Chapter 54: A Raise of the Hands, A Shot of the Gun

Bam!

Chen Xu hadn’t fired the gun in his hands before. Discovering that a green-skinned beast was standing behind him, his shock was out of this world. He raised his hands and let off a shot immediately.

Blobs of green blood splashed out of the creature’s head.

Bam bam bam bam…

He kept pulling the trigger, not stopping even after all the bullets in the gun were used. The sound of blasts turned into the soft empty strikes of the firing pin.

“Pant… pant… pant…”

His chest was throbbing wildly as he looked at the creature lying on the ground with an almost deformed head and pale green liquid oozing out from its wounds. It was already deader than dead.

“Holy shit. That really scared me,” he mumbled to himself as he gradually relaxed. At that moment, his right hand still felt a little sloppy, and he couldn’t even reload nimbly.

He never thought that his performance would be so atrocious when faced with danger.

Earlier on, his mind was absolutely blank. Firing the gun was purely his subconscious reaction.

Fortunately, his skills with the gun were well-trained, so he could instinctively land headshots. Otherwise, judging on the size of the creature, hitting its body probably wouldn’t have killed it.

“Just a green-skinned ape, isn’t it? What is there to be afraid of?”

In his heart, he was a little ashamed of his performance. He shook out his hands that were still shaking to vent his emotions.

That creature’s form and walking posture slightly resembled an ape, only uglier and fiercer because of its mouth full of sharp teeth.

“I need to leave this place quickly. The gunshots just now might have attracted other creatures.”

Finally, he reloaded the magazine. He didn’t dare to stay any longer. He quickly scoured through the scene and retrieved the resources he had traded for before he came in.

Then, he looked at the large barrels of water. He felt a little troubled. Bullets, medicine, and compressed food were all fine as they were not that big. He could still manage to fit them all inside his super large backpack.

The water, however, wouldn’t cut it. There were a thousand liters of water over there, filling ten 100-liter barrels. He’d need at least a truck to haul them all.

“I’ll leave them here for now.”

Chen Xu didn’t hesitate for long. He gritted his teeth, packed everything he could bring with him, and left this place.

Wearing a one-side exoskeleton robotic arm, his center of gravity was slightly shifted. He felt very awkward as he was left with a strange walking posture. Nevertheless, he didn’t have time to worry about that.

He didn’t go far and headed straight to a nearby ten-story building that had fortunately survived.

Aside from attracting creatures, the gunshots just now might have also attracted that woman. Thus, he couldn’t go too far, or he could miss her.

“I must find that woman before the skies darken, and then find a place to settle down.”

He felt a sense of pressing urgency in his heart.

This place was different from the last dream world. Vile creatures existed, and it was much more dangerous. That woman, on the contrary, wasn’t like him. She couldn’t come in with weapons. Unarmed, she would be done for if she bumped into creatures like that green-skinned ape.

If the companion he had chosen were to die on the first day into the dream, that would be some foul luck.

After a while, he entered the building and ascended the stairs.

He didn’t dare to go too fast as he needed to constantly be alert of his surroundings to ensure his own safety.

The structure of the building was still intact, but the walls were severely damaged. He couldn’t imagine what had happened here.

It took him ten minutes to get to the rooftop.

After confirming that there was no potential threat on the rooftop, he put away his pistol, replaced it with a rifle, walked to the edge to look around.

“Nothing?”

He made a circle on the rooftop and looked in all four directions. However, he found nothing, neither humans nor creatures.

“Could they have gone into hiding?”

He frowned. This building was the tallest in the nearby vicinity. Looking out from here, the scene below was fully laid out.

However, there were still some low-rise houses underneath. She might have hidden herself.

“Logically speaking, she should be nearby,” he thought to himself. Otherwise, the function of bringing in a companion wouldn’t be necessary at all.

If they were too far away, how would they meet each other?

Hence, he was pretty sure that the woman would be just around his periphery.

“She must’ve been frightened by the gunshots.”

He realized that the question before him was how to convince her that he bore no malicious intent after he found her.

Cloning a non-acquaintance into the dream was also quite troublesome. Anyone who had ridiculously popped up in such a dangerous place would probably be on full guard towards a stranger.

He sighed. Sure enough, things didn’t turn out to be perfect on all ends.

If he cloned an acquaintance, that person would be relatively easier to approach, but if they developed feelings in the dream world, it would be difficult for him to face the person after he woke up.

But a non-acquaintance was hard to approach.

“Forget it. I’ll just play it by ear when the time comes,” he thought to himself.

As for cloning a male friend into the dream, the thought had never once crossed his mind. Who’d want to spend half a year in a dream world with a friend of the same gender?

That would simply be too weird.

After some thought, he walked to face the location where he first entered the dream and stood guard over there. That would be the area she would most likely be hiding.

Now, he would first have to confirm the location she was hiding.

…

Chen Xu adjusted the exoskeleton robotic arm to rest mode. By doing so, he could save more energy and be less tired.

Watching the ruins in front of him, a feeling of forlornness gradually emerged in his heart.

He couldn’t help but think of the last dream world. He felt exactly the same as when the torrential downpour that lasted for 20 days had submerged half of the city underwater.

As a member of humankind, the feeling of watching the destruction of the modern civilized world was indescribable.

“Too bad that I can’t use any of my ideas to earn money.”

He sighed out of the blue, feeling that it was too much of a pity.

After waking up from the first dream, he intentionally went to a forum that he frequently visited and asked about how to make money given similar situations.

It was on this exact forum that he learned about something called the “scratch-off lottery” for the first time.

After learning that it was a kind of instant redemption and that it was a legal welfare lottery issued by the national lottery department, he was literally stomping his own feet and pounding his own chest. That was a big opportunity he had just barely missed.

If he had known about it before, he would have been rich for a long time. Maybe not in terms of buying a house or a car, but It should still be easy for him to pay off his family’s debt.

It was because he had let such an opportunity slip that he had come well-prepared into the dream this time. If the situation was something like that of the first dream, he had made it compulsory for himself to round up all the lottery stations in the entire city in one swoop.

But in the end, he had come into a freaking field of ruins.

Moreover, from all indications, the probability was high that he wasn’t even on earth.

All his money-making plans naturally went down the drain.

All of a sudden, he heard some movement by the stairs. His nerves were all clenched as he held up the gun in his hands.

A green shadow appeared at the stairway entrance. He was about to pull the trigger as if it was his conditioned reflex. The next moment, he finally got a clear view of the opponent. His pupils immediately constricted.

Bam!

Following a gunshot, the green shadow collapsed to the ground.