Chapter 5: Enemies Meet
Su Xiao's originally heavy breathing calmed slightly. He was about to close the valve in his hand when he noticed that the several hundred shadow crows had already gathered around him, fighting over the fresh water spraying from the valve. He simply tossed the rubber hose in his hand to the ground. He couldn't take the drinking water from the metal tank with him anyway. His initial slash had been quite vicious, directly cutting through a small portion of the truck, and the engine hadn't been spared either.
With a few more slashes, Su Xiao cut open the severed metal compartment of the truck. Blood flowed out. Inside were several corpses cut in two. Su Xiao leaped into the compartment, and a pungent stench of decay entered his nostrils.
Dozens of strips of meat hung inside the compartment, some on the verge of rotting. At the innermost part of the compartment was a tactical assault vehicle. This thing had strong off-road performance, with a chassis at least 40 centimeters off the ground. The roof was quite simple, formed only by a metal frame, with most of the front, back, left, and right made of glass.
This thing had only one purpose: pursuit. Scavengers couldn't possibly only use trucks for hunting. This ferocious little thing, similar to a tactical assault vehicle, was dozens, even hundreds of times faster than a truck. Ninety percent of its weight was in the engine and chassis.
Clang, clang, clang...
Blade light flashed. The metal roof of the truck was cut to pieces. Su Xiao tried to lift the tactical assault vehicle. This thing was very light.
In a place like the Black Abyss, full of deadly threats, once you engaged an enemy and there were corpses, you had to move positions quickly. But before that, Su Xiao still needed to deal with the black dragon corpse. This was good stuff. If he could take it away, he would definitely take all of it.
A few minutes later, the Black Abyss wyvern was disassembled by Su Xiao. Using the quality judgment provided by Reincarnation Paradise, he picked up over thirty pounds of wyvern meat, easily portable dragon hide, and the wyvern's heart and eyeballs. As for essence orbs and the like, wyverns rarely produced such things.
After placing the spoils behind the seat of the tactical assault vehicle, Su Xiao got in. The control panel before him gave him a headache. He even felt like he was piloting a plane. The metal skull at the center of the steering wheel seemed to mock Su Xiao.
Soon, Su Xiao found a "start button" below the steering wheel. He tentatively pressed it.
Vroom~
The roar of the engine came from behind Su Xiao. He suddenly had a bad feeling.
Puff!
Eight streams of blue flame shot out from the rear of the tactical assault vehicle. The front wheels of this ferocious little thing lifted high, instantly turning into a blur.
Half a minute later, the tactical assault vehicle slowly came to a stop on the Gobi Desert. Fortunately, the terrain here was flat enough, or else this ferocious little thing would have crashed long ago.
Su Xiao stood up from behind the seat and jumped back into it.
"It seems this isn't the start button. Let's try them one by one."
Su Xiao pressed a blue button. The next moment, the glass window above him clicked open.
"Could it be..."
Bang!
Su Xiao was ejected. Suspended in mid-air, he thought to himself that this was a miscalculation. He had forgotten to ask the scavenger how to start this tactical assault vehicle.
Half an hour later, the tactical assault vehicle sped across the Gobi Desert. According to the scavenger's description, the Penitent's Highland was very far from this Gobi Desert, and it wasn't a good place.
Those gathered at the Penitent's Highland were no pushovers. The younger generation from the major races who came to the Black Abyss for training didn't dare to get close to that place. It was the territory of madmen and desperadoes, even larger in scale than Vanishing City.
A place like the Black Abyss was a completely lawless zone. To survive here, you not only needed strength but also had to be ruthless enough.
The tactical assault vehicle kicked up a trail of dust and stopped on the Gobi Desert. Inside the driver's cabin, Su Xiao picked up an old-fashioned laptop from behind the seat. This thing had a sense of the times, still with a blue and white screen. Although outdated, it could guide directions and was very resistant to falls.
