Chapter 68 - Dragon's Breath

Even through a layer of laminated glass, one can still faintly hear the chewing sounds coming from the cafeteria.

The driver whispered, “What do we do now?”

“We need to figure out what happened here first,” Li Cheng said as he pushed his glasses up, calmly stating, “The Alien we encountered earlier had an artificial chip implanted in its neck, and the billboards on the wall indicate that this place is some sort of theme park.

I speculate that, like the movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ the park’s management here has also lost control.

At least twelve hours, forty-one minutes, and thirty-seven seconds ago, there was an accident that caused all the monsters to break free and start a massacre on humans.”

“Ah?” Su Jie asked in astonishment, “Mr.

Chu, how do you know the time when the accident happened?”

“It can be deduced from the corpses,” Li Cheng explained.

“After death under room temperature, due to lack of blood flow and oxygen, rigor mortis begins to set in.

It starts in the eyelids and throat and then gradually spreads to the rest of the body, reaching its peak at 12-16 hours.

The ‘earliest’ corpses exhibit this state, and their corneas are slightly cloudy, consistent with 12 hours.”

The driver couldn’t help but ask, “But how did you figure out the exact minutes and seconds?”

“Oh, that,” Li Cheng shrugged, “I calculated it from the broken wall clocks that have stopped working, and the wristwatches on some of the corpses that are still ticking.”

Then what was all that fluff you were going on about?

The driver’s face twitched, barely suppressing the urge to retort.

“Anyway, 12 hours isn’t very long, so there likely are other survivors hiding somewhere here.

We can try to find a survivor to question, or look for the bunker’s map to head to the control room mentioned in the mission…”

Li Cheng suddenly paused, bent down, and put his ear to the floor to listen carefully, “There’s a human ahead, male, running desperately.”

After saying that, he swiftly stood up and shot out along the corridor.

Su Jie hurriedly followed, and the driver quickly picked up Walking Grass and chased after them, whispering in a low voice, “How do you know it’s a human?

You heard the footsteps?”

“Yes,” Li Cheng replied rapidly, “Through the frequency, weight, and interval of the footsteps, one can deduce the type of shoes the person is wearing, their weight, height, whether they’re walking or running, and if they’re injured.

The only thing to note is differentiating between a sexy white-collar woman walking past you in high heels and a seventy-year-old wealthy woman with a cane.

Both of their footsteps sound ‘thud, thud, thud.'”

What exactly have you been through???

With the driver and Su Jie sporting confused expressions, Li Cheng violently pushed open a door and was met with a man in frantic escape.

He was about forty-something years old, with a white face and a beard, wearing a yellow vest of an engineering technician, his expression filled with terror and panic.

Chasing after him was…

a bizarrely shaped monster.

It was nearly two meters tall, roughly humanoid in shape, with large areas of decaying flesh on its body, a swollen abdomen, both arms turned into cleavers, its lower jaw had vanished, and blood vessel-like organs dangled from its mouth.

It was one of the necromorphs from the video game ‘Dead Space,’ known as a Pregnant, transformed from a pregnant woman after infection.

“Help!”

Upon seeing other humans appear, the man cried out for help.

Li Cheng motioned for the man to move aside with a tilt of his chin, halting his pace, and flipped his hand over to take out a semi-automatic shotgun with a thick and long silencer from the Backpack.

The Shotgun was produced by European Heavy Industry, featuring a rotary chamber drum design, and its overall shape somewhat resembled the Striker series of weapons from South Africa.

Bang bang!

Li Cheng pulled the trigger, and two shotgun blasts hit the zombie-like creature’s shoulders, immediately bursting into flames.

Seems like…

Dragon Breath Bullets?

Just as Su Jie had this thought, he dismissed it.

Dragon Breath Bullets replace the pellets in a shotgun shell with magnesium particles and flakes.

When fired, the magnesium ignites dramatically, creating a spectacle like a Fire Dragon breathing fire, hence the name.

In some marketing hype and video game promotions, Dragon Breath Bullets are depicted as earth-shattering.

But in reality, the lightness of the magnesium flakes results in insufficient bullet kinetic energy and lethality, and the rapid burning of the magnesium doesn’t transfer enough heat, at most igniting the outer layer of clothes.

They are more of a gimmick than practical in actual combat.

As for the gun in Li Cheng’s hands, it was likely specially modified, using normal deer hunting loads plus an incendiary compound, which is why it can continue to burn for a long time after hitting the target.

Bang bang bang bang—

The zombie-like creatures fear fire and are flammable.

Under Li Cheng’s continuous barrage, their limbs break, bodies shatter, and heads are blown to bits.

‘Indeed, this monster has an artificial chip installed in its neck…’

Li Cheng thought nonchalantly, and then fired another shot into the abdomen of the zombie-like creature—according to game settings, these things might also have a transformed baby zombie-like creature inside their stomachs.

After the creature was completely motionless, Li Cheng turned to the driver and said, “Your Walking Grass should have learned the Dissolving Liquid Skill, right?

Help me dissolve this body.”

“Okay.” The driver nodded and summoned the Walking Grass to release its skill, spraying a transparent liquid over the corpse, dissolving it—this thing in the game’s setting is not a single entity, but a mass of living mutated cells, it’s still “alive” even if the corpse is chopped into mincemeat, so it has to be completely destroyed by thorough incineration or acid dissolution.

After dealing with the zombie-like creature, Li Cheng looked at the panicking man and sized him up before asking, “What happened here?”

The man, clearly greatly shocked, provided a disjointed narrative through which the three players learned what had transpired.

The place was called the “Dark Universe Theme Park,” financed by a super-wealthy individual and built underground, aiming to recreate horrific monsters from movies and video games to attract visitors.

It was currently in the pre-opening internal testing phase.

The man claimed to be Felix Taylor, an engineer responsible for maintaining the park’s electricity system; his wife also worked in the park, handling marketing duties.

About thirteen hours ago, the park experienced a severe earthquake, causing all monsters to go berserk and massacre the staff.

Hiding out, Taylor himself barely survived.

Just as he feared for his wife and daughter and was in utter despair, he received a call from his daughter, learning that she and her mother were hiding on the other side of the park and still alive for the moment.

To find his family, Felix left his hiding place and was discovered and pursued by the zombie-like creature during this time.

“Wait a minute, I still don’t understand, how did you create these monsters?”

The driver asked with a frown, “Cloning?

Genetic engineering?

This doesn’t make sense.

How much money can you make from selling tickets to cover the costs?”

“We didn’t create these monsters,”

Taylor struggled to avert his eyes from the human hands hanging in front of Li Cheng and answered honestly, “A year ago, an expedition in the Arctic discovered something.

It seemingly could read human thoughts, conjuring all sorts of bizarre monsters out of thin air.”

The driver said in astonishment, “You used that thing to set up a theme park?

Didn’t anyone think it was risky?

And no governmental organization forcibly intervened to treat it as a strategic weapon?”

“Uh…

Our electronic chips were originally capable of perfectly controlling the monsters’ thoughts and behavior, so we were not afraid of them getting out of control.

As for the other matters, I don’t know.

I’m just a small fry, after all.”

The three players exchanged looks.

Clearly, Taylor and the bunker beneath their feet originated from another world—when showing him a constellation diagram including the Big Dipper, he couldn’t recognize a single one.

This has happened in history before.

The killing field occasionally pulls creatures, buildings, and even Transcendents from places outside of Earth through rifts.

It’s just unclear whether it was the park getting pulled into the killing field that caused the monsters to lose control, or if the earthquake happened first and then the whole park was brought in by the killing field.