Yang Ying knew that in a direct confrontation, he was no match for the Ape-man. The Psychic Ape-man alone was several times stronger than him, not to mention its formidable physical power and superior weaponry. If he engaged it in close combat, the result would inevitably be being cut to pieces in less than a second.
Yet, at this moment, Yang Ying possessed one advantage: the Ape-man was blind. Analyzing his own condition, Yang Ying deduced that mental energy could significantly sharpen the senses. For instance, mental power could enhance sight, hearing, and sixth sense, but it could not replace those fundamental senses entirely.
Consequently, the Ape-man’s sight was effectively useless.
From a safe distance of five meters, Yang Ying reached toward the laser pistol holstered at the Ape-man's waist, concentrating his mind with fierce intensity, willing the weapon to lift and pull itself into his hand.
Pull! Hurry and pull!
The entire world fell silent. The Ape-man’s heavy breathing, the sound of the lightsaber ionizing the air, and Yang Ying’s own respiration—sounds that had been amplified and clearly audible through his helmet’s filtration system—now receded into a distant hum.
In Yang Ying’s mind, only the laser pistol remained. As his focus deepened, a red light, darker than before, emanated from his eyes.
The Ape-man hadn't seen Yang Ying's action, but it sensed unease. It swung its lightsaber faster; thick, long veins bulged on the surface of its arm muscles, revealing it was exerting maximum effort. Furthermore, the Ape-man strained to open its eyes a mere slit, attempting to pinpoint Yang Ying’s location, and pressed forward. With a single shift of its foot, the Ape-man covered a distance of a meter, rapidly closing the gap between them.
Yang Ying certainly dared not engage in close combat. He could only turn tail and run. The lightsaber sliced past his back, making him break out in a cold sweat. Clad in his spacesuit, his skin couldn't register the extreme heat of the blade, but the sensation of imminent death clung to him like a shadow.
Even so, he did not surrender his concentration, continuing to struggle to focus his spirit on drawing the laser pistol while fleeing.
Finally, the laser pistol moved!
The Ape-man instantly detected the disturbance. Its first reaction was to shove Yang Ying away. It pushed its left hand, which had been covering its face, toward Yang Ying, unleashing a burst of potent psychic energy that hurled him backward.
Then the Ape-man pulled its hand back to its waist, intending to secure the weapon.
"Not a chance!"
Yang Ying shouted. Although he had been thrown back, his concentration had not ceased. He twisted in mid-air, facing the Ape-man, and hurled the cleaver from his hand. The cleaver spun perfectly, embedding itself precisely into the Ape-man’s left wrist, causing it to miss grasping the laser pistol that had suddenly flown free from its holster by a hair's breadth.
The laser pistol flew toward Yang Ying!
Yang Ying snatched the gun mid-air, then tumbled twice on the ground before regaining his footing. Standing up, he couldn't help but clench his fist in a victorious gesture. After being hunted since leaving his doorstep, he finally had a decent weapon!
The Ape-man spun around to flee, kicking off powerfully enough to leap ten meters high, aiming for the adjacent rooftop!
Yang Ying aimed the gun and fired wildly at the creature. A hit!
The towering Ape-man and the meter-long lightsaber were simply too different in scale; the blade could not protect its entire body, especially since it wasn't the sort of opponent who could use a lightsaber to deflect a laser beam.
The outcome of this battle had been decided the moment Yang Ying acquired the laser pistol.
The Ape-man slammed into the wall at the edge of the rooftop and fell back down, missing the escape onto the roof by mere inches—that tiny distance being the difference between life and death.
Yang Ying kept firing, striking it over a dozen times in total. Each shot punched a large hole in its frame, several hitting vital areas. The Ape-man shrieked, and its two-meter-tall, muscular body collapsed, motionless.
At that very moment, Yang Ying felt a chill wash over him. A surge of ferocious mental power radiated from several blocks away, laced with intense unwillingness and madness, rapidly approaching him.
This intense sense of danger surpassed even the feeling he had when the Ape-man first appeared.
"Another powerful figure has emerged?"
Yang Ying picked up the lightsaber, simultaneously noticing a faint reflection beneath the sparse fur on the Ape-man's neck. He reached out, parted the fur, and saw the reflection came from a thin chain attached to a metal dog tag. Engraved on the tag was a script Yang Ying had never seen before, clearly something recording the Ape-man's identity and rank.
Since it was within easy reach, Yang Ying tore the tag off as a souvenir of killing an Ape-man, placing it—along with the laser pistol and the lightsaber—into the storage compartment of his motorcycle.
Then he mounted the bike and fled.
Though Yang Ying had won the contest against the Ape-man, he was utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally. His head ached fiercely, and he had no desire to fight anymore.
The magnetic levitation motorcycle floated in the air; traveling forward required no regard for ground friction, allowing speeds easily exceeding two hundred kilometers per hour.
Yang Ying sped through two city blocks. The streets were littered with vehicles crushed into scrap metal, corpses, and blood—some resulting from traffic accidents, the rest from external attacks.
Yang Ying had ridden far beyond the sight of the Ape-man's corpse, yet the sense of danger had not vanished; if anything, it had intensified.
"It's here!"
Yang Ying looked back and saw a wheel, two stories high with dozens of grotesque insectoid legs sprouting from its sides, slice like lightning through the intersection behind him, rolling rapidly toward him with a rumbling sound!
Most of the buildings lining the road were only two or three stories tall, making this legged wheel appear enormous.
A wheel?
No, not a wheel!
Yang Ying looked closer and realized it was a centipede at least twenty meters long, its entire body covered in biologically metallic, lustrous armor. Its head and tail were coiled together in a ring, making it resemble a wheel. The centipede rolled at terrifying speed, carrying an aura of crushing everything in its path; even the magnetic motorcycle couldn't shake it off.
Yang Ying drew the laser pistol and fired at the centipede. The laser beams mostly reflected off the bio-armor, leaving only small black scorch marks.
The centipede was closing in. Yang Ying had pushed the motorcycle's speed to its absolute limit, the scenery on either side rushing backward like a blur. He glanced back and saw the centipede’s speed was still increasing—it was clearly faster than the motorcycle!
He arrived at an intersection just then. Yang Ying wrenched the handlebars, and the motorcycle let out a screech as it turned onto the road to the right.
The immense inertia from the speed nearly sent the motorcycle crashing into the opposite wall, but the centipede was heavier and faster, meaning its inertia was exponentially greater. It failed to turn in time and shot straight through the intersection.
Yang Ying breathed a sigh of relief. This centipede’s maneuverability wasn't superior to the motorcycle's; he could shake it off by utilizing sharp turns.
However, one problem remained: Yang Ying pondered how the centipede had detected him.
After all, the moment he killed the Ape-man, the centipede immediately knew. This could be understood; perhaps the two shared some sort of psychic link, allowing the second party to be alerted upon the death of the first—a common trope in fiction.
But he hadn't met the centipede face-to-face, yet it could track him. Could psychic power achieve this? Yang Ying was doubtful, which implied this insect possessed an unknown form of sensory capability.
Unless he understood how the centipede found him, he wouldn't be able to escape.
The rumbling sound approached again, but this time, it was ahead!
The centipede burst out from the intersection in front of him—it had known to cut him off!
"Damn it! This centipede isn't an idiot!"
Yang Ying’s assessment of the creature instantly upgraded by two levels. Turning sharply now would mean hitting the wall; braking was suicide. He had no retreat left.
He had to risk it!