Chapter 28: Overture to Slaughter
"They’re here!"
"There are giant birds about!"
At that moment, a voice thick with panic echoed across the open field.
Following the shouted warning, everyone indeed saw a dark shadow streak across the night sky.
In the blink of an eye, the Night Bird was circling above the campsite, hovering in a dark area beyond the reach of the high-mast lights.
With a sharp screech, the unidentified species of Night Bird gave a light flap of its wings and flew off toward Cyan Dragon Ridge to the south.
"Unbelievable. Those guys still haven’t made it over the mountain."
Someone remarked, at a loss for words.
The commotion drew everyone’s attention to the southern mountain peak.
The mountain was a dark silhouette, its forests indistinct shapes, as if even the starlight dared not fall upon it.
Su Chen raised his night-vision device, pressing the eyepiece to his eye. His vision switched instantly. Unlike light amplification, this device worked by actively emitting infrared light and forming an image from the reflected rays.
The resulting image was a high-contrast, black-and-white picture.
Within the dense, interwoven gray-and-white forest on the mountainside, twenty blurry yet discernible human silhouettes were still moving slowly upward.
They hadn’t crested the mountain yet; there was still some distance to the summit.
What was most ridiculous was that there were several more black-and-white figures at the foot of the mountain, holding flashlights. What could have possibly possessed them to start climbing after sunset?
Some people just liked to court death.
Just then, to the astonishment of the onlookers, the dark shadow in the sky swooped down to the ground. A pair of sharp talons seized a person. It lowered its head and pecked, its sharp beak striking like a chisel. Blood instantly sprayed out, appearing in the infrared view as a startling white mist.
Even more horrifying, after taking just one bite, its throat suddenly swelled. It then spat out a fist-sized ball of dark light, which instantly tore apart two figures who were attempting a rescue, shredding them like paper boxes.
The entire process took less than a few seconds, yet it had already resulted in three gruesome deaths.
From the image, Su Chen could gauge its size. The Night Bird stood roughly four meters tall on the ground, with a wingspan of about nine meters.
Under the threat of such a behemoth, the figures on the slope panicked and ran for their lives.
The Night Bird ate quickly, or perhaps it was just picky. After pecking selectively at the other two corpses, it spread its wings and glided away. Its hooked talons sank into one person’s shoulder blades, and it simply carried them off.
"It eats one and takes one to go. How vicious."
Nearby, a figure holding a thermal imaging night-vision device sighed.
Su Chen glanced over. These dozen or so people were, to put it mildly, armed to the teeth—they were clearly hardcore tactical gear enthusiasts.
They wore tactical helmets mounted with monocular night-vision devices, multi-layer composite tactical vests, and tactical belts crammed with all sorts of equipment: walkie-talkies, tactical flashlights, and so on.
The only fly in the ointment...
...was that two of the masked, armed individuals had none of the air of hardened soldiers. In fact, with their flabby, overweight figures, they looked even less convincing than the military cosplayers you’d see at a comic convention.
Their weapons were also a major letdown.
They had no firearms, not a single prohibited or controlled item in sight. Their hands mostly held melee weapons like Engineer Shovels and crowbars.
If there was a highlight, it was the long saber one of them held, which crackled with lightning.
Su Chen looked away. ’They must be from that Trunk Line Club,’ he thought.
"Here they come! Here they come!!"
The appetizer was over. The true feast was about to begin.
Perhaps the Night Bird’s screech had summoned its kin. More dark shadows appeared in the night sky. Looking into the distance, one could see countless tiny black dots continuously rising from the depths of the forest, right where the treetops met the stars.
The lookouts on the high-rise rooftop spotted them and immediately notified the broadcast room via walkie-talkie.
The campsite’s broadcast system crackled to life:
"Attention: A large flock of birds is approaching. All combat personnel, prepare for engagement."
After the message looped three times, the scene had already descended into chaos.
According to the plan, even the personnel at the vehicle barricades had steel-framed shelters or canopy tents set up nearby for them to hide in.
Unlike the Demon Dog Tiger Leopards, which relied heavily on their sense of smell, large birds like Golden Eagles and rocs were extremely dependent on their vision. To put it dramatically, they could lock onto a small animal on the ground from ten kilometers away.
Based on this trait, hiding under a shelter beforehand was definitely the best way to deal with the aerial threat.
In the public camping area, some people had piled up monster carcasses in advance, hoping to use them as a trap to lure the large birds down.
This plan was unlikely to work.
These strange, large birds rarely ate carrion. There had been plenty of dead bodies during the day, but not a single vulture had been spotted.
However, someone had a flash of genius. They’d gotten their hands on a pet pot-bellied pig from somewhere, tied its hind legs with a chain, and staked it to the open lawn.
Within the shadows of the surrounding hexagonal canopy tents, Archers lay in wait, ready to greet any large bird that took the bait with a baptism of arrows.
This gave Su Chen an idea.
Instead of heading to the defensive fortifications in various directions and passively waiting for the monster invasion, he remained in the middle of the large lawn in the public camping area.
There was nothing around him, giving him a clear, unobstructed view under a brilliant, starry sky.
A light breeze swept past, lifting the black hair on Su Chen’s forehead.
His plan was to use himself as bait.
Seeing a large bird dive toward the open field, Su Chen remained calm and took a golf ball from his waist pouch.
However, he apparently hadn’t drawn its aggro.
The oinking little pot-bellied pig didn’t seem to have caught its attention either.
Instead, an Archer in the distance—either by revealing their position or just by having a natural taunt—drew the large bird’s attack.
Gotta say, the guy’s luck was terrible, but his evasion was maxed out. He ducked and lunged forward, managing to dive deep into a canopy tent and narrowly dodge a strike from its lightning claws.
It missed by a hair’s breadth. The vicious claws scraped past the back of his neck, and the crackling electricity probably left him numb and tingling.
Its attack having failed, the giant bird’s wing hit the top of the tent, throwing it off balance. After stumbling and flapping twice, it quickly regained its footing and began gliding low to the ground, straight toward Su Chen.
"Bro, run!" someone shouted from a distance.
But Su Chen didn’t move an inch.
He calmly faced the large bird head-on.
The golf ball in his hand was now covered in a spiderweb of fiery patterns, and a violent, brutal energy had finished accumulating within it.
Illuminated by a nearby bonfire, the large bird’s full form was revealed. Its head resembled that of an eagle-owl, but its body was rather slender, and its feathers flickered with faint sparks of lightning.
What was most striking were its eye sockets, which glowed with an eerie purple light. Its pupils reflected a human figure, and at the same time, an abruptly thrown sphere rapidly grew larger, about to fill the entire vision of its right eye in an instant.
Su Chen made his move.
The gliding thunder-bird hadn’t even picked up speed. He didn’t even use the Jingzhe Rune, relying solely on his perfect feel to throw the first ball of the night.
He threw, and he hit.
A precise trajectory, a steady force—a mid-range shot straight for the right eye.
BOOM!
The sphere detonated on impact.
Scorching flames instantly engulfed the large bird’s head. Its skull was blown off, and half of its head, along with its feathered crest, disintegrated into fragments of flesh and blood.
The giant bird didn’t even have time to cry out. Its massive body fell, carried forward several meters by momentum, and finally crashed to a halt one meter in front of Su Chen’s feet.
"Uh, this..." Several figures who had rushed over at the sound of the commotion stood frozen in place, completely unable to process what had just happened.
’How did it just die?’