Huang'e was a barren planet of primal minerals, and the only specialty worth anything here was rainbow crystal. If not for the crystal, the Horsehead Star Ring probably wouldn't have given it a second glance, let alone set up an administrative system on it.
For that very reason, Huang'e had no schools, no arts centers, no research institutes, nothing of the sort — and the Horsehead Star Ring's scientists had no interest in coming out here for field surveys either. Which was also why nobody had ever bothered to study Huang'e's cannibal tribes.
No one knew where the cannibals came from, no one knew how they were organized, no one even knew their intelligence level or their body structure. People's ears were stuffed with absurd legends and rumors; some even suspected the cannibals weren't living creatures at all, but combat robots developed by some major power.
In short, once the topic turned to cannibals, the more absurd the better — nobody could produce scientific evidence to refute you anyway. And amid all these rumors the cannibals' image grew more and more horrifying, until in the end they had become the collective nightmare of all Huang'e.
But today Wuchang and the others were feeling something peculiar — from their first terror to their present bewilderment, all because of the goodwill these cannibals were showing.
Twelve cannibal warriors had formed a circle, and Wuchang's group huddled back to back in the middle of it, shivering. They listened to the squeaking for a good half hour, and not one of those cannibals made a single threatening move.
"What do you figure they're planning to do to us?" Wild Bull whispered to Pike beside him.
Pike was crying too hard just then to pay him any mind, so Lane answered instead. "Looks like we're safe for the time being. At least we can be sure these cannibals aren't hungry..."
Perhaps to prove Lane right, a tall cannibal came striding over from the distance just then, an armful of dried fish clutched to his chest. Reaching the edge of the circle, he raised a hand and flung a dozen or so of the fish in.
Everyone froze, staring at the dried fish on the ground without a word. These blueback fish were a specialty of Huang'e's oceans and the cannibals' most common ration. The cannibals weren't the only ones who liked them — Huang'e City sent fishing boats into the deep sea on a regular schedule to net the things.
"You want to treat us to fish?" Wuchang asked that cannibal cautiously.
"Squeak, squeak..." His question earned him a burst of screeching, but Wuchang got the gist — these fish really were meant as their rations.
Wuchang carefully tore a strip of meat off the dried fish, and before it even reached his mouth the cannibals were already getting excited. Boss Pan leaned over and whispered.
"You actually dare eat that? Poison's unlikely, but that's cannibal rations we're talking about..." Before he could finish, Boss Pan seemed to think of something; he flopped onto the ground and started dry-heaving.
Wuchang frowned. He felt a bit sick himself, but with things the way they were, he wanted to take the gamble. Gritting his teeth, he stuffed the fish into his mouth.
"Squeak, squeak..." The whole pack of cannibals screeched in excitement.
Just then a faint zizzing sound came from the northern sky, and the cannibals — somehow — all started trembling, as though something terrible were drawing near.
The fidgeting cannibal warriors, for reasons of their own, suddenly leapt up and went charging north as one — but just as their silhouettes vanished among the piles of rubble, a violent explosion erupted from the north, firelight and smoke billowing up to the sky.
"Shit, it's the Guard. They've come to hunt cannibals."
"That's right — the Swarm. The Swarm Phalanx."
"Looks like a whole squadron of land vehicles turned out. Could Ye Tian be leading them?"
There was no time to chat and analyze the situation. Right now the group couldn't trust anyone; if they were exposed, all it would earn them was Coyote Seven's endless pursuit.
"Run! While the cannibals keep the Guard busy, we get out of here. The Pillar Forest is just south — plenty of caves to hide in once we're there." Pike, who knew the terrain, was the first to jump up and sprint south.
Pike was right. Within sight to the south stood a forest of pitch-black stone pillars, and in under fifteen minutes the six of them had dashed inside and quickly found a place to hide.
The six of them squeezed into a narrow cave and hardly dared breathe. The cave was hidden in a pillar's shadow, next to impossible to spot from midair.
"Guard land vehicles generally don't come in here. Their hover ceiling is only about ten meters, after all, and the pillars here average over fifteen meters tall..." Lane was giving a lecture again.
"Can't they just drop lower and come into the Pillar Forest?" Wuchang asked, puzzled.
"Impossible. The most effective way to deal with these cannibals is to shoot them from range — nobody dares grapple with the things up close. If land vehicles went into this stone forest, they'd likely be wiped out to the last man."
"Huh?" Pike asked, a little timidly. "You're saying there are cannibals here too?"
"Of course there are. Past the stone forest is the ocean, and that's cannibal territory. However cocky Ye Tian gets, he wouldn't dare send the Guard out there to hunt cannibals."
