Dragon Clan: Avoid the College Entrance Examination to Slay the Dragon

Chapter 6: Elevated (Part 2)

Gu Yi grabbed Grandpa by the back of his collar and dragged him upwards. The overturned car groaned in the torrential rain, and the old man's shoulder blades scraped against the deformed metal door frame, making a harsh sound. The muddy cry of pain was swallowed up by the rain as it escaped his throat.

More snake-necked monsters were pouring into the car through the broken windows, and the sound of their scales scraping against the iron sheets made the hairs on the back of Gu Yi's neck stand on end.

"Don't look!"

Grandpa's warning choked his throat, mingled with blood and foam, but Gu Yi, from the corner of his eye, had already caught a glimpse of the horrific scene inside the carriage. The monsters were tearing apart bodies with their dark blue claws. Aunt Du's nails were firmly embedded in one of the monsters' foreheads. Old Mr. Zhou's body hung halfway from the luggage rack, the tin can of his fast-acting heart pills clutched in his hand still glinting coldly as it was chewed.

"Let's go!" He grabbed his grandfather's skinny waist and jumped down. Suddenly, a fishy wind came from behind him.

Gu Yi spun around and swung his fist. His knuckles hit the monster's jaw. With a crisp sound like shattering glass, the two-meter-tall body flew out at an angle, plowing a several-meter-long ditch on the asphalt road.

Grandpa dug his nails into Gu Yi's shoulders, and his turbid breathing sprayed behind the boy's ears: "Only if you leave me behind will you have a chance."

"Shut up!"

Gu Yi's roar was like a raging wind, and a golden light flashed in the depths of his eyes like a molten sword. Gu Huaiyuan's skinny body suddenly stiffened, and his words of advice were crushed in his throat by some invisible pressure.

Screams still echoed in the overturned carriage. The moment he carried the old man on his back, Gu Yi heard the sticky sound of flesh peeling off from behind him. A passenger, whose waist was grabbed by the monster, was frantically pounding on the window, his intestines dragging on the broken glass: "Save me! Please!"

As Gu Yi left at a high speed, the man's wailing suddenly twisted into a curse: "Gu Yi, you will not die well! You will be punished! You will...ah!" The curse stopped abruptly and was replaced by the sound of a bone blade breaking through the chest.
The asphalt road turned into flowing ink under Gu Yi's feet. The roars behind him were like a death warrant. Grandpa's sigh mixed with the smell of blood and rust penetrated his eardrums: "Leave me here... We can't get away together..."

The hot tears welling in the boy's eyes froze into ice beads in the wind, and he tightened his grip on his grandfather. He couldn't accept it. Today, either they left together, or they died here together.

The crisp sound of bones bursting reached his ears. Gu Yi glanced sideways and saw a three-meter-tall snake-necked monster pulling the spine of a humanoid out of its body. Its dark golden vertical pupils locked onto his back and then it threw him out violently.

"Get away!"

The moment the sound of breaking air came, Gu Yi turned around and threw his grandfather backwards. The spine was like a javelin, and the force remained as it pierced his right chest. The bone spur at the tip also penetrated into his grandfather's shoulder before it hit the ground.

The two men fell into the blood splatter on the asphalt road. The boy saw that the scarlet liquid he sprayed actually evaporated into golden mist in the rain.

The pursuing monsters suddenly froze, hissing like mating pythons. The three closest monsters stopped pursuing, their barbed tongues lashing wildly against their fangs, dark green slime cascading from their mouths.

"Hi ha——!"

The giant deadpool in the lead roared like an air raid siren, but the entire horde of monsters, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, cascaded down upon the pool of golden blood. Two of their kind gnawed at each other's throats in the struggle, their black blood splattering and corroding the highway guardrail like honeycombs. The snake-necked monster that had thrown the attack, however, took an unusual half-step back, its molten-gold pupils swirling with a dark tide of fear and desire.

At that moment, strange ripples appeared in the rain curtain. The girl's toes tapped on the raindrops, which were steaming with golden blood mist. Her oversized white shirt was soaked by the downpour, but instead of looking charming, it exuded a chilling coldness. She lowered her eyes and looked at the boy lying in a pool of blood.

"Very embarrassing."

Gu Yi's blood-stained eyelids trembled violently, "Help..."
The girl pressed her cold fingertips against his cracked lips and said, "I can't save you. You have to save yourself."

Gu Yi felt as if his retinas were saturated with molten lava, his vision suddenly shrouded in a golden-red filter. The world hummed like an old-fashioned television, and the ferocious monsters suddenly became a series of stuttering slides. He saw raindrops hovering around his grandfather's graying temples, and saw the bone spurs hurled by the monsters again, spinning at a snail's pace.

Beneath his skin, he felt the excruciating pain of thousands of ants gnawing at him. Black scales pierced his flesh and multiplied wildly. These icy scales spread along his spine and spread throughout his body, enveloping the boy into a hideous monster. As the last piece of armor covered his eyelids, he heard the crisp sound of exploding glassware echoing in his mind.

A will more primitive than that of a beast took over the body.

When Gu Yi regained control of his limbs, his sense of smell was the first to return. The thick scent of blood, mixed with the sour smell of viscera, filled his nostrils. The asphalt pavement was riddled with radiating cracks, and the three-meter-high steel bars of the guardrails resembled tinfoil crumpled by immense force. The remains of the monsters lay scattered in a circle around him. A still-twitching head was nailed to a road sign, its dark golden pupils still tinged with fear.

A tingling sensation spread across his right chest, and the young man trembled as he tore open the torn collar of his shirt. The wound, which should have been pierced, was actually smooth as new, with only the new skin shimmering with a pearly luster.

“Grandpa!”

The old man lay on his back beside the cracked roadbed, half of his dark red spine still embedded in his left shoulder. Gu Yi grasped the cold spine, his scaly fingers easily pulling it out. The unconscious man suddenly coughed violently, and the black blood that came out was mixed with tiny pieces of scales.

"Hold on, I'll come..." The boy's hoarse promise came to an abrupt end.

The sunlight cuts open the sky like a golden scalpel.

A white mist rose from the asphalt road. Gu Yi knelt in the middle of the road. The twisted steel guardrails were now as straight as new, and the honeycomb-like holes that had been corroded were still covered with fresh reflective paint. In the distance, the overturned bus lay quietly on its side, with only shattered glass and splattered blood to prove that it was not a collective hallucination caused by the heavy rain.

"You're going to die!" The taxi's tires dragged charred arcs on the ground. The driver leaned out the window and cursed, "You're looking for death on the elevated road!"

Gu Yi knelt in the middle of the road in a daze. He looked down at his hands which were covered in blood but intact, and suddenly seemed to remember something.

"120 ambulance!" Gu Yi's roar tore through the humid air. He pressed the old man's collapsed chest in vain. "Call the police! Call an ambulance!"

(End of this chapter)