Chapter 447: Strange Death

“Do two-star superhumans have such powerful strength in their fingers?”

Meng Chao arrived in front of a Bloody Moon Wolf King whose head had been reduced to a pulp.

There was a clear palm print on the Bloody Moon Wolf King’s head, and all five fingers could be seen clearly. The skull was completely crushed.

Meng Chao placed his palm on it and compared them. Based on the outline of the palm, which was about the same as his, he could be certain that the injury did indeed come from a human instead of another monster with sharp claws but short and stumpy fingers.

It has to be known that canine-type monsters were known to have tough heads, sturdy shoulders, but weak stomachs. Their heads were the sturdiest parts of their bodies.

Many canine-type monsters’ charges could leave marks on tanks which the attack of a huge shell.

But the person who killed the Bloody Moon Wolf King had grabbed it casually and crushed as well as destroyed its head like it was a match box.

Meng Chao stared at Manager Jiang in puzzlement. He asked, “Just what is the background of this two-star superhuman?”

Manager Jiang was also shocked when he saw the Bloody Moon Wolf King’s wound. He shook his head and said, “I’m not too sure of it myself, but I heard that he’s a Gun Fighting Style martial artist. There’s no way he would possess such brutal melee skills.”

“Did some elite arrive ahead of us to provide reinforcements?”

Meng Chao narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, an incredibly dangerous presence rose deep within the jungle.

“Careful!”

His pupils shrank, and he shouted at a Dragon Fang Commando member who went ahead to explore the area.

It was too late!

Right when that Dragon Fang Commando member entered the depths of the jungle, he was knocked away by a black shadow, and like a kite with its string snapped, he flew more than ten meters away and blasted apart a tree whose trunk a grown man coil not hug. Then, he landed on the ground like mud.

The Dragon Fang Commandos were all dressed in strengthened exoskeletons made of super alloy. They also had firearm systems that made them look like moving armories and crystal support systems. The total weight of their equipment was hundreds of kilograms, so even if an Iron-armored Rhinoceros charged at them at full strength, it would not be able to send them flying so far and so fiercely.

But this figure who jumped out of the jungle was a different type of monster. It was more than two meters tall and looked like an ape.

It was covered in coarse and thick black fur. Its arms were really long, practically reaching its knees, and its palms were like small fans with ten fingers which were like ten metal hooks.

The creature’s face was covered in black fur, so its features could not be seen clearly. All they could see was a pair of eyes that were almost bulging out of their sockets. They were bloodshot and murky.

‘What’s going on?’

In an instant, Meng Chao recalled dozens of ape-type monsters’ appearances and diagrams, but none of them fit the monster in front of him.

When the Dragon Fang Commandos behind Manager Jiang saw that their teammate was attacked, they reacted instinctively and lifted their guns to shoot.

The ape-type monster moved like a phantom, and they could not predict its actions. It moved randomly among the ten or so lines of fire. Even if the bullets hit it, they just slid off its shiny and coarse pelt.

Only a few bullets managed to dig into its flesh.

The pain made the creature even more maniacal. It bared its sharp teeth at the commandos.

When the Dragon Fang Commandos saw this, they spread out to open up the path for the heavy machine guns and rocket projectiles on the armored vehicle outside the jungle.

“Wait—”

Meng Chao was observant. He suddenly saw something flash on the ape’s wrist.

His expression changed, and he pounced on it like a whirlwind to deliver a heavy kick to its stomach.

No matter how fast the ape was, it was impossible for it to match Meng Chao’s rhythm.

Bang!

The kick resounded with a muffled thud, as if a battering ram had destroyed a city gate. Now, it was the ape’s turn to be sent flying like a kite. But before it landed on the ground, Meng Chao had already come to attack. Without letting the creature do anything, he arrived at the spot where it would land and brought up his leg to kick it again so that it would remain airborne.

Meng Chao then did the same thing and moved to where it would land again. He delivered around eight kicks in succession, and for a total of ten seconds, the ape remained airborne.

When it finally landed on the ground, its limbs were already limp; Meng Chao had dislocated all of its joints.

But the ape was really strong. Even if its limbs were dislocated, it was still able to tense up its steel-like muscles and crawl up with a roar.

A small scowl appeared on Meng Chao’s face. He brought out his chain and bound it tightly.

The ape struggled with everything it had, so the chains released electricity with loud crackles, electrocuting the ape until smoke came out of its body. Its pelt became burnt, and it let out terrifying screeches.

Meng Chao felt resigned. He could only ask Manager Jiang’s subordinates to inject the tranquilizer from the emergency medical kit.

A tranquilizer that was five times the usual dose was injected into the black ape, but it showed no effect.

Then, when a high-density tranquilizer that was used to capture live superbeasts was injected into the ape, it finally settled down and fell asleep.

“Just what monster is this?”

Someone had already brought back the commando who was sent flying by the ape. When they saw the clear palm print on his chest plate, all of them gasped in amazement and surrounded the fierce ape to observe it.

“I... don’t think it’s a monster.”

Meng Chao crouched down and pulled up the black fur above the ape’s left wrist, which revealed a tactical watch.

“This is...”

