Free Web NovelThis beast tide had come in a very strange way.
Stray beasts liked to move around at night, and in the past, the times they chose to attack the base had always been deep in the night.
But this time, the stray beasts launched their attack all of a sudden just before dawn.
The base had not expected the beast tide to strike, but all the years of experience fighting stray beasts had long since given them an internal set of countermeasures.
By the time Wen Yuzhi followed Xi Heyan up onto the wall, Uncle Chong had already led the hunting squad out.
Chong Fengxue and Chong Fengshuang were holding the wall. They drew their bows, and countless showers of fire rained down.
The moment they heard footsteps approaching, the twins turned their heads back at the same time, alert.
“Brother Yan!”
But the instant they saw who it was, the vigilance in their eyes immediately turned to delight.
Then, when Chong Fengshuang saw the boy following behind Xi Heyan, Chong Fengshuang could not help freezing for a moment.
“Th-this is...” Chong Fengshuang said in surprise.
Before Xi Heyan could answer, a white figure charged straight out of the corner.
“Awooo~!”
The white wolf pounced over and rubbed against Wen Yuzhi affectionately.
It recognized people by smell. Wen /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ Yuzhi was taller now, and his appearance had changed, but his scent had not.
So the white wolf immediately recognized that this was its owner.
“Awu!”
Wen Yuzhi rubbed the white wolf’s head.
His words and the white wolf’s reaction also made Chong Fengshuang understand at once.
Without a doubt, this boy standing beside Brother Yan was Wen Yuzhi.
The hair color and eye color were almost exactly the same...
The only mystery was why this young master had suddenly gotten so much taller.
“What’s the situation with the beast tide? How many stray beasts are there?”
Xi Heyan saw Chong Fengshuang’s gaze lingering on Wen Yuzhi in curiosity. Without drawing attention to it, he shifted his step and used his body to block the boy from view, deliberately changing the subject.
Sure enough, the moment Xi Heyan mentioned the beast tide, Chong Fengshuang stopped being curious about Wen Yuzhi’s abnormality. The situation was urgent. Compared with worrying about anything else, stopping this beast tide came first.
“These stray beasts have really grown brains! They snuck up under the wall while it was still dark. If the watchtower hadn’t had people keeping watch the whole time, they probably would’ve climbed right in!”
In everyone’s impression, stray beasts had no brains. They did not understand what thinking was, there was no order among them at all, and they usually fought scattered and independently.
Who could have expected that the stray beasts attacking the base this time would suddenly become so clever? Hundreds upon thousands of stray beasts had not made a single sound, hiding silently under the wall.
They had almost fallen for it!
Thinking of that, Chong Fengshuang looked at Xi Heyan with worry on his face.
“Brother Yan, something’s wrong this time. There are too many stray beasts.”
Chong Fengxue added, “Could be more than ten thousand.”
The people in the base were all skilled with bows, and the arrows they fired could travel very far. Yet wherever the firelight reached, the densely packed stray beasts stretched almost beyond sight.
This was an extremely lopsided battle.
There was no way the hunting squad could hold back that many stray beasts. Once all of them gathered, they could probably flatten the fortress just by trampling it.
Xi Heyan clearly knew that too. But there was no panic on his face. Only the slight furrow between his brows betrayed how unsettled he really was inside.
Wen Yuzhi stood to the side holding the white wolf. While Xi Heyan, Chong Fengxue, and Chong Fengshuang were talking, he turned and looked down at the beast tide below.
The darkness did not hinder his vision.
He could see more clearly than anyone else present.
The endless stream of stray beasts was like a tide. They were coming from all directions, all converging on this place.
An ant colony.
The densely packed beasts made that phrase spring into Wen Yuzhi’s mind at once.
Ants could bite an elephant to death. They would not be able to hold this place.
Even if the hunting squad could fight one against a hundred, against ten thousand stray beasts—or even more still gathering—their strength was far too thin.
The more immediate problem was that even if they wanted to leave now, they had no way to.
Just as that thought crossed Wen Yuzhi’s mind, he suddenly spotted several “different” stray beasts within the tide.
These few stray beasts were scattered across different positions within the beast tide.
They looked very much like the stray beasts Wen Yuzhi had encountered before, the ones that could spit fire and venom, and each of them had a metal collar around its neck.
Wen Yuzhi could see clearly that low growls were coming from their mouths.
After the nearby stray beasts heard those growls, they became even more frenzied and charged toward the base without a care for anything else.
Those collared beasts themselves did not move. From beginning to end, they stayed inside the beast tide.
Compared to the other stray beasts, these few seemed smarter.
Smarter...
Wen Yuzhi asked Chong Fengshuang for a bow and arrow.
He drew the bow, then released.
The arrow shot out trailing firelight.
It just did not fly very far before dropping limply to the ground.
That was actually normal. Wen Yuzhi had never used a bow before. Being able to shoot the arrow at all was already lucky.
Although his arrow had not hit the target, it landed near one of the collared stray beasts.
The firelight illuminated its figure, and Xi Heyan instantly noticed that unusual beast too.
“It’s controlling the beast tide!”
Xi Heyan recognized the collar as something made by the laboratory.
These collared stray beasts had to have been released by the laboratory.
Thinking of what Wen Yuzhi had just done, Xi Heyan looked at the boy beside him.
“You can see them?”
“Mm.” Wen Yuzhi did not hide it. He pointed to several more places.
“Here... here... and here too. There are collared stray beasts in all those spots.”
