RNP Chapter 117 The Bustling City
Chapter 117 The Bustling City
"boom--!"
A dull thud came from the next block, and even the abandoned floorboards underfoot shook twice.
The noise didn't sound like a gas cylinder explosion; it sounded more like a building had collapsed.
Jiang Ming walked to the top floor of the unfinished building, holding up the binoculars he had just taken out of his storage card.
He had casually picked this up from a faculty dormitory; it wasn't high-end, but it was usable enough.
"Brother Jiang, what's going on over there?" Wang Yang asked from the side. "A gas explosion?"
"I don't know, let me see." Jiang Ming adjusted the focus, and the image in the lens gradually became clear.
Two streets away was the once-famous upscale residential community, "Jinxiu Garden".
The price of housing in that area is 35,000 yuan per square meter, and the residents are all either very rich or very powerful.
But now, those iconic river-view luxury apartments have changed.
The original beige facade was now covered with purplish-black vines, resembling some kind of giant blood vessel clinging to the building's surface.
The balconies on the lower floors were almost entirely blocked off by unknown bushes, and some windows even emitted eerie green smoke.
The most outrageous thing is the foundation.
The entire neighborhood looked as if it had been scooped up from the earth by a giant spoon and then casually thrown back in.
The asphalt road at the edge of the residential area has a neat fracture surface. The originally flat road surface is raised half a meter in mid-air, revealing the dark brown soil underneath. It is definitely not the backfill soil from urban construction, but the humus soil from the familiar primeval forest.
"Looks like we're not the only ones with bad luck." Jiang Ming put down his binoculars, a cold smile playing on his lips. "The Jinxiu Garden community also time-traveled, and it looks like they just got back, just like us."
"Is that so?" Li Bin adjusted his glasses, leaned over and took a look through the binoculars. His face instantly turned pale. "That's... a mutated man-eating flower? I've seen similar ones in biological atlases, but there's definitely no species this big on Earth."
In the footage, the roof of the security booth at the entrance of the residential area has been breached by a huge red flower.
The flower head was as big as a millstone, and the edges of the petals were covered with fine barbs. It was opening and closing in the wind, as if it were breathing.
"It's not just plants." Jiang Ming pointed to the other end of the street. "Look at those office buildings over there."
Following the direction Jiang Ming pointed, everyone realized that the CBD area, which should have been full of modernity, now looked like a patched-up tattered garment.
A glass-walled office building stands abruptly in the middle of the intersection, completely blocking the original eight-lane road.
The building still displays a huge sign for "Hongtu Technology," but several thick animal bones are wrapped around the sign.
The piercing alarms came from all directions.
Dozens of security vehicles, special operations armored vehicles, and even fire trucks, flashing red and blue lights, surrounded the "return zones" completely.
The cordon was stretched out in layers, and loudspeakers kept broadcasting lame excuses such as "Please stay away" and "Gas leak repairs are underway."
"Gas leak my foot." Zhao Yanzhi leaned against a concrete pillar and scoffed. "Whose gas leak would produce man-eating flowers?"
"This is going to be interesting." Jiang Ming smiled.
Suddenly, a dense clump of wisteria at the north gate of Jinxiu Garden Community began to tremble violently.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A crisp gunshot rang out.
The special agents surrounding the entrance were clearly under attack and were firing to suppress the fire.
Immediately afterwards, a creature the size of a small car crashed through the green belt and onto the street.
It was a giant lizard covered in iron-gray scales, with half a security window hanging from its tail.
It opened its mouth wide and let out a hoarse roar, a sound like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, sending chills down your spine.
【Ironclad Monitor Lizard (Lv.6)】
[Status: Frenzy/Hunger]
Weakness: Abdomen ,eyeball】
[Ability: Scale Hardening (Physical Defense +15), Savage Charge.]
A red data box popped up instantly in Jiang Ming's field of vision.
"A level 6 monster." Jiang Ming narrowed his eyes, calculating in his mind, "15 points of defense, my Zhanma sword will probably be dulled if it hits it."
The streets were in complete chaos.
The armored giant lizard completely ignored the humans in uniforms.
Its yellowish-brown vertical pupils held only the most primal desire to kill.
"Fire! Focus fire!"
A man who looked like a commander was shouting from behind a security vehicle.
More than a dozen Type 95 assault rifles simultaneously spat fire.
A hail of bullets rained down on the giant lizard.
"Jingle bells—"
Sparks flew everywhere.
What happened next left all the onlookers and the sheriff in despair.
