Chapter 104 – Death List

The gunfire in the streets was terrifyingly intense. Gouzi followed close behind Su Lifeng, pressing himself carefully against the wall, not even daring to poke his head out.

This was a shootout in the middle of a downtown district! Looking at the empty buildings all around him and listening to the gunfire ringing in his ears, he could hardly believe he was in the central area of a city with a population of several million.

Gouzi knew this still was not the real apocalypse, but the scene before his eyes already felt no different from one.

“Su-Ge, are we still going to keep getting closer?” Gouzi asked, his legs going a little weak.

“The closer we get to the TV station, the more Xenospecies we’ll run into. Most of them are probably gathered around there, so of course we’re going,” Su Lifeng said. “Besides, this is likely Ningnan’s first large-scale battle against the Xenospecies. Don’t you want to see it?”

“No…” Gouzi very much wanted to answer honestly.

Just then, Su Lifeng suddenly raised a hand, stopping him from speaking.

Gouzi looked at him in confusion as Su Lifeng’s expression shifted from grave to dark. His gaze flickered constantly, as if he had seen some terrifying scene ahead of them. But when Gouzi followed Su Lifeng’s line of sight, all he saw was an empty passage with no sign of anyone.

Of course, in Su Lifeng’s eyes, what lay ahead was an entirely different scene. A great amount of blood came pouring down before him, and from within that curtain of blood came a man’s voice. “What do we do? Can you people get me out of here or not? …The list? Of course I’ll give it to you, but you have to at least guarantee my safety first… Fine, fine.”

Through the haze, Su Lifeng saw the speaker write several names on a sheet of paper, with a few numbers behind them. “These are several of the safe houses. Those people live there. I paid a huge price and put on an act for a long time to get this intelligence, so you can’t screw me over… Don’t worry. They may immediately investigate everything related to me, but I prepared for that long ago. For the time being, they won’t be able to trace this part…”

“Hah!” This Precognitive Vision was very brief, and Su Lifeng quickly came back to himself. A flash of shock crossed his face.

That voice sounded familiar…

“It’s that mayor.” It seemed that aside from his speech, the mayor had made plenty of other preparations as well. The suffixes after those names were almost all things like bureau chief or expert. Presumably, they were all people useful to the Xenospecies but who had not yet been controlled by them. And now they had become bargaining chips for that mayor to negotiate with the Xenospecies…

But what truly made Su Lifeng’s brow knit tight was that he had actually seen his mentor’s name on that list.

He Jingyu, academician of the School of Life Sciences, an elderly man already eighty years old. It had even been specially noted afterward that he had a daughter and a seven-year-old granddaughter, both living with him in the same place.

Since returning to Ningnan, Su Lifeng had rarely gone back to school. He Jingyu had called him several times, but almost every call had been to ask how he was doing and tell him to relax at home. A few times, he had seemed to want to say something, but after hesitating, he had hung up anyway. And because Su Lifeng had been busy all this time, he did not know much about He Jingyu’s situation. He only knew that, just like before, the man kept a low profile and seldom went out, so his personal safety should still have been guaranteed.

He had never expected that He Jingyu had already moved into a state-provided safe house. In that case, was he now helping the government research the Xenospecies? Then during those moments of hesitation, had he wanted to invite Su Lifeng in? Or had he simply wanted to warn him about the existence of the Xenospecies? But since he was working for the government, he probably had to obey confidentiality rules… The fact that he had hesitated at all already struck Su Lifeng as no easy thing.

Come to think of it, He Jingyu had gone out of his way to get his phone number from Shen Fei.

“He couldn’t directly tell me about the Xenospecies, but he still kept calling me because he was worried I might be hurt by them while I was away?” Su Lifeng was very surprised. The old man usually always wore a stern, serious expression and did not seem like the sort of person who would do something like that. He had not expected him to be so cold on the outside and warm on the inside. Though it had only been a few phone calls, that was already everything the old man had been able to do… As soon as he understood that, a surge of anger shot up in Su Lifeng’s heart.

That mayor deserved to die.

Even if his mentor hadn’t been involved, betraying his own people was reason enough to die.

The fact that Su Lifeng had foreseen that scene meant that if it truly came to pass, the consequences would be severe. There was no way that mayor didn’t know that.

“But why did I only see the mayor? Where was the bureau chief?”

The bureau chief had a gun, and from the look of him, he had clearly come from the military. His marksmanship probably wasn’t poor. Su Lifeng had no intention of rushing into danger recklessly.

But whenever he thought of the scene from his Precognitive Vision, Su Lifeng couldn’t suppress the anger in his heart.

“That place didn’t look like it was inside the TV station anymore. It shouldn’t be too far from here…” Su Lifeng forced himself to recall it for a while, then said to Gouzi, “Gouzi, I was planning to give you a surprise… or maybe a fright. Anyway, do you want to be the boss?”

Gouzi was instantly stunned…

A few minutes later, beside an empty shopping mall, Gouzi swallowed hard as he stared at a Xenospecies not far away.

The Xenospecies had long ears, and its bared mouth was packed with sharp, elongated teeth. Judging by its clothes, though, it seemed to have once been a security guard at the mall. At some point, however, it had gone to work as nothing more than a human skin.

Su Lifeng had severed the security-guard Xenospecies’s legs, but it still dragged its shortened limbs toward Gouzi. A Black Thread suddenly shot out from its mouth.

Swish!

Su Lifeng sliced through the Black Thread, then handed the military dagger to Gouzi. “Do it. If you still can’t make up your mind by the time it crawls in front of you, I’ll take that as your refusal. This is the only chance I’m going to give you.”

Although he trusted Gouzi, Su Lifeng would not force him to become one of the Mutants, nor would he keep dragging him out to hunt Xenospecies.

Gouzi knew that Su Lifeng had already helped him plenty. One look was enough to tell that this Xenospecies was powerful. It wasn’t something Su Lifeng had just grabbed at random. If Su Lifeng hadn’t cared, he could have said all this back when the first Xenospecies ambushed them. To Gouzi, that one had been plenty strong too.

“I…” Gouzi gripped the military dagger, suddenly feeling as if his tongue had tied itself in knots.

Killing a person was hard enough, let alone killing a Xenospecies wearing human skin…

But as he watched it close in rapidly, it was obvious he didn’t have much time left to think.

To hell with being scared!

Gouzi roared inwardly, then drove the military dagger down with all his strength.

The moment he felt blood spurt out and splatter across his face, Gouzi’s mind went completely blank.

He had killed it…

A long while passed. Only when Su Lifeng reached out and patted him on the shoulder did he slowly open his eyes.

“Ah!” Gouzi immediately let go of the military dagger and scrambled away from the corpse. Then, extremely nervous, he looked himself up and down. “How is it, Su-Ge? What changed? Is my face still there?”

No sooner had he spoken than a flash of red swept past in front of him. Gouzi felt an incomparably sharp sensation bearing down on him, making his scalp prickle. He instinctively shut his eyes and dodged to the side.

“Take a look for yourself,” Su Lifeng said, his tone a little strange.