43: Chapter 43 Chen Chen's Gambler's Mentality, Jiang Yanxue's Cause-and-Effect Relationship Deepens!

"Move it! Move it now!" the leader roared at the top of its lungs.

It scrambled to its feet and turned, kicking the leg of a nearby cyborg equipped with a chainsaw.

"Are you deaf! Go open the hidden compartment!"

Six cyborgs scrambled on all fours toward the container barricade.

The chainsaw cyborg cut through the welded steel plates, sending sparks flying everywhere.

Two others rushed into the slaughterhouse, stepping over the dried blood on the ground, and carried out a treasure chest radiating a red glow.

Five minutes later.

The loot was piled in a small heap in front of the tank traps.

Two barrels of pure fuel, fourteen intermediate vehicle cores, and various miscellaneous mutated materials.

At the very top sat the chest emitting that eerie red light.

[Flesh Mutation Treasure Chest].

The chest was made of living tissue, its surface patterns writhing slowly.

An amber-red, eye-like gemstone was embedded in the latch, its pupil spinning rapidly as it scanned its surroundings.

Chen Chen pushed open the car door and stepped down.

His combat boots crunched onto the dark brown ground.

He walked to the chest, squatted down, and ran his fingertip across its surface.

It felt warm to the touch, with a faint pulse.

The leader and the other five cyborgs huddled ten meters away, not daring to even breathe loudly.

Chen Chen gripped the eye-like gemstone with one hand.

He gave it a forceful twist.

With a squelch...

The gemstone shattered, and dark red liquid splattered onto the ground.

The lid popped open.

A thick, pungent scent of blood billowed out.

Inside were layers of cartilage-like material, shimmering with a faint purple light.

[High-Level Mutant Cartilage Fragments *5].

Chen Chen's jaw tightened.

He pulled up the panel for the [Grade-A RV External Armor Blueprint] from his storage backpack.

Among the required materials, the red text for [High-Level Mutant Cartilage *150] was exceptionally eye-catching.

He had five pieces now.

The gap was still huge, but at least he'd made a start.

With a thought, the thirty-six-slot storage backpack opened.

The supplies on the ground, along with the treasure chest, vanished instantly.

Chen Chen stood up and clapped his hands together.

The leader remained flat on the ground, not daring to move.

"Clear the roadblocks. If you block my car again..."

Chen Chen didn't finish the sentence; he didn't need to.

He turned and stepped back into the driver's seat.

The armored door slammed shut, and the engine roared.

The thirteen-and-a-half-ton mobile heavy fortress crushed its way through the gap in the dismantled tank traps.

The Grade-B tires rolled past less than half a meter from the leader's head.

The wind whipped gravel against its face.

The leader waited until the engine sound had completely faded before crawling up from the ground.

It wiped the back of its neck; it was drenched in cold sweat.

It turned to watch the heavy RV disappear into the distance, its lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.

Inside the vehicle.

Chen Chen held the steering wheel with one hand while glancing back at the rear seat.

"Wanxing."

Shen Wanxing already understood.

She walked to the middle of the aisle in her Stealth Walker Boots.

Chen Chen re-materialized the supplies he had just collected onto the metal floor.

She squatted down, placing her fair, delicate hands on the pile of supplies.

Lucky Critical triggered.

Gold and purple light flashed repeatedly in the back row.

The radiance illuminated the armored walls of the entire living quarters.

The fourteen intermediate vehicle cores triggered a double multiplier, becoming twenty-eight.

The two barrels of refined fuel triggered a five-fold multiplier, becoming ten barrels.

The five mutant cartilage fragments triggered a five-fold multiplier, becoming twenty-five fragments!

Shen Wanxing looked up, her cheeks flushed.

"Brother Chen Chen, the cartilage got a five-fold multiplier!"

Twenty-five fragments. Adding the previous five, that was thirty in total.

He was a big step closer to the target of one hundred and fifty.

