Chapter 110
Chapter 110
“Huodou. Huodou.”
Hyena looked like a little man charred black, and at this moment, he truly lived up to his name.
His facial and jawbones jutted forward, his canine teeth long and sharp.
In theory, his body should have been covered in a thick mane and hide, but Huodou’s flames had burned it all away.
He no longer looked at Qin Ying. His greedy gaze was fixed dead on Huodou.
A living Monstrous Beast was worth far more than that pile of Zheng gene serums in the laboratory.
Especially a divine beast like Huodou, known as the Fire God’s mount.
Its value went without saying.
A huge smile split Hyena’s burned-black face.
The One-Horned Black Dog’s all-out charge just now had caught Huodou unprepared, ramming straight into its flank.
At the same time the One-Horned Black Dog’s head had been burned down to visible bone, Huodou’s side had been torn open, leaving a wound deep enough to reveal its organs.
Huodou ate charcoal and excreted balls of fire. The organs inside its abdomen were completely different from those of ordinary creatures; they were not flesh and blood.
Its pitch-black viscera were covered in dense red patterns, like a furnace breathing in and out, the firelight brightening and dimming with each breath.
A gust of smoke choked out of Huodou’s mouth and nose.
Its four legs went weak. Only by pressing its spine against the wall did it barely manage to stand.
On the other side, the One-Horned Black Dog was even more badly injured.
But it was, after all, a fighting dog that had survived a brutal selection process on the arena floor.
As for Huodou, before it had become like this, it had only been a puppy not long out of its mother’s womb.
Strictly speaking, it was still at the age where it should have been nursing.
There was no telling how many times greater the difference in their combat experience was.
The mother dog in Qin Ying’s arms struggled with all four paws, trying to protect her pup.
But going over there would only mean death, so Qin Ying could only hold her tightly.
When her hand circled the mother dog’s belly, she felt a small, hard object in the lower abdomen.
Sharp and spindle-shaped, like… a fragment of something.
When she pressed there, the mother dog whimpered in pain.
Huodou, which had been forced into the corner, heard the sound and glanced toward Qin Ying. Then it bristled and bared its teeth in her direction.
The hair on Qin Ying’s body stood on end, and she leaned back a little farther.
In the instant Huodou was distracted, the One-Horned Black Dog, its head scorched black, seized the chance to pounce again.
Seeing this from the sidelines, Hyena joined in as well.
For a moment, three pitch-black Monstrous Beasts fought in a tangled mass amid the flames.
Huodou lacked combat experience. Every lunge and bite was clumsy, and it relied entirely on its innate flames to burn Hyena and the horned black dog until they sizzled.
The smell of sulfur mingled with the aroma of roasting meat in the air.
Qin Ying felt sick from the smell. Forcing herself to endure the burning pain across her back, she stood and moved a little farther away from them.
She looked left and right, trying to find some kind of weapon.
In that moment of distraction, the mother dog in her arms bit her hard again, leaving a bloody tooth mark on the burned part of her hand before struggling free.
She was such a small dog, so thin from behind she looked like a sheet of paper.
She wrestled out of Qin Ying’s arms and fell, without making a sound.
Her four paws slipped for an instant on the smooth floor before she rushed toward Huodou.
Ignoring the flames, she bit down on Hyena’s heel.
Before Hyena could react, the One-Horned Black Dog with the horn growing from the center of its forehead opened its jaws and tore into her without mercy.
A Monstrous Beast fused with Zheng had extraordinary bite force. With a single bite, it snapped the mother dog’s body in two.
Clearly, flames were roaring all around them. Clearly, the sounds of their battle were far from quiet.
But in that instant, Qin Ying distinctly heard the sound of a spine breaking.
From the lower abdomen of the dog corpse that had been bitten in half, a small gray meteorite fragment fell out.
The One-Horned Black Dog had retained the habit of eating the bodies of the defeated.
The burning all over its body had driven it into a rage. Its upper and lower jaws snapped shut, and it swallowed the dog corpse along with that tiny meteorite shard.
Huodou stood frozen in place for a moment. Then a whimper rose from its throat, and the flames around its body surged violently.
Even Qin Ying, who had hidden behind a massive specimen jar, felt the temperature spike.
Huodou clamped its jaws around the back of the One-Horned Black Dog’s neck.
Its bite force was ordinary, so all it could do was bite down and refuse to let go, letting the flames around its body scorch the Black Hound.
When the mother dog was bitten to death, Hyena had frozen for a moment.
But he quickly reacted and rushed forward to help.
Ignoring the flames, he punched again and again at the torn wound on Huodou’s flank.