Xi Heyan did not hesitate. He raised his bow. The arrow that had felt limp and weak in Wen Yuzhi’s hands became as swift as the wind in his, piercing straight through that stray beast’s brain in an instant.
A burst of blood mist splattered across the ground.
The beast tide paused for a moment. The stray beasts near it all turned around and lunged toward the corpse of the dead beast.
They began frantically devouring that stray beast’s body. Fighting over flesh and blood, even the nearby stray beasts started tearing into one another.
Wen Yuzhi saw it very clearly, and the scene nearly made him sick.
He had seen blood. He had seen corpses. But he had never seen a scene of the same kind devouring each other.
Wen Yuzhi looked away and quietly edged a little closer to where Xi Heyan was standing. Only after catching that faint bitter orange scent did he feel slightly better.
Xi Heyan noticed the boy’s little movement. The instant Wen Yuzhi leaned closer, his body tensed for a moment, but he quickly relaxed again.
Seeing how pale Wen Yuzhi looked, Xi Heyan simply took off his coat and draped it over the boy.
“Put it on. It’s colder outside. And it’ll be better if your hair and face are covered.”
Wen Yuzhi was already used to Xi Heyan taking care of him now and then.
Besides, his appearance really was a little too conspicuous here.
Earlier, Uncle Chong had given him a cloak. Now Xi Heyan was giving him a coat. Both were just to help cover him a little.
This coat had a hood. Wen Yuzhi pulled it over his head, and the oversized garment immediately concealed the unusual silver strands of his hair.
Xi Heyan was now wearing only a fitted high-collared shirt. He rolled up his sleeves, exposing strong, muscular arms.
“Brother Yan.”
Chong Fengshuang brought over several more arrows.
Xi Heyan gripped the bow. “Tell me where they are. We’ll kill these stray beasts first.”
Wen Yuzhi quickly pointed out the locations of the remaining collared beasts.
But after four or five were killed in succession, the others with collars seemed to realize something was wrong.
Looking at the figures on the wall, they understood that these humans were the ones causing trouble.
Furious howls rang out, and the beast tide’s assault grew even fiercer.
Seeing that the situation had gone bad, Uncle Chong immediately led the hunting squad that had been blocking the beasts outside back into the fortress.
His whole body was stained with blood, but Chong Feng did not care in the slightest.
He ordered the horn to be sounded.
That horn meant retreat.
They had decided to abandon this place.
But before leaving, Chong Feng still had one great gift to send these stray beasts.
Back when the base had first been built, Chong Feng had buried explosives underground.
If he had a choice, he had never really wanted to use them. No matter what, this was still the place they had lived in for so many years.
For Chong Fengxue and Chong Fengshuang, this place was their home.
But now, faced with the endless tide of stray beasts, Chong Feng ultimately detonated those explosives.
A tremendous explosion rang out, and the dense beast tide was split apart by the sudden blast.
Wen Yuzhi was riding on the white wolf’s back when he saw Xi Heyan.
Wen Yuzhi reached out his hand.
Xi Heyan had originally wanted to say that he had a mech and was not afraid of being surrounded by the beast tide.
But as he looked at the boy’s vivid, striking face, lit bright by the firelight amid the sparks flying everywhere, Xi Heyan stepped forward before he could stop himself.
He took the hand Wen Yuzhi had reached out to him.
By the time he came back to himself, he was already seated on the white wolf’s back.
Even carrying the weight of two people, the white wolf was still not slow. With only a few leaps, it dodged the stray beasts blocking the way ahead.
Xi Heyan did not sit idle either.
He continuously fired arrows at the collared stray beasts hiding within the tide.
Every time one of those collared beasts died, the surrounding stray beasts immediately fell into chaos as they fought over flesh and blood.
By creating one disturbance after another like this, the people from the base rapidly cut their way out through a road of blood.
Once they were some distance away from the fortress, Chong Feng detonated the last of the explosives.
An explosion louder than any before thundered out, and the base that had once sheltered them countless times was gone. In its place was a gigantic crater.
But no one present had time to grieve.
Because they still had to hurry to their next destination.
—the Polaris laboratory established on Blackrock Star.
And along their evacuation route, a vehicle was already waiting there for them. The moment Rabbit Mask saw Xi Heyan and the others, Rabbit Mask stepped down from the vehicle.
“We’ve finally caught up with you.”
The voice was hurried.
“The shielding system is damaged. Our starship received the laboratory’s distress signal. Through that signal, we’ve already confirmed the laboratory’s coordinates. It’s right here in this mountain range.”
Rabbit Mask enlarged the laboratory’s location on the map displayed on the tablet.
If this had been earlier, while the shielding system was still functioning, they would never have been able to find that laboratory on the map. freewebnøvel.coɱ
But now the laboratory’s location had been fully exposed. And combined with the distress signal it had sent out...
something had obviously gone wrong there.
No one dared waste time. They hurried in that direction at once.
And when they arrived at the laboratory’s location, everyone froze.
Blood.
Blood everywhere, and guard corpses lying on the ground.
That bizarre scene had appeared right outside the laboratory entrance.
Wen Yuzhi noticed that the bloodstains on the ground had not fully coagulated yet, meaning these corpses had not been dead for long.
Xi Heyan stepped forward to examine them.
He frowned.
“The cuts are very clean. These bodies were sliced apart by a sharp weapon.”
Xi Heyan also glanced at the particle guns on the guards. The energy in them was still full, which meant these guards had died before they even had the chance to fire.
...What exactly had happened here?
Looking at the wide-open entrance, the group still walked inside.
