Chapter 163: Creased Skin and Monsters

"No..." Cannibalism, even in the apocalypse, was hard for an ordinary person to accept.

As soon as this thought popped into Liu Chang's mind, he hurriedly dismissed it. Yet within just those few seconds of his absent-mindedness, the wrinkled skin on his body intensified exponentially, and the hunger in his stomach struck like an avalanche.

Daring not to hesitate any longer, Liu Chang lunged directly into the office building. The dizzy, muddled feeling in his brain grew even more intense, causing him to grab the very first person he encountered upon rushing inside without even looking.

"Where is the food?" Liu Chang asked, his eyes gleaming with a greenish light as he stared at the person he had seized.

"Ah!" The man was delivering supplies inside the building when he felt a flash before his eyes, and a figure hoisted him up by the neck. In a daze and daring not to think further, the man instinctively screamed at the top of his lungs, "Don't kill me! The food is in the warehouse, in the back of the first floor!"

"Hmph." Throwing the man aside with a violent toss, Liu Chang ran impatiently toward the back of the office building.

The interior layout of the office building had been altered. Areas that were originally meant for desks had been converted into empty spaces for warehouses and cargo transit. Liu Chang barreled past these obstacles, following the scent of food all the way into a huge partitioned room.

Kicking open the sheet-metal door, his vision was filled with compressed biscuits and some unprocessed food supplies. Without a second thought, Liu Chang plunged headfirst into the pile of provisions and began to gorge himself. He didn't even have time to unwrap the biscuits, instead stuffing raw, unprocessed grain products into his mouth and devouring them.

Bite after bite, he felt as though he wanted to tear his own throat wide open, yet it could never satisfy the bottomless black hole in his stomach. The tingling sensation all over his body persisted; his wrinkled skin grew continuously thicker, and gradually, a scaly luster began to sprout upon its surface.

While his feeding process was as ravenous as a gluttonous beast, the people outside were not about to let him enjoy it in peace.

For someone to break alone into the stronghold of a criminal gang was an extreme humiliation. Because many people had failed to react in time when Liu Chang first barged in, it had bought him a few minutes of undisturbed feeding time. But a few minutes later, everyone understood what was going on.

Even those who had not seen Liu Chang dart inside earlier had pieced together eight or nine tenths of the situation from the subsequent shouts and cries. Therefore, although not as responsive as a regular army, within five minutes a squad of gunmen had traced Liu Chang's path of entry and aimed their barrels at the warehouse where he was feeding.

"Who broke in?" the leader of the gunmen asked with a frown, turning to a worker beside him—the very same man Liu Chang had grabbed to ask for directions upon entering.

"I don't know. Just now, I felt myself being lifted up, and I didn't get a clear look at what he was like," the worker cried out. "But his strength was immense. His level of evolution must be very high."

"Just one person?" the captain asked again.

"Yes," the worker nodded.

"If it's just one person, did he carry any weapons?"

"I didn't see him carrying any weapons."

"Then he must be the child of some big shot in the city, daring to be this arrogant." Hearing that the intruder was alone and unarmed, a relaxed expression appeared on the captain's face.

Waving his hand to signal the squad of gunmen to stand by in position, he took two steps forward and walked into the warehouse. "Hey, friend, which boss are you?"

"Mm-mph..." In the midst of feeding, even if he had two more mouths, it still wouldn't satisfy his stomach's demands. With his mouth stuffed full of food, how could he possibly manage to speak?

Therefore, inside the hollow food warehouse, there was only the sound of chewing and swallowing.

Hearing such ferocious chewing sounds, the captain was slightly taken aback. But having crawled and fought his way through the underworld of the apocalyptic era for over four years, he wouldn't have survived to this day or attained his current rank without a certain degree of courage and audacity. Thus, although he felt some hesitation upon hearing the chewing, he still walked deeper into the warehouse and stood behind Liu Chang.

An ordinary person's visual range is three meters; even with human continuous evolution over the past four years, most people still could not see beyond five meters. As he slowly walked closer to Liu Chang, it wasn't until the captain stood right behind him that he sensed something was wrong with this person. At five meters, he had only seen a figure bent over eating; at four meters, he discovered that this person wasn't eating biscuits, but rather consuming unprocessed rations.

And upon stepping within three meters, the captain saw the fully developed wrinkled skin on Liu Chang's neck, as well as the bright red scales writhing atop those folds.

"Mon..." Seeing the scales and folds, the captain immediately came to a halt. "Monster! There's a monster..."

Just as he stopped moving, the shouting of his subordinates echoed from outside.

"Captain Zhou! The front gate guards, Da Liu and Xiao Zhao, have both had their entire faces smashed in! It looks like a wild beast attack!"

Hearing the shouts from outside, Liu Chang, who had long since sensed someone entering, turned his head around. Captain Zhou, who had just stepped inside and was about to turn and run, found himself facing a terrifying countenance in the very next second—a mouth full of sharp teeth stuffed with food, combined with a face covered in wrinkles and scales, matching human facial features, and paired with a pair of eyes devoid of whites, forming a bizarre and horrifying visage. The folds were those of a rhinoceros, and the scales looked like snake scales, yet they exuded a more metallic sheen than snake scales, instilling in him an urge not to dare look straight at them. An aura of an extremely dangerous wild beast washed over him in a suffocating wave.

"Fuck!" Startled out of his wits, Captain Zhou instinctively drew the service pistol at his waist—a large-caliber modified military handgun, a piece of equipment he kept on his person at all times and had handled tens of thousands of times over the years. His draw speed was extremely fast, and his sequence of shooting actions was smooth and practiced in one fluid motion. "Bang, bang, bang!" He fired several shots directly at the monster's head.

The monster did not dodge. One could tell that the monster seemed capable of controlling its movements, yet it genuinely chose not to dodge at all. The high-powered gunshots at close range all struck their target, and multiple bullets colliding with the monster's face and head produced a wondrous, metallic clanging sound. Accompanying this strange resonance were sparks bursting forth from the monster's face.

"What?" A large-caliber military pistol, hitting the head at close range, couldn't even leave a scratch. Seeing this situation, Captain Zhou didn't say another word, discarded his gun, and bolted backward. While running, he didn't forget to faithfully shout out a command: "Prepare to fire..."

Hearing his words, the gunmen outside immediately raised their rifles. At the exact moment he finished shouting and was taking his second running stride, he was grabbed by the large hand of the monster with the red scales, dragged backward, and then tucked under its arm like a helpless chick as it charged out of the room.

With a whoosh of wind, he felt a flash of air, and his body was instantly outside the warehouse.