Chen Chen nodded. This 'mental distress fee' was well worth collecting.

With these high-level materials, the realization of Grade-A armor was no longer an unreachable fantasy.

The RV continued to push forward across the Flesh Wasteland.

The tires carved two ruts into the dark brown ground, which slowly healed behind them.

They had driven about ten kilometers away from the tank traps.

Jiang Yanxue walked from the back to the aisle between the cockpit and the living quarters.

She leaned against the partition doorframe.

She had just finished wiping her blade.

"Chen Chen."

"Yeah."

"When exactly did the ammunition run out?"

The question came very suddenly.

Chen Chen glanced at her and said nothing.

Jiang Yanxue's mind worked quickly.

She looked down at the ammunition readout panel next to the weapon control console.

The numbers on it were four zeros.

She stared at those zeros for a full three seconds.

During the encounter with the Tyrant, the Shen sisters had used half, and the rest had all been dumped onto the Black-Robed Apostle.

She looked up, her dark red pupils filled with disbelief.

"You were spinning the gun barrels at those six cyborgs for so long just now, and you didn't have a single bullet?"

Shen Wanxing let out a soft gasp from the back, covering her mouth with both hands.

Shen Wanbing adjusted her non-existent glasses.

Her raised eyebrow said it all.

She had also just realized this.

Of the four people in the vehicle, only Chen Chen had known the truth from the start.

The guns were empty.

Holding empty guns while counting down three seconds against six armed cyborgs, with his finger on the trigger and a calm expression—he had forced the lot of them to their knees.

Jiang Yanxue leaned back against the armored wall, clutching her shadow blade.

The way she looked at Chen Chen had completely changed.

She rapidly simulated the previous situation in her mind.

Six fully armed mutants, fifty meters away.

If the other side hadn't fallen for it and had charged directly...

The heavy firepower on the roof was just for show.

No matter how high the defense, being cut at close range by chainsaws and armor-piercing weapons would have been trouble; scratched paint was a minor issue, but damaged tires would be a disaster.

He had abandoned the conservative option of simply ramming through and chose the most extreme psychological warfare instead.

"Weren't you afraid those mutants would take the gamble? If they fired the first shot and found out you had no bullets, you wouldn't have even had a chance to run," Jiang Yanxue asked.

Chen Chen kept one hand on the wheel and patted the dashboard with the other.

"Thirteen and a half tons. If I floor the gas, how many seconds would it take to flatten six cyborgs and that pile of containers into iron pancakes?"

He paused.

"Bullets are for hitting distant targets. At fifty meters, crushing them is faster than shooting."

He turned his head to look at Jiang Yanxue.

"No one on the wasteland dares to gamble their life against me. Because if they win the bet, they still can't escape, and if they lose, they still can't escape."

Jiang Yanxue opened her mouth, but swallowed the words that were at the tip of her tongue.

That was the way a madman thought.

In a situation where he could have just stepped on the gas to crush them, he insisted on stopping to play a round of psychological warfare.

Looking at his back as he steered with one hand now, Jiang Yanxue felt a chill down her spine.

Thinking carefully, what had he done in these past three days that wasn't crazy?

When he carried her and slaughtered his way out of fifty frenzied monsters, it was crazy.

When he jumped from a fifteen-meter-high overpass into a Tyrant's stomach to plant explosives, it was also crazy.

Every single time, he had come back alive.

And he was living better than anyone else.

Jiang Yanxue sheathed her shadow blade back into its tactical strap.

She turned and walked back to the rear row.

Growing up amidst the blades and bullets of the Black Dragon Society, she was used to seeing thugs who bluffed.

But someone like Chen Chen, who put his life on the table as a bargaining chip while calmly calculating physical mass suppression, was unique.

[Ding! Detected a change in the causal relationship with a beauty.]

[Jiang Yanxue Favorability: LV2 (Current Progress 88%)]