"Why not?" Wuchang asked, baffled.
"No rush. If you're lucky, you'll probably find out the answer soon enough..."
Before Lane finished speaking, that familiar zizzing sound rose again, closer and closer this time — it looked like the land vehicle squadron had finished mopping up the cannibal tribe up north and was now pushing toward the stone forest.
Wuchang's group was right at the edge of the stone forest. From this angle the north was in plain view, but by the same token, the Guard members up north would have a hard time spotting this cave in the shadows.
Fifteen two-man land vehicles lined up along the edge of the stone forest, as though hesitating over whether to enter that dangerous jungle. But before they could hesitate for long, a din broke out inside the stone forest, and black shapes suddenly burst up atop the stone pillars, big and small.
The shell-armored cannibals, sharp volcanic rocks in hand, hurled the stones with all their strength, and in an instant the Guard was smashed into utter chaos.
No more than three cannibals were throwing stones from any one pillar top, but that made no difference — every one of those throwers was among the strongest. It was plain enough that these cannibals were extraordinarily tall, each over two meters, and that their fighting power was in no way inferior to a fourth dan martial artist. Just look at the shells on them: many had grown sharp barbs, and that alone proved these warriors were the strongest of the strong.
A stone hurled with the full strength of a fourth dan elite struck with power no less than an ancient catapult; however sturdy the Guard's helmets were, those stones would crush them.
The Guard, fresh off their successful raid on the tribe, had never imagined an ambush waiting here, and caught off guard, they were struck helpless. Three land vehicles actually took hits and started belching smoke, spinning down from ten meters up to crash on the ground.
The Guard members themselves fared even worse: two were killed on the spot and four knocked unconscious.
"Fire! Open fire, now!" Under the squad leader's orders, the nine vehicles still able to fight scattered at once into tactical maneuvers. The Swarm saturation system came online; the black boxes on either side of the hulls swung open, and the eighty-four-tube Phalanx revealed itself in full.
The engineer who designed the Swarm once said, "I will never write a single-shot mode into the Swarm. With the Swarm Phalanx, the moment it fires, it's a merciless full salvo."
This was the first time Wuchang had ever seen a weapon of mass destruction in this world. As strings of rockets swooped down on the cannibals like hornets, Wuchang truly saw it — he saw Death in midair, already swinging his scythe.
One salvo bought a sea of fire over a full fifty mu of land. Nine Phalanxes fired at once, every one of them covering the same patch of ground. The stone-throwing cannibals didn't even get out a scream before they were blasted into nothing.
The explosions went off fifteen meters up in the air, but the shockwave still reached the cave. The instant the blast hit, everyone but Wuchang blacked out.
Wuchang jammed his body desperately into the narrow cave mouth, hoping his flesh could block the savage shockwave and the blistering air. He knew it would do little good, but inside that cave were his friends — people worth protecting.
The explosion lasted only an instant, but in that instant fifty mu of stone pillars were leveled; rocks big and small came down like rain, and within moments the cave mouth they were hiding behind was buried, leaving only one small opening for Wuchang to see through.
Through that single small opening, Wuchang witnessed a scene he would never forget in his life. As the Guard swaggered about surveying the fruits of their victory, the last thing they expected was that these cannibals, who couldn't even speak, had set a second ambush.
One black shape after another suddenly came charging out of the north, shooting into the air like arrows. The warriors who had thrown the stones were only bait; their deaths had bought the more elite cannibals their opening.
Sure enough, the cannibals who perished in that sea of fire had lulled every Guard member present into complacency. By the time they spotted the cannibals appearing behind them, they had no time left to react.
Roaring cannibals flung themselves onto the land vehicles, battering soldiers to the ground one after another, then tore out their throats and clawed out their hearts. These cannibals' strength already rivaled fifth dan martial artists — the low-dan soldiers were no match for them at all.
The Phalanxes had no time left to fire, and the soldiers' sidearms were useless. Those high-energy rounds could punch through a cannibal's shell, but punching through was all they did; inflicting a fatal wound was pure fantasy.
Over fifty cannibal warriors swarming twenty-odd human soldiers — it was a one-sided slaughter. Wuchang watched helplessly as humans in midair were ripped to pieces, flesh and organs raining down.
"Ambush — we're in an ambush! The cannibals have evolved again, their brains are sharper — they set two trap rings..." Before the squad leader could finish his report, one of his arms was torn off.
"Aaaah—" The screaming squad leader slammed the self-destruct device on his land vehicle. "Ye Tian, you bastard, avenge your brothers!"
In the violent explosion, the last soldier died.