harleyscars Chapter 10 Continuing the Journey
Chapter 10 Continuing the Journey
By the time the landslide was cleared, it was already past 4 p.m.
In late autumn, darkness falls early. As the sun begins to set, the light dims gradually, as if a knob has been turned.
Zhao Lie stood at the front of the convoy and shouted in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "We must reach the White Stone stronghold tonight! Anyone who falls behind knows what will happen!"
No one answered. Everyone was speeding up.
Jiang Che walked in the middle of the group, no longer trailing at the back.
His right knee had fully recovered, and the wound on his left shoulder had also healed. His peak D-level physical fitness made walking on this gravel road feel like walking on flat ground.
But he didn't walk too fast.
He still leaned on that bent steel bar—just for show—keeping his pace at a slightly below-average level in the group, neither drawing attention nor slowing them down.
Su Qingyuan walked about two meters ahead of him to the left.
She maintained this distance intentionally.
Too far apart, and it feels distant; too close, and it feels ambiguous.
But Jiang Che noticed that since his leg healed, she looked back at him more often.
Previously, he would turn around every ten minutes to make sure he was still alive.
Now he turns around every five minutes, his gaze sweeping over him before immediately turning back, as if to check if he has "gone wrong".
When he turned around for the fourth time, Jiang Che met her gaze.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" he mouthed.
Su Qingyuan's lips moved slightly, and she mouthed a response.
Jiang Che spent a long time trying to decipher it and figured it was probably the phrase "Who's looking at you?", but the mouth shape of the last "了" sounded more like "Get lost."
He smiled.
Su Qingyuan turned her head back.
The procession moved through the twilight.
The ruins on both sides gradually diminished, replaced by vast stretches of wasteland and scattered collapsed farmhouses.
The White Stone stronghold is built in an abandoned mine at the foot of a mountain. It is said to have well-developed fortifications and underground water sources, making it the safest human settlement within a hundred miles.
But everyone knows perfectly well what the word "it is said" means in the apocalypse—it means you might walk for two days and two nights only to find that the place no longer exists.
The sky changed from orange-red to black.
The torches were lit.
The beam of light flickered in the darkness.
The armed men in the rear guard began to tense up—their hands remained on the triggers, their eyes constantly scanning the darkness on either side.
"Speed up!" Zhao Lie's voice came from the front of the group. "Everyone speed up! Stay close to the right, don't scatter!"
Jiang Che's D-level hearing detected some unusual sounds.
It wasn't footsteps, nor breathing; it was a very faint, continuous "buzzing" sound, like electricity, or like something being burned in the dark.
He held the steel bar in his hand.
Su Qingyuan also slowed her pace.
She turned her head to the side, her expression focused.
"What is it?" she whispered.
Before the words were finished, a scream erupted from the darkness on the right.
It wasn't a human scream—it was eerie.
A completely new shriek, one that Jiang Che had never heard before, was much sharper than that of a low-level Shadow Demon, like the sound of someone smashing glass with a hammer.
The sound was so sharp it sent chills down people's spines, and several people's steps faltered at the same time.
Then the darkness came to life.
From the wasteland on the right side of the road, countless black shadows surged out like a rising tide.
They weren't low-level Shadow Demons—at least not the ones Jiang Che had killed before.
These shadow creatures are wider, like sheets of black paper being blown by the wind. They have no fixed shape, tumbling and drifting in the air, and their speed is more than twice that of the lower-level shadow creatures.
Their core is not hidden in the center of their form, but is wrapped in layers of black film, like an onion. You can't reach the core without tearing open the outer layer.
Nocturnal and treacherous.
These are low-tier variants that are active only at night. They are extremely fast and move in groups. Each one is weaker than a regular low-tier Shadow Ghost in terms of attack power, but what makes them terrifying is their sheer numbers.
Jiang Che glanced at them out of the corner of his eye; there were at least twenty.
"Flanking man! The flank has been breached!" Liu Cheng's voice came from the right, tinged with obvious panic.
Two armed men in the rear guard were caught off guard and had their arms wrapped by the Night Stalker. Their flesh withered away at a visible speed, and they let out inhuman screams in the darkness.
Zhao Lie cursed from the front, then shouted, "All ability users! All ability users, assemble on the right! Ordinary people, move to the left! Don't run around!"
Su Qingyuan has already made a move.
Her spiritual threads traced almost transparent arcs in the darkness, each swing severing two or three night-walking monsters in half.
But what was severed was not their core, but only their outer form—the severed Nightwalker tumbled twice in the air, then reformed, like an unkillable jelly.
Jiang Che gripped the steel bar and stood still.
His brain was working at high speed—his physical abilities at the peak of D-rank were more than enough to deal with an ordinary low-level Shadow Ghost, but the Night Ghosts were too fast, and he needed to determine their trajectory in a very short time.
He hasn't had any real combat experience yet, so he doesn't know if he can do it.
Then he heard a voice.
"Help—help—my leg—"
The sound came from his left rear.
It was a woman's voice.
Jiang Che turned his head.
About fifteen meters away, a woman was lying on the ground.
Her right leg was entangled by a nocturnal creature, its black form clinging to her calf like a leech, frantically draining her life force and moisture.
Her skin shrank and turned gray at a visible rate, like a grape that had been drained of its moisture.
Her hands frantically dug at the ground, her nails breaking and her flesh bleeding, but she kept crawling forward. Inching her way towards the convoy.
Her eyes were fixed on Jiang Che.
There was fear and pain in those eyes.
Jiang Che moved.
His body moves faster than his brain.
The explosive power of a peak D-rank was released in an instant, the gravel under his feet was kicked and scattered, and he shot out like an arrow.
He covered the 15-meter distance in less than two seconds.
He swung the steel bar in a semi-circle, striking the Nightwalker precisely in the core of his body—not with brute force, but with a technique he had instinctively learned in his first real battle after awakening: concentrating all his power into a single point.
The form of the Nightwalker was broken up.
It's not "cut", it's "smash".
All the black films shattered into countless pieces under that blow, like glass struck by a heavy hammer, exposing the core—the size of a fist, dark purple, with cracks on the surface.
Jiang Che's second strike followed immediately, the tip of the steel bar precisely piercing the deepest part of the crack.
The core is broken.
The elusive form of the night-walking ghost silently disintegrated in the air, like a drop of ink falling into water, vanishing without a trace.
The woman lay sprawled on the ground, her right leg so emaciated it was unrecognizable.
But she was still alive, her eyes were still open, and she was still looking at Jiang Che.
"You...you..." Her lips trembled, unable to utter a complete sentence.
"Don't talk." Jiang Che bent down and lifted her up from the ground.
His movements were rough—not intentionally, but because he lacked experience and didn't know how to carry an injured person.
He put her arm on his shoulder, put one arm around her waist, and practically dragged her forward.