The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 26: Struggle

Swoosh!

A fierce, mesmerizing slash flashed across Wu Dahai’s vision. The three vines grabbing at him were cut at once. Splatters of blood permeated the air, glowing faintly of gold under the streetlight. Like a champion descending from heaven, the tall uniformed girl stood between him and Old Man Zhang with her hand holding her weapon in a reverse grip, her hair flying and her long legs straining.

Wu Dahai stared at her, his fear forgotten for a moment. His heart had never pounded so hard.

“Go.”

Qing Ling didn’t even spare him a glance. Instead, her eyes were focused on the enemy.

“Right...right.” Wu Dahai came back to his senses and stumbled away, but not without warning Qing Ling, “Pretty girl...be careful...”

Old Man Zhang had turned into a hybrid monster of plants and animals. The facial organs on the flower bud gurgled with dripping pus and blood foams while it screamed with hunger and rage, “Human! Human! Human!”

Instead of rushing to attack, the vines at its feet wrapped around its body and tightened inch by inch like a meat grinder.

Gao Yang couldn’t put the disgusting picture it painted into words. In less than ten seconds, the air was filled with a pungent, repulsive smell. He fought the urge to throw up and ran up to support Wu Dahai, who had just run back to them. “Why didn’t you fight?”

“I’m not built for that!” Wu Dahai said without shame.

“Didn’t you do something impressive?” Gao Yang was confused. “You turned off all the machines with a snap.”

“That’s a sound switch. You can do it too with a snap.”

Gao Yang was speechless. You’re more useless than I am, bro? How did you get into the organization then? Through a back door? Nepotism? Is the organization actually worth joining?

Forget it. It was better to do things himself than rely on others.

“Is there any weapon?” Gao Yang called out to Officer Huang.

“There’s a golf club in the trunk of my car.” With one hand still holding his gun, Officer Huang fished the car key out of his pocket and threw it to Gao Yang.

Catching it, Gao Yang quickly opened the trunk and pulled out a silver golf club.

Not far from them, Old Man Zhang had ground his entire body into pieces. Except for the ball of flesh with countless facial organs—the brain, one could call it—the rest of his body had all turned into vines, or tentacles, to be more precise.

The tentacles were a patchwork of intestines, organs, muscle tissues, and cartilages, and there were more than twenty of them at a first glance.

He was like a malformed octopus with tentacles on the ground.

Swish, swish, swish! Three tentacles flew toward Qing Ling.

She cut them down at once with a slash.

Swoosh!

Then another four tentacles swung down at her.

She rolled to the side and dodged the whip-like tentacles, but without her noticing, a few others had already crept up to her feet in the dark.

Surprised, Qing Ling quickly jumped back.

The tentacles leapt up with a swooshing sound like rattlesnakes. One of them grabbed onto Qing Ling’s fair ankle and yanked her back to the ground.

Bam! A bullet broke it off.

Ignoring her pain, Qing Ling flipped sideways to get to her feet and cut the other three incoming tentacles.

She didn’t dare stop moving. With her Tang Dao raised, she quickly ran. During the handful of times she dodged the tentacles, she noticed that they were fastest when they were shooting out in a straight line from the main body of Old Man Zhang. In comparison, the tentacles were much slower when whipping sideways to grab onto their target.

Qing Ling decided to run around Old Man Zhang to lower her chance of getting caught.

Bang! Officer Huang seized an opening and took three shots in quick succession at the ‘brain’.

“Gah, ah... Human! Human! Humanhumanhuman...”

Old Man Zhang shuddered in pain and screamed. A few tentacles retracted to protect the brain.

“The head is the weakness!” Officer Huang shouted while he took out another magazine and replaced the spent one.

Qing Ling had noticed that, but she didn’t dare approach recklessly.

Old Man Zhang had more than twenty tentacles, each of which was powerful and sturdy. Her Tang Dao was the only blade that could cut through them, but even when she did, the tentacles could regenerate quickly.

In contrast, Qing Ling would be caught by the countless tentacles and dragged toward Old Man Zhang with one misstep. Then the tentacles would wrap around the main body and become a meat grinder again. She would be pulled into it and rendered into minced meat, becoming part of Old Man Zhang. Her eyes, mouth, nose, and ears would be incorporated into the repulsive lump of flesh, chanting ‘human, human, human’ with the monster. Her other body parts would become new tentacles the monster caught humans with...

The thought of dying like that made even someone as aloof as Qing Ling shudder.

She only had one chance.

If she failed, what awaited her would be hell.

Taking a deep breath, Qing Ling ran around Old Man Zhang like she was doing a hundred-meter sprint. Old Man Zhang’s tentacles moved in circles to follow her like a smaller rotating swing.

After two minutes, Qing Ling slowed down gradually. Both her usual training and her God of Blades were about explosive power. That meant she wouldn’t last long and had to finish things off quickly.

She still hadn’t spotted the perfect opening, but she had to move before her stamina ran out.

“Cover me!” Seizing a chance, Qing Ling ran to the side where there were the least number of tentacles and rushed up to Old Man Zhang with her weapon. Seven or eight tentacles immediately retracted, while the other dozen and more tentacles closed in on Qing Ling from all sides.

Qing Ling sprinted while sidestepping to dodge the attacks and cut down tentacles.

Vapor of blood permeated the air. Amid the flashes of the blade, Qing Ling moved like a bloodied white butterfly fluttering across the countless tentacles.

Officer Huang hadn’t been standing around.

With his God of Firearms, he made a shot every second to cover Qing Ling. The tentacles that had escaped Qing Ling’s blade ended up broken by the bullet that followed.

Everything happened in mere seconds.

Officer Huang had emptied the magazine, and Qing Ling was now close enough to Old Man Zhang. With an agile flip to the side, she dodged the last two tentacles and raised her blade to bring it down on Old Man Zhang’s brain.

At that moment, everyone believed that the monster’s brain would be cut in half like a watermelon. However, they had all neglected one thing—the severed tentacles.

As soon as they fell to the ground, they started slithering back to the main body at impressive speed.

Just when Qing Ling was going to make the slash, she felt pain shot up from her ankle. The countless tentacles had returned and made several swings at her feet. She faltered. Although she had quickly regained her balance, she wasn’t able to generate as much force with her waist, and thus much less power was transferred to her arms.

The next second, she made an imperfect swing.

It was still powerful, and the blade was still sharp. However, she only managed to cut one-third into the brain. Old Man Zhang wasn’t dead yet. While the monster cried out in pain, the regenerated tentacles made a powerful swing and hit Qing Ling in the waist.

“Ugh...” Qing Ling’s blade fell from her grip as she flew a few meters in the air before landing on the ground and rolling twice. She hadn’t given up yet. She extended her right arm toward the monster a few meters from her, her fingers splayed with force, “Metal!”