Free Web NovelChapter 809: Chapter 718: Feverish Rush to the Abyss (3)
Riding an off-road vehicle tearing across a sea of yellow sand, Night Owl cranked the music to max and rocked his body to the beat.
All around was a barren desert. They had already gone hundreds of kilometers deep inland; Sparrow watched the scenery flying by on both sides, bored out of her mind, and propped up one leg.
Just then, the vehicle suddenly jolted violently, half the wheels sinking into the sand. Amid the billowing dust the whole SUV shook hard.
"Can you focus when you drive!?" Sparrow cursed.
"It’s so dead in here, how boring is that? Of course you gotta get hyped before a big score!"
"This is our last score, right!"
As he spoke, Night Owl floored the gas. The SUV shot out of the sand pit like it was flying, the whole vehicle lifting into the air. Sparrow, not sitting steady, was thrown off her seat, yanked back by the seatbelt, and her face had intimate contact with the glass.
"Night Owl!" Sparrow came back to her senses, yelling as she swung a fist. "If you can’t drive like a human being, let me drive!"
"Shut up, all of you. Quiet." Chichu Chun frowned.
Maybe sensing the red-haired girl’s bad mood, the others glanced at each other and tacitly shut their mouths.
Chichu Chun looked at Owl, then at Benjamin in the back who was adjusting their gear, sighed slightly, and didn’t say anything else.
Hijacking planes, blowing up buildings, stealing classified files, releasing all the inmates of a forbidden-water prison, kidnapping corporate execs, busting up sugar dealers’ dens big and small, joining Jiulong Communications and the Jiulong Battleship’s local war as mercs, delivering seeds of the future to the bottom rung of Alfas, stopping the Pole Star Association’s zealots from launching a large-scale miracle descent event...
In these past few months, she and the Dark Night Walkers had basically replayed everything you could do in Grand Theft Auto, in real life.
They’d become legends in other people’s mouths, and also a thorn in the companies’ side, the super villains countless media outlets scrambled to cover.
Out of the corner of her eye, Chichu Chun saw her own reflection in the rearview mirror. Her face was painted with strange pigments, dressed like a girl who had walked out of some ancient tribe.
Her tube top was made from the hide of a Red-Mane Lion King, her headpiece from the skull of an Armored-Bone Bull, her earrings carved from the tusks of the Behemoth Elephant god. Under the trailing vine apron was a pair of tactical combat pants, and her dust boots were already full of cracks.
The others beside her were dressed in roughly the same style; the Pu’er Clan’s aesthetic had always been like this, and she had already fully blended into this clan.
During this time, she’d returned with them to the Desolate Stone Plateau many times, attended the clan’s night-fire parties, danced with the young Pu’er girls, and joined the clan’s elite youths in the "Hunt of the Wilds" ritual. This entire outfit was her spoils of war.
The bounties on the Dark Night Walker crew had all reached the 100000000 required for the Trial.
But even so, the High Priest still kept silent on her request to meet "Pu’er".
She had decided: once this commission was done, if the High Priest still refused, she’d storm the Pu’er holy land alone.
That was her style.
All this time, she’d also been tracking news from the Chichu Heaven front. Unlike before, after breaking High Heaven Pass, the armies of Cosmic Heavy Industries had rapidly pushed up to Yuyuan City, and after that it turned into a long, brutal tug-of-war. High-level Insect Race units and the Association’s top combatants were taking casualties on both sides, and there had even been a near-incident of the Insect Mother’s revival.
On the other hand, Red Weaving Workshop had been quiet. At this point, Li Mingqing had yet to defect from Life Daylight; on the surface, countless nests in the southern hemisphere were still under Li Mingxiong’s control, and the Life Staff incident had shifted from the open to the shadows.
At least, Xu Xiaoyou had not yet set her sights on Red Weaving Workshop; that night had not yet come.
Chichu Chun really wanted to know how Xu Xiaoyou was doing now, but also feared what might happen if they met.
The two who had once been so familiar and close now couldn’t even afford the luxury of contacting each other, each stuck on their own side.
In the time she’d spent integrating with the Pu’er Clan, like most Saji People, her footprints had covered the vast majority of nests in the world, yet she never managed to find a sense of belonging. On those nights by the fires on the Desolate Stone Plateau, under that vast and endless starry sky, Chichu Chun kept thinking of cramped little Dragonfly Town, where her best memories and closest people were.
The wind kicked up the sand, breaking her train of thought. Chichu Chun shook her head and focused on what was in front of her.
This time, the commission hadn’t come from any faction or broker. The initiator was herself.
She was going to say goodbye to her past.
So she had come back to Chichu Heaven.
The off-road vehicle drove deeper into the desert. This was the most desolate area in the northwest of Chichu Heaven, bordering the Wastelands, a place with no name of its own, an absolute forbidden zone for life, where the wind always carried the wails of Demons.
"So, why’d you come here?" Night Owl said.
His question was aimed at Chichu Chun, and of course everyone else in the car was curious too.
"I used to live here for a while," Chichu Chun said. "Honestly, I’m not even that sure of its exact location. It’s more like some intuition in the dark has been guiding me here."
The others didn’t get it.
Who would live in a place this harsh and barren—she was the Young Master of the Chichu Family, after all. And what exactly was this vague "it" she was referring to?
Seeing that Chichu Chun didn’t really want to answer, they simply dropped the question.
The vehicle rolled to a stop in front of a tavern. The tavern’s signboard hung crooked and dilapidated, the gate of the fence standing open, starkly conspicuous amid the blowing sand.
"There’s actually a tavern still open out here?" Night Owl blurted.
Click!
The sound of weapons being loaded rang out. The young man turned, stunned, to see Benjamin on guard beside him.
"Whoever we run into next, no matter who it is, we shoot," Chichu Chun said. "Including Life Daylight people."
"Life Daylight? What would they be doing here?" Night Owl’s face was full of confusion.
"More precisely, the Eurasia Life Joint Airline," Chichu Chun said.
The fence gate was kicked open. A howl came from inside the tavern, like a Demon’s scream.
The light shifted from bright to dim; as the group stepped into the tavern, the previously lively place instantly went silent. The patrons froze, hesitant looks coming over their faces.
A few patrons dressed like cowboys reached toward the backs of their waists, and the bartender behind the counter narrowed his long, thin eyes and slowly crouched down.
Bang—
A gunshot ripped through the silence. One patron let out a scream, raising his hand with a shattered index finger, the weapon at his waist clattering to the floor.
Chichu Chun tilted her head slightly. The magazine, loaded with her blood, was glowing with a blazing red light.
The next second, a vicious brawl erupted in the tavern. Sparks flew, muzzle flashes flared and died.
Half a minute later, Chichu Chun stamped down on the chest of the last patron and finished him off with a blank expression.
With her main family cut off and no supply of inducer-enzyme inhibitors, Chichu Chun feared losing control and had been suppressing her abilities. This whole stretch, she’d been fighting with firearms, and had specially built a gun that could be loaded with her own blood.
—Hell Angel.
For both her and her enemies, her blood was a lethal toxin—scorching and gorgeous.
"Aaahhh!" the terrified bartender scrambled backward. "Who are you people, how did you find this place!"
Owl dragged him out from behind the bar.
The bar had been blown to bits in the earlier fight, and he hadn’t managed to hit the alarm button.
"Wait..." The bartender got a clear look at Chichu Chun’s face, and his expression grew even more horrified. "It’s you!"
"There’s something that’s been bothering me all this time," Chichu Chun said,
"The lost child has come home."
