At once, Yu Hong placed the spiked club on the ground and rummaged through a pile of the weapons he had previously collected from the dead.
Amongst them were steel pipes, machetes, and daggers, with a few small alloy shields scattered about.
Yu Hong gathered the metal items together with the spiked club.
He picked up the micro-submachine gun he had seized earlier, contemplated it for a moment, then set it down.
In close combat, the gun simply wasn't as effective as the club.
Pressing one hand on the surface of the metal pile, he focused his thoughts.
"Strengthen the weapon. Direction."
A vision of the weapon he desired formed in his mind.
Soon, a black line flowed out, merging into the spiked club.
"Do you wish to strengthen?"
"Yes!"
A countdown appeared: 3… 2… 1…
*
*
*
At the post office.
Two multi-eyed birds stumbled away from the stone house, flying off into the distance.
Their bodies were charred and burned from the recent explosion, with one bird even having lost its head.
Flesh and blood on its neck wriggled as it rapidly grew back, forming a new head.
Inside the stone house, a group led by Ge Shenghao looked as if they were on the verge of madness.
Out of the five participants, two had lost an arm, one had a crushed shoulder, barely breathing, and another lay on the ground, howling in agony, his legs broken.
Ge Shenghao pushed himself up from the ground, his back soaked in blood.
Yet, it was only a minor wound, received from being slammed against the stone by the tremendous force of the multi-eyed bird.
"The grenades are all used up. If that monster comes back, we are dead for sure!"
"Let’s say goodbye to A Dong," said a bearded man with a lost arm softly.
The "A Dong" he referred to was the man whose legs had been crushed.
In this situation, without arms, one could still attempt to escape, but without legs, there was no chance.
Bang!
One man stepped forward and knocked A Dong unconscious with a slap, leaving him to bleed, laying him down gently.
"How long until the rescue team arrives?" Ge Shenghao asked in a low tone, starting to tend to their wounds.
"They said today," replied the bearded man, lighting a cigarette with a lighter after biting a piece off with one hand.
He closed his eyes, unwilling to look at his dying partner.
"We cannot hold on much longer. We have nothing left that can threaten the multi-eyed birds," Ge Shenghao said, wrapping a bandage around the broken arm.
"There’s nowhere to run; we would be killed halfway," the bearded man said tiredly.
"But there’s another path!" Ge Shenghao paused for a moment and recounted what he had seen earlier concerning Yu Hong.
"There haven't been any explosions from that direction, and that guy managed to protect those two ladies all by himself. He definitely has a secret. He must have a way to drive away the multi-eyed birds!"
Upon hearing this, hope flickered in the eyes of the others.
"What do you plan to do?" The bearded man looked at Ge Shenghao, familiar with life and death but still preferring to survive.
"Desperately seek out an opportunity to survive!" Ge Shenghao turned to see Li Runshan crawling out from the basement, completely unharmed.
This guy had a guilty expression, holding some medicine and clean water.
Apparently, he had sneaked down to the basement during the chaos without anyone noticing.
*
*
*
In the evening, as darkness fell.
In the courtyard, Qiu Yanxi and her daughter were busy chipping the glowing stone into small pieces.
However, unbeknownst to them, outside the courtyard wall, two large grey shadows lurked in the fog, quietly watching them and the safe house cave.
Yu Hong stood in the basement of the safe house, holding a swirling symbol plate, having just discovered a secret.
“The swirling symbol needs to be inscribed with internal energy to successfully produce its effect. Once successful, the negative radiation no longer spreads outward but concentrates, gathering at the core of the symbol," Yu Hong summarized.
"The moment the swirling symbol is crushed, the internal negative radiation will burst forth, creating a short-lived area of high concentration radiation effect. I might be able to use it like a negative radiation grenade."
"From this look, the main function of the swirling symbol is to store radiation energy."
Thinking this, Yu Hong suddenly recalled that if the swirling symbol was indeed a storage device, why would the subsequent explosion yield such a massive value?
"Could it be that the large glowing stone powder inherently possesses that much negative radiation?"
Shaking his head, Yu Hong considered the possibility.
After all, the glowing stone's radiation was continuously produced, concentrating all that radiation into one point for an explosive release wouldn't be a surprise.
"But from more than a hundred negative values to seven or eight hundred, that’s a bit much," he remembered distinctly that after three uses of the phantom, a large glowing stone would completely exhaust its energy and turn to dust.
This meant the glowing stone's radiation energy couldn't possibly reach seven or eight hundred.
"But why?" His brows furrowed, and the largest suspicion slowly rose.
"The only possibility is that the swirling symbol isn't just a simple radiation storage."
He picked up the symbol plate, carefully tracing the delicate lines on its surface.
"It might be absorbing external radiation energy and then storing it!"
"If this is true, then by varying the time the swirling symbol is placed, I could test for the differences in negative values at the moment of its explosion."
After making the symbol, the longer it was placed, the greater the potential eruption of its negative radiation upon crushing.
With this thought, Yu Hong leaned the freshly made symbol plate against the wall, momentarily dismissing it.
Then he walked to the center of the basement, beginning his training.
Over these days, as he continued to practice the Second Layer of Heavy Leg Skills, his physical strength had ceased to grow, yet the thickness of the skin’s keratin layer had been increasing, making him feel lighter and more agile.
