explosive talismans was growing weaker by the minute. By now, the insects were all taking care to avoid them. Some still stepped on them, but not like before, when they blundered about in swarms like a nest of hornets.

After paying a certain price, the insect horde closed in swiftly. More than twenty humans had already died, and this made the insects understand that as long as they kept chasing the fleeing people, nothing would happen to them. With that thought, the steel-armored beetles, along with the more obedient corrupted carapace beetles hiding farther back, let out piercing cries.

Whether from excitement or fury, no one could say.

After a run of more than three hundred meters, Yang Fan finally led them to a downhill stretch. There were many trees all around, making movement extremely inconvenient for these steel-armored beetles. Even with ten or twenty times the strength of enhanced humans, they could not simply ram through the trees with brute force. If they forced their way ahead, they would only injure themselves.

So some of the steel-armored beetles began taking the narrower paths. If they could pass, they would; if not, they had no choice but to change routes. Others, however, let out savage roars and furiously sawed at the trunks with their insect limbs, trying to cut the trees down so they could move more easily.

“All right, we’ve lured the enemy here. Everyone attack. Archers, crossbowmen, fire at once!” Yang Fan shouted. He had discovered this place two days earlier. His original plan had been to deal with the flying insects first, then lure the ground insects here and use the natural terrain to hinder them.

Now the plan was nearly perfect. Only the avalanche had caused an accident, resulting in the needless deaths of more than ten people. Still, that did not affect the bigger picture much.

Li Qiang, who had already been lying in ambush, immediately issued orders for the soldiers and the inheritors of the apocalypse system to attack. From the very beginning, Yang Fan had selected a group of excellent marksmen and armed them with bows. He had also purchased some bronze-rank bow weapons.

Now iron arrows rained down like a storm, striking the insect horde. Occasionally one or two came close to hitting a human, but fortunately the people reacted quickly. As for the insects, to be honest, they could have dodged them too, but many of them were trapped in the center among the trees and instantly became living targets.

If Yang Fan had not been unable to find a source of fire, his first thought had actually been to make fire-oil arrows. But he knew that would probably not work. Leaving aside the fact that this was a snowfield, where a fall to the ground would render the flames largely useless, there was the bigger concern of whether it might cause other trouble.

After weighing several factors, Yang Fan finally gave up on the idea of making fire-oil arrows and honestly used iron arrows instead. Their damage was not high, but when fired in volleys, they still caused considerable harm. Just like that, more than forty arrows sank into one steel-armored beetle, killing it on the spot. The sustained blood loss, together with the injuries, took its life.

Then Yang Fan wasted no words. He seized the Thunder Essence Blade and charged forward, telling Wang Cheng and Fu Gaobin to be careful. After Yang Fan rushed over, Wang Cheng looked at Fu Gaobin and asked, “What do we do? Follow behind him, or hide?”

“Hide your ass. We may not be as strong as our brother, but we’re still going to stand behind him. Let’s join the others and kill these insects beside Brother Yang Fan. Damn it, I refuse to believe these brainless beasts are stronger than us!”

After saying that, Fu Gaobin pulled out Azir’s greatsword without the slightest hesitation. On the silver-rank blade, a sharp cold light flashed. After his enhancements, Fu Gaobin now possessed four times the strength of an ordinary man, so he could effortlessly heft the thirty-plus-jin greatsword and bring it down on the nearest insect beside Yang Fan.

That insect had been trapped in place, so Fu Gaobin shamelessly moved in to butcher it. Seeing this, Wang Cheng naturally refused to fall behind. Over the past while, he had come to understand that Yang Fan valued Fu Gaobin greatly because they were sworn brothers. And he, too, had a chance to become Yang Fan’s good brother.

That chance was to truly treat Yang Fan like a brother.

A real brother was not someone who sweetly promised to block blades for you for life. It was someone who lent a hand when the moment was right, who offered congratulations when his brother achieved success. Real brotherhood was the simplest thing of all; it was not mere talk. The kind of people who only said such things were the very ones who would let you down at the crucial moment.

Thus Wang Cheng rushed forward with the green spear Fu Gaobin had given him. The two of them, together with four or five others, began mercilessly beating up a steel-armored beetle.

“The weak point is the abdomen. That’s the flaw of most insect races!” Yang Fan shouted. A moment later, some of the others saw the blade in his hand pierce straight through the abdomen of a steel-armored beetle that had just broken free, around the lower belly area. The Thunder Essence Blade went clean through from front to back.

Green blood flowed down along the blade and from the wound behind it, earning Yang Fan more than three hundred experience points. He glanced at his progress and saw that he still needed fifteen thousand experience points to level up. Without hesitation, he withdrew the Thunder Essence Blade and went searching for his next target.

“S-so strong!” Some people hiding in the snow, as well as those standing on the high ground with bows in hand, could not help but cry out in amazement when they saw Yang Fan’s fluid, effortless movements. But soon, several screams dragged them back from their astonishment.

Though everything had been planned flawlessly, zero casualties were absolutely impossible. A few people had become so absorbed in slaughtering the insects that they failed to notice several steel-armored beetles had already broken free. Then those sharp insect limbs, together with the cold, sinister, needle-like fangs, bit down hard and tore into their bodies.

Flesh was crushed and ripped away, chunk by chunk. Thighs, backs, heads—some were seized directly by a steel-armored beetle and then torn at the face. The beetles were immensely strong; once they clamped onto a person, they almost never let go.

Those fangs bit through faces, noses, legs, backs, and heads.

Bloody, and cruel...

A howl!