Chapter 151: Frog Eyes

With a deafening "boom," accompanied by a massive roar and a burst of flame, the giant bullet blasted out of the barrel once again.

However, this thunderous shot missed its target. Dragging his injured body, the amphibian vanished from the spot with a speed far surpassing Liu Chang's. Immediately afterward, another shell came hurtling out of the thicket toward him.

Leaping out of the blast radius, Liu Chang was blown clear of the area by the shockwave. Amidst the billowing smoke and dust, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye as the amphibian scrambled up into the dense canopy and disappeared.

With his rifle raised, Liu Chang swept his muzzle alertly, aiming at the patch of upper foliage where the amphibian had concealed itself. He did not dare to lower his guard in the slightest. He knew that if his opponent closed the distance to within ten meters, he would have no room for counterattack whatsoever. Before his finger could pull the trigger, the creature would crack open his skull.

Therefore, he remained constantly on edge, watching the sway of the leaves in the canopy above. Yet no matter how vigilant he was, he could not match the amphibian's blinding speed.

A minute later, a patch of bushes beside Liu Chang parted amidst a heavy stench of blood, and the amphibian, wielding its hand cannon, suddenly appeared right in front of him. Charging forward at terrifying speed, it fired a shell at him simultaneously. The velocity of the projectile combined with the amphibian's own momentum made it so Liu Chang saw nothing more than a flash of flame before his eyes. Death seemed to have already descended upon him.

He instinctively pulled the trigger, but the booming shot failed to strike the agile amphibian. In that fraction of a second, Liu Chang felt as though he could see the footsteps of the Grim Reaper.

A fist-sized shell flew straight toward the center of his chest. If this shell struck true, let alone him, even an amphibian or a giant centipede several times stronger than him would be blown to smithereens. The hand cannon was originally meant for the amphibian to deal with colossal creatures; using it on him was already overkill.

Thus, at that very moment, Liu Chang felt the near approach of death's footsteps. In the blink of an eye, he seemed to watch the shell creep toward him inch by inch—inching closer and closer—its speed growing slower and slower. It was like a film strip playing in slow motion; the cinematic quality grew stronger while the sense of motion weakened, until finally, Liu Chang could distinctly see the patterns and markings on the surface of the shell, as well as its entire flight trajectory.

This instilled in him a bizarre and uncanny sense of bewilderment for a fleeting second.

Liu Chang had heard countless times that people on the verge of death would see everything from their past replaying in their minds like a slide show. But he had never heard of anyone experiencing a slow-motion effect on the reality unfolding right before their eyes prior to death.

The trajectory of the ballistic flight path was crystal clear in his eyes. Combined with his calculation abilities, which rivaled Li Qingshui's, it allowed him to compute the shell's movement trajectory for every single millisecond with absolute precision. His body also reacted reflexively, making the movement to step out of the path of the oncoming projectile.

Yet, unlike in the movies, he lacked the speed to dodge a bullet. Though his brain reacted quickly and his eyes captured every single detail of the flight path, he felt his physical body fall woefully short of matching the reaction speed of his eyes and mind. Liu Chang felt as though the shell had traveled thirty centimeters, while his own body could only manage a movement of less than one centimeter. The disparity in absolute speed was simply too massive.

No human could move faster than a bullet. Nor could Liu Chang. Yet within this slowed-down world, Liu Chang did not actually need to be faster than the shell. Having calculated every single trace of the bullet's flight path, his body slowly canted sideways. Although his speed was far, far slower than the projectile, he did not waste a single fraction of a millimeter on useless movements.

Tilting his torso by ninety degrees and pulling in his chest and abdomen, Liu Chang could clearly see the shell slowly approaching him from afar. He could also see himself leaning his body to the side at an even slower speed, and even witness the projectile skimming past the junction of his chest and abdomen, scraping away a large patch of flesh and skin in the process. He could distinctly see the shell flying past his chest to explode right behind him, and finally, he even caught the vivid scene of the explosion's flames and jagged shrapnel scattering in all directions amidst the flying dirt and sand.

Everything was vividly present, and everything was agonizingly slow.

Caught in the aftermath of the explosion, Liu Chang's body was tossed upward by the flames, yet his mind remained lucid. He did not know why he was able to perceive such slow-moving imagery while standing on the brink of life and death, but he was certain of one thing: he was not dead, and that amphibian was right in front of him.

Struggling to twist his torso amidst the swirling storm of the explosion, Liu Chang lifted his even slower arm within this slowed-down world, slowly aiming at the amphibian—who had also been caught in the blast wave—and exerted force with his index finger, preparing to squeeze the trigger.

