Chapter 55: Farewell, Ye Sheng & Aki Sakitoku

"Awakening? What is that..."

Lu Mingfei was about to retort when another fish that had slipped through the net charged in from the side. He raised his right hand, whose numbness was slowly fading, and fired another shot.

The thunderclap-like roar of the gun made his mind race in a sharp turn, and he changed his tune: "Naturally, I awakened long ago."

Intuition told him that this "awakening" was the crucial factor behind Cassell College's desperate attempts to recruit him.

Guderian ducked his head to avoid half a skull that came flying by from an explosion and asked loudly, "Then when did you realize that you were different from ordinary people?"

Although his brain often short-circuited, by this point he should have noticed that Lu Mingfei had been seizing the opportunity to fish for information.

"Five years ago. Isn't that a bit too early?"

Lu Mingfei originally wanted to say fifteen years ago—the year he lost his parents and completely became a Harry Potter living under someone else's roof.

It was just that he never received a mysterious letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, nor did he meet a half-giant who would take him away from his aunt's house; he had left that "storage closet" entirely alone.

"Indeed quite early, but that precisely proves how extraordinary your talent is."

Guderian nodded thoughtfully. No wonder Lu Mingfei was so persistent in chasing after Chu Zihang's footsteps; it turned out both of them had awakened in the very same year.

Cassell College guarded student records extremely strictly, but for professors like them, aside from certain key pieces of information, the rest could still be accessed.

Moreover, thanks to a certain omnipotent paparazzi king, the moment Chu Zihang enrolled last year, his public profile had already been dug up; Guderian only needed to search the forum to spot the clues.

It was just that none of these things were suitable to be told to Lu Mingfei out in the open, especially since they were running for their lives right now.

"Damn it, did we poke a hornet's nest? Just how many of these monsters are left?" Guderian cursed under his breath.

At this moment, they were only a hundred meters away from the temporary camp, but as ill luck would have it, another batch of ghouls rushed down the mountain, blocking their path.

"Didn't you guys scout the situation before going on a mission?" Lu Mingfei felt a sudden urge to curse out loud. With this kind of professional competence, they had the nerve to call themselves the world's hidden guardians?

These people were simply the modern-day MAC team; without Ultraman Leo, they probably would have been wiped out long ago.

"Things happened suddenly, or else our preparations certainly would have been more thorough." Guderian briefly recounted the sequence of events regarding the tunnel incident, leaving Lu Mingfei speechless:

"Good grief, so it turns out these monsters are sensitive-skinned types. They felt something even without being touched."

Guderian: ???

His Mandarin wasn't very good; did something just flash past his face?

Before he could figure it out, Lu Mingfei had already shoved the sniper rifle into his hands, holding a gun in each hand and firing with frenzied precision, truly achieving the feat of eliminating one enemy with a single bullet.

Once his magazine was emptied, he smoothly and seamlessly pulled a spare magazine from Guderian's waist, slapped it in, and continued his manic slaughter on the other side.

In the distance, a girl with silver-dyed hair was holding an Uzi and running toward them with a group of people, seemingly pursuing the batch of ghouls that had rushed down from the mountain.

Nana Sakitoku's side had plenty of firepower and had long since blown the ghoul pack to pieces, leaving a massive pile of monster parts on the slope, yet quite a few fish that had slipped through the net were still running away.

Although they had set up defenses around the area in advance, out in the pitch-black wilderness, no one could guarantee that no omissions would occur.

Seeing the monsters—attracted by the gunfire in the woods—attacking Guderian and the others, Nana Sakitoku and her pursuers had no choice but to lower their gun barrels.

Now the ghouls were jammed between their two groups, and the slightest carelessness would result in friendly fire; none of them wanted to shoulder the blame of murdering comrades.

Yet while they had stopped shooting, the other side showed no intention of cutting the engine whatsoever.

Nana Sakitoku watched with her own eyes as a teenage boy, dressed out of the ordinary as if he were here for a spring outing, followed right beside Professor Guderian and blasted away wildly toward their direction. The gunfire of his modified PPK even drowned out the sound of a large circle of assault rifles nearby.

Watching the ghouls in the front fall one by one, Nana Sakitoku couldn't help but swallow hard.

If she hadn't been wearing gloves that made it inconvenient, she really would have wanted to rub her eyes to confirm whether she was hallucinating.

That person over there... seemed to be Lu Mingfei, right?

Why was his marksmanship so good? How could he calmly score headshots on ghouls one after another without fearing that a stray shot might hit friendly forces?

Not just her, but the other accompanying combat personnel also wore faces full of question marks.

Didn't the headquarters say that the other commissioner for the Coffin Mountain Operation was a foreigner? Why was the one laying waste and slaughtering everything a scrawny-looking high schooler?

Doubts were doubts, but the monsters still had to be fought.

With both sides working with one heart, this small group of ghouls was quickly wiped clean, and everyone successfully arrived at the base camp.

Lu Mingfei could swear that this was the most thrilling four hundred meters he had ever run, with a level of danger second only to Leon's streets.

At this point, there were no longer any locust-like ghouls pouring out of the tunnel from the mountain, but the gunfire over there still hadn't ceased.

These bronze-colored monsters possessed far too much concealment under the cover of night, and because they were essentially corpses, even thermal-imaging night-vision goggles struggled to capture their forms.

While Nana Sakitoku was leading people to reinforce Guderian, quite a few people on this side had already been ambushed and injured.

Fortunately, their protective gear was up to par, so they only had a few ribs snapped by the claws.

If they had truly been scratched, conservatively speaking, a rabies vaccine, a tetanus shot, and sticky rice would all have to be deployed together.

The dashing silver-haired girl led her team to clean up the aftermath, while Guderian anxiously dragged Gao Mi off to find the accompanying medical personnel.

Lu Mingfei was just about to find Guderian to get his Remington 700 sniper rifle back, and incidentally ask for a few magazines to practice his shooting, when before he could even open his mouth, he spotted an acquaintance lying in the temporary treatment center.

The young man was handsome, pale-faced, with sunken eye sockets and a weak aura, looking rather like a youth who had overindulged in debauchery and was almost sucked dry—it was none other than Ye Sheng, whom he had just added as a friend without having the chance to exchange many words.

"Yo, isn't this Ye Sheng? How come you're so feeble after just a few days apart?"

He squatted down in front of the man, reached out to press his pulse, and exclaimed in astonishment, "Does your Cassell College have to sacrifice your own bodies to subdue demons? Looking at you like this, your kidneys are practically overdrawn."

Ye Sheng: "..."

At this moment, the executioner division's diving ace of Cassell College was inwardly shocked.

He had just made a death flag saying that the next time he saw Lu Mingfei, he would personally tell him superpowers truly existed in this world, only to have his face slapped flat in less than half an hour.

Especially since the other guy had just slaughtered his way out of a horde of monsters, carrying a gun and a backpack while looking completely relaxed—he was in vastly better shape than his own emaciated state.

"Why aren't you talking?" Seeing Ye Sheng play mute, Lu Mingfei cast a solemn gaze toward the smoking tunnel entrance on the mountain:

"Don't tell me that's the legendary Spider Cave, and you were caught by a spider spirit and..."

"Cough, cough! Stop talking nonsense, I was just exerting myself too much a moment ago and collapsed from exhaustion!"

Before Lu Mingfei could utter any more wild remarks, Ye Sheng finally snapped back to his senses, and in his agitation, he almost sprang straight up from the ground to perform a dying patient's sudden sit-up.

Pity that his physical strength was lacking; halfway up, he flopped right back down.

Raising his head to glance at the distant battle, Lu Mingfei noticed Nana Sakitoku and a dozen-odd people returning to the battlefield, quickly stabilizing the situation.

Certain that he didn't need to step in and help, he simply sat down beside Ye Sheng:

"I was just joking, why so nervous? Are you afraid Miss Sakitoku will overhear and misunderstand?"