Chapter 77: The Demon Infant Descends

Fate is like a line of dominoes.

Sometimes, a casual gesture can set off a series of unpredictable chain reactions.

Usually, people go their whole lives without realizing this, only becoming bewildered when disaster strikes suddenly, cursing their unlucky fate in their hearts.

Ren Zhong was different.

He had personally experienced other timelines; he knew how things were meant to unfold.

So when events derailed, he could feel the rush of fate’s butterfly wings beating against him.

He would not curse fate.

Because he understood that he himself was the inducing factor, the agent of change.

He was the source of all evil.

As one who toyed with time and space, he had to possess the awareness of a villain.

When facing an unexpected situation, he would exhaust every ounce of his intellect to devise a way to break free, analyzing cause and effect, piecing together a logical thread to regain control over the situation.

...

“Go! Faster! Push forward! Zheng Tian, weld your foot to the accelerator! Don’t slow down, even if you hit a tree! Charge!”

The truck, reduced to just its cab and cargo bed, had long since abandoned its freight box and now thundered across uneven terrain.

The wind whipped up by the vehicle bent the grasses and bushes along the way.

“Wen Lei, get ready to raise your shield! Front-right! Here it comes!”

Hanging outside the passenger door, Wen Lei unhesitatingly lifted his shield.

A shadow the size of a human head darted in from the side, colliding squarely with the massive shield.

Sparks flew.

Wen Lei’s whole body shook, his throat tasted faintly sweet.

But seeing the shadow knocked backward, his tension eased—it had worked.

He sighed with relief that Mr. Ren’s armor scanner was so formidable, its extended coverage always spotting danger a few seconds ahead of others.

Without it, everyone would have been doomed.

“Ouyang Ning, throw the fog grenades! Fifty meters out at nine and three o’clock!”

Having switched to the passenger seat, Ouyang Ning assembled two pear-sized grenades in two seconds, attached micro thrusters, and completed the programming in another second.

He flung the two fog grenades out the window—a window whose reinforced glass had been shattered earlier—launching them forward in straight arcs trailing white smoke, landing precisely where Ren Zhong had directed.

Detonate!

White mist billowed.

Two human-head-sized metal blocks hurtled out, caught in the fog, their advance halted for a moment.

Taking advantage, the truck barreled through.

“Bai Feng! Fire at one o’clock in front of you! Empty the magazine!”

Clinging to the back of the truck, Bai Feng obeyed.

A metal block, freshly launched from the soil, was struck dead-on by Bai Feng’s volley, clattering backward over a hundred meters.

It no longer pursued their truck, instead veering toward another nearby half-professional team’s heavily loaded vehicle.

Ren Zhong, hanging from the left door, issued commands by radio while swinging his arc-blade with his left hand, cleaving another metal block that lunged at him.

Stretching his neck, he glanced back and saw the metal block Bai Feng had repelled crash through the window of the other team's truck.

The vehicle screeched to a halt.

Three people jumped out.

A gunsmith with a firearm, a warrior in exoskeleton armor, and an implant soldier.

The uncontrolled truck tilted, plunging into the ground.

Shrieks echoed from the windows.

The three who escaped first didn’t look back, sprinting away.

Barely ten seconds later, the truck exploded.

The metal block flew out, now stained with fresh, crimson blood.

---

It spun through the air, trailing blood as it sped toward the last fleeing gunsmith.

All the while, it emitted an ear-splitting, dizzying shriek, like a baby’s cry.

Hearing the sound growing closer, the gunsmith looked back in terror, just starting to raise his weapon, but the metal head abruptly accelerated, smashing into his abdomen.

The gunsmith screamed, falling flat on his back.

The baby’s cry became sharper and more piercing.

The metal block pinned him down, spinning and tearing at his belly, like a wolf gnawing its prey.

Within seconds, the gunsmith’s screams ceased.

His combat suit was ripped open.

From his chest to lower abdomen, nothing remained.

The metal head rose again, now larger, charging straight for Ren Zhong’s truck.

Ren Zhong cursed inwardly.

This monster grew stronger after feeding, its speed now far surpassing the truck.

No escape.

Bai Feng at the back could never stop it.

Two seconds later, Ren Zhong made his decision.

He chose to take Wen Lei’s place as the rear guard.

“Keep heading south! I’ll stop that thing! Don’t look back!”

Letting go, Ren Zhong dropped from the truck cab, took a deep breath, cranked his armor output to its current limit—53.17 kilowatts—gripped his arc-blade in both hands, and charged headlong.

Time rewound to half an hour earlier.

Lin Wang’s professional team seemed possessed today; from the moment they entered the valley, they kept their firepower at maximum, even eating lunch while fighting.

Around five in the afternoon, the team finally pushed into the deepest part of the valley, a place they’d never reached before.

Suddenly, wind and clouds changed, cold gusts howled, the earth trembled.

Dense black mist rose from the valley’s depths, like war smoke.

A thunderous roar, as if earth dragons stirred, erupted.

