Dark Blood Age - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Chapter 6 The moment between life and death
Translator: Doggotranslation Editor: Doggotranslation

There was a fierce fight between the army and three red monsters on the street. According to the neighbor, who lived upstairs, the army named those monsters Red Shelled Insects and classified them as the Insecta in the animal kingdom. They had extremely strong defensive and offensive abilities. Their secretions were also extremely corrosive. 1
Luckily, there were tanks and armored vehicles on the street. However, although they killed three red shelled insects, they paid a heavy price for it. There was no celebration after the fight ended, no crying or sad mourning. Everything went back to the quiet status, like what it was before.
On the following day of the incident, the army started to give out even less food than before. The neighbor, who lived upstairs, told him again that it was no longer safe to transport supplies now. Everywhere was under attack from large amounts of red-shelled insects.
He also claimed that he had even gotten a message from a whistleblower inside the army. He was told that the military would probably abandon this area soon. They had already started to prepare for relocation. He said that there was a place, where many red-shelled monsters were constantly crawling out, and the number of insects crawling out of that place started to increase rapidly recently. The army seemed to have lost control of that place.
This guy definitely jinxes it!
Everything he had said, started to happen. Around seven or eight days later, red-shelled insects started to frequently appear around his housing estate.
There was a building just right behind the housing estate he stayed in. Whenever it got to midnight in “Age Of Light”, many horrifying screams mixing with high-pitched animal’s roars would appear there.
Troops had been sent out to deal with it several times, but gradually they stopped doing it and never went back to check it again.
As time passed, the red-shelled insects’ roars started to appear everywhere around his housing estate. Shen Cheng city was no longer a safe place to stay, everywhere inside the city was dangerous. Chu Yunsheng was living in fear day by day, but he still did not forget to cultivate Yuan Qi energy.
It wasn’t long before the army began to withdraw its first regiment from the city. Under the protection of a large number of tanks and armored vehicles, a long procession of private motorcades was slowly passing the street in front of Chu Yunsheng’s housing estate. The neighbor upstairs said that the first batch of withdrawal was some people with power, and they were escorted by the elite troops. But he did not know exactly where they were going to, perhaps, some military bases.
…One week later…
The soldiers that were responsible for distributing the food in the area, had stopped showing up for some days now, the number of law enforcement troops started to reduce, the situation started to get worse. The upstairs neighbor’s wife almost got raped, but luckily Chu Yunsheng was there. He used the gun he purchased to stop the guy.
The neighbor was very grateful for what he did. Later that night, he told him another secret he knew. He heard his contact inside the military say that after three days, the last group of well-equipped elite troops would help to evacuate the rest of the important people in the city. Because of some unknown reason he was on the list.
Although he was on the lowest-level protection list, he was allowed to bring three family members with him. Unfortunately, his family had four people, so he could not bring Chu Yunsheng with him. Chu Yunsheng had already known that he was not eligible to be on the list. So he did not think too much about it.
…Three days later…
The woman who was saved by the third-floor neighbor came back and took them away. It looked like from now on, they would also receive protection from the army.
Although he knew that it was actually his book that saved the woman’s life, he did not dare to tell anyone. Of course, others would not believe him as well. The woman seemed to have a good heart, but he gave up the idea of seeking help from her. After all, the explanation would only cause more trouble for him.
However, he did not expect that the last evacuation on the third day was compromised. Even with the help of heavy armored vehicles, they only managed to move a very short distance before they were stopped by the civilians. The people in the city were very angry that the military wanted to abandon civilians. Everyone was gathered on the street demanding fair treatments.
Chu Yunsheng did not come downstairs, he was worried that the red-shelled insects might appear. He just removed a small metal plate on the window and observed how the situation progressed from his flat.
The street was already blocked by the crowd. The military’s vanguard was only able to advance for a few blocks from his flat. He could see some cars were blocked at the back and the crowd started to throw all kinds of stuff toward the cars to express their anger.
Before the neighbor who lived upstairs left, he told Chu Yunsheng that the military headquarters had already given out the order, that during the evacuation, any obstruction of the military task would be neutralized. All the troops did not need to report to their superiora before executing the order. This was a troubled time. The harsh punishment was inevitable.
But when the 126th regiment was blocked by thousands of people, even if it was the senior military officers, they also did not dare to execute the order. There were too many people and they were all just regular civilians. It would only cause more trouble if they started to kill people. Reports were sent to the headquarter constantly. But in the meantime, the military officer needed to calm the crowd.
