Inside the alley, the smell of blood from the wounded pup hung thick in the air.
Howls rose and fell around them as the wolf pack fixed their vicious stares on Meng Liang and his men, hackles rising, edging steadily forward.
"Damn it!"
Seeing the alpha's eyes flash green, Meng Liang cursed under his breath and raised his crude powder gun.
"Whoosh!"
The instant he moved, over a dozen wolves surged forward at once, one wave after another.
"Fire! We push through!"
Terrified as he was, Meng Liang's will to survive kept his mind clear enough to make the call at once.
"Roar!"
A massive wolf leapt into the air, lunging straight at him.
"Crack!"
A gunshot rang out, flame bursting from the barrel of Meng Liang's powder gun, and a mist of blood sprayed from the wolf's belly.
"Thud!"
The massive wolf slammed into him a moment later, pinning him down like he'd been crushed under a boulder, leaving him no chance to fight back at all.
Meng Liang's grandfather had been a hunter too, and he remembered him once saying a wolf's weakest spot was its belly, but this one didn't seem to have taken a fatal hit despite the shot.
Was it just that the powder gun lacked enough force, or had these creatures evolved even further?
Before Meng Liang could work out an answer, the massive wolf had already clamped its jaws around his throat.
Head torn from body, blood spraying across the dirt wall.
The wolf pack's assault came with terrifying speed, and Meng Liang's group barely had time to react before they were swallowed whole, torn apart into scattered pieces across the ground.
"Tramp, tramp!"
On the rooftops behind them, Ning Zhe was already moving fast toward where the pack had gathered, close enough now to hear the sound of bone and flesh being torn apart.
This wasn't happening in just this one alley, either. Throughout the sprawling shantytown around them, wolf howls and human screams rose together, one after another.
Ning Zhe couldn't make sense of it. Just recently, he hadn't spotted a single game animal within dozens of kilometers, so how could a wolf pack this large have suddenly appeared in the settlement?
By everything Ning Zhe knew, wolves usually formed packs of around seven, maybe a dozen or so at most. Within a pack, every wolf carried its share of responsibility toward the group's survival and growth. But the pack he saw tonight went far beyond anything he'd ever known. The wasteland's scarcity of food had always guaranteed wolf packs would never grow too large, and a pack numbering several dozen wolves, he'd only ever heard of such a thing existing in the old world, kept behind the walls of a zoo.
There was no time to think it over further. Ning Zhe had already caught sight of the pack devouring the bodies under the moonlight, tearing through them as easily as tearing sheets of rice paper.
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"Brother Zhe, there's too many of them. This might not be a fight we can win." Lin Xun had roughly counted the pack's numbers, his expression turning grim. He'd hunted wolves with Ning Zhe before, but only ever lone wolves, old and weakened, cast out from their packs. A full pack like this, they'd never once attempted.
"We know this ground well, and we've got the advantage of terrain. It's worth a try. If we can bring down even one wolf, it might just save the fat guy's life." Ning Zhe weighed it for only a brief moment before making his decision, calling out in a low voice, "Tinder!"
"Scratch!"
Hearing the order, Lin Xun cleared his mind of everything else, struck a match as instructed, and threw a burning bundle of tinder.
"Whoosh!"
The tinder landed in the alley, catching the plastic sheet covering the gate of one house, and quickly spreading to a haystack inside the courtyard.
The wind picked up, scattering burning straw out through the gate, and soon the alley itself was ablaze.
The pack scattered in panic, and three young wolves found themselves cut off from the rest by the wall of fire.
"Howl!"
Wolves themselves feared fire by nature, and at the alpha's low growl, the others grabbed whatever flesh was nearest and began retreating.
Seeing this, Ning Zhe gripped his metal knife and gave a low shout. "The pack's split! Now!"
"Fwip!"
The instant he spoke, Lin Xun drew his bow taut and loosed an arrow, striking a half-grown pup square in the eye with perfect precision.
"Yelp!"
The pup let out a wretched cry and began writhing in pain on the ground.
"Howl!!"
On the other side of the fire, a mother wolf, watching several pups caught in the flames, let out a mournful, piercing howl.
"Thud!"
At the same moment, Ning Zhe leapt down from the rooftop and charged straight into the flames. The burning straw wouldn't last long, so he had to move fast.
"Whoosh!"
The fire scorched him as he ran, singeing his eyebrows and hair with the smell of burnt hair, and burning a hole clean through his winter coat, exposing the grimy cotton and hemp fiber padding underneath.
"Yelp! Yelp!"
The two smaller pups, seeing Ning Zhe come charging at them, scrambled backward.
"Thud!"
Ning Zhe closed in on the injured pup and kicked the arrow lodged in its eye, killing it instantly.
"My brother's life depends on you now."
He hadn't expected catching a pup to go this smoothly. Elated, he grabbed it by the hind legs, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to sprint back the way he'd come.
"Howl! Aaaooo!!"
Watching her pup die through the wall of flames, the mother wolf let out a bone-chilling cry.
It was an untamed, defiant kind of grief, the rawest, most primal emotion an animal's instinct could unleash.
On this wasteland, humanity itself had grown scarce.
But animals remained exactly what they'd always been.
"Aaaooo!"
At the mother wolf's howl, the dozen-odd adult wolves, panicked only a moment ago, raised their heads to howl at the moon together and began closing ranks.
Killing that pup had, without question, enraged the mother wolf, and cut off the pack's only path of retreat. Fighting now with a heart full of vengeance, the wolves turned savage beyond anything before.
"Snarl!"
Among the pack, the alpha, its head covered in old scars, its body unusually powerful, snorted mist from its nostrils, front paws clawing furiously at the ground.
Seeing this, a jolt of alarm shot through Ning Zhe.
Out here on the wasteland, wolves posed an enormous threat, and were fiercely unified, savage creatures, especially under an alpha's command, their combined fighting power was terrifying, arguably even more frightening than humans, since humans understood the value of their own lives, but beasts felt no fear of death at all.
Even the tiger fears the wolf pack.
A pack of wolves gone bloodthirsty was enough to make even the mightiest predators in nature tremble. Under their coordinated assault, even the king of beasts himself couldn't always escape unscathed.
As a hunter by trade, Ning Zhe understood this truth more deeply than most.
"Damn it!"
Seeing the alpha's eyes flash green, Ning Zhe cursed under his breath, hoisted the pup over his shoulder, and bolted without a second thought.
"Tramp, tramp, tramp!"
The moment Ning Zhe moved, over a dozen adult wolves, led by the alpha, surged after him one after another, straight into the wall of fire.
"Whoosh!"
The alpha cleared the flames, its fur catching fire instantly, and came charging after Ning Zhe like a living fireball. The wolves behind it followed suit, plunging straight into the blaze, carving a path through the fire with their own bodies by sheer force.
A human's stamina was never a match for a wolf's to begin with, and Ning Zhe had barely covered ten meters before he heard ragged, panting breath closing in right behind him.
"Fwip!"
The alpha leapt high into the air, eyes blazing with murderous fury, raising its razor-sharp claws and lunging straight down at Ning Zhe's back.