Clearly, the primary improvement from the Second Layer was in defense and speed.
With each passing day of relentless training, Yu Hong could vaguely feel that the second internal energy was on the brink of coalescing.
He stood in the middle of the basement, concentrating deeply, continuously practicing the Heavy Leg Skills while visualizing the accompanying patterns.
Time slowly dripped away.
Suddenly, a faint scream echoed from outside the safe house.
Whoosh!
Yu Hong, deeply absorbed in visualization, quickly opened his eyes, rapidly donning the White Bear suit, and ascended to the upper floor.
As he passed the spiked club, he noticed it was fully strengthened now.
He grasped it instinctively and rushed to the door.
Pulling aside the barricade, he peered out through the fortified glass window.
The sky had turned completely dark.
The moon hung brightly, veiled in mist, almost indistinguishable from one another.
Two giant multi-eyed birds circled above the woods outside the cave, shrieking their eerie calls like toads.
Just like before, the two creatures flapped their wings, howling fiercely, with rows of small red eyes glowing faintly in the night like a sniper's laser sight.
Observing carefully, Yu Hong noticed that one of the multi-eyed birds had scars all over its side from being hit by the spiked club.
"Is that the one from earlier?" he took a deep breath.
The last encounter had nearly injured him, and now two had come at once.
His wooden shield had already been destroyed and was still not repaired.
"This is troublesome."
A quick sweep of the courtyard showed that Qiu Yanxi and her daughter were already missing, clearly having hidden themselves away—be it the wooden house or the newly dug cave.
Roar!!
At that moment, both multi-eyed birds spotted Yu Hong.
One dove down while the other flanked, charging towards the cave entrance like arrows.
The whistling sound of their flight filled the night air, akin to ghostly wails, harsh and grating to the ears.
Realizing the danger, Yu Hong quickly retreated, one hand gripping the gun while the other held the club, creating distance between him and the incoming threat.
He hadn’t dashed outside but instead intended to assess the current defense of the door.
One second.
Boom!!! Boom!!!
Two loud explosions resonated one after the other.
The entire stone cave shook violently, the heavy wooden door buckling inward, showing two pronounced bulges from the force of the impact.
Yet, those were just two bulges, nothing else.
"It held!"
Yu Hong felt a surge of energy.
The door, which previously couldn’t hold back the multi-eyed birds, had successfully withstood the assault of two at once.
This was enough testing.
Relying solely on the door to block the enemy was not realistic; unless it could self-repair, he had to go out to drive the enemy back regardless.
Confirming that the door had indeed become noticeably stronger eased his heart, and he stood his ground, lifting the spiked club in one hand, patiently waiting.
Bang!!
Bang!!!
Bang!!!
Boom!!!!
The door shattered finally, a white bird head crashing through, driven by inertia toward Yu Hong.
"Die!!!"
In an instant, Yu Hong roared as he stepped forward, his body becoming a fleeting shadow that thunderously struck the ground, delivering a power-packed blow to the bird's head.
The spiked club whistled through the air with a piercing sound, unleashing all of Yu Hong's pent-up strength in a devastating blast that struck true.
Boom!!
The multi-eyed bird was caught off guard, and a single strike caused its head to explode, the upper part of its neck scattering into a grayish-red mist.
The force from the blow was so tremendous that even the remaining neck and body were launched backward from the cave, splattering into the nearby woods.
Roar!!
The second multi-eyed bird seizing the opportunity lifted its beak high like a hammer, crashing downwards.
Its feet gripped the door while its wings flapped wildly, the sharp beak letting out a piercing shriek, aimed squarely at Yu Hong, who stood by the door.
This sudden assault came right after Yu Hong had smashed the first bird, losing his balance in the process.
With the speed of the multi-eyed bird already formidable, this surprise attack was impossible to dodge.
Splat!!
The beak crashed gruesomely into Yu Hong's raised arm, where the alloy plating rattled under the impact.
The plate bent once more as Yu Hong’s face twisted from the internal force.
Yet, despite the severity of the blow, the transparent keratin layer that had developed over Yu Hong's skin absorbed the brunt of the attack, yielding mere pain without any real injury.
This sudden pain, however, ignited a blazing fury within him.
With his blood surging in response, he instinctively staggered backward, raising his gun to shoot.
No need to aim.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Five shots rang out in succession.
The reinforced bullets exploded on the second multi-eyed bird, creating five gaping wounds that nearly obliterated its upper body, leaving even the basic skeletal structure unsustainable.
Seizing the moment, Yu Hong raised the spiked club, roaring fiercely as he lunged forward to deliver a devastating blow.
With the enhancement, the club had grown immensely heavier, now weighing well over a hundred pounds, its surface bristling with many barbed spikes.
Once embedded in flesh, it would be virtually impossible to remove.
Now, as Yu Hong swung the club downward, its tip barely struck the second multi-eyed bird’s neck.
With a sharp tug, he pulled it back.
Yu Hong’s overwhelming strength clashed against the brute force of the multi-eyed bird, one pulling back while the other struggled.
A violent tearing sound echoed as the bird’s neck was almost wholly stripped of flesh, leaving it snagged on the spiked club and unable to break free.
(End of Chapter)