His fists were burned black as charcoal. Who knew what was still allowing them to move.
After several punches, Huodou’s organs had been dragged out, and one of its fangs had been snapped off.
The One-Horned Black Dog clamped in its jaws gradually went limp, losing the ability to fight.
Just then, the automatic sprinkler system overhead in the corridor suddenly beeped twice.
Qin Ying cursed under her breath as the sprinklers above her activated.
A torrent of water hissed down, drenching Huodou completely.
Steam billowed up. At the same time, the flames on Huodou’s body went out, and it visibly withered.
Even so, it clung to its last breath, its jaws locked tight around the back of the One-Horned Black Dog’s neck.
A constant whimpering came from its throat, impossible to tell whether it was rage or sobbing.
Hyena panted heavily a few times. The clothes on his body had been burned into strips, and his shoes had melted and stuck to the soles of his feet.
He was in so much pain that his whole body was trembling, yet he was still breathing, still very much alive.
The One-Horned Black Dog lying on the ground gave its neck a shake and easily threw off Huodou.
It forced itself to stand, planted one forepaw on Huodou’s soaked head, and flaunted its victory.
But as soon as it was done showing off, it seemed to choke on something lodged in its throat.
Along with stomach acid, it vomited up bits of the dog corpse it had swallowed whole earlier.
Huodou struggled but failed to get up. Its ruby-like eyes blinked once, mist gathering in them as though it were crying.
Spitting out the dog corpse did not make the One-Horned Black Dog feel any better. It stretched out its neck, retching and retching until blood gushed from its mouth and nose.
At its throat, a distinct red glow lit up.
This One-Horned Black Dog had been personally selected and raised by Hyena. In his heart, its status was unique.
Seeing this, he hurried forward and reached into the One-Horned Black Dog’s throat to dig out whatever was stuck there.
With a bang, a Specimen Bottle smashed over his head.
It was Qin Ying, who had been hovering at the edges, waiting for her chance.
She was soaked from head to toe and had chosen the moment when all three of them were locked in a life-or-death struggle to strike.
The Specimen Bottle in the corridor had become the most convenient weapon at hand.
The bottle shattered against Hyena’s forehead, and the small deformed dog corpse soaking inside spilled out along with the formalin.
The corrosive, irritating formalin corpse fluid ran all over Qin Ying’s hand.
The pain was excruciating, but she still stepped forward and drove the jagged neck of the broken Specimen Bottle into the side of Hyena’s neck.
No blood poured out. With the shard of Specimen Bottle lodged in his neck, Hyena seized Qin Ying by the throat.
His charred hand carried a strange, searing heat.
Hyena cursed something, but her ears were ringing too loudly for her to hear it clearly.
She could only raise her hand with all her strength, reaching for the shard embedded in Hyena’s neck.
Just as oxygen deprivation nearly made her black out, the fire door sealing off the outside rang with a tremendous crash.
A huge bulge caved inward.
Something was ramming it from outside, and judging by the force, it was no weaker than a fully loaded dump truck.
Huodou, slumped on the floor, and the One-Horned Black Dog, still coughing up blood, both showed fear.
Hyena’s shock and suspicion made the strength in his hand loosen slightly.
A faint, weak breath escaped Qin Ying’s throat.
In the next instant, the steel fire door was ripped completely off by an immense force, knocking over who knew how many Specimen Bottle along the way.
A shadow that nearly reached the ceiling charged in at a speed impossible to follow with the naked eye.
Threads of blue shimmered faintly over black scales.
Hyena saw a long, sharp-clawed hand swat toward his head, but his body was too sluggish to dodge.
His burned, unrecognizable head spun three hundred and sixty degrees under the tremendous force, turning a full circle before returning to its original position.
Qin Ying lay half-reclined in the arms of an incomparably tall, double-horned “person.”
The man in his Monstrous Beast form stepped forward and placed his free hand on the top of Hyena’s head.
Then he pulled.
Hyena, who had survived being engulfed in flames, had his head and half his spine yanked out of his chest cavity like a radish being pulled from the ground.
The water sprayed by the sprinklers had soaked the corridor completely.
Qin Ying’s face was covered in water, and she coughed for a long while.
The hand that had just pulled off a man’s head patted her gently on the back.
She finally caught her breath and looked up dizzily.
She met a pair of gray, teardrop-shaped eyes filled with guilt.
“Han Lie?”
How had he gotten so big?
Qin Ying’s throat hurt so badly she could barely speak. Before her words had even faded, an enormous head buried itself against her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
Holding her as she sat on his clawed hand, Han Lie pressed his fine-scaled face against the side of Qin Ying’s neck, his voice hoarse.