Chapter 8: Escape

Chapter8: Escape

Chen Jian didn't spare another glance at Du Hu, for he knew the situation had already become quite clear.

It was a trap.

The enemy's aim was to lure his squad into the narrow subway tunnel and then annihilate them all with the so‑called mother entity.

Whether it was pure malice or a covetous eye on the squad's gear mattered little.

The pressing question now was how to escape the mother's pursuit.

According to the map, the straight‑line distance to the subway exit was still nearly eight hundred meters; even with the AI's shortest‑path calculation, reaching the exit would take at least five minutes.

That meant their average speed could not exceed one hundred meters per minute.

Yet the monster behind them could move far faster!

The wider the passage, the quicker it glided.

In the constricted sections it could cling to the walls with its tentacles, literally squeezing its body out of the 'can'.

With no other choice, they either had to find a sufficiently narrow tunnel to hide temporarily, or…

…meet it head‑on!

At that moment the squad had opened a gap of several tens of meters from the mother, and the mines Lei Jie had planted in the rear began to take effect.

"Boom!"

After the deafening blast, more than four hundred steel pellets spread across a massive conical impact zone, completely filling the tunnel.

The mother's motion stalled instantaneously—

—but only for an instant.

The pellets lodged deep in the mother's cranial keratin layer, yet failed to pierce it, inflicting no substantive damage.

On the contrary, enraged, the mother grew even more ferocious, its speed picking up a notch.

Shattered concrete kicked up clouds of dust, the air reeking with noxious gas and choking particulates.

Chen Jian barked the order:

"Don gas masks, activate emergency respirators!"

"Shen Yue, provide cover; Lei Jie, deploy the sniper grenade—find a way to sever its tentacles!"

"Understood!"

"Understood!"

The squad, surging forward, halted abruptly; Shen Yue flung himself to the ground, took a rough aim, and squeezed the trigger of the 201‑pattern general‑purpose machine gun.

"Rat‑tat‑tat‑tat—"

Bullets poured out, but the gory spectacle Chen Jian had hoped for—flesh flying, the mother collapsing—did not materialize.

The 7.62 mm rounds might have nicked the mother, yet the wounds were superficial.

That was to be expected.

A creature whose musculature and skeleton could support a twenty‑meter‑tall frame could not have tissue strength comparable to a mere three‑ or four‑foot‑high minion.

Even if the strength gain from five‑fold size fell short of five times, it was still at least two or three times greater.

"Lei Jie! Quick!"

Shen Yue shouted.

At that instant the mother was only thirty meters from him, its elongated tentacles already less than ten meters away.

A few more seconds of delay and those barbed, hook‑tipped limbs could pierce him.

And it was precisely at this hair‑raising moment that Lei Jie finally had his sniper grenade ready.

"Get down!"

After a loud yell he pulled the trigger.

"Thud!"

The grenade trailed white smoke down the tunnel, then a blossom of flame erupted at the far end, inside the mother's vast maw.

"Boom!"

The flash faded, and the mother thrashed in frenzied writhing and struggle.

"Hit effective!"

Lei Jie roared; Chen Jian snapped his head back, eyes fixed on the mother.

The smart visor's damage‑assessment module kicked in immediately, but because the previous night's scan had been incomplete, the model was still unfinished and the readout fuzzy.

Chen Jian had to rely on his own eyes to gauge how much harm the single sniper grenade had inflicted on the beast.

Yet what he saw utterly overturned his expectations.

——

If there were smoke but no injury, the monster being unscathed would seem normal.

If there were injury and it was rapidly repairing, that too could be accepted.

But neither was the case.

The mother's mouth‑region clearly bore a gaping hole from the sniper grenade, yet the torn muscle fibers on the wound edge writhed as if possessed, sealing the fragile breach in a heartbeat.

Gecko.

A word flashed in Chen Jian's mind.

When a gecko sheds its tail, the muscles there contract in the same fashion to staunch bleeding and heal the wound—this mother was doing exactly the same thing, not merely similar but identical.

"Keep firing! Prioritize the tentacles!"

"Shen Yue, fall back!"

"Alternate cover and retreat!"

Chen Jian issued the command again, while simultaneously drawing his own LG6 and taking aim at the mother.

Only five grenades remained in the magazine—his last reserve.

He had to meter his fire carefully, lest he and Lei Jie, the two heavy‑weapons specialists, find themselves in a void of firepower.

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

Each explosion made the mother's motion stutter a fraction.

Yet after each reverberation it would spring back to action with astonishing speed.

It was indeed growing weaker, Chen Jian could see that plainly.

But mere weakness was insufficient; if they could not kill it or shake it off before the grenades ran out, this squad would be doomed.

Chen Jian's heart hammered like a war drum; the smart visor showed the exit less than fifty meters away.

But in his hand, only the last grenade remained.

"Bang!"

Blue smoke rose, and the grenade once again struck into the mother's mouth.

Chen Jian decisively flung the LG6 behind him, turned, and strode toward the subway exit.

Passing the rendezvous Shen Yue, he shouted loudly:

"Retreat!"

"Understood!"

Shen Yue picked up the machine gun, sprinting with standard field maneuver, while the more forward He Shuo had already set up the 10 sniper, firing the last two rounds from the magazine.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

The high-penetration bullets pierced straight through the mother's entire body, and Chen Jian clearly saw the sparks where the two bullets struck the wall.

This sparked a bold idea in his mind:

If this monster controls its injuries through the writhing of its muscle groups

then does it mean the caliber need not be large; any weapon capable of harming it could grind it down?

Perhaps there will be a chance to test this idea later, but not now.

At that moment, the exit lay right before him.

Chen Jian shouted to Lei Jie, who was leading the way:

"Prepare the explosives! Seal the exit!"

Then he quickly climbed the half-collapsed steps and stepped outside the subway station.

In that instant, it felt as if another world.

There was no time to reflect; Lei Jie had already finished setting the explosive charge.

The next second.

"Boom!"

The upper part of the subway station entrance collapsed completely, heavy yet rusted and weathered concrete crashing down.

After the dust settled, the terrifying tremors from below seemed completely isolated.

Chen Jian drew two breaths, without pause, leading his three-man squad to continue moving away from the entrance.

But just after they had run less than thirty meters, a tremendous impact sound came from underground.

"Bang!"

Then came the second, then the third.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

The heavy, drum-like sound felt as if it were striking directly at Chen Jian's heart; he turned to look at the rising ground, not yet having decided whether to retreat and hide or fight to the death, when the change occurred suddenly.

"Boom!"

The ground shattered, dust and smoke billowing.

That massive, terrifying mother had burst forth from the earth!

(End of Chapter)