Those 5.8mm steel-core bullets, powerful enough to pierce a human body and shatter brick walls, only left faint white dots on the monitor lizard's scales; most of them were deflected by the hard, curved scales!
"Holy crap..." Wang Yang stared in disbelief from upstairs, instinctively touching his arm. "This thing is harder than me? Even a gun couldn't stop it?"
"It's not that the gun is useless, it's that the caliber is too small," Jiang Ming calmly analyzed. "This lizard's scale structure is similar to composite armor, and a small-caliber rifle doesn't have enough kinetic energy. Unless we use an anti-materiel sniper rifle or a rocket launcher, it's just tickling him."
The monitor lizard was clearly angered by this "tickling".
It suddenly flicked its tail.
The thick tail, covered in bone spurs, swept across a security vehicle like a battering ram.
"Clang!"
The two-ton SUV security vehicle was flung out like a plastic toy, flipped twice in the air, and crashed heavily into a roadside milk tea shop, shattering glass everywhere.
"ah--!"
Screams erupted one after another.
The internet celebrities who were originally holding up their phones to live stream and the elderly people who were watching the commotion finally realized they were scared. They threw down their phones and canes and ran away, and the scene instantly spiraled out of control.
"This is too powerful..." Xu Shishi covered her mouth, her face pale. "Is this a monster brought back from somewhere else? Luckily we haven't encountered it before, otherwise facing something like this..."
"It will be more troublesome." Jiang Ming turned around, no longer looking at the tragic scene over there. "The firepower of the special operations team is more than enough to deal with human bandits or native humans from another world, but dealing with this kind of tough-skinned monster is like trying to poke an elephant with a toothpick."
He walked to the other side of the unfinished building and looked into the deeper part of the city.
The sky there had an unnatural grayish-yellow hue, and the air was filled with a faint smell of sulfur.
"It seems that this time it's not just our school and neighborhood that's been transported through time." Jiang Ming pointed to several locations in the distance emitting black smoke. "Shopping malls, hospitals, and maybe even a zoo... There are definitely many areas in this city that have been transported through time, just like our school."
"What do we do now?" Zhao Yanzhi asked, somewhat flustered. "There are monsters everywhere, and the sheriff can't handle them..."
"The sheriffs couldn't keep up because they hadn't adapted to the update yet." Jiang Ming took out a bottle of mineral water from his storage card, unscrewed it, took a sip, and moistened his throat, which was a little dry from running. "But we're different."
He looked down at the armored giant lizard wreaking havoc below, his eyes showing no fear, but rather a hint of assessment, like a butcher examining pork.
"If you peel off the lizard's skin and combine it with steel plates, you can craft a [Superior Grade Scale Armor Shield] with a defense of at least 20."
"Its claws should be able to be used to enhance Wang Yang's axe, increasing its armor-piercing properties."
"As for the tendon in that tail..." Jiang Ming paused, "it's perfect for making a bowstring for a powerful recurve bow for Zhao Yanzhi."
Hearing Jiang Ming's words and looking at the invulnerable monster below, everyone felt a chill run down their spines.
While others were fleeing for their lives, this guy was already figuring out how to dismantle the monster into parts.
"Brother Jiang, you...you want to go down there and do it?" Wang Yang swallowed hard. "There are dozens of special agents watching over it."
"Not now." Jiang Ming shook his head. "When it comes to stealing monsters, timing is everything. The best time for us to enter and reap the rewards is when they run out of bullets and their confidence collapses."
Just then, an even more piercing sound came from overhead.
Everyone looked up and saw a strange bird with a wingspan of five meters, clutching half a GG sign, swooping down from the direction of the CBD and crashing directly into the glass curtain wall of an office building not far away.
"That's... a Gale Eagle?" Li Bin recognized the strange bird.
"Looks like today's going to be lively." Jiang Ming crushed the empty water bottle and tossed it into a corner. "Let's go, let's change spots. The view is good here, but we're easy to get accidentally shot by official snipers. Let's go to the top floor of that shopping mall over there; there are some things there that I'm quite interested in."
Jiang Ming led five people like a group of ghosts moving through a concrete jungle, avoiding the panicked crowds and whistling security cars, and made his way to a commercial plaza a few hundred meters away from the scene of the incident.
This place is called "Wanhui Plaza". It is usually a bustling landmark in this area, but now it has become the most dangerous grandstand outside the restricted area.
The third-floor corridor of the mall faces the intersection below, which is also an area that has just "returned".
However, what they brought back was not plants, but scorched earth.
In the fountain plaza in front of the mall, the ground was blackened by the high temperature, and the original marble tiles were cracked in large areas, with dark red sparks still shooting out from the cracks.
