Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 172: A Big Guy Under the Fog River Bridge

“Madman! You’re a complete madman!”

Xiao Hua clutched her mangled hand, her face twisted with venomous resentment. The facade of the submissive, cautious girl had been stripped away, leaving only raw hatred. Yet, beneath the anger, she was drowning in confusion. Every word she had spoken to Chen Ye had been meticulously calculated—a blend of ninety percent truth and ten percent tactical omission.

How did he catch it? she wondered frantically. There were no holes in my story! It’s impossible!

“One more word of nonsense, and I’ll have you cut out your own tongue,” Chen Ye stated, his voice flat. “I imagine you haven’t experienced that particular sensation yet, have you?”

Xiao Hua chose the rational path and shut her mouth, though her eyes continued to burn with a venom she couldn’t hide.

Chen Ye didn’t care about her feelings. “You claimed that because of these ‘Fog Slaves,’ your group was reduced from over a hundred people down to seventeen?”

The girl gritted her teeth, cold sweat beading on her forehead from the throbbing pain in her hand.

Chen Ye held the steering wheel with one hand, casually ramming into a rusted sedan blocking the lane and flipping it aside like a toy. “Impossible,” he continued leisurely. “Even if there were a thousand of you, escaping an Anomaly with ten survivors would be a miracle. If a hundred ordinary people encounter a real monster, there is only one outcome.”

He turned his head slightly, his Abyssal Blood Eye catching her gaze. She flinched, desperately trying to bury her resentment as she looked at her boots.

“The outcome is that every single one of you dies,” Chen Ye finished. “So, you’re hiding something. You might have butchered a Beyonder like Xia Bo, but don’t assume we’re all as soft as he was. If you want to lie to a Beyonder, you’d better make sure your acting is Oscar-worthy.”

His words were as sharp and cold as a winter night, making the girl shiver uncontrollably. A profound, paralyzing fear began to take root in her heart. She had catastