The head flew up again, and it was larger by a circle, rushing towards the truck where Ren Zhong was.
Ren Zhong felt a bitter taste in his heart.
This damn thing grew stronger after consuming people, much faster than the truck.
Bai Feng in the back of the truck wouldn’t stand a chance either.
Two seconds later, he made a decision.
He decided to take over Wen Lei’s rear-guard duty.
"Keep heading south! I’ll hold that thing off! Don’t look back!"
Letting go, Ren Zhong floated down from the truck cab, taking a deep breath, first boosting the output power of his armor to its current limit of 53.17 kilowatts, and then gripping the Arc Light Saber in both hands, charging straight ahead to meet it.
Time rewinds to half an hour earlier.
Lin Wang and the professional team seemed to have taken something wrong today, maxing out their firepower value since entering the valley, even eating lunch while fighting.
Around five in the afternoon, the professional team finally pushed to a depth in the valley they had never reached before.
At this moment, the winds and clouds suddenly changed, the cold wind howling, and the ground trembling.
Dense black fog surged up like smoke from an uninhabited deep area of the valley.
A piercing roar, as if the earth dragon had turned over, suddenly exploded.
This boom was not an explosion, nor thunder, but a very high-pitched baby cry.
The next instant, an oval object about ten meters tall and four to five meters wide burst from the ground.
It was a metal-engraved infant’s head.
At this moment, the enraged infant head wore a terrifying expression, mouth wide open, emitting an ear-splitting roar.
Ren Zhong and others, several hundred meters behind the professional team, watched in horror.
No one expected the legend in Starfire Town to be true.
And they were unfortunately the witnesses.
In the deepest part of Bone Valley, a terrifying Level Five Ruined Beast—the Descending Demon Baby—was indeed hidden.
Legend says that due to the accumulation of too many human corpses without cleaning in Bone Valley, it became a "feng shui treasure" continuously spawning Ruined Beasts.
Over the years, a top-potential Ruined Beast generated from some human remains, becoming very powerful, cold-blooded, and with innate human-like wisdom.
It rose by continually suppressing and devouring other Ruined Beasts, becoming the valley’s lord, known only in legend, not seen by eyes.
These rumors originated from the top professional scavengers of the previous generation. By this generation, no one had seen it for decades.
Perhaps all who had seen it were dead.
Of course, related videos remained, but it hadn’t appeared for so long that most people believed it had died of natural causes, and some thought it had quietly left. Few took it seriously.
No one expected the professional team’s rash approach to dredging up fish to attract it out.
The professional team ahead reacted swiftly, turning their jet skis around and fleeing at top speed.
The semi-professional teams reacted quickly too, but their vehicles were general in performance and already fully loaded; the heavy trucks were slow to turn.
On Zheng Tian’s team, Ren Zhong’s prior warning proved effective.
Zheng Tian decisively dropped the car body for survival, pulling only the cab and cargo board with a dragon’s tail maneuver, whistling away from the valley.
The other semi-professional teams made their decisions too.
Some were only a step slower, imitating Zheng Tian by abandoning the car body.
Some didn’t equip their vehicles with a detachment function and had to haul their full load away.
Others, bewitched by wealth, carried a lucky mentality, forcibly turning their full-load vehicles, hoping to escape.
After all, with so many people in the valley, nearly twenty teams, surely someone had to try their luck.
And so, to try was to perish.
The Descending Demon Baby, emerging after decades, was clearly not just for show.
Ren Zhong and company, who turned first, attempted to return by the original route, only to find countless metal pieces the size of human heads erupting from the ground along the path home.
These metal pieces looked like human heads, indeed metallic human heads, their appearance identical to the Descending Demon Baby’s body.
This was also part of the rumors—the metallic offspring spawned from the real skeletons of humans by the Descending Demon Baby.
Ren Zhong was the first to jump off the truck and took on a Demon Baby offspring in a fight.
But for anyone else on the team, it was almost certain death.
So, Ren Zhong jumped back on the truck, pointing to the mountain slopes on both sides, "Up the mountain! Most former residents lived in the valley, fewer on the mountain! The Demon Baby offspring density is certainly much lower there!"
Zheng Tian sharply turned the steering wheel, following Ren Zhong’s direction to flee, first rushing up the slope onto the mountainside, then racing along the mountainside outwards.
The six-person team was still the first among all semi-professionals to make the right choice.
But even so, their escape was fraught with danger.
Occasionally, Demon Baby offspring appeared on the mountainside, chasing Ren Zhong and his team.
The scanner Ren Zhong had modified was remarkably effective, complementing his ability to remain calm in dire situations, and his decisions were always correct.
The group faced peril at every turn but always emerged unscathed.
Until this time, as they got dragged into a mess by another unfortunate team at extremely close range, forced to confront a reinforced Demon Baby offspring that had just devoured at least three people.
That’s why Ren Zhong made the decision to cover the rear himself.
But he wasn’t sacrificing himself; Ju Qingmeng’s installation of a short-range flight reverse-thrust propellant engine gave him extreme burst sprinting ability.
Once the propellant engine’s energy was exhausted, he could still rely on amplifiers to unleash up to 310 kilowatts of power, covering more than ten meters in a step, though not as fast as driving, certainly faster than other scavengers abandoned to flee on foot.
When being chased by a bear, you don’t need to outrun the bear, just outrun others.
Ren Zhong was confident of his self-preservation.
The distance between Ren Zhong and the reinforced Demon Baby offspring closed rapidly in a short time.
He observed the opponent’s subtle oscillation rhythm, the corner of his eye checking the energy reaction data on his helmet panel’s scanner.
In the next second, Ren Zhong’s left foot moved forward, toes stabbing fiercely into the dirt.
He twisted his body, like a top league baseball batter.
His hands dragged the saber behind, swinging horizontally.
The heavy Arc Light Saber emitted a bright blue electric arc, tracing an upward crescent shape in the air.
He struck for a direction not directly facing the opponent.
However, that Demon Baby offspring took the initiative to suddenly change course, shifting from ramming his abdomen to hitting his helmet.
It ended up facing his saber.
Ren Zhong made the right choice.
His upward-swinging Arc Light Saber, like a baseball bat in a home-run swing, slashed precisely toward the soccer-ball-sized massive Demon Baby offspring flying at him!
As they were about to make contact, the blue glow on the saber’s surface flared even more intensely, like the blazing sun.
Ren Zhong completed the preset program 0.1 seconds ahead.
The Arc Light Saber’s instantaneous output power reached its peak for a single weapon, 180 kilowatts.
This was a cut only a Second Level peak Mechanical Warrior could execute by completely forsaking defensive performance.