Chapter 89: Third Tier, Psychic-Type Zombie (Second Update)

This submachine pistol was one of the weapons Long Xi had collected from the arsenal beneath the new district’s 4S dealership. It had taken her several days to become fully proficient, from assembly to actual use.

Normally, this type of pistol was most effective and least tiring when held with both hands. But with four enemies attacking from all directions, one gun alone couldn’t cover every angle.

She could only hope for a swift and decisive battle.

Bullets poured out like a flood, but the four opponents were clearly well-trained—they didn’t panic, dodging calmly. Unfortunately for them, they soon discovered their feet were entangled.

“Ah!”

“No—!”

Their heads split open like watermelons, or their bodies were shredded like rags. In the blink of an eye, all four were dead.

Long Xi spun her gun toward the direction from which a golden blade had just been thrown at her back. The metal-ability man cursed, darting away like a leopard and vanishing. The people chasing behind him weren’t so lucky—several dropped instantly.

Long Xi kept running, gun at the ready, eyes alert for any sign of that metal-ability man—but he was gone!

Suddenly, she came to an abrupt halt. A shadow dropped from above, and a leg like a club slammed down exactly where she would have passed. The ground caved in, rocks flying everywhere.

Long Xi retreated rapidly, firing as she went. Suddenly, an earthen shield materialized out of thin air. Her bullets struck it, leaving only deep pits.

The earth shield quickly thickened and expanded into a wall. The man behind it gave a loud shout, pushing the wall forward as he charged.

Long Xi only managed two steps back before realizing she couldn’t outrun it. She tossed her gun aside and reflexively braced her left arm against the wall, but was shoved away instantly.

Her heel scraped across the rocky ground, drawing blood. Luckily, she reacted quickly, adjusting her stance. She moved her legs rapidly, letting the momentum of the wall carry her backward. She stepped onto a mound, bracing her right leg behind her, forcing herself to hold her ground.

Her leg was ramrod straight, forming a line with her torso—the best posture for absorbing force. But her shoulders and waist creaked under the pressure.

She was no match for the earth-ability man in a contest of strength.

He shouted again, and the earth wall exploded with a bang. Dirt and debris flew at Long Xi like a storm. She flicked her left hand, sending a vine to hook a tree behind her, pulling herself out of danger. Landing, she drew her pistol again. Just as she was about to fire, a leg suddenly swung up from the side, kicking her wrist from below. The gun flew high, and she staggered away with a cry of pain.

That boot was as hard as iron, its pointed tip smashing into her bone. Long Xi felt as if her entire arm had been struck by lightning, the pain nearly knocking her unconscious. Darkness swam before her eyes.

Before she could recover, another kick slammed into the left side of her chest, sending her rolling.

She landed amid a pile of rocks. The stabbing pain beneath her was nothing compared to the agony in her body. She was in so much pain she couldn’t even scream, her mouth open in a silent gasp. After a long moment, she managed to turn stiffly onto her side, curling up inch by inch.

A leg pressed against her left shoulder, rolling her over. Then it stomped down hard, crushing her already sunken ribs even further. Amid the crunching of breaking bones, she screamed and coughed up a mouthful of blood, then gasped for air like an asthmatic.

“Careful, you’re crushing her lungs. This wood-ability expert might not be able to save herself,” a mocking voice laughed.

Long Xi, drenched in cold sweat, forced her eyes open. She could just make out two figures—one standing a bit farther away, A-Gang, the one who’d kicked her hand. The one pinning her down...

“It’s you… as I thought.”

The earth-ability user was none other than Liu Meng.

“Tsk tsk, listen to her—she can still talk. As expected of a wood-type,” Liu Meng pressed down harder, watching with malicious delight as Long Xi’s pain deepened. “I heard you’ve been looking for trouble with me these days. Ha! I’ve been lying low, almost underground, and you haven’t caught a single slip. Disappointed?”

He bent down, eyes wide and vicious. “I ended up like this all because of you. I’ve been waiting for a chance to settle the score. Heaven’s finally given me one—Gu Xu’s group is finished, and you just had to provoke Qu Shangjin. Know why we can act so openly this time? He gave his tacit approval! You’re just too stupid!”

Blood kept bubbling from Long Xi’s lips, soon covering half her face. It trailed past her eyes, making it look as if she were crying blood, her eyes growing ever brighter, as if about to ignite.

She trembled, reaching out to grab his pant leg.

“Trying to bite me? I’ll tell you, you—ah!”

He staggered back, falling hard. Blood gushed from his heel, his whole leg shaking as if it were useless.

His Achilles tendon had been severed. Without it, a person can’t stand. Furious, he shouted, “You… I’ll kill you!” He raised his hand, but a shadow flashed before his eyes—one of his eyes vanished in an instant. He froze, then let out a bloodcurdling scream.

