Chapter 168
Chapter 168
Ji Feifan circled several stretches of mountain forest where Qingshui might be hiding, as well as the roads and rivers connecting them.
“Put two vehicles to the north, by the river. Don’t enter the woods. Just seal off the riverbank.”
His finger moved west.
“Put three vehicles at the highway entrance to the west. There’s only one road. Once the vehicles are in place, they won’t be able to get out.”
His finger moved south.
“Put two vehicles to the south, the direction they came from. Don’t pursue them. Just block their path.”
Big Guy, one of the Madmen, pressed him. “What about the east?”
“No vehicles in the east.”
Big Guy stared at him. “None?”
“Leave them an opening. Let them run.”
Big Guy stood there blankly for several seconds, then abruptly slapped his thigh and burst into wild laughter. The sound echoed through the cramped room.
“Heh… hehehe! I get it! I can’t wait to see the despair on their faces! The despair of realizing they’ve walked into hell all by themselves, one step at a time!”
“You stay.”
A hoarse, icy voice suddenly cut in.
Big Guy’s laughter stopped dead. He turned stiffly toward the figure who had been sitting there in a daze all this time.
“Me?” Big Guy pointed at his own nose, disbelief and displeasure in his voice.
“Mm.” Cat gave only a one-syllable reply.
Big Guy opened his mouth and muttered something indistinct under his breath, but under Cat’s frigid stare, he ultimately did not dare voice a single objection. He could only hunch his shoulders resentfully.
The air in the room froze. A deathly silence pressed down on them, almost suffocating.
Screech-screech–
The harsh sound of scraping broke the silence.
It was the sound of chairs dragging across the floor. The three Madmen who had been huddled silently in the corner seemed unable to endure it any longer. They stared fixedly at Ji Feifan, their bodies trembling violently beyond their control as thick, guttural laughter bubbled from their throats.
It had been far too long since they had tortured a human. The brutality etched into their bones was rapidly devouring their sanity.
Cat leisurely rested his chin on one hand, amusement glinting in his slit pupils. He looked at his restless fellows and casually waved a hand.
“Go. You have permission… to indulge yourselves.”
After a pause, he added, “We begin after midnight.”
The three Madmen practically flashed out of the room. Even Big Guy could not resist going outside.
Before Cat had finished speaking, the three figures had already become blurs and vanished through the doorway. Big Guy stared at the empty entrance and swallowed, then split into a grin and followed them out.
Only Ji Feifan and Cat remained in the room.
Cat hopped lightly down from his chair and stretched before looking at Ji Feifan. “Come on.”
Ji Feifan’s hand clenched sharply at his side, his nails nearly digging into his flesh. He took a deep breath and forced his fist open, his voice dry and strained.
“What am I supposed to do there?”
“Go.”
Just one word. No explanation. No reason.
Ji Feifan was silent for two seconds. Then his body reacted before his mind did, and he immediately followed.
The abandoned lot was filled with a nauseating stench of rust and blood.
Standing off to one side, Ji Feifan felt as if his soul were about to fly straight out of his skull.
The Madmen were feeding. Screams and pleas for mercy mingled with the crisp cracks of breaking bones, forming a terrifying symphony in the empty night.
The other Madmen had been completely consumed by their violent urges. They tore and snapped at one another, adding a frenzied accompaniment to the gruesome music.
Ji Feifan’s gaze remained fixed on one man. The man was fairly muscular, but his limbs were now twisted at grotesque angles as he lay helplessly on the ground.
The three Madmen wore expressions of feverish excitement as they seized his shattered arm and forcibly pulled it straight. Then they stomped on it again and again, grinding the already broken bones into even smaller fragments.
“Aaaaaah!!”
The man’s scream was enough to chill anyone to the core.
“Scream louder! Hahahahaha!”
His desperate gaze swept over the scene before finally settling on the only human among the pack of Madmen. He tried to raise a hand and beg for help, only to find his arm impossibly heavy. He couldn’t lift it at all.
His other arm had already been ripped off, left lying nearby in a mangled heap of flesh and blood.
Cat crouched atop an abandoned oil drum, watching everything with cold indifference, as though the scene before him were nothing more than some trivial circus act.
“Lock him up.”
Cat’s sudden command brought the revelry to an abrupt halt.
Lock him up? Lock up who?
Ji Feifan didn’t understand at first. Then Big Guy’s gaze fixed squarely on him, and a chill shot through his entire body.
The fear on his face quickly receded, replaced by a carefully feigned indifference. “Why lock me up?”
But such feeble resistance was laughable in the face of overwhelming strength.
A massive shadow appeared silently behind him. Before he could react, a huge hand covered in calluses and scars clamped down on his shoulder like an iron vise.
It was Big Guy.
Big Guy was still immersed in the lingering thrill of slaughter. Its fingers dug into Ji Feifan’s flesh with terrifying force. Agony struck instantly, draining every trace of color from Ji Feifan’s face and cutting off his breath.
“Heeheehee… Scheming dogs need to be punished.”
He was dragged away like a bag of garbage and hauled into a windowless storage room.
Big Guy loomed over him and brought one foot down hard on his shoulder.
Crack!
The crisp sound of breaking bone rang out. Ji Feifan’s face went deathly pale, and cold sweat instantly soaked through his clothes.
“Hahahahaha…” Big Guy laughed with mounting delight, steadily increasing the pressure beneath its foot as if it meant to crush Ji Feifan alive. “This feels amazing!”
The excruciating pain bored into his heart, every breath tearing through him. A tidal wave of hatred surged inside Ji Feifan. He wanted to rail at that Madman, to curse it, to tear the monster in front of him apart.
But he clenched his teeth and reached out to seize its ankle.
“Cat only told you to lock me up. He didn’t tell you to kill me, did he?”
Big Guy’s ear-to-ear grin froze. Its surging bloodlust was abruptly snuffed out. It slowly withdrew its leg, cast Ji Feifan a sinister glance, then turned and left.
Bang!
The iron door slammed shut, sealing away the final sliver of light.
In the darkness, Ji Feifan lay sprawled across the freezing floor, gasping for breath.
The room was cramped and claustrophobic, packed with rusty odds and ends piled almost to the ceiling.
Shit.
He’d been thrown into a windowless room full of junk, almost all of it stacked to the ceiling.
Elsewhere…
Several drones rose into the sky.
Below them, the engines of more than a dozen vehicles roared. Tires shrieked against the ground as the vehicles scattered wildly in every direction like a pack of beasts breaking free from their restraints.
In the passenger seat of one off-road vehicle, Cat lay with narrowed eyes, watching the scenery flash past outside.
A Bald Madman sat behind the wheel. Its scalp was covered in vicious scars, layers of bright and dark red flesh overlapping as though it had ripped out its own hair by the roots.
Yet its eyes were unusually calm at that moment, even carrying a trace of eerie gentleness.
The side window reflected its profile. Its mouth was stretched wide in unrestrained laughter, a jarring contrast to the tranquility in its eyes.
“Very strong little piglets, huh…”
The Bald Madman murmured under its breath, fanaticism burning in its eyes. “They’re still nothing but toys for us.”
Cat laughed as well. “Maybe they’ll even become one of us.”
And so, a terrifying campaign of encirclement and extermination began.