Soon, Chu Yunsheng heard a man’s voice from far away. The man used a megaphone and shouted, “Comrades! Comrades! Please listen to me! I am the 126th regiment political commissar Qin Gang. Please stay calm, I can assure you that the headquarters will never give up any comrade. The military withdrawal plan will definitely include you, please believe me! ”
…
“You are lying!”
“Bullshit! After you people are left, who is gonna evacuate us?”
“You call yourself the People’s Liberation Army, but you are only protecting rich people. Are you the army of rich people or all people?” 1
…
Crowds were enraged, no one believed a single word he said.
Qin Gang raised the voice and shouted, “Comrades! Do not be blinded by certain conspiracists. The military will not give up on you. I, Qin Gang will stay behind and help to evacuate every single one of you. Please, believe me! A large number of troops are still defending the front. We are not the last batch. Evacuation requires order. Otherwise, it will be vulnerable to monsters’ attacks, we must ensure the smallest loss!”
…
“Do not listen to this bastard, nonsense!”
“If this is really the case why are the government officials and the rich people the first? Why are we the last?”
“Money is worthless, it is just paper now.”
“Are you stupid! Rich people have background relationships with those government officials, they must have some kind of dirty deal. We are nothing to them!”
“I hope they will all be eaten by insects, those fuckers…”
The situation was very chaotic. The crowd did not show any signs of wanting to leave. More and more people started to gather together. One soldier could not handle the pressure and fired a warning shot all of sudden. It was like dropping a bomb in the crowd, the crowd instantly exploded with rage and uncontrollable violence.
“Murderers!”
“They are going to kill everyone now!”
“Let’s fight them!”
…
Qin Gang instantly turned around and shouted at his men furiously, “who the fuck fired the gun? I am going to kill him!”
The soldier, who fired the warning shot, was already surrounded by the enraged crowd. And the crowd was even preparing to rush to the military vehicles as well.
Suddenly!
Someone screamed, “Mon! mon! Monsters!…” 2
One, two, three…
At least fifty or sixty red-shelled insects were running along the walls of the buildings on both sides of the street. They were approaching the crowd fast! The whole crowd was terrified and started to disperse. Everyone was running everywhere.
There were more than fifty red-shelled insects! No one dared to stay.
Unable to use the telecommunication equipment, the 126th regiment commander used the megaphone and shouted,
“Ready to engage! The 2nd battalion, the 3rd battalion, the 7th battalion, get ready the heavy machine guns, the rocket launchers, all armored vehicles get ready!…”
While the heavy machine guns were fired, the rocket was shot out, the panicked people in the crowd were trampling on each other and running toward the nearest building looking for hideouts.
Under the hail of bullets and rockets, the red-shelled insects were still rushing forward fast. Only a few of them were blown away by the rockets, the rest of them were not affected by the bullets at all. The saturation fire only caused a few cracks and holes on their shell, none of them died. 1
When they reached the crowd, they immediately started slaughtering people. The spine-chilling screams right before people died constantly appeared in the crowd.
They were agile. One of them easily dodged the rockets and tanks’ attacks, rushed into the troop’s formation and stood on the top of a tank. It opened its bloody mouth and spat a green liquid on the tank. The armor of the tank was quickly corroded at a speed that was visible to the naked eyes.
And as it made a loud high-pitched roar, its body started to glow in red. Then it just used its front claw to open up the tank’s armor. Through the hole that was penetrated by its secretions, it killed the soldiers inside the tank. Before the soldiers inside the tank were killed, they were still trying to use pistols to kill the monster.
Chu Yunsheng admired the determination of those soldiers. If it were him, he would probably have fainted already.
Chu Yunsheng took a deep breath. He needed to cast a frost talisman onto the crossbow he bought three months ago.
According to the book, after the enchantment, he would be able to use Yuan Qi on his crossbow. It would unleash an arrow with the frost damage. It was a very effective way to kill those monsters because they happened to be the fire elemental monsters.
Before the monsters appeared, he did not know what kind of monster would appear. So he made a lot of fire elemental talismans, which were less effective than the frost talisman in dealing with this kind of monster.
In order to protect himself, he needed to hurry up making more of those frost talismans.
The reason why he was in such a hurry was that he noticed three red-shelled insects were chasing a group of people towards his building. Unless the book glowed again, otherwise, those three monsters would definitely follow them into his building.
But he didn’t know when the book was going to shine again, so he had to rely on himself.
He had to avoid having a close combat with those monsters. Because he did not have any protection nor was his speed fast enough to be comparable to those monsters. That was why the crossbow was the best option for him at the moment.