Chapter 53

Zhang Heng’s face turned glum and his hands blurred as he pulled the triggers on his guns at baffling angles. The countless training sessions with guns had made gunslinging a second nature to him. The two Desert Eagles were as precise as the Reaper, with every single bullet taking one xenomorph down each.

Zhang Heng’s face turned glum and his hands blurred as he pulled the triggers on his guns at baffling angles. The countless training sessions with guns had made gunslinging a second nature to him. The two Desert Eagles were as precise as the Reaper, with every single bullet taking one xenomorph down each.

All 14 rounds were emptied in just five seconds, yet Zhang Heng didn’t stop. He ejected the emptied magazines quickly and two fresh ones were loaded into the guns just when the emptied ones hit the ground. The entire process lasted for half a second before the fires of death spewed from the muzzles of the Desert Eagles yet again.

The xenomorphs managed to break through Zhang Heng’s wall of fire after losing over 20 of their own. However, there were only about four or five xenomorphs left by then. Zhang Heng kept shooting and three xenomorphs fell before long. The remaining two managed to finally get close when one of them launched itself into the air with a powerful burst from its hind legs and immediately charging for Zhang Heng.

The speed at which the xenomorph charged made it so that even if he was able to kill the creature while it was still airborne, the xenomorph’s momentum would have enabled its body to crash onto him. Regular people might hesitate for a split second when met with such a scenario, but not Zhang Heng. Without hesitation, he bent over and kicked, appearing somewhere about half a meter away, evading the xenomorph’s attack by just a hair’s breadth. He extended a Desert Eagle right in front of him, putting it against the xenomorph’s head, which looked as if the xenomorph was putting its head against the gun instead.

The round in his magazine was fired into that creature’s brain in a split second. Zhang Heng threw away the emptied gun from his left hand and drew a bayonet in a reverse grip, launching himself backward hard and plunged the weapon in the last xenomorph’s jaw that was charging at him.

The xenomorph shrieked in pain and it swept its two-meter-long tail at Zhang Heng like a whip.

The force of a xenomorph’s tail-whip was massive, especially at the spiked end of the tail. The attack was able to burst supersonic speeds in the blink of an eye and penetrate steel alloy plates that were tens of millimeters thick. If the attack were to hit him, he would have suffered serious injuries despite having protection from the security suit.

However, Zhang Heng seemed to have anticipated the attack beforehand and his reflexes, which were higher than the xenomorph’s movements, enabled him to lunge forward while the tail whipped at him. He threw the emptied gun from his right hand and drew the second bayonet, plunging it down hard on the xenomorph’s head from above viciously. The tremendous force of the attack nailed the xenomorph down on the ground.

Everything looked like it happened over a long period of time, but only about 11 to 12 seconds passed between him firing his first shot and killing the last xenomorph. The scene that could have been described as a point of no return for regular people but was a walk in the park for Zhang Heng. If it hadn’t been for the fact that fighting up close and personal all the time was too risky, he was confident enough to get rid of all the xenomorphs armed only with a pair of bayonets.

Zhang Heng scored a flawless victory against over 30 xenomorphs.

He breathed a sigh of relief after getting all of that done and pulled the bayonet that nailed the xenomorph to the ground. The bayonet looked as shiny and slick as it had always been, without even the slightest signs of corrosion, and he nodded satisfactorily.

Bayonets were expensive weapons crafted for special orders. The ones Zhang Heng used were crafted using the most advanced of special steel alloys, and he specifically asked for a thick layer of anti-corrosion coating put on them. Each weapon cost him tens of thousands of yuan to craft.

Zhang Heng realized what was so difficult about the Alien plane after making it through the first stage. What happened there was but the first wave in the Alien plane, and he had already exhausted half of the ammunition he packed in advance.

Surviving in this plane for 36 hours unscathed looked utterly impossible.

Then again, this was only a simulation. Things might be different when the Dimensional Star sent him to the true Alien plane. One way or another, there was absolutely no way that the Dimensional Star would send him to a place that survivability was non-existent, as that was the fundamental rule inherent with the Dimensional Star.

He was not about to stay around for any longer, as gunshots and the stench of xenomorph blood would only serve to draw more xenomorphs towards his location. He needed to leave the scene before a new wave of xenomorphs came.

Zhang Heng successfully arrived at the ruins of the city after having to wipe out yet another small group of xenomorphs while he was on his way there.

