Chapter 86 - 85: Rapid Response
’What else could I do at a time like this?’
Jiutian snatched up an office chair and roared in their direction.
"Get back!"
Then he swung it in a half-circle and hurled the chair with all his might.
The people in front saw someone maniacally hurl a chair at them and scrambled to get out of the way. Tao Xingzhi was no exception. No one wanted to test their durability at a time like this.
The instant they dodged the chair, they were all furious. They wanted to find the bastard who threw it and beat him senseless.
But the thought was instantly cut short by a loud CRASH.
As they turned their heads, everyone had the same thought: ’Holy shit, did it hit someone?’
Because they were closer, Tao Xingzhi, Xiaoliu, and the leader, Li, saw where the chair landed first.
In an instant, all three of their pupils contracted violently.
It was impossible to tell how much force was behind that throw, but the chair shattered on impact. That wasn’t the important part, though.
The important part was that it had crashed into thin air in the doorway.
No! Not thin air. At almost the same instant, a faint, sharp hissing sound reached their ears.
Suddenly, Tao Xingzhi felt his face go numb as goosebumps erupted all over his body. An intense, instinctual sense of crisis washed over him.
With no time to even think, he dove to the side again with all possible speed, abandoning his previous spot.
PFFT!
A massive hole suddenly opened in the chest of an engineer who had been standing next to Tao Xingzhi. All the blood and tissue from his body began to flow upward from the hole, as if being siphoned through an invisible, transparent tube.
It wasn’t like in the movies, where the monster would wait for one victim to be drained dry before moving on to the next.
Tao Xingzhi’s reaction was lightning-fast. In that split second, he seized the opportunity, pulling out two handguns. He aimed one at the transparent tube now stained with blood and the other at the doorway where he predicted the tube originated.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Meanwhile, Xiaoliu rolled to his feet, pulling out a handgun and a military-issue dagger.
Dagger in hand, he ran to Tao Xingzhi’s side, already firing his pistol wildly at another weak point—the window.
The roar of three handguns echoed wildly throughout the room.
Aside from Huang Jiutian and the few people who had witnessed the event up close, the designers and engineers farther away were still recovering from dodging the chair. They instantly felt like their eardrums were about to burst.
「In the outer perimeter’s sentry posts and police rest vehicles.」
"Gunshots!"
"Move out! We’ve got gunshots! Sound the alarm!"
"Ammo check, ammo check! Everyone else, move out! The rest, stay on guard!"
"Go, go, go...!"
...
Immediately after, the blare of red alert sirens sounded from all the police rest areas.
Tao Xingzhi and Xiaoliu both knew they just had to hold on for a little while. Reinforcements from the armed police on the perimeter would arrive soon. They had no idea what kind of monster it was, but it was definitely capable of turning invisible.
Tao Xingzhi’s shots had severed the transparent proboscis. The engineer’s blood splattered across the floor, and a sharp hiss, clearly a cry of pain, rang in their ears.
But there was no sound of bullets hitting anything at the doorway; it had obviously dodged them. The same was true for the window Xiaoliu was covering.
"Good, it can feel pain! That means it’s alive, and we can kill it!"
Tao Xingzhi shouted, as if to bolster his own courage, then rolled backward with Xiaoliu, moving away from the doorway.
The portly Leader Li was no slouch, either. Without a hint of nausea, he immediately scooped up handfuls of the unsavable engineer’s blood and flung it toward the doorway.
Although he hit nothing but air, the act made both Tao Xingzhi and Xiaoliu see him in a new, more respectful light.
’Incredible!’
Only one word surfaced in Huang Jiutian’s mind.
He’d just been briefly stunned by how he was able to throw that chair with so much force, but then he saw the lightning-fast reactions of Tao Xingzhi and his men, and their unhesitating will to fight back.
’But these guys can’t see it!’
And yet, these two men who couldn’t see the creatures had actually managed to force them back.
True, his chair had hit one of them, and the force of the impact might have even injured it, but at most, that only angered them. What truly forced them to retreat were the shots from Tao Xingzhi that hit its proboscis, and the subsequent hail of bullets from him and Xiaoliu.
"Reloading!"
"Right!"
Tao Xingzhi and Xiaoliu slowed their rate of fire, reloading in turns. In less than a minute, both were already drenched in sweat.
Outside, the thundering sound of approaching footsteps grew louder.
An Armed Police Officer was shouting, "Seal off Prefab House One! Seal off Prefab House One! All units, prepare to fire!"
The heat in his arm began to subside. A thought suddenly struck Huang Jiutian, and he looked at Tao Xingzhi.
"They’re getting away!"
Tao Xingzhi froze for a second, then immediately remembered the designer who had thrown the chair.
’He can see them. That’s it, he can see them!’
He rushed over and grabbed Jiutian by his clothes.
"Quick, with me! You’ll be my eyes! Are there any more at the door?"
Huang Jiutian couldn’t think of a better plan, so he decided to cooperate.
"It’s clear!"
The two of them charged out of the office together.
Xiaoliu followed half a step behind them. After a moment’s hesitation, Leader Li gritted his teeth and went too, leaving the rest of the terrified designers and engineers to stare blankly at one another.
The armed police had already formed a perimeter twenty meters out from the prefab house. Snipers had taken up positions on top of cranes and construction vehicles.
A team had already been sent charging toward the building to attempt a rescue.
But other than the sound of gunfire, they were completely in the dark about the actual situation.
Tao Xingzhi and Huang Jiutian burst outside.
Tao Xingzhi immediately roared a question.
"Where are they? Point them out!"
Relying on the vision granted by his Magic Power, Jiutian spotted the monsters in an instant.
He pointed toward the roof of the prefab house.
"On the roof! One of them already jumped onto a dump truck."
In the next instant, three handguns opened fire, all aiming in the direction Huang Jiutian was pointing.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
At the same time, Leader Li saw the armed police below standing there dumbfounded and, without hesitation, roared down at them.
"Target the roof! Saturation fire! Go, go, go!"
The armed police were quick to react. They were all elites handpicked from their respective units. While they hadn’t been fully briefed, they knew this construction site was anything but ordinary.
At this point, it didn’t matter if the roof looked empty. Even if their leader had gone insane, their job was to play along first and ask questions later. Obedience was their highest directive.
And so, within seconds, a curtain of innumerable bullets rained down on the roof, covering every inch of its surface.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT... BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
...
SPLAT! SPLAT! THWACK! THWACK!
HIIISSSSSS! ROOOOAR!
A sharp, ear-splitting shriek echoed in everyone’s ears for a moment before vanishing a few seconds later.
Huang Jiutian waved his hand excitedly.
"The ones on the roof are all down! There’s still one left! It jumped out of the perimeter! Don’t let it get away! It’s heading for the pits!"
Once again, it was Leader Li who acted. Having been in charge of the site for a long time, he was familiar with every part of it.
He immediately roared down to the men below.
"Use the water cannons! Everyone on the water cannons! Spray down the pits and the surrounding area! Now!"
Modern construction sites are required by dust control and road surface regulations to have water-spraying systems at all entrances, exits, and main areas. This particular site was so well-equipped it even had a full perimeter of soundproof walls, meaning its water systems were even more extensive.
P.S. Thanks to readers Book Friend 160927124450767, Plucked Your Eyelashes, Blood Race Night Blade, and The Molting Wolf for the 100-coin tips!~~
There’s no way I’m only releasing one Chapter today!