Chapter 746: The Fourth Stage of Heaven! (2/4)

Chapter 746: The Fourth Stage of Heaven! (2/4)

Seeing that no amount of shouting could wake the man, the overseer walked over, crouched down, and slapped the middle-aged man twice, crack-crack.

The man who received the slaps did stir, opening his eyes weakly, but what showed were not dark pupils but ghastly white sclera.

“Oh, I think you’ve had enough of living.”

Thinking the man was provoking him, the overseer flared up, his brows shooting up, and reached out to grab his neck, but saw the man open his mouth and bite down fiercely.

That bite showed no mercy at all, as if venting all the pent-up grievances of usual days, and in an instant it tore the hand open, flesh and blood gushing.

“Ahhh!!!”

The overseer’s screams echoed across the field.

He desperately tried to pull his hand out of the man’s mouth, but the man held on with a death grip.

The onlookers were stunned by the sight, momentarily forgetting to step in and separate them.

No one had expected that scrawny fellow to muster such strength, let alone dare to lay a hand on a member of the disciplinary squad.

Was he tired of living?

After all, they were still men of the Expeditionary Force; who knew when General Babita might get a whim and send them back to the battlefield.

Offending the disciplinary squad now might earn them a bullet in the back of the head.

This was a place where the emperor was far away; even if two people died, no one would bother to investigate how.

To put it bluntly, they were just a bunch of rats scraping by in the nobles’ estates, and no one would even remember their names...

A dark emotion swelled in everyone’s hearts, gradually twisting.

What did it matter if this world was destroyed? After all, it had never belonged to them for a single second.

They suddenly no longer wanted to pull the two apart; they only wanted to watch that white-eyed rat rip open the belly of the Maren overseer, letting his blood soak the land.

Not only that.

Better if everyone died...

Only when all human trinkets were dead could the base nature of humanity vanish along with them, and they could start anew with a new identity, truly ending that painful cycle.

Not just the cycle of the Bolo Province, but the cycle of everything!

Suddenly another person fell to the ground, then crawled up from the dirt, and soon the field echoed again with the roars of beasts and heart-rending screams.

That mist seemed to carry a strange magic, able to affect people’s minds, magnifying primal instincts and desires without limit, turning them into puppets driven by these urges.

For instance, appetite.

Tiny hyphae slowly emerged from the soil, infecting crops and vegetation, then releasing spores to assimilate other living things as well.

This seemed to be the source of the thick fog.

The denser the vegetation, the thicker the gray-green mist.

And the more malnourished and weaker a person was, the easier they were to infect.

Especially the land that had been turned into orchards.

Of an entire hundred-man group, only a few remained conscious, screaming as they fled.

These people, who had barely eaten a few meals in their lives, were undoubtedly the perfect breeding ground for the plague!

Makhur stood frozen, staring dumbfounded at the chaotic field, a trace of panic finally appearing on his face.

“These madmen... are they rebelling?!”

It couldn’t be!

He had only asked them to do some work, and it wasn’t even harder than what they did back home!

Only then did he recall what the decurion had said earlier, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

“It’s no longer safe here... we need to leave as soon as possible. Yes, hurry to the train station!”

The entire wasteland was full of madmen, and people who came to the wasteland gradually became abnormal.

Now he believed it.

Only the Bolo Province was the safest place; he had to return there immediately!

He turned to run out, but saw a crowd of madmen already surrounding him, blocking all his escape routes.

The overseer beside him looked at him in terror, his eyes full of fear, as if asking what to do.

Makhur steeled himself and shouted loudly.

“These people are traitors! They... have betrayed the Empire! Show no mercy, shoot them all!”

With the order to open fire, the overseers drew their pistols and aimed at the approaching madmen, pulling the triggers without hesitation.

Gunshots echoed across the field, but the firepower of a few pistols was too weak to suppress the surging tide of people.

Including Makhur, four officers and twelve overseers were soon overwhelmed and pinned down by the thousands-strong crowd.

Screams rose and fell, then were drowned out by the crunching sounds of gnawing.

“Stop! You disgusting rats! Let me go! Aren’t you afraid His Majesty will—Ahhh!!!”

“Help... please...”

