Chapter 39: Evolving Again

Volume 1 “Year of Calamity”

“How much longer do you think you can hold on, insect? Five minutes? Or ten? Hahahahaha…”

Li Mu scraped his Razor against the wall, producing a piercing screech that echoed his dry, hoarse laughter, making An Sheng feel nauseous. The effect was practically comparable to Medusa’s sonic attacks.

“You really do talk a lot of nonsense. Calling me an insect – then what does that make you? Look at your appearance – hooked nose, toad-like mouth, and a pair of bow legs! If I were you, I’d have hanged myself long ago! I truly admire your shamelessness for having the courage to keep living in this world.”

Though he couldn’t defeat his opponent in combat, An Sheng never held back with his words. His sharp, barbed verbal attacks were quite satisfying. Moreover, An Sheng knew such linguistic assaults were very effective – the short man before him was already turning pale with rage, the scant flesh on his withered, thin face twitching slightly.

“Vile insect! How dare you mock me! I’ll kill you!”

Clearly, An Sheng had successfully enraged this Purifier. The man had even forgotten his habitual dry laughter when speaking.

“Chaotic Blades!” With the Purifier named Li Mu’s low roar, he began spinning in place, moving faster and faster like a high-speed propeller. Even the airflow in the corridor was severely affected, whipping up a fierce hurricane.

An Sheng only had time to reverse-grip his Saber to protect his vital points before he was swept into what felt like a helicopter’s rotor. In less than a second, countless dense wounds covered his body. Purple-black Blood Rain sprayed out as An Sheng was sent flying backward, crashing heavily against the wall before collapsing motionless on the corridor floor.

Though his recovery ability remained intact, it seemed utterly inadequate against such concentrated damage. Dark purple blood flowed onto the floor, forming a pool of thick, blackish gore. Clearly, this injury had rendered An Sheng incapable of resistance.

“You…dare…insult me! I’ll kill you! Kill you!”

Though An Sheng lay dying from the Purifier Li Mu’s “Chaotic Blades,” the enraged man remained unsatisfied. He stomped repeatedly on An Sheng’s Demon head with his foot, each impact causing blood to spray from An Sheng’s wounds. While stomping, he continued cursing An Sheng with foul language! Clearly, he harbored deep hatred for the person before him.

At that moment, the supposedly fallen An Sheng suddenly erupted into action! He grabbed Purifier Chen Mu’s legs and slammed him against the wall like a ragdoll! Though An Sheng’s injuries were severe, he hadn’t lost his mobility. His feigned death on the ground was meant to deceive his opponent and lower their guard.

And it was precisely this moment that gave him the opportunity to seize his opponent. However, An Sheng still underestimated the Purifier’s capabilities.Although Li Mu always preferred to control his superpower to transform his fingers into razors, this didn’t mean other parts of his body couldn’t be sharpened. He had allocated most of his Deification Factor to physical enhancement, so the area he could sharpen wasn’t very large—but even this was sufficient.

His right ankle suddenly sharpened into a keen steel blade. As he forcefully swung his right leg, An Sheng’s hand gripping his ankle was cleanly severed. For a moment, An Sheng nearly lost control over Chen Mu, but how could he easily abandon this hard-won counterattack opportunity?

Using his remaining hand, An Sheng dragged Chen Mu’s body toward himself, pinning him against his chest with the arm that had lost its palm. He sank his teeth into Chen Mu’s neck—in his Demon Form, his sharp fangs pierced the skin, and scorching blood flowed into his mouth, down his throat and esophagus into his stomach.

“Bastard!” Chen Mu let out a piercing shriek, his fingers on both hands transforming into blades once more. Using his elongated arms, he stabbed backward into An Sheng’s chest and abdomen, the blades plunging deep into his lungs and churning relentlessly! The excruciating pain forced An Sheng to one knee, but driven by fierce determination, he refused to release his bite, desperately sucking Chen Mu’s blood.

This only further enraged Chen Mu. He withdrew the blades from An Sheng’s chest and abdomen, aiming them directly at his head.

At this critical moment, a sharp boning knife abruptly appeared. Caught off guard, the blade pierced through his eye straight into his brain, freezing the blades intended for An Sheng’s head mid-air.

“I’ll kill you!”

Xun Lili’s icy voice rang out—the last words Chen Mu would ever hear.

