The sedan was hit by a wave of mud, rolling as it broke through the guardrail and slid down off the road shoulder. In the end, it lay upside down in the dark mud, like a turtle on its back.
Wei Tianyang’s back was firmly pressed against the seat back. In the brief ten or so seconds, he was reminded of the encounter when he retrieved the gun from Starbucks. This time, however, he didn’t fly out, but the shattered car window carved a large gash on his left arm, blood gushed out like a fountain.
He clenched his right fist and punched, sending the twisted and deformed car door flying. He grabbed Yaha and crawled out of the back seat.
Yaha was beaten to a pulp but hadn’t lost consciousness. When they leaned against the rear of the car, Wei Tianyang found that Yaha’s left leg had broken during the collision, bending into an inverted L-shape. He grimaced in pain, still clutching the submachine gun in his hand.
Wei Tianyang quickly flipped open the driver’s door, only to find it was filled with mud and broken stones. The windshield was shattered, the airbag hadn’t been deployed, and the driver was crushed to death in the driver’s seat.
He dragged the driver’s body over to Yaha, saying, "Quick, use your superpower."
Yaha pressed one hand onto the driver’s body and grabbed Wei Tianyang with the other. In an instant, the wound on his left arm vanished, leaving only dried bloodstains.
"What are you doing? You should have healed your leg!" Wei Tianyang said.
"A corpse can only be used once... The one who attacked us must be in the shape of an equilateral triangle... Even if I were unscathed, I couldn’t have helped. It’s all up to you now, Ishmael," Yaha said, squeezing out a smile toward him.
"You sure know how to give orders," Wei Tianyang replied with a smile.
Before he finished, the sound of bullets whizzing overhead came from above, and a tinkling noise from the other side of the car signaled that the car doors and sedan’s body couldn’t withstand the large-caliber machine gun bullets. Wei Tianyang watched as the rear end of the car was penetrated by bullets, igniting searing flames that instantly engulfed half of the vehicle.
The fuel tank has been hit...
He mentally cursed, a bad feeling washing over him as he dragged Yaha toward the front of the vehicle, pressing his hands into the mud, only to feel an unusual trembling.
The next second, the earth turned into a giant hand that gripped the entire car in its palm, as if a giant hidden beneath the ground had stretched forth his arm, pulling the burning car up ten meters into the air.
The surrounding earth was gathered into this one massive arm, causing the ground level to suddenly drop.
Wei Tianyang and Yaha had just tumbled down to the bottom of the pit when the mud hand disintegrated, showering down mud rain. The burning wreckage of the car followed suit, crashing down from above.
With his right arm, Wei Tianyang scooped Yaha’s waist and hoisted him onto his shoulder. Yaha was much lighter than he had anticipated, his abdomen as soft as a cat’s.
He scrambled up the earthen slope, and as he did, the ground beneath his feet began to churn like a landslide, and an even greater shaking emanated from deep underground.
As the earth beneath his feet gave way, the previously solid ground loosened with the vibrations, causing him to sink in until his calves were buried.
And then, the shaking stopped. The soft mud hardened again, trapping him in place.
Across the highway, Wei Tianyang saw Mud Man, as if for the first time in palpable reality, entirely encased in his earthen armor, with a portion of his right arm extended—his light machine gun.
"Yaha! Cover your mouth and nose," Wei Tianyang said.
Yaha clung tightly to Wei Tianyang’s back, burying his face in the nape of his neck.
Wei Tianyang extended his Bone Knife seven to eight meters long, plunging it into the ground until his entire arm was submerged. Then, with a shout, he swung up his right arm!
The Bone Knife, joined together like a shovel, flipped over ten or more meters of mud in front of him, creating a ditch. This trench was almost six or seven meters long—the deepest under his feet and shallowing towards the front.
The flying black mud and broken stones were sprayed forward, forming a gray curtain in the air.
Wei Tianyang leaped out of the trench, retracting the Bone Knife and, at the same time, spreading his fingers to extend the barrel of his AK47, spraying bullets towards Mud Man’s position.
In the distance, a wall of mud suddenly rose.
"Shit..." Wei Tianyang cursed. He glanced back at the car wreck lying at the bottom of the mud pit, half-buried; the fire had been extinguished by the smothering mud.
At least it served as a cover.
He took advantage of Mud Man’s defensive lapse and doubled back, placing Yaha behind the wrecked car.
Fighting him on this muddy ground is too disadvantageous... The entire landscape is his weapon, and I can’t let him injure Yaha...
Mud Man probably didn’t know Yaha’s whereabouts. As long as he kept himself exposed, Yaha would be safe.
Wei Tianyang stared at Yaha, his expression grave, and said in a low voice, "You must not make a sound, understand?!"
"What are you going to do...?" Yaha asked worriedly.