But it was not an explosion, nor thunder—it was an extraordinarily loud, high-pitched infant’s cry.

The next moment, a ten-meter-tall, four or five meters wide, perfectly round sphere burst from the ground.

It was a metallic sculpted infant’s head.

Now, this enraged infant’s head wore a ferocious expression, mouth agape, roaring deafeningly.

Hundreds of meters behind, Ren Zhong and his group watched in terror.

No one had expected that the legend of Starfire Town would prove true.

And they had the misfortune to become witnesses.

At the deepest point of this Bone Valley, a terrifying level-five Ruin Beast had indeed lain hidden—the Demon Infant of Cataclysm.

It was said that too many human corpses had piled up in Bone Valley, never cleared, making it a “feng shui treasure ground” for spawning Ruin Beasts.

Over the years, a Ruin Beast of supreme potential had formed from some human remains—powerful, cold-blooded, murderous, and with a certain innate human-like intelligence.

It rose swiftly by suppressing and devouring other Ruin Beasts, becoming the unseen overlord of the valley.

These stories stemmed from the previous generation of elite professional scavengers; in this generation, not a soul had glimpsed it in decades.

Perhaps everyone who saw it died.

Of course, related videos existed, but since it hadn’t appeared for so long, most believed it had naturally died of old age, or slipped away unnoticed. Few took it seriously.

No one guessed that the professionals’ reckless overharvesting would provoke its emergence.

The professional team reacted quickly, sensing danger and spinning their motorboats to flee at top speed.

The half-professional teams were also swift, but their vehicles—heavy trucks loaded to the brim—were sluggish to turn.

On Zheng Tian’s team, Ren Zhong’s advance warning paid off.

Zheng Tian, decisive as a gecko dropping its tail, immediately abandoned the truck’s cargo box, keeping only the cab and cargo bed, fishtailing away toward the back of the valley.

Other teams made their own choices.

Some, just a step slower, copied Zheng Tian’s tactic and abandoned their cargo.

---

Others, lacking a detached cargo function, could only flee with their full load.

Some, blinded by greed, gambled on turning around fully loaded, hoping to escape.

With nearly twenty teams in the valley, they figured luck might be on their side.

But such attempts led only to death.

The Demon Infant, returning after decades, was not here to play.

Ren Zhong’s team, among the first to turn, tried to retrace their steps, only to discover that the ground was erupting with countless human-head-sized metal blocks.

These blocks were shaped like human heads, their features identical to the Demon Infant’s true form.

This was part of the legend—the Demon Infant, multiplying by splitting off sub-bodies that grew from genuine human skulls.

Ren Zhong, leading the way, jumped out and fought one of these sub-bodies.

He could handle it.

But anyone else from his team would have been doomed.

So Ren Zhong jumped back into the truck, pointed to the slopes, “Up the mountain! Most former residents lived in the valley, fewer on the slopes! The density of sub-bodies must be much lower!”

Zheng Tian spun the wheel, following Ren Zhong’s orders, charging up the hillside and along its edge.

Their six-person team was the first of all half-professional teams to make the right choice.

Even so, their escape was fraught with peril.

Stray sub-bodies appeared on the hillside, pursuing them.

Ren Zhong’s specially modified scanner proved invaluable, and his nerves grew steadier with each crisis, never making a wrong call.

Despite danger at every turn, they survived.

Until now, dragged into peril by another doomed team, forced to face a sub-body that had just devoured at least three people.

Hence Ren Zhong’s decision to guard the rear himself.

But he was not sacrificing himself—thanks to Qu Qingmeng’s addition of a short-range flight reverse-thrust mass engine, he had explosive sprinting power.

When the engine’s energy was spent, he could still use amplifiers to force output up to a staggering 310 kilowatts, leaping ten meters at a time—slower than driving, but faster than any scavenger fleeing on foot.

That was enough.

When chased by a bear, you don’t have to outrun the bear, just outrun the others.

Ren Zhong was confident in his survival.

---

The distance between Ren Zhong and the enhanced Demon Infant sub-body closed rapidly.

He studied its subtle movements, his peripheral vision checking the energy data on his helmet’s scanner.

The next second, Ren Zhong planted his left foot, toes stabbing into the soil.

His body twisted, like a top-tier batter in Major League Baseball.

Both hands gripped his blade behind him, swinging sideways.

The heavy arc-blade crackled with blue electricity, tracing an upward crescent in the air.

He did not aim for the sub-body’s frontal charge.

Yet, the Demon Infant sub-body suddenly changed direction, shifting from ramming his abdomen to aiming at his helmet.

Right into the path of his blade.

Ren Zhong had chosen correctly.

His upward swing, like a baseball bat, met the soccer-ball-sized sub-body head-on.

At the moment of contact, the blade’s blue glow blazed even brighter, like sunlight.

Ren Zhong had completed the preset program 0.1 seconds ahead.

Now, the arc-blade’s instantaneous output was at its peak—180 kilowatts.

A strike only a level-two peak mecha warrior could deliver, sacrificing all defense.

Blast!