The shadow landed on the ground—a brown, rat-like creature. It held an eyeball in its claws, glanced at it in disgust, then flung it away and leapt at Liu Meng again.

The sudden turn of events stunned Long Xi, but she quickly shifted her focus to A-Gang.

A-Gang was still staring at the rat in shock when a powerful sense of danger washed over him. He instinctively dodged, but a bullet grazed his left arm, spraying blood.

Long Xi fired again, but her arm was too weak to handle the recoil. Her right arm was useless, and though her left was intact, her shoulder and chest muscles were shot. Now that A-Gang was alert, she couldn’t get another easy shot. She dropped the gun, forced herself to stand, and leaned against a tree, sending out thin vines.

Some of the vines had sharp wooden thorns—fast and vicious.

A-Gang roared in anger as he was entangled, firing two ice spikes in return. Long Xi bent her body, and the spikes embedded themselves in the tree behind her.

A-Gang, enraged, charged despite his wounds. Long Xi’s eyes flashed—she sent a stream of water at him. He cried out in shock, “You have water abilities too?”

I’m electric-type as well!

She pulled out the stun device she’d taken from Zhang Yuwen and pressed the button. The water carried the current straight to A-Gang, who immediately convulsed as if in an epileptic fit. But as a special forces soldier and an ability user, he still had some fight left. Gritting his teeth, he staggered out of the water’s reach, trembling uncontrollably as he stared at Long Xi in shock—he hadn’t seen the stun device, so in his eyes, Long Xi was terrifying. Without hesitation, he flung several ice spikes her way and turned to flee.

He would probably regret not looking back, because his wild, haphazardly thrown ice spikes were hard to predict. Long Xi, barely standing with the help of the tree, couldn’t dodge them all. She avoided most, but one struck her abdomen, knocking her sideways against the trunk.

The sharp ice spike was as deadly as a blade, carrying a chilling cold that instantly froze flesh and organs on contact. Gasping, she gripped the spike and pulled it out.

The wound in her abdomen barely bled—it was frozen solid and wouldn’t heal.

Long Xi wanted to cry from the pain. She bit her lip, stuffed some gauze into the wound, then wrapped more gauze around her waist, tying it tight with one hand.

Meanwhile, Liu Meng was suddenly howling in rage—Milk was clawing, scratching, and biting his face with all its might, refusing to let go no matter what he did. In desperation, Liu Meng pulled out a stun device and jabbed it at Milk.

Bzzzt—

The sound was sharp and terrifying, but Milk still wouldn’t let go until it had gouged out Liu Meng’s other eye. Only then did it fall away.

Now it was burnt to a crisp, barely the size of two lead balls, smoke curling from it like a cheap coal briquette.

“Milk…” Long Xi’s eyes turned red.

Liu Meng went berserk, his face a bloody ruin, no longer even human, flailing wildly at the ground.

“Ah, th-this…” A group finally caught up, someone recognizing Liu Meng through the gore. “Old Liu?”

“Kill it! Kill it!” Liu Meng shrieked.

They thought he meant Long Xi. Seeing that such a delicate-looking woman had reduced the burly Liu Meng to this state, they were shocked and terrified, raising their guns at her.

But Long Xi didn’t see any of this. She stared at the charred lump that was once Milk, now shrunk from basketball-sized to barely two lead balls, her blood-smeared face twisting, her eyes burning red as she ground out, “You will all die… all of you!”

She gripped the crystal core—the third-tier crystal core!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

From beneath the ground where those men stood, thick, eerily green vines as thick as a grown man’s wrist shot up. Even more terrifying, a red line of light glowed fiercely at the center of each vine, casting a bloody hue over everything.

The vines whipped around the men, some squeezing the weaker ones until their blood and brains burst out before they could even scream.

Others were wrapped into long, thin cocoons, their bodies twisted beyond recognition.

Liu Meng was shredded into meat paste by three vines in the blink of an eye.

In her previous life, Long Xi had reached the late stage of the sixth tier.

A sixth-tier’s rage—even at only third-tier strength—could still turn the ground into a river of blood.

Long Xi’s mind suddenly emptied. She could no longer hear any sounds around her; her vision was filled with a deep, eternal darkness.

Yet she could still “see” the spurting blood, the flying flesh. She could feel the wind, the moon’s shadow, the swaying trees, the falling leaves, an ant burrowing in the soil, a dewdrop trembling on a blade of grass. Every plant rooted in the earth—some danced with joy, some wept in sorrow—stretching, shrinking, gathering strength, painfully transforming.

Countless tiny voices rose up, merging together, like yellow fireflies blooming in the deepest darkness. She felt the wood energy within her extend outward, intertwining with those glowing lights, merging, caressing, then separating, spreading farther and farther at incredible speed."