The Black Abyss wasn't entirely occupied by wild beasts. Some locations had gathering points for various races. Some major races even set up supply points exclusively for their own people here, to improve their survival rate.
The old laptop showed sixteen arrows of varying sizes. Most gathering points in the Black Abyss had magnetic levitation stations built for positioning. The larger the arrow on the screen, the stronger the power of the magnetic levitation station, and the larger the scale of that gathering point.
The speed of the tactical assault vehicle was beyond reproach, but this thing was a fuel guzzler. Moreover, Su Xiao needed to find reliable native inhabitants of the Black Abyss to ask about the situation at the Penitent's Highland.
Starting the tactical assault vehicle, Su Xiao headed toward the direction indicated by the largest arrow. Twenty minutes later, a metal sphere floating in the air came into view. Below the metal sphere was barely considered a city.
The reason he said "barely" was because the architecture of this city was too strange. The outskirts were full of tents, while the interior consisted of dilapidated concrete building frames. Judging by the appearance, it had clearly been bombed by powerful thermal weapons.
The tactical assault vehicle slowly drove toward this city named "Waste Fort."
Perhaps hearing the engine of the tactical assault vehicle, a few gaunt, barely clothed humans or other races walked out of the tents on the city's edge. They only glanced at Su Xiao before returning to their tents.
The tactical assault vehicle stopped. Su Xiao gazed at the "Waste Fort City" a hundred meters away. He felt something was off here.
He glanced at the fuel gauge of the tactical assault vehicle. Less than 30% fuel remained. This vehicle was extremely fast and light enough. Abandoning it was not a wise choice.
However, a faint malice emanated from the ruined city ahead. Su Xiao wasn't sure if this was how gathering places in the Black Abyss normally were, or if there was something else going on.
After hesitating for a moment, Su Xiao chose to reverse. Something was wrong ahead, yet insisting on going forward was the exclusive behavior of plot protagonists. Su Xiao didn't have such a hobby. In a place as deadly as the Black Abyss, it was necessary to avoid risks appropriately.
Just as Su Xiao started reversing, a strange sound came from Waste Fort City. It was a very rapid clicking sound, somewhat similar to the collision of shells.
Hearing this sound, Su Xiao immediately made the tactical assault vehicle do a sharp turn. The tent cluster on the edge of Waste Fort City suddenly fell silent.
With a crash, the concrete buildings inside Waste Fort City instantly collapsed—no, they split apart. These buildings were originally composed of individual entities. Their gray-white shells were tightly connected, thus forming those gray building frames.
A kind of completely gray-white crab surged outward like a tide. Judging by the area of Waste Fort City, there were at least tens of millions of these gray-white crabs.
As the saying goes, when enemies meet, their eyes blaze with hatred. Su Xiao and these gray-white crabs were mortal enemies. This thing was called a Star-Eating Crab, infamous throughout the Void, a terrifying species capable of devouring planets.
Although the Star-Eating Crabs in the Black Abyss could only eat dirt and couldn't devour the Black Abyss's origin, after adapting for over a thousand years, they had also become one of the wild beasts.
These Star-Eating Crabs were fishing. The tents on the edge of Waste Fort City were deliberately preserved by them. Whether it was travelers in the Black Abyss or other wild beasts, as long as they got close, they would become their nourishment. Moreover, these Star-Eating Crabs even maintained the magnetic levitation station to attract more prey.
Su Xiao had absolutely no interest in fighting these Star-Eating Crabs. Not to mention their overwhelming numbers, this was the Black Abyss, not Alice's castle. Even the weakened Star-Eating Crabs had such strong combat power. Now encountering unweakened Star-Eating Crabs, the best choice was to retreat quickly.
Puff!
Blue flames shot out from the rear of the tactical assault vehicle, and it disappeared in an instant. Behind, the Star-Eating Crabs had already gathered together. They combined into a giant crab-scorpion, also extremely fast, each step shaking the mountains and earth.