Chapter 86: Fist Like a Spear

The jeep bucked over the uneven sand. Half the windshield on the right was gone. In the back, a soldier knelt on the seat, twisted around, and kept firing. Spent casings rattled over the cushions and bounced out of the vehicle.

Something enormous pursued them through the dust.

It stood three meters tall. Great mounds of muscle crowded its shoulders and back, making the head wedged between them look grotesquely small. Its skin had split under the bulk. Exposed bundles of dark red muscle flexed and swelled as it ran, thick blood seeping between them.

Every footfall blasted a hole in the sand.

The jeep climbed a shallow slope. Its rear wheels sank into loose sand and spun, throwing yellow fans behind them. The driver floored the accelerator. The front end lurched uphill, but the vehicle was losing speed.

The creature closed in a few strides and reached for the rear with its left arm.

The soldier lowered his rifle and emptied the magazine at the face buried between its shoulders. Bullets punched shallow dimples into the thick muscle around its neck. The flesh sprang back, shedding flattened rounds like steel pellets bouncing off a heavy tire.

Click.

He clawed at the ammunition pouches on his chest. His fingers scrabbled inside an empty one.

"They’re bouncing off! They’re fucking bouncing off!" Sweat streamed down his face. "Faster! It’s grabbing us!"

"Hold on!"

The driver wrenched the wheel to full lock, his face contorted. The jeep slewed across the slope and plunged downhill. A tire struck a ridge of sand, jolting the soldier against the frame and nearly knocking the rifle from his hands.

The creature lunged after them. Its left hand swept past the rear and closed around the spare tire.

The mounting bracket shrieked. The entire jeep jerked backward.

The soldier fell between the seats. Looking up, he saw the creature’s swollen right arm rise, its fist blotting out the sky.

Something tore through the air.

WHOOOSH—!

A piercing whistle drowned out the engine. A flash of steel cut through the blowing sand, crossed the slope, and drove into the raised arm.

The long blade punched through muscle and shattered bone, wrenching the arm across the creature’s chest. Its point carried on into the ribs, burying the weapon to the guard.

The impact sent the creature staggering sideways. Its left hand still held the spare tire, dragging the bracket with it.

CRACK!

Tire and mounting tore free.

The jeep shot forward, careening down the slope.

"Watch out! Someone ahead!"

A black-armored figure was charging toward them. Before the driver could react, Lin Yan sprinted past the side of the jeep, heading straight for the creature behind it.

Lin Yan planted a foot in the slope and drove off, blasting sand behind him.

The creature had just regained its footing when he reached it. It threw aside the tire and roared, swinging its left fist across his path. The thickly corded arm swept up a cloud of sand.

Lin Yan dropped low and slid beneath it. The fist passed his faceplate with a sharp rush of air.

His breath and footwork fell into rhythm. Following the swing, he slipped inside the creature’s reach, turning sideways into the opening beneath its arm.

His lead foot planted. His hips twisted.

His left elbow drove back with the turn, tendons taut as bowstrings. The force of his whole body hammered through the point of the elbow into the creature’s upper abdomen.

THUD!

A deep, hollow boom gave way to the crunch of breaking bone.

The dense muscle caved inward. The creature’s eyes bulged as its torso folded over the blow.

Lin Yan used the recoil to coil his body tight, his back drawn like a bow. His joints cracked in rapid succession. Then his hips unwound, his right shoulder drove forward, and the fist chambered at his waist fired into the creature’s belly like a bolt from a siege crossbow.

The close-range brutality of Baji, the whipping force of Tongbei—heel, hips, shoulder, fist. Every part of him drove through the same point.

BOOM—!

His fist tore through flesh. His right arm plunged into the abdomen as readily as a spear into wet clay.

For an instant, even the wind and noise seemed to fall away.

The creature froze. Its back bulged under the force of the blow. Organs ruptured around Lin Yan’s hand, and foul, hot fluid splashed through the gaps in his armor.

He opened his fingers inside the ruined abdomen and closed them around the spine.

The creature’s back went rigid. Bundles of muscle rose along its shoulders and neck.

Its left hand had barely touched his shoulder when Lin Yan lowered his weight, braced his feet, and pulled.

CRRACK—!

A long section of pale spine came tearing out through the abdomen, trailing cords of tissue and shredded organs in a wash of black blood.

The creature’s knees buckled.

Three meters of muscle collapsed like a burst sack. It struck the sand in a final spasm, its head thumping down beside Lin Yan’s boot, and lay still.

Thump.

Lin Yan opened his hand. The bloody spine dropped into the sand.

His entire right arm seized.

Small blood vessels ruptured beneath the skin, ugly bruising spreading up his arm and across his shoulder. Pain and sudden weakness overwhelmed that side of his body.

Behind the faceplate, he clenched his back teeth and drew in a breath of hot, smoke-tainted air.

Before throwing his sword, he had swapped out Blade Arts II and Battle Instinct I for Badminton Expert and One-Armed Champion. On top of Brawn I, the two Traits had doubled his right arm’s strength, then doubled it again.

The punch had felt great.

The torn muscles afterward felt considerably worse.

"Fuck... overdid it."

At the foot of the slope, the jeep’s engine idled.

Its occupants sat rigid. The soldier in the back still clutched his empty rifle. His eyes moved from the creature’s open abdomen to the spine lying in the sand. His lips trembled.

[Trait Plunder triggered.]

[Trait obtained: Brawn II — Green.]

[Effect: Increases muscular strength and physical load-bearing capacity to four times their original levels.]

Brawn I doubled them. Brawn II quadrupled them.

Lin Yan immediately replaced the old Trait.

[Brawn II — Green equipped.]

Greater strength filled his limbs, accompanied by an increased capacity to bear the strain. His tense shoulder eased a little. His right arm still throbbed, but Fleshseed was steadily knitting the torn muscles back together, and the pain began to subside.

He curled his fingers. Fragments of bone caught between the plates of his gauntlet crunched as he slowly ground them to pieces.

He had been here barely ten minutes. Both Agility and Brawn had already advanced.

"Now this is my kind of place..."