Amidst this sluggish turbulence, he possessed one hundred percent confidence that he could finish off his opponent with a single shot. The difficulty of this particular shot was negligible. Firing at mid-to-close range against an object that was practically stationary was ten thousand times easier than shooting at something moving too fast for him to see. With this shot, Liu Chang was certain the creature would be reduced to a splatter of ground meat just like his brother within a single second.

Therefore, transitioning from death to life, he felt the joy of hope.

He had surged from hell straight to heaven; with one single shot, the world would return to peace once again.

However, good fortune and misfortune always alternated like a roller coaster. Just as the muscles in Liu Chang's finger began to exert force, he plummeted straight from heaven back down to hell. A wave of dizziness washed over his brain, and his body slipped out of his control. It was the exact same state he had experienced when he first saw Li Qingshui use brainwaves to control people. In that instant, he felt that familiar slight tingling sensation across his scalp. Simultaneously, he lost control of his body entirely, unable to twitch even a single finger. Even though his target was right in front of his eyes, he simply could not pull the trigger.

Even more terrifyingly, Liu Chang felt his vision go dark. Beset by hallucinations, he momentarily forgot where he was, and his line of sight lost the attacking target just a second later.

"It's those two kids!" Right before losing consciousness, Liu Chang thought of the entities he had somewhat overlooked—the clones of Li Qingshui—the two children who had disappeared into who-knows-where from the very beginning of the battle.

In his subconscious, Liu Chang had never guarded himself against Li Qingshui's clones. After all, he and Li Qingshui himself were sworn brothers of life and death, so he naturally harbored an innate goodwill toward these clones who shared the exact same genes.

Yet what he never expected was that the person he let his guard down against the most would become his most fatal threat. Amidst the dizziness, Liu Chang foresaw his ultimate destiny: death.

Fighting an amphibian at close-to-medium range while suffering even a single second of dizziness was enough for the opponent to tear him apart ten times over, let alone losing consciousness for several seconds—that was enough to die a hundred times.

Therefore, during this period of mental haziness, Liu Chang had already resigned himself to death.

Yet amidst the haze, the anticipated pain never struck. When consciousness returned once more, what Liu Chang saw was the amphibian standing right in front of him, also just regaining its wits. Thus, he instinctively raised his gun again—while the opponent instinctively lunged forward toward him once more.

However, neither of their attacks landed this time. Just as Liu Chang raised his arm and the opponent lifted its foot, that familiar wave of dizziness struck them both yet again, forcing them to halt their actions.

"Stop it, both of you!" The two children crawled out from the bushes, looking at the amphibian and Liu Chang respectively.

"Stop my ass!" The amphibian's body had just wanted to move when it was suppressed for a few seconds once more by one of the clones. Having thus failed three consecutive attacks, it glared furiously at the child. "Don't forget your current identity! I am your protector now. Without me and Liule, you'd already be dead. And now you're actually helping an outsider deal with me? Snap out of it a little; we have other matters to attend to. Don't project Li Qingshui's emotional baggage onto this person!"

"I know, I have my own plans," said the clone who had been rebuked by the amphibian. "I am indeed still weak right now and need your help, but I don't want to kill this person. He is the final and purest experimental subject left by Li Qingshui. I want to see what he will eventually grow into."

"Hmph, what could he possibly grow into? If you don't interfere with me, I'll let him die ten times over," the amphibian said, staring at the clone with anger in its eyes. "He killed one of our kin. How many of us amphibians are there in total? How do you propose we settle this score?"

"Isn't the value of that girl, Xiaojing, much greater than your kinsman brother?" the clone argued. "Don't your amphibian species calculate things based on equivalent exchange? Leaving emotional factors aside, trading this girl for your brother puts us at a profit. Let's just drop this matter."

"Besides, if we hadn't intervened just now, the one who died definitely wouldn't have been him—it would have been you," chimed in the other clone who had been facing off against Liu Chang.

"Impossible! If it were a head-on duel instead of a sneak attack, I could kill him ten times!" Disgust flashed in the amphibian's eyes.

"Heh, you could a minute ago, but not anymore," said the clone confronting Liu Chang. "Look at his eyes."

"Eyes?" The amphibian took a few steps forward and peered at Liu Chang's face. "This pupil... he..."

"Yes, reverse evolution. Mammals have already finished evolving; he has now stepped into the domain of amphibians," the clone said, taking a step back and pointing at Liu Chang's eyeballs. "These are frog eyes—eyes with dynamic visual acuity dozens of times better than a human's. Combined with Li Qingshui's genes, there should be other functions as well. If he raises his gun now, whatever falls within his line of sight cannot possibly be missed. You are no match for him!"

"Dynamic visual acuity?" Upon hearing the clone's words, Liu Chang's eyes held vigilance alongside a complex and bewildered expression.