Chapter 23

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

When the black mutated ants surged over like a tidal wave, Shen Cong’s expression changed drastically.

When facing one hundred mutated ants who attacked him ahead of the others, he could still rely on Titan’s Activity laced armor to stop their charge and lure them over one by one so that he could kill them. But if Titan had to face the mass of ants over there, it would be covered in no time.

‘What should I do?!’

Shen Cong sucked in a deep breath and squashed down the nervousness in his heart. The more dangerous a situation was, the less he was allowed to panic. His mind started working swiftly, and information as well as countless plans flashed through his mind.

The dangers in the post-apocalyptic world always surpassed his imagination and what Titan could handle. The flood caused by the storm was a great danger, and the ant colony was also a great danger. And what was difficult about both was that Titan did not have a good way to handle either situation.

After the flood left, Shen Cong had thought of a way to handle any future storms. He sealed off the joints of the truck, including the vent, so that Titan would become a war truck that could be submerged in water.

He also made a new plan. Once he reached Hefei, he would definitely install a few more motors attached to a propellor so that Titan could move in water.

After all, he did not know when the next storm would arrive. The sky tended to start pouring whenever it wanted.

Before the apocalypse, Shen Cong could only imagine how the apocalypse would be like based on the conditions he already knew. However, he had believed that a zombie outbreak would happen, so Titan’s modifications had been tailored to face that sort of apocalypse. He had installed an armor covered with steel spikes, had an abundance of weapons and food, along with a small amount of drinking water as well as fuel.

If an apocalypse at the level of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 appeared, no matter what, Shen Cong would just end up dying, so there was no need for him to make many preparations in regards to it.

From what it looked like, however, the current apocalypse was a weakened version of 2012 and combined with Resident Evil. It was completely out of his expectations.

Fortunately, Titan had become “alive”, or else, Shen Cong would have met his end a long time ago.

Right now, he was facing another danger.

Shen Cong never thought about fleeing when he faced the surging ants, because there was no way he could escape. He quickly sealed the hole with the steel board, turned around, and went to the weapons rack, where he found the high-pressure air gun and pistol. He brought them to the window, loaded them, opened the window, and took aim at the relatively large mutated ant moving together with the others in the distance.

He fired.

Bang!

The high-pressure air gun fired lead bullets. The guns that Shen Cong bought in the beginning were all guns created to possess great power. Even though their power might not compare to an imitation Type 64 pistol, they held an advantage over the pistol because they were fast and possessed high accuracy. In truth, Shen Cong himself knew how to create high-pressure air guns, but he did not have a stamping press, and the compartments he created were all rather crude. The accuracy would then be low as well.

The high-pressure air guns he bought were rumored to be able to kill dogs within 100 m.

He should be able to kill a singular mutated ant easily.

The lead bullet flew out, and a mutated ant with a huge mandible died on the spot. The largest mutated ants were about the size of a huge Coca-Cola bottle. They should be the mutated forms of soldier ants.

But even if they were soldier ants, once they were shot, they could only be like small pebbles that fell into a lake—they fell to the ground without causing a ruckus.

Bang!

Another soldier ant died.

Shen Cong focused on soldier ants and killed them while he thought about how he should deal with the ants coming at him like a swarm. Fire and water were an effective way to deal with gregarious insects like ants, but there were no lakes nearby, and neither was there a large amount of flammable objects. Titan was not able to gain speed in such terrain as well.

‘What should I do?!’

Shen Cong was swiftly cast into a situation where he was at his wits’ end. His hands as he fired his gun started to shake a little, and the lead bullets started wavering. Fortunately, there were many mutated ants, so even if he fired aimlessly, he would still hit one of them.

But things could not continue this way. The air cylinder in the high-pressure air gun allowed the firing of one hundred shots when it was full. The first fifty would possess great power, while the subsequent ones would be each weaker than the last as the pressure in the air cylinder became weaker.

Soon, Shen Cong fired the sixtieth shot from his first high-pressure air gun. The air cylinder showed clear signs that the air pressure inside had decreased, and the fired lead bullets were no longer as strong as before. But Shen Cong could still kill an ant with each shot when he hit them at close distance. By then, the ants had already reached the area around Titan and surrounded it.

The mutated ants tried to break into Titan through the window, forcing Shen Cong to give up on his gun and switch to his dagger. He swung the fang dagger and cut down the mutated ants.

‘Their numbers just keep increasing!’

Since there was Activity attached to the fang dagger, killing the mutated ants was a piece of cake for Shen Cong, but this also put a huge burden on him, because if he did not attach Activity to the dagger, its power would fall by a whole level. The exoskeletons of the mutated ants seemed to have mutated to become similar to metal, which meant that they were incredibly sturdy.

Sweat trickled down Shen Cong’s cheeks, but he did not have time to wipe it off. He used an increasing amount of Activity to sharpen his fang dagger, and it used up a lot of his energy.

1He soon began gasping for breath.

But what exhausted him even more than using up his Activity was that he still had not figured out a way to get out of the dangerous situation.

Shen Cong had always believed himself to be smart, even if he did not possess an astonishing IQ. After all, it was impossible for someone who was not smart to modify a heavy truck. But being smart did not guarantee a good performance when danger was right in front of the eyes.

Since Shen Cong did not have any experience, he sometimes made some rash decisions, thinking that it was only natural for him to do so. For example, when he met the prehistoric crocodile in the water.

The best way to handle it would have been to forget all about his own curiosity and endure the unknown presence until it left. But he just had to be certain about what he was facing, and he ended up using the X-ray machine, which angered the prehistoric crocodile.

And it led to Titan’s near destruction.