The ruins seemed to be somewhere in the US or the UK, as he could see occasional English writings on the walls of the collapsed buildings. However, it was obvious that the city had the highest radiation levels compared to the surrounding areas. There had been at least four or five devastating nuclear bombs that detonated in the city back when human civilization was being wiped out, making it a place of death that even xenomorphs had a hard time approaching.

Zhang Heng was able to take a casual stroll around in the ruins due to the protection given by the security suit. It was just as he expected—there were no signs of xenomorph activity around and he couldn’t help but look up at the sky, quickly catching over a dozen silhouettes circling in the air.

Those silhouettes had pitch-black bodies and had webbed wings like bats. It was apparent that those were flying xenomorphs that never appeared in movies before.

Zhang Heng couldn’t help but shake his head, as it was obvious that he couldn’t do anything to them from where he stood, unless he had an effective long-range weapon with him, like the Remington sniper rifle. There was simply no other way he could get rid of those ‘eyes’ up in the sky.

He looked down to check his watch, which was a very expensive mechanical watch that also had a compass, a timer, and a variety of other functions made specifically for surviving in the wild. Only an hour had passed since he came to the plane and he still had to stick around for 35 hours before he was able to clear the mission objective. He picked a low building that had yet to completely collapse around the vicinity, checking his surroundings and possible escape routes, before deeming the place safe enough to serve as a temporary shelter.

Evening came before long and the sky, which had been covered with a layer of radioactive fallout dust so thick that daytime looked like sundown, became completely dark before nightfall.

Zhang Heng’s right eye had night vision as part of its innate combat module, while the high-tech suit that he brought from the Dead Space plane came with a variety of visual features like infrared vision, thermal vision, and so on. As such, there was no fear of being attacked at night. The only thing he had to worry about was finding a place to sleep during the night.

Despite having been enhanced by the T-Virus, Zhang Heng was not superhuman. He could have easily forgone sleep for up to 72 hours and not feel tired during peacetime, so 36 hours wasn’t even considered a problem for him. However, given that he was behind enemy lines and was required to be alert all the time, all of that mental tension would wear down both his mental and physical stamina. As such, 36 hours became difficult for him.

The effects would get especially pronounced after 24 hours, where his mental and physical stamina would drop sharply. Fighting in such a state would no doubt be extremely taxing and dangerous.

Whatever light was left in the sky gradually dimmed and night came shrouding the area like a huge sack. Zhang Heng sighed exasperatingly in that dead silent world, feeling himself being taken over by some intense loneliness that he couldn’t quite place.

This was a plane where humans were rendered extinct. Unlike planes like that of Resident Evil, there was no way that there could be any survivors found on Earth or in the Alien plane. That meant that if he were to travel to that plane, he would probably be the only human found in the entire plane.

Zhang Heng felt an indescribable fear at that thought which almost sent shivers down his spine. That was the first time that Zhang Heng’s belief buckled.

“If there were to be such a day coming to my world, would I have the courage to turn a blind eye to the rest of humanity? Could Mom, Dad, and Xin accept the fact that humans have gone extinct, and the four of us would have to live the rest of our lives in pain and suffering?” That question made Zhang Heng feel very uncomfortable.

He couldn’t help but open the mask part of the suit and pull out a pack of cigarettes from his backpack before lighting one up and began to puff away.

The searing smoke immediately traveled all over his lungs and all of the fog in his head was cleared out.

Zhang Heng wore a bitter smile and found that despite all of his training to toughen his psychological fortitude, there was still no way he could let his home plane be eradicated, as humans are social and protective animals.

Everything around him was quiet in that deep, dark, and lonely night. The entire world around him only had the little bit of light found at the end of his cigarette that lit the surrounding area up, as if to serve as a testament to his loneliness.

He smoked one cigarette after another to keep himself awake. However, by the time he got to his eighth cigarette, he felt his stomach churn and a feeling of nausea that he couldn’t suppress shot to his head. He went straight to the window and bent over, stuck his head out of the window, and vomited as hard as he could.

The only thing that came out was stomach acid and nothing despite his ‘efforts’. He wiped his mouth with a bitter smirk and sealed the mask of his suit up again before feeling somewhat better.

It was obvious that the radiation levels where he was had vastly exceeded his expectation, so much so that he speculated that the ambient radiation has reached above 10 Sieverts. The city was bombed by nuclear weapons from the future, which definitely was far more devastating than the ones found back in his reality.

Regular people would die in mere minutes after being exposed to radiation of Six Sieverts and above. Zhang Heng, on the other hand, had been exposed to a dose of radiation over 10 Sieverts for over half an hour at that time. It was fortunate that his physique was beyond that of normal humans, or his first foreign plane simulation training would have ended right away.