"That is..." Su Xiaoxiao leaned behind the railing, pointing at the enormous thing lying in the center of the square, her voice trembling slightly.
It was a giant bull that was nearly four meters long.
Its entire body is dark red, and its skin is like flowing magma. With each breath, two streams of scorching white smoke will spew out from its nostrils.
The most eye-catching feature is the single horn on its head, which is wrapped with crackling electric arcs that occasionally leap towards the surrounding metal lampposts.
【Thunderhorn Flame Bull (Lv.10 - Elite)】
[Status: Alert/Territory Patrol]
[Skills: Thunder Stomp, Flame Leap, Static Field]
[Weaknesses: White patches below the throat, weakness after the antler fracture]
"A level 10 elite monster." Jiang Ming's eyes lit up. "This is a big one."
At this time, the team responsible for this area was clearly not an ordinary security team, but a real special operations riot squad.
Three black armored personnel carriers were parked across the intersection, with machine gunners on their roofs aiming intently.
Further away, on the tall buildings, reflections could be faintly seen; that was snipers taking their positions.
At this time, the team responsible for this area was clearly not an ordinary security team, but a real special operations riot squad.
Three black armored personnel carriers were parked across the intersection, with machine gunners on their roofs aiming intently.
Further away, on the tall buildings, reflections could be faintly seen; that was snipers taking their positions.
"They're about to make their move," Jiang Ming said in a low voice.
As soon as he finished speaking, a tear gas canister, trailing white smoke, landed precisely at the feet of the Thunderhorn Flame Ox.
"Sizzle—"
Acrid white smoke instantly filled the air.
But this otherworldly monster clearly wasn't buying it.
Instead of shedding tears or coughing, it was enraged by the smell.
"Moo—!!!"
A roar like muffled thunder exploded forth.
Thunderhorn Flame Ox suddenly stood up and stomped heavily on the ground with its front hooves.
[Skill Trigger: Thunder Stomp]
Centered on it, a visible blue electric ring instantly spread out.
"Sizzle!"
The tear gas canisters that had just landed on the ground were detonated by an electric current.
Even more terrifying, the current traveled along the damp ground and instantly reached the armored vehicle dozens of meters away.
"what!"
The machine gunner on the roof screamed and convulsed as he fell back into the carriage.
The armored vehicle's electronic equipment short-circuited instantly, and the headlights flashed wildly a few times before going out completely.
"Fire! Free fire!"
Although the communication equipment was damaged, the on-site commander still managed to issue orders by shouting.
This time, the intensity of the firepower was even greater than when dealing with the lizards.
Not only were there Type 95 assault rifles, but there were even two squad automatic weapons roaring around.
"Da da da da da—"
Countless bullets struck the Thunderhorn Flame Ox.
However, the scene that plunged everyone into despair played out once again.
This cow's skin is not only tough, but it also seems to have its own high-temperature force field.
The bullet softens slightly due to the high temperature just before it makes contact with the skin, greatly reducing its kinetic energy.
When it hits you, it doesn't cause any real damage other than sending up a few sparks and angering the creature.
"Is this what they call gua sha?" Wang Yang couldn't help but complain, "A flurry of actions, but only half the damage."
"They've shot in the wrong place." Jiang Ming shook his head, tapping his fingers lightly on the railing. "This cow's defenses are all in its hide, and it has a natural magnetic repulsion against metal bullets. To kill it, you'd need water-cooled or non-metallic bullets, or..."
"Or what?" Li Bin subconsciously took out his notebook, wanting to write it down.
"Or we could cut off that horn." Jiang Ming stared intently at the horn crackling with lightning. "If we used that horn to synthesize something, combined with current industrial battery packs, we could definitely create a high-level weapon with astonishing power."
"And that skin," Jiang Ming continued, rattling off a list of dishes, "It's heat-resistant and insulating. If we make it into armor, we can withstand a lot of damage from monsters in the future."
The battle off the field has reached a fever pitch.
Leijiaoyan Niu clearly didn't want to be a target anymore.
It lowered its head, its single horn aimed at a security car blocking its way, and with all four hooves exerting force, it charged forward like a high-speed train engine.
"Get out of the way!"
The sheriffs scattered in terror.
"boom!"
The security car blocking the way and the armored riot control vehicle weighing several tons behind it were both sent flying, tumbling through the air and crashing into the mall's entrance.
Unfortunately, a group of ordinary citizens who hadn't had time to evacuate were hiding behind the mall's main entrance.