"I’m going to kill him!" Wei Tianyang shouted angrily.
With that, he ran out from cover, palms open, continuously shooting at the mud wall while trying to skirt around its edge and close the distance with Mud Man.
But the wall moved... No matter how Wei Tianyang ran, it always faced him. Worse yet, Mud Man expanded the mud wall into a circular barrier, completely sealing off any gaps.
"You can’t see now, can you?!" he muttered under his breath, changing direction while shooting, and sprinted straight towards Mud Man, closing the gap to within 40 meters.
Just one punch... A single punch and you’re dead!
Wei Tianyang’s eyes blazed with fury, he retracted his gun barrel and clenched his fist.
However, at that moment, a hole the size of a human head appeared on the mud wall.
"Goddamn it..."
He felt his body shake suddenly, then his running form became distorted, and he collapsed to the ground, limp.
He first felt a surge of excitement, but then the pain in his left leg and lower abdomen began to spread.
The pain drained the air from his lungs, and his body instinctively wanted to curl up, but he was as immobile as a corpse.
He craned his neck to look down at his body; a large caliber bullet had torn open his abdomen, creating a gaping wound from which a length of intestine, wrapped in blood and fatty moisture, and steaming, hung over his left thigh.
Her left leg had also been hit; the tibia was shattered, and he couldn’t feel his left toes.
Next, he saw the Mud Man slowly rise into the air within that earthen wall, standing on a pedestal made of mud and aiming a light machine gun wrapped with mud at him.
That was the last strike...
They were only about 20 meters apart, but both could read each other’s thoughts from their small figures.
This had nothing to do with personal grudges; they simply stood on opposing sides of the battle.
Loyal to the mission, loyal to the country...
In the distance, the crisp sound of gunfire echoed.
The Mud Man instinctively dropped down halfway, turning to look in the direction of the gunfire.
Yaha was lying on the charred rear of the car, firing his submachine gun at the Mud Man, about 40 meters away.
The 9mm bullets couldn’t penetrate the thick mud wall, but at least they could draw the Mud Man’s attention.
Then, a mass of mud swept up Yaha, wrapping him within it and pulling him underground.
"Yaha!!"
Red light flickered in Wei Tianyang’s eyes as he pressed his right hand against the ground, which was very solid...
Maybe this could work...
He focused more than ten tons of strength into the palm of his hand and then, like a spring, pushed off violently, launching his body eight meters into the air in a parabolic arc towards the Mud Man.
Mid-air, he spread his palms and opened fire at the Mud Man.
But the earth, as if aware of itself, enveloped the Mud Man in a cocoon of mud at the sound of the gun, looking from a distance like a giant mud egg had sprouted from the ground.
Then, at the top of that mud egg, a firing hole opened up.
One punch.
One punch and you’re dead.
Wei Tianyang, less than 5 meters away from the Mud Man, retracted the barrel of his gun and clenched his fists together.
Through that firing hole, he saw the Mud Man’s eyes.
For a second, time seemed to stand still.
The look in the Mud Man’s eyes seemed to tell him.
"It’s okay, Ishmael."
A ten-ton punch was thrown, forming a fan-shaped shockwave that obliterated the entire mud egg, with mud and debris flying everywhere.
The Mud Man’s body rolled more than ten meters away, limp as if its bones had been sucked out, the joints twisted and collapsed on the ground.
Without the Mud Man’s control, the mud all loosened and crumbled, black blood rising from it and leisurely being absorbed into the palm of Wei Tianyang’s right hand.
He lay on the ground, the wound in his abdomen having been torn open further due to the recent violent action, with much of his organs now protruding. He groaned and clenched his right fist, the blood energy churning, dispersing from his palm, then miraculously, all the wounds on his body began to heal at a visibly rapid rate.
He knelt on one knee, spat onto the ground, and threw up three bullet heads.
Yaha?!
He ran toward the wreckage of the vehicle, where the ground was now solid, with no sign of Yaha.
He closed his eyes, and at that moment, the ground began to tremble...
He felt the power, sensed the Earth’s most minute composition, the soil became like an extension of his body; he could touch the boulders buried underground, see the wriggling earthworms and the disrupted ant nests...
And he saw Yaha.
He was curled up in pain, lacking air, his chest compressed, about to suffocate.
Wei Tianyang looked at his own skin-and-bones right arm, gritted his teeth, and clenched his fist!
The soil under his feet trembled, then the ground in front of him slowly rose and split open in a cross-shaped fissure.
Yaha, wrapped in the soft mud, was gently lifted from beneath the ground and lay on the mud-made bed, taking deep breaths of fresh air, his amber eyes staring at the ash-gray sky, unable to refrain from bursting into laughter.
"From now on, you’ll have to lift me up like this every day!"
"Stop messing around, Yaha."