novelraw Chapter 308: Bloodstained Return
Chapter 308: Bloodstained Return
Five seconds.
For the Plague Butcher, locked in paralysis, it was an eternity.
For Lin Jie, it was the moment that would decide everything.
Simultaneous with the White Ghost's desperate final strike, Lin Jie's mind entered a state of complete calm.
His movements were fluid; his left hand steadily supported the gun body while his right thumb swiftly flipped open the Serene Heart's cylinder.
A scorching hot cartridge case was ejected. Then, from the special ammunition case at his waist, he took out the last, and most unique, bullet.
It was a bullet entirely suffused with a deep, ghostly blue, like a crystal from the abyssal sea.
The bullet's tip was a translucent, frosted-glass-like crystal.
At the core of that crystal was sealed the potent neurotoxin from the Ghost Jellyfish.
He loaded this bullet, carrying the concept of sensory deprivation, into the cylinder.*Click.*
The cylinder snapped back into place. The entire process took less than a second.
At this moment, signs of recovery were already beginning to show in the Plague Butcher's body.
The flames burning in its eye sockets flickered violently, and its massive frame began to twitch uncontrollably.
It was about to break free from the paralysis caused by its internal injuries.
"Only one chance."
Lin Jie did not choose a conventional aim.
He understood perfectly well that between him and his target lay a layer of green flame that constantly distorted light and bullet trajectories.
Attempting a straight-line aimed shot would likely miss the mark, not to mention that the bizarre flame would likely dissolve the attack.
Therefore, Lin Jie chose a shooting method that was even more unthinkable and relied heavily on intuition.
A flick shot.
He bent his knees slightly, lowering his center of gravity, his entire posture like a leopard poised to spring.
Then, his arm whipped out violently, his wrist turning outward at an incredibly unnatural angle!
As the muzzle of the Serene Heart traced a momentary arc, it spat out vengeful fire!
The ghost-blue bullet, due to its trajectory-stabilizing properties, did not follow the arc, but it still deviated from its original path.
It skirted around the corrosive core of the green flame and plunged directly into the Plague Butcher's left eye socket.
Upon contact with the plague flame, the crystalline bullet tip's casing began to rapidly dissolve.
But before it was completely vaporized, the single drop of highly concentrated neurotoxin sealed within it had successfully injected into its brain.
The Butcher's body stiffened. Muscles on the verge of regaining mobility froze solid as the toxin spread within its brain.
Sensory deprivation.
Absolute sensory deprivation.
First, vision.
The twin blazes of plague fire burning in its eye sockets suddenly lost their connection to the world.
It could no longer see.
Everything before its eyes became pure darkness.
Then, hearing.
Brewer's gunfire, the greedy roars of the living corpses, the sound of the underground river flowing—all of it vanished.
The world fell into dead silence.
Next, touch.
It could no longer feel the hard rock beneath its feet, feel the weighty hook that had accompanied it for countless years in its hand, or even feel its own body.
It was like a ghost trapped in a prison cell that was absolutely soundproofed, absolutely dark, and absolutely devoid of tactile sensation.
Its consciousness remained, but every connection it had to the entire material world was utterly severed by that insignificant drop of toxin!
The Butcher descended into its final frenzy.
It began to swing its massive hook wildly, indiscriminately attacking everything around it without any target.
It crashed into walls, trampled over bones, grinding the living corpse minions it had summoned into bloody paste by the dozens.
The sounds of explosions, impacts, and screams were incessant; the entire underground space became its solitary stage of despair.
But without sight or perception, it was merely a beast trapped in a cage, venting its rage in vain.
Every one of its attacks landed on empty air.
Lin Jie, the White Ghost, and Brewer stood far off at a safe distance, quietly watching the curtain fall on this behemoth.
"Well done, Lin," Brewer said, clutching his arm that had been dislocated in the earlier explosion, his praise heartfelt.
The White Ghost silently looked at his own prosthetic arm, now destroyed and continuously emitting black smoke, and said nothing.
The Butcher's frenzy lasted a full three minutes.
Finally, when the life force within its body was completely exhausted, its massive frame could no longer be supported.
It staggered a few steps, chunks of rotten flesh sloughing off, then heavily fell to its knees with a thunderous crash.
The hook slipped from its grasp, striking the ground and splashing up water.
The enormous pig's head hung down powerlessly. The two blazes of plague fire burning in its eye sockets, like candles guttering in the wind, flickered a few times and went out.
The battle was over.
This hastily assembled trio had finally managed to wear down and kill this powerful Kingdom-class UMA together.
After a brief silence, Brewer broke the quiet.
"We... we did it?"
"Yes, we did," Lin Jie's voice was weary, yet exceptionally firm.
He dragged his heavy steps forward.
The suffocating corrupt energy in the air began to dissipate the moment the Plague Butcher died.
Lin Jie approached the corpse. The Silencer folding knife appeared in his hand, its blade plunging into the monster's chest.
After some probing, he extracted from within a large heart that was still faintly pulsating.
The Plague Heart.
This Kingdom-class core material was finally in hand.
"We must leave here immediately," Lin Jie said to the other two as he carefully placed the Plague Heart into a special lead-lined container.
Brewer and the White Ghost both nodded.
This was no place to linger.
Although the Plague Butcher was dead, the plague domain it had created would not vanish instantly.
And who knew if the other hunters participating in the "Free Hunt" on the surface might be drawn by the commotion here.
Dragging their wounded and battered bodies, the three dared not delay for a moment.
They did not choose to return the way they came. Instead, they began a swift evacuation using another emergency exit to the surface, recorded in Dmitri's diary.
This passage was hidden behind a waterfall—a narrow, upward-slanting natural cave.
Supporting each other, they trekked through the darkness for nearly an hour.
When they finally saw the faint glow of moonlight ahead, everyone let out a sigh of relief.
The exit had arrived.
They emerged from an abandoned mine shaft, finding themselves in a desolate cemetery on the far side of Delacroix town.
According to the pre-arranged plan, this was their final extraction point.
The Baroness, Isabella, would send a carriage to rendezvous with them here at midnight.
Lin Jie glanced at his pocket watch. It was now 11:40 PM.
Twenty minutes until the agreed-upon time.
In the distance, at the town center, they could still see towering flames and hear sporadic gunfire. The "Free Hunt" carnival was far from over.
Yet the cemetery beneath their feet was eerily quiet.
At the far end of the cemetery stood an abandoned Gothic-style clock tower.
Parked beneath the clock tower was a black carriage all too familiar to them.
The person sent to retrieve them had arrived early.
"Finally... we can go back," Brewer leaned against a tombstone, letting out a long, deep sigh.
The feeling of having survived a catastrophe made all the muscles in his body relax.
However, at that very moment, a sense of foreboding rose in Lin Jie's heart!
His gaze shifted, locking onto the top of the abandoned clock tower!
Against the silhouette of the ruined tower, under the bright moonlight, a black figure stood quietly.
The figure wore a well-tailored black trench coat, its posture upright.
Its gaze was looking down from on high, surveying the three survivors who had just crawled out of hell.