Infinite Nightmares

"Holy shit!" A torrent of bullets rained down. Caught completely off guard, Zhang Wenda scrambled to pick up a corpse and use it as a shield, narrowly avoiding being riddled with holes.

"Watch this!" Song Jianguo’s spear shot forward, effortlessly piercing the creature’s head. However, as the sundered cloud coalesced again, the attack proved completely useless.

The gunfire intensified. The cloud creature, a semi-automatic rifle in each hand, went full Rambo, wildly spraying at Zhang Wenda and the others. The sheer volume of fire pinned them down completely.

Zhang Wenda took cover behind the corpse, while Auntie and Song Jianguo barely held on behind the Cat Shield.

Zhang Wenda knew this was unsustainable. ’At this rate,’ he thought, ’the corpse I’m holding will be torn to shreds in no time.’

After a moment of rapid thought, he yelled, "Cover me!"

Song Jianguo gave a thumbs-up, then hurled her spear again. This time, however, her target wasn’t the cloud creature’s head. Instead, she aimed directly for one of the rifles spitting fire.

The moment he felt the impacts on the corpse cease, Zhang Wenda steeled himself. His Red Core flared to life, and he launched himself two or three meters through the air, slamming into the cloud creature’s body at incredible speed.

He had, however, miscalculated one thing: the storm cloud was filled with lightning. With a series of sharp CRACKLES, his hair fried and stood on end as a numbing jolt of electricity coursed through him from head to toe.

Fortunately, Zhang Wenda was highly resistant to electricity. While the shock would have been unbearable for an ordinary person, he could just about endure it.

It was brutal, but Zhang Wenda’s charge had worked. After he slammed into it and scattered its form, the two rifles, which had been wreathed in cloud, dropped limply to the ground, clattering and bouncing like flopping fish.

"Hahaha! Look at you, all zapped and fried!" Song Jianguo walked over, roaring with laughter at the sight of Zhang Wenda’s hair standing straight up.

Still twitching from the shock, Zhang Wenda shot her a glare. "Shut up. Don’t you see the cloud is already reforming?"

When Song Jianguo looked over, she saw the cloud had already reformed half its body and was reaching for the rifles. Panicked, she scrambled to snatch up all the weapons before the creature could get to them.

They’d kept the deadly weapons out of its grasp for now, but the creature itself remained a problem.

Seeing that it couldn’t get the guns, the cloud creature hovered for a moment before drifting down to one of the corpses. It pulled a dagger from a boot and lunged menacingly at Zhang Wenda.

Song Jianguo’s spear parried the dagger, and the creature immediately turned on her, hacking relentlessly.

For a moment, they were at a loss. They had no idea how to deal with the cloud creature. It was completely immune to physical attacks; no matter how many times they dispersed it, it would reform in seconds.

After scattering most of the cloud creature’s body with another punch, Auntie said, "This ain’t workin’, kid. If this drags on, the exhaustion will kill us even if the lightning doesn’t."

"Then what’s the plan? We can’t just let it be," Zhang Wenda said, swinging his Light Saber to slice the creature’s newly reformed head in two.

’Now I get it,’ Zhang Wenda thought. ’So this is why they were collecting those clouds generated by the miniature sun. If every single one of them is this powerful, they must be worth a fortune.’

Just then, Zhang Wenda noticed the shattered bottle by his feet. ’Wait a second... if it can’t be destroyed, maybe we can just trap it in a container?’

’A container... a container...’ His thoughts racing, he suddenly turned his head and saw the dented enamel mug on the ground nearby.

’If that thing can hold Auntie, it can definitely hold the cloud creature. But there’s just one problem... how do we get it to go in willingly?’

While Zhang Wenda was mulling this over, the cloud creature had already floated away again, now brandishing a log several meters thick as it charged aggressively toward them.

"Ugh! This is so annoying!" At Song Jianguo’s command, a giant hand formed from cats swatted the cloud creature, splattering it apart.