Manager Jiang and the Dragon Fang Commmandos were all shocked.

Meng Chao checked the tactical watch. It seemed like the newest version that was only distributed that year.

He touched the ape’s skull and found that it was no different from a normal human’s.

He then groped about the ape’s palm and fingertips and quickly found signs of long-term, high-intensity training of guns.

“By the looks of it, he’s not a monster. He’s one of the three superhumans from this developing land. He might be the Gun Fighting Style martial artist,” Meng Chao concluded.

Manager Jiang and the Dragon Fang Commandos looked at each other at a loss.

“How could this be?

“How could a human turn into something like this and even lose his rationality?”

Meng Chao wanted to know the answer to that question too.

It was clear that the Gun Fighting Style martial artist had gone through a complete change.

However, he should not have been infected by the new zombie virus, because after he fell asleep, his physiological parameters were all very stable, and no drastic propagation of microorganism appeared to show that his organs were rapidly decaying.

Was he infected by Blood Flower spores and turned into the undead? That did not seem right either. It was clear that he was not dead. He just lost his rationality and appeared to have entered spirit energy deviation.

While Meng Chao was thinking, an explosion suddenly went off in the area ahead of them.

“Have two people keep watch over him. There might be other survivors here as well as other superhumans who entered spirit energy deviation. Their fighting strength seems to have surpassed their original cultivation realm, so you must be careful!”

Meng Chao led Manager Jiang and seven Dragon Fang Commandos toward the area in which the explosion originated.

The weeds and trees ahead of them were on fire. The air looked like flowing magma and released the pungent scent of sulphur.

There were monster carcasses strewn all over the ground. The sight was so horrible that it was even worse than in the perimeter. But the monsters here were not ripped apart forcefully by human hands. Instead, they were burnt until they turned into snow white statues. When the commandos touched them gently, the statues crumbled swiftly and disappeared into the wind.

Such a phenomenon would only occur when something was burnt continuously at thousands of degrees Celsius.

Meng Chao thought about it for a long time, but he did not know a move among all the spirit energy magnetic fields possessed by Earth Realm superhumans that could release such terrifying power.

The next moment, they heard an inhuman scream in the depths of the flames ahead of them.

The crowd’s gazes focused on a huge ball of fire.

When they looked at it closely, they finally realized that it was not actually a ball of fire. Instead, it was a human. He was kneeling on the ground while burning.

Red flames flowed out of his orifices and pores.

The flames were really pure, as if they were frozen magma, and upgraded his flesh and blood into something that resembled a crystal.

He looked like a melting glass statue. When he arduously extended his arms to Meng Chao and his group, his face was full of confusion and pain. He opened his mouth to scream, but they did not know whether he was begging for help or warning them. Soon, his voice and expression were engulfed by flames.

Before Meng Chao and the Dragon Fang Commandos could think of a way to save him, the burning human melted completely, just like how glass would when it was exposed under the heat of thousands of degrees Celsius.

Aside from the flowing flames on the ground, there was nothing left of him.

If the commandos’ cameras had not recorded everything clearly, they might have thought that they had an indescribable nightmare.

“So, was he... burned to death by some kind of monster that’s skilled in spitting flames or...”

“Why do I think that he’s the monster that’s skilled in spitting flames? But for some reason, he couldn’t control the flames that came from the depths of his cells, and his spirit energy went out of control, which was why he ended up self-immolating?”

With puzzlement tormenting them, Meng Chao and the Dragon Fang Commandos continued forward.

They went around the developing land and discovered more mangled monster carcasses. They also finally found some human corpses.

Many of the pathfinders and monsters were locked in each other’s arms, having died after they bit each other’s throats. The horrors of the battle and the strength of the pathfinders was so great that it far exceeded the group’s expectations.

However...

Meng Chao knelt down on one knee and carefully separated the carcass of one pathfinder and a Ghost Leopard whose neck the man had broken with force.

There was no fatal wound on the person’s carcass.

Even though there were three deep wounds from the Ghost Leopard and the flesh around the wounds had decayed and turned black, it was not the cause of death.

The man had died of dehydration.

That’s right. It was dehydration. Meng Chao could not deny it even if he thought that it was ridiculous.

Based on the freshness of the monster carcass, it had been at most one hour since the developing land had been attacked.

Yet the pathfinder’s body had already turned into a dry corpse with only skin and bones left. He looked like a relic that had been sealed up underground for thousands of years and had just been excavated.

His limbs and body had shrunk by half; they were so stiff that they were like withered logs. Even if Meng Chao pressed down gently around the wounds, not a single drop of blood or pus gushed out.

It was as if some sort of mysterious force had wrung all of the pathfinder’s cells dry.

Wu Wu was Meng Chao’s university mate in Agricultural University. She was in the monster controller course and reared a Ghost Leopard as a pet. The two of them often sparred, so Meng Chao knew very well that the Ghost Leopard’s inborn talent could only make the prey’s wounds decay faster. It could not make a human dehydrate to this degree within one hour.

He examined a few other corpses, and they showed different degrees of dehydration.

Many of the people had no chest wounds, but their hearts had burst.

It was as if they died of fatigue after they were drained of their lives.