Chapter 537: A Deformed Ecology
The woman was stunned, white powder falling from her scalp.
"Clown City will never accept you. You should know that very well, otherwise you wouldn't have fled here to live underground," Xu Huo said coldly, showing no sympathy for their suffering or predicament.
"If it were just a matter of being hunted by those warriors on the surface, you wouldn't be willing to shrink here like livestock rather than go out. There must be another reason, right?"
"The water and food in the Cleanup Zone cause people to go mute and become infected. Perhaps there are also special elements in the air that gradually drive infected people insane."
"You've managed to hide underground for over a decade and safely reproduce, which suggests you've figured out the pattern. What's wrong with the surface? Is it the soil, or the high temperature?"
Jin Dong's condition was very strange. Of course, the strangeness wasn't just that he had suddenly lost his mind without being injured. But given that, the special climate here was worth suspecting.
There were countless things that could cause such effects, and Xu Huo was no expert in this field. Naturally, he wasn't seeking a definitive answer. However, if the key to the Cleanup Zone's deformed ecology lay with the warriors supposedly responsible for cleaning up this area, then his inference about clearing the instance was incorrect. Whether it was the Xenomorphs or the warriors, they could essentially be classified as the same type.
For now, there were no clues to be found on the people. Perhaps breakthroughs could be made elsewhere.
The woman kneeling on the ground didn't react. Xu Huo turned and left without a second word. She quickly scrambled to block him, urgently pulling a pen from a hole in the wall to write on paper.
Xu Huo glanced at what she had hastily written, his expression turning cold. "There's no need to make excuses."
The woman made "ah-ah" sounds to stop him, then quickly wrote again. Unfortunately, this time Xu Huo didn't even bother to look. He grabbed the strings and lifted off the ground.
Only then did the woman reluctantly tell the truth. "The high-temperature environment accelerates Xenomorph transformation!"
Xu Huo stopped. "You lose your minds when you go to the surface? How long does it take?"
"A few hours. If someone is physically weaker, maybe one or two hours."
Xu Huo looked at the several children standing at the cave entrance. After a moment, he made a decision. "I'll take two people with me. Whether they transform into Xenomorphs after going out depends on their fate. If they can withstand the high temperature, I'll take them out of the Cleanup Zone."
The woman was overjoyed and quickly nodded, calling the children over for him to choose.
Xu Huo ultimately selected the stone-throwing Fish Ball and the frail child called Snow Cake.
The woman had already clearly told him that the weak one wouldn't last long outside, but Xu Huo still chose Snow Cake. The adults, who couldn't speak but were rational, began to doubt his motives. Snow Cake's parents were even unwilling to let him go with Xu Huo.
"I'm not a Cannibal Player," Xu Huo said. "He looks unhealthy. Even if he stays here, he won't last two years. It's better to let me take him out and try his luck."
The white-haired people gathered around, refusing to disperse. Xu Huo added, "What happened to the children taken out before?"
The agitated people gradually calmed down. Although they were underground, they were well aware of the fate of the children who had left. Usually, on the second or third day after they begged a normal person to take a child away, bodies or bones would be thrown back down—sometimes the child's, sometimes the adult's.
In other words, neither the child nor the adult had escaped. This had also been a small bargaining chip in the notebook earlier, used to persuade Xu Huo.
"Either I take two, or I take none," Xu Huo said, shifting the conflict back onto them.
Now it was the woman's turn to plead with Snow Cake's parents.
As parents, they naturally couldn't trade their own child's life for another's. But the frail child grabbed his mother's hand and pointed upward, expressing his desire to go out.
Xu Huo ultimately took the two children. When they left, he didn't use the underground passage. Instead, he grabbed both children and flew up through the crack.
As expected, Gao Peng was waiting for him outside.
Sitting on a motorcycle, Gao Peng grinned at him. "I heard from Lightning that you came out. Didn't expect you to end up here too."
Xu Huo set the two children on the ground, pulled out a lighter to light a cigarette, and glanced at the black bag behind their vehicle. "I heard you eat people."
The expressions of Gao Peng's group shifted slightly, and they immediately straightened up.
"Not planning to talk nicely?" Xu Huo flicked the lighter, and the bag behind the vehicle instantly caught fire.
Gao Peng and the others quickly moved away from the vehicle and created distance. One of them, taking advantage of Xu Huo's attention being drawn to the corpse in the bag, charged from the side and swung a fist at him.
Without turning his head, Xu Huo raised his hand and swept it through the air, then slashed downward. The man's body suddenly split into two misaligned halves. Because he was charging forward, his stiff body couldn't stay upright and pitched forward, directly cut in half by the ray on the ground!
The corpse fell, a large amount of blood pooling at their feet. Xu Huo took a drag of his cigarette, squinting at Gao Peng and the others. "Killing children too—that's just too inhuman."
Under the high temperature, the corpse seemed to burn more easily, and a foul smell soon wafted out. But Gao Peng and the others couldn't care less about the "rations" they had just hunted. They were on high alert, watching the man not far away.
"I suggest you don't move." Xu Huo pointed at Cen Lu. "The weather is hot, and no one's in a good mood. If anyone else makes a move, you'll all die here."
Cen Lu had already taken out an item, holding it behind her back. Hearing this, she first looked at Gao Peng.
Gao Peng tilted his head, signaling her to put it away. Then he relaxed his stance and smiled at Xu Huo. "Just different philosophies. No need to fight to the death. Calm down, brother. If you want to take two kids out, go ahead..."
Before he could finish, Xu Huo, still standing in place, suddenly drew his sword. The sword's cutting plane swept through the air, and an invisible barrier split open from within. The torn edges curled, and with them, the few people still standing in view fell to the ground—this was just an illusion item. In reality, from the moment Gao Peng started speaking, the people in Xu Huo's field of vision had already moved from their original positions. They only appeared motionless due to the item's effect.
Now that the trick was exposed, Cen Lu and the others, who had already closed the distance, struck quickly. Cen Lu first threw out a living rope. "I'll restrain his hands! You shoot!"
The rope item did indeed bind Xu Huo, but it was shed the next second by "Universal Lubricant." He used the "Door of Severed Ties" to stand in front, blocking the hail of bullets. Pressing the two children against the door, he flicked the lighter and burned the protective suit of the person charging from the side.
A scream rang out. Xu Huo kicked away the writhing man and rushed out from behind the door. With several quick movements, he used the Water Blade Gun to kill the two nearest, then cut down another with his sword. Dodging bullets from Gao Peng and Cen Lu, he threw out "Lament of the Plants." In the moment of their instinctive stiffness, he cleanly severed both their heads!
(Chapter End)