This lesson gave Shen Cong a better understanding as to what sort of situation he was currently trapped in and how he should handle it. Hence, he concocted a small strategy to survive during the apocalypse: If he could win against a monster, then he should not let it go. If he could not win, then he should run. If he could not run, then fake his death. If he could not fake his death, fight desperately for his life.

‘Should I… fake my death now? How do I do that?’ Shen Cong closed the window and rubbed his nearly numb wrists as he panted.

The burden of using up Activity was too great.

Once Shen Cong became certain that there was no way he could win against the ants coming at him like a wave, he chose to fake his death. He suppressed the surging emotions in his heart and focused his mind on Titan.

In an instant, Titan delivered a very dangerous piece of information.

Countless mutated ants had climbed up Titan, and they covered it densely. Once they found that they could not find a way to enter the truck, they started biting its external armor, but the armor had Activity supporting it, and the mutated ants could not bite through it, since they did not know how to use Activity.

However, the mutated ants secreted a substance that was similar to formic acid in the stingers on their abdomen. Once that substance came into contact with Activity, it gained a corrosive effect, and it slowly whittled down the Activity in Titan’s armor.

After devouring the Activity from the motorcycle, Titan had nearly 49% of its body covered in Activity, but it was reducing slowly. In just one minute, the distribution of Activity across Titan had dropped from 49% to 48.7%.

Nearly 0.3% Activity was reduced in one minute, which meant that one hour would be all it took for the Activity in Titan to fall to 10%, which was the state where it would be at the brink of death.

2Once half of Titan’s Activity was gone, it would definitely not be able to endure the bites from the mutated ants, since its metal armor would have lost its Activity. The wrecked car the mutated ants devoured previously was also made of metal, but it was reduced to mere scraps within a short amount of time. While Shen Cong increased the speed at which Titan absorbed the wandering Activity around them, he tried to hide Titan’s actions.

But this proved to be not uneffective. The ants had already set their sights on Titan, and they just continued biting into it without paying attention to anything else.

1This was different from when Shen Cong faced the prehistoric crocodile. Keeping silent did nothing.

‘How can I put on a disguise?’

The more urgent the situation was, the faster Shen Cong’s mind worked. The ways to use Activity flashed in his mind as he attempted to search for a feasible method to get him out of the situation.

‘Extension allows me to slowly guide the Activity in metals and non-metals which have been previously infused with Activity so that I can change their shape.

‘Alloying allows me to fuse metals and non-metals that possess Activity with other metals and non-metals.

‘As for Transmission… Activity Transmits very quickly while in metals, but in non-metals, it is much slower.

‘Exchange allows Titan to send a portion of the Activity it absorbed into my body through something similar to a magnetic field.

‘Absorption allows Titan to absorb the wandering Activity in the world.

‘Devour allows Titan to devour the Activity from other mutated metals.

‘Sharpen allows me to use Activity on Activity cores, making them sharper and tougher.

‘Recovery allows Activity to recover my wounds.

‘Strengthen allows me to infuse Activity into metals and non-metals that had absorbed Activity before, and it increases all of their attributes drastically.

‘Radiation makes mutated forms constantly release an electromagnetic field that is similar to radioactivity.

‘Frequency is just the different radiation frequencies between different mutated lifeforms.

‘Ingestion is the ability of mutated lifeforms like myself and the plastic rabbit in getting the abundant amount of Activity from the flesh of other mutated lifeforms by eating them.

‘Alteration is the main factor in how Activity causes a lifeform to mutate. The characteristics of Alteration are especially prominent on animals, because some parts of their bodies show clear signs of Alteration.’

That was all the information related to Activity Shen Cong had gathered over the two months or so through repeated research. But even if he had gathered so much information about Activity, he knew he had only gained superficial knowledge regarding this phenomenon. There were still plenty of things he did not understand about it.

‘Extension, Alloying, Transmission, Exchange, Absorption, Devour, Sharpen, Recovery, Strengthen, Radiation, Frequency, Ingestion, Alteration… Hmm?’

Suddenly, light flashed in Shen Cong’s chaotic thoughts.

‘Frequency… Frequency! That’s right, Frequency!’

The radiation frequency of each mutated lifeform was different from the others. This was something Shen Cong had noticed after he devoured the Activity from the plastic rabbit’s motorcycle. The Activity in Titan and the motorcycle had different frequencies.

Humans and animals used their eyes to identify the differences in other lifeforms and categorized them using visual cues, but what did ants use to differentiate other things from themselves?

Shen Cong remembered that National Geography had once given an introduction about ants before, and he had watched that particular episode. Ants used their antennas to identity smells, sound, and pheromones. Then, if he wanted to destroy the ants’ senses, he had to target these aspects. Besides, living creatures who had mutated should all be able to perceive Activity, which meant that they were also able to sense its frequency.

It was easy to deal with sound. Shen Cong had already turned off Titan’s ignition, so it was completely silent right now.

As for scent… he needed something that produced a pungent smell to cover Titan’s scent.

‘Lindane can produce powder that gives off a pungent smell!’

Shen Cong had lindane in the truck, and it was known as hexachlorocyclohexane. It was once the most produced form of pesticide, but later on, due to its strong stability, high toxicity, and harmful effects toward the human body, it was banned from production. But Shen Cong had still bought more than 5 kg worth of lindane through hidden channels, because its ability to kill pests was really good.

Shen Cong immediately went to search for his lindane. Then, he opened the window, poured lindane all over the ground and the truck. Wherever the powder went, the mutated ants avoided it, just as Shen Cong expected.

Next was the most crucial part of the entire plan—he had to change Titan’s Activity frequency until it was in sync with that of the mutated ants.