That insincere plea clearly had no effect; Makhur’s voice gradually weakened, and finally he became a bloody pulp.

Those frenzied rat-men also ate their fill.

They, who could barely eat meat twice a year, now had their mouths full of fat intestines.

In their pupils burned a craving for flesh and blood, and a layer of scarlet crept over their sclera.

At the same time, nourished by the blood, a deep green spore coat slowly crawled out from their nostrils and ears, like moss growing from a corner.

Not only that—

The soil beneath their feet also began to loosen slowly, and something followed the hyphae that had emerged from the soil, crawling out from the stinking earth.

These were skeletons buried for who knows how many years, most of their bones already brittle, but the gray-green spore coat glued them together, absorbed the residual genetic factors, and gave them new “bones” and “flesh.”

The spores floating in the air pointed the way forward; they dragged their incomplete bodies, making “hiss-hiss” sounds, advancing toward those stubborn organisms that refused to embrace evolution...

Gunfire erupted not only on the endless fields by the Wei River, but also in Kun Town, not far from the Weifu military base.

Most of the survivors stranded here were wastelanders from Jinchuan Province, especially those from Mafu Town, who were strong and fierce, and not many were infected by the Nag fungus hyphae.

But those things that suddenly grew out of the ground still caused them considerable trouble...

At the tavern at the town entrance.

A burst of bullets mowed down more than a dozen fruiting bodies that charged up, and Mosquito cursed irritably.

“WTF! What the hell are these things?!”

“Another expansion pack??” Kakarot beside him was also dumbfounded, not understanding what was happening.

The young rat-man who helped Mosquito sell cards was trembling under the table.

This guy had been eating well lately, probably getting enough nutrition, so he hadn’t mutated.

Ten-Fist Superman said with a tense expression.

“These guys are just like zombies... Could they be the survivors who disappeared from Fuzhuang earlier?”

“I’m afraid it’s more than that! Those Torch Church bastards have probably dug up two-hundred-year-old graves!”

Changing the rifle’s magazine, Mosquito reached out and pulled out the young ratman hiding under the table, while shouting loudly at the boss hiding behind the bar.

“Stop hiding there! Come out and come with us now!”

“Wh-what happened?” The boss crawled out from under the bar with a terrified face, asking him in a trembling voice.

Listening to the chaotic gunfire outside, Mosquito said succinctly.

“I don’t know. We’ll find out once we get to the military base.”

...

What Mosquito didn’t know at this moment was that the Weifu Military Base was also filled with the sound of gunfire.

Besides those creatures crawling out of the soil, the Legion’s clone troops had also mutinied on a large scale.

At least half of the entire Glorious Army was infected by Nago mycelium.

Unlike the ratmen who bit with their teeth, the frenzied ones grabbed Ripper rifles and aimed at their comrades beside them, even at other members of the coalition.

After being beaten for half a month, the Torch Church finally launched a counterattack.

And in a way no one expected—they suddenly emerged from underground.

The Alpha Task Force, fighting on the front lines, immediately fell into a stalemate with the mutants on Blood Mountain.

Having learned of the coalition’s rear situation from the Beast King, Prophet Sodom of the Bloodhoof Tribe seized the opportunity and called upon his Plague Monks to launch a fierce counterattack.

At the same time, on the positions of Broken Blade Mountain, Black Cloud Mountain, and even Fu Mountain, the goblins that had been hiding in caves and caverns and not yet wiped out emerged one after another, launching suicidal attacks against the defenders stationed there.

The battlefield was in utter chaos.

From the front lines to the rear, flashing gunfire lit up everywhere, and everyone was bloodthirsty.

Aboard the Loyalty Airship.

Upon hearing the news, General Lioum was so furious he nearly twisted his nose, and he cursed at the messenger.

“Tell General Melka! If he can’t have those brain-damaged clones shot within half an hour, then let him come see me with his own head in his hands!”

“Yes, sir!”

The messenger hastily saluted and rushed over to the communication radio to relay the order.

Sitting in his chair, Lioum wore a furious expression, but inwardly he was secretly astonished.

Clone mutiny—in his memory, such a thing had never happened before.

It seemed the Torch Church had indeed cooked up something formidable.

Without a doubt.

It was related to the eerie fog that shrouded the entire wasteland.