Seeing this, Zhang Wenda’s eyes lit up. "Jianguo! Have your cats form a big bowl and trap it!"

The cloud creature quickly reformed, only to find itself in a pitch-black environment. It spun left and right, unable to find an exit. Suddenly, it spotted an opening to its left and immediately contorted its body to squeeze through the gap.

On the other side of that gap was the enamel mug in Zhang Wenda’s hands.

The cats’ fur stood on end as they were zapped, and they meowed incessantly, clearly in great discomfort.

Zhang Wenda gently stroked their heads. "You’ve worked hard," he whispered. "You’ve all worked so hard. When we get back, I’ll buy you all the fish you can eat!"

"Meow!"

With the cats’ help, the entire cloud creature was soon funneled into the enamel mug. Once they plugged the opening with a thick wad of cloth, the problem was finally solved.

While gathering the dead men’s belongings, Zhang Wenda also found three transparent glass jars. One held captured sunlight, another contained fire, and the last one held a rainbow.

Looking at the gently pulsating jars, Zhang Wenda felt a pang of retroactive fear. ’Good thing we ambushed them,’ he thought. ’If they’d released all of these, we would have been slaughtered.’

’Never underestimate villains,’ he mused. ’One wrong move and you could lose your head.’

"How do you use these? Do you just throw them? This is wild."

Song Jianguo came over and sat down, staring curiously at the three glowing glass jars. She couldn’t resist reaching out to touch one.

"Don’t you dare touch them," Zhang Wenda snapped, quickly stopping her. He picked them up himself, took off a piece of his clothing, and wrapped them carefully.

Just then, Zhang Wenda felt something tickling his foot. He squatted down and saw a tiny, finger-sized cloud creature hammering away at his shoe with its little fists.

Just as Zhang Wenda reached for it, Song Jianguo pounced, grabbing his hands. "It’s mine! I’m keeping it!"

Too tired to argue with her, Zhang Wenda simply stood up and turned to Auntie, who was tidying up the battlefield. "That’s enough. Let’s not forget our mission. It’s time to destroy the plane."

Auntie put her hands on her hips and stared at the massive nose of the aircraft. "Damn. This thing’s huge. How are we supposed to wreck it?"

Then she glanced at the Light Saber in Zhang Wenda’s hand. She didn’t have much faith in that little "toothpick" against a steel behemoth one or two hundred meters long.

But Zhang Wenda saw things differently. "Don’t worry. Airplanes are delicate machines. We don’t have to destroy it completely, we just have to make sure it can’t fly. That’s easy enough. People have grounded planes just by tossing a handful of coins into an engine."

"Tch, yeah right. You’re just bragging. I bet this is the first time you’ve ever seen a plane, too," Song Jianguo said disdainfully, cradling the tiny cloud creature.

"I know more than you, and that’s what matters." Zhang Wenda rolled up his sleeves, ready to start by hacking off the landing gear. ’Without its wheels,’ he thought, ’I doubt it’ll be flying anywhere.’

"Hey, kid... does something seem off to you?" Auntie asked, a puzzled look on her face as she stood near the plane’s nose.

"What’s wrong? You think someone’s inside?" Zhang Wenda peered at the cockpit. It was pitch-black; not a soul in sight.

"No, not that. Don’t you think..." Auntie trailed off, hesitating.

"Don’t you think... this plane wasn’t quite this close to us before?"

"Really?" Just as Zhang Wenda noticed the deep tracks freshly gouged into the mud, two malevolent red lights flared to life in the pitch-black cockpit.

A screech of tearing metal followed as the underside of the massive nose ripped open, forming a hideous metallic maw. The splintering fuselage sharpened into rows of jagged teeth jutting outward.

Before anyone could react, the colossal plane lunged down. With a sickening CRUNCH, it bit off the lower half of Auntie’s body.