Chapter 61: Scapegoat
The courtyard was in total disarray.
Under the dim wash of moonlight, the crimson eyes of a dozen gray-black mutant rats glinted with ravenous hunger as they scurried frantically across the snow.
Lin Xiao and Su Mubai stood back-to-back, their heavy blades whistling through the air, but the rodents were lightning-fast. Lin Xiao swung and missed, clipping nothing more than a tuft of coarse fur.
The beast twisted its body with uncanny agility, whipping back around to lunge straight for his heel.
“Damn it, these things are way too fast!” Lin Xiao cursed, lifting his boot to kick it away.
Su Mubai frowned, seizing a brief opening to bring his blade down on a rat lunging toward him, slicing the creature cleanly in half and spilling its entrails across the packed snow.
Just then, Jiang Jue raised his hand. A cluster of micro-arcs crackled across his fingertips.
The blinding blue-white flash flickered and vanished into the night, moving far too fast for the eye to track.
A heartbeat later, the five or six lead rats collapsed to the ground, twitching as wisps of black smoke rose from their charred bodies before going entirely still.
“Boss!” Lin Xiao felt a surge of adrenaline. With the pressure suddenly lifting, he swung his blade with renewed speed.
Chu Yang burst out of the doorway right behind Jiang Jue. His sharp gaze swept the chaotic courtyard, instantly taking stock of the situation.
Without a second of hesitation, his eyes narrowed as he clenched his right hand into a fist, making a sharp wrenching motion toward the group of rats pouring through the smashed window frame.
The space inside that targeted zone seemed to warp and compress under an invisible vise!
Three rats huddled together didn’t even have time to shriek before their bodies twisted and crushed into grotesque shapes, as though squeezed within the fist of an unseen giant.
Filthy blood and pulverized bone splattered across the snow in the dim light—a sickening, brutal sight.
The door to the adjacent room was kicked open, and Zhao Yong, Jiang Lin, and several other survivors scrambled out, pure terror written across their faces.
“W-what the hell… how did these rats get so huge?!” Zhao Yong’s voice cracked, his knees shaking uncontrollably.
Before the words had even faded, a mutant rat locked its glowing red eyes on him, launched off its hind legs, and charged.
Zhao Yong’s mind went blank. In a panic, he instinctively yanked a middle-aged man standing beside him directly into the path of the beast.
“Ah—!” Caught completely off guard, the man was clamped by the leg as the rat’s teeth sank into his flesh. Blood spurted instantly, and he shrieked in agony.
“Zhao Yong, you motherf—!” Furious, the man kicked the creature off his thigh and spun around, backhanding Zhao Yong across the face with a vicious slap.
Crack!
The sharp sound cut clearly through the chaotic din.
Zhao Yong’s ears rang, his cheek burning with fiery pain as humiliation and fury surged within him. Just as he raised his hands to retaliate, two more rats leaped out of the shadows.
In this life-or-death crisis, stark terror curdled into pure malice.
With all his strength, Zhao Yong shoved the man—who was still cursing him—directly toward the oncoming beasts.
“You—” Before the man could finish, he was tackled flat into the snow by the two mutant rats.
Razor-sharp fangs ripped straight through his neck and chest in a fraction of a second, spraying dark blood across the ground. His desperate screams quickly devolved into a wet, bubbling choke before his body convulsed a few times and went completely limp.
The entire sequence played out in the blink of an eye.
Everyone standing nearby—including Wang Qiang, Li Yu, and Wang Li—witnessed the cold-blooded betrayal.
Their expressions morphed from raw shock to disgust, hardening into deep, chilling wariness.
“Stay away from him,” Wang Li whispered to Li Yu, pulling Niu Niu closer against her chest.
Li Yu gave a stiff nod.
The group stepped back in silent unison, widening the distance between themselves and Zhao Yong. In this brutal wasteland, a man willing to sacrifice his own companion to save his skin was far more terrifying than any mutant rat.
Distracted by her furious glare at Zhao Yong, Li Yu failed to notice a rat darting out from the side, leaping straight at her throat.
“Watch out!” Wang Qiang bellowed, desperate to rush to her aid. But having just exhausted his strength to manifest an earthen wall to clear their escape path, his head pounded with a severe wave of dizziness, leaving his limbs heavy and useless.
Panic-stricken, Li Yu threw her hands up on pure reflex to fend off the monster—
A thin, pale stream of water shot straight from her palm like a child’s toy squirt gun, splashing directly onto the mutant rat’s snout.
The beast froze mid-air, shaking its wet head as water droplets sprayed in all directions.
It seemed thoroughly confused by the sudden splash of water, lingering for a second before turning even more vicious, letting out a sharp screech as it lunged again.
Li Yu stared dumbfounded at her own palm. “I—what on earth is this…?”
Just as the rat was about to sink its teeth into her face, Chu Yang flicked his wrist casually. An invisible wave of spatial energy swept past, slicing the creature cleanly in two before it hit the dirt.
More rats continued to pour through the gap.
Hunched in the corner, Jiang Lin had taken in every detail of the exchange. She had watched the stream of water shoot from Li Yu’s hand, frozen for a second before instinctively looking down at her own fingers—her fingertips felt oddly damp, too.
Could it be…
Before she could finish the thought, Zhao Yong noticed that the entire group had ostracized him. Fear and anxiety spiked in his chest.
Catching sight of Jiang Lin huddled safely in the quieter corner, his eyes darted craftily. Snatching up a broken wooden stake from the ground, he swung wildly at a stray rat while inching toward her, forcing an ugly, ingratiating smile. “Miss… Miss Jiang, don’t be scared! Come here, I’ll protect you!”
Jiang Lin looked up. Seeing his hypocritical smirk and remembering how he had just fed a man to the monsters to save himself, a wave of revulsion rose in her throat. She shook her head sharply. “Stay away from me.”
She tried to slip past him to find a clearer path.
Right at that moment, three mutant rats screeched and charged directly at their corner!
A wicked, desperate glint flashed in Zhao Yong’s eyes. Instead of swinging his stake at the attackers, he lunged forward, grabbing Jiang Lin’s arm with the intent of using her as a human shield!
Jiang Lin had been on guard against him the entire time.
The second she saw his hand shoot out, she dropped smoothly to the ground.
Zhao Yong grabbed nothing but air. Thrown off balance by his own momentum, he pitched forward, slamming face-first into the frozen gravel with a dull thud.
A mutant rat seized the opening instantly, pouncing forward and clamping its jaws around the raised right forearm he had thrown out to break his fall!
“Aaargh—!” Zhao Yong shrieked in agony.
The beast’s fangs sank deep into his muscle, dark blood gushing from the punctures.
He thrashed wildly, finally managing to fling the creature off, but his forearm was already shredded with deep, bleeding gashes. The searing pain made him break out in a cold, shivering sweat.
Staggering back to his feet, he stared at his mutilated arm, paralyzed by a mix of excruciating pain and terror—in an apocalypse where medical supplies were practically nonexistent, a wound like that, left untreated, was virtually a death sentence.
His head snapped up, bloodshot eyes locking onto Jiang Lin, who had retreated a safe distance away. All his fear and pain morphed instantly into blinding rage.
“Bitch! Why the hell did you duck?!” Zhao Yong roared, closing the distance step by step, his face twisted with malice. “If you hadn’t moved out of the way, I wouldn’t have gotten bit!”
Hearing his absurd, warped logic, Jiang Lin snapped. All her lingering caution vanished as she fired back without hesitation: “I shouldn’t have moved? Should I have just stood there and let you use me as meat-shield fodder?! Zhao Yong, you’re the coward here, greedy and spineless, willing to sell out anyone to save your own hide. Now that karma’s caught up with you, you’re blaming me? Have you lost every shred of human shame?!”
“What the fuck did you just say?!” Goaded past his breaking point by the verbal slap, paired with the agonizing throb of his arm and the terrifying realization of infection, Zhao Yong completely lost his mind. He raised his wooden stake and charged directly at Jiang Lin, looking intent on delivering a lethal blow.
Jiang Lin’s face drained of color as she pressed her back hard against the crumbling brick wall, trapped with nowhere left to run.
A single second before the heavy stake came crashing down toward her head—