“Kill you, kill you, kill you…”

With each “kill you,” Xun Lili would withdraw the steel knife and plunge it again into the body of the man who had murdered her kin. Splattering blood covered her face and clothes, some even entering her mouth, but none of it mattered anymore. She would have her revenge—for her Uncle Wang!

This was An Sheng’s first time drinking human blood—if a Purifier could still be called human. The blood rich with Deification Factor entered his stomach and soon reacted with the Red Tide virus within his body.

These two factors originally came from the same source as different products, yet were fundamentally similar—or rather, the Red Tide virus is more like a product of the mutated Deification Factor. When both factors coexisted in An Sheng’s body, a strange transformation occurred—or more accurately, an evolution.

His wounds healed at a visible rate, faint metallic patterns emerging on his originally purple skin. From the stump of his severed hand, countless fleshy threads sprouted, slowly intertwining and gradually reforming into the shape of a palm.

Sharp bone spurs about ten centimeters long extended from the joints of An Sheng’s limbs, occasionally glinting with a silvery sharpness identical to the blades Chen Mu produced through his superpower. The mutation wasn’t limited to An Sheng—Xun Lili, who had swallowed a small amount of the Purifier’s blood, was changing too.Xun Lili’s entire body was now like a boiled shrimp, flushed with a sickly red hue, with occasional wisps of steam rising from her skin.

The Deification Factor was a pure form of energy, but ordinary human bodies couldn’t withstand such power. Purifiers achieved Sublimation only with the Emissary’s assistance, yet Xun Lili had directly absorbed the Deification Factor with her mortal flesh, placing an immense strain on her body. It was only because she had ingested a small amount of blood that she hadn’t already exploded from the overload.

Even this tiny amount of Deification Factor, however, caused her blood to boil and her body temperature to skyrocket. The steam that had just appeared was, in fact, the result of her scorching skin vaporizing the sweat expelled from her body due to the excruciating pain. One could only imagine the agony Xun Lili was enduring at that moment.

“An Sheng, respond if you can hear me! An Sheng! An Sheng!”

Nie Chong was still trying to reach An Sheng, but ever since the exchange with that girl over the walkie-talkie, there had been no response—not even from the girl who had spoken initially.

He had no idea how the battle in the opposite building was unfolding. If An Sheng were killed, it would essentially be a death sentence for all of them. With just one man and one Spear, he stood no chance of breaking through the massive Corpse Horde encircling them, especially while escorting over a dozen survivors.

Yet he dared not voice these fears, for more than ten pairs of hopeful eyes were fixed on him. He couldn’t bear to extinguish the light in those hopeful gazes. Let them hold onto their joy a little longer, even if only for a moment.

“Nie Chong, it’s An Sheng.”

Just as Nie Chong was on the verge of despair, An Sheng’s magnetic voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.

“Holy shit! You’re still alive, you bastard!” Nie Chong blurted out in exhilaration. Their hope for survival—his and the survivors’—had returned.

“You’re not dead yet, so how could I be? Ran into some trouble—a Purifier ambushed us. One person died, and another is unconscious, not looking good. She’s been running a fever the whole time! You know what that looks like—a precursor to mutation. Should we bring her along? What if…”

An Sheng’s concern stemmed from his experiences early in the catastrophe. The symptoms of this girl named Xun Lili closely resembled those of survivors who had been exposed to the Blood Rain and hadn’t died but later mutated—though not exactly the same. After all, An Sheng had never witnessed the actual transformation process firsthand and couldn’t be entirely certain.

“You make the call. But if there’s a chance to save her, try your best. After all, it’s still a life.”

Nie Chong couldn’t bear to abandon someone in need, and neither could An Sheng. Otherwise, An Sheng wouldn’t have risked entering the town center with Nie Chong in the first place.

“Alright, I’ll take this girl with me. Stick to the original plan: I’ll draw the Zombies away, and you evacuate everyone quickly. We’ll deal with the rest once everyone’s safe.”

“Got it. Be careful out there. We’ll meet at the Warehouse. And thanks, brother!”

That word “brother” signaled that Nie Chong now fully regarded An Sheng as one of his own, just like the comrades who had fought alongside him through life and death.

“You too, watch your back, brother!”

With that, An Sheng turned off the walkie-talkie, tore a piece of clothing into strips to secure the scalding-hot Xun Lili to his back, then grabbed the Loudspeaker and rushed downstairs.