His voice cracked.
This island was at least several times the size of Li Cang’s Floating Island, with half a dilapidated, old, bluestone-tiled house standing on it; the main building had collapsed, but the side rooms were very well preserved, complete with a chimney.
In front of the house was a bluestone slab walkway that extended to the corner of the wall, and the collapsed courtyard wall, made of blue bricks, buried more than half of the flowers and plants.
Even in its fragmented state, it was still evident that the owner of this small courtyard was a very refined person; the green plants, rockeries, and pond landscaping, whose original appearance could still be vaguely discerned, were arranged in a well-ordered manner.
Such aesthetics and cost were not something an ordinary person could afford.
“It has to be the kitchen, it has to be the kitchen!”
Now was not the time to cultivate artistic cells; Li Cang did not pay much attention to anything else and scurried up like a rabbit.
In the courtyard, there were several earthenware kimchi jars, almost completely shattered; the surface of the rotten kimchi was covered with a layer of frothy white film, emitting a foul odor, and the green water in the pond also had a muddy smell.
The cedar wood door, over four fingers thick, lay half-leaning on the ground with its frame.
As soon as he entered the house, Li Cang instantly retreated with even greater speed.
The kitchen!
But someone was there!
A filthy figure leaned against the wall, huddled in the shadows.
In the three days since the disaster, it was the first time Li Cang had encountered a Floating Island with living survivors, and the emotions that suddenly welled up were surprisingly only tension.
Extreme tension, a bewildered tension.
Who are you?
Where am I?
Why aren’t you moving?
Are you trying to ambush me?
Are we teaming up or fighting here?
Social phobia is too hard...
“Ahem, frie, friend?”
No response.
Just as Li Cang thought he had unfortunately perished, the figure suddenly erupted, crossing a distance of four or five meters in one step, directly knocking Li Cang and the half-leaning door frame flying.
Li Cang rolled seven or eight meters away, his back hitting the courtyard wall solidly, almost spitting out a mouthful of old blood from the impact—
What the hell kind of strength is this for a normal person?
A mass of sticky black hair hung long down its neck, its eyes bloodshot, almost no whites visible.
Its left face was still normal, but its right half was covered with a thick layer of crocodile-skin-like keratin, irregularly embedded with some scales, extending from its right half-face all the way to its right neck, back, and chest.
Its entire right arm was covered in a thick layer of keratin, with a sharp, bluish-green bone spur bent at the elbow.
Its hand was four or five times the size of a normal person’s, with jet-black nails at least five inches long.
All the skin covered with keratin seemed incompatible with the normal skin, cracking into a deep bloody gash, constantly dripping with grease, bodily fluids, and dark red blood.
“WDNMD!”
This creature, which was similar to a human but not entirely human, made goosebumps instantly erupt all over Li Cang’s body, feeling even more terrifying than other monstrous, non-human entities.
Li Cang’s fear was greatly amplified, and a chill ran down his spine as if he had fallen into a deep valley.
“Ho-ho…”
The humanoid monster let out a few low growls from its throat.
Its mouth opened wide, revealing six extremely prominent, sharp teeth, drooling.
Its crimson, purplish eyes, like those of a half-starved madman, looked at Li Cang with no difference from how they would look at a pork hock.
It was clear that this thing, like him, was starving.
Li Cang rolled, dodging the monster’s pounce, his posture ungraceful but very practical.
The monster was not that agile, even appearing somewhat weak; it stumbled and crashed into the half-collapsed courtyard wall, kicking up clouds of dust.
Coincidentally, the already tottering wall was hit squarely by the monster, completely collapsing, and shattered stones and tiles rained down on the monster.
Opportunity!
Li Cang was very decisive; he scrambled to grab two bricks and swung them in wide arcs, delivering two powerful blows to the monster’s crown and temples.
Dirty, foul-smelling bodily fluids immediately splattered.
Li Cang dared not let these unknown liquids get on him and quickly retreated.
The monster roared chaotically.
It acted as if nothing had happened, sweeping its arm in a wide arc.
What a long arm!
“Bang!”
Li Cang failed to dodge in time, taking a heavy blow to the abdomen, and the shepherd’s purse he had just eaten was immediately vomited out.
Its strength was extraordinary; three days before the disaster, this elbow strike would have cost at least a full CT scan from head to toe at the Second Hospital, the kind that wouldn’t let you get up without tens of thousands of yuan.
Now, it was different.
People’s hearts have become depraved!
The brief skirmish clearly told Li Cang that if the monster successfully escaped from the rubble, his most dignified way to die would be to slide over and feed it until it was full.
Li Cang stubbornly climbed up, staggering onto the pile of broken bricks, and began a brutal, frenzied assault on the monster, which was half-buried and unable to move.
After smashing an unknown number of bricks, the monster’s impossibly hard head was almost hammered into a pulp, and the arm exposed finally drooped weakly, leaving only un-dead muscle twitching and spasming.
“Hoo-hoo…”
He plopped down on the ground, panting like a dog.
He had used all his strength, struggled twice, but still couldn’t get up.
It was only then that Li Cang began to feel fear.
Already covered in sweat, a layer of cold sweat suddenly broke out on his back.
The monster’s very salty, pungent, rotten smell wafted over in waves.
After thinking for a moment, he found a few broken pieces of wood to pry the monster out of the pile of bricks and stones.
Its height was clearly much greater than Li Cang’s 1.8-meter-plus, almost two meters tall, extremely strong, with muscles like a sculpture.
Aside from the half-body of bizarre scales, or what could be called bone armor, its exposed skin was also abnormal; the blood vessels were dark and twisted, and the muscles subtly showed a bluish tint, yet the skin itself was extremely fair and smooth, with almost no visible pores—white people would be crying with envy.
It was wearing a tattered, shapeless assault jacket and work pants, with a string of wooden beads on its wrist, now stained with bodily fluids and blood beyond recognition of their original color, seemingly telling of its former human identity.
Li Cang opened his mouth, speechless for a long time.
Given that the mother planet had completely fractured and many survivors were still busy posting, the appearance of this monster seemed so unremarkable.
However,
Even though the monster’s head had been pounded into a mush like sachima, its corpse exhibited activity that defied Li Cang’s biological knowledge from years ago.
Its head… no, its spinal bones, skull fragments, and pale pasty substance and blood vessels
were sticking together like taffy, constantly twitching and wriggling.
These chaotic elements combined on the monster’s torso, forming a grotesquely strange and unsettling mass that made one’s scalp tingle.
Blood vessels and sinews protruded like tentacles, clinging everywhere, as if trying to restore their original form.
However, in the next second, the horribly shaped mass exploded with a bang, scattering like tortoise jelly falling to the ground, a truly horrific sight.
It kept bubbling, extruding wisps of yellowish-green foul gas.
Then...
It continued to combine and arrange randomly, forming a mass again.
Then it would explode again, repeating the cycle tirelessly.
Such a vivid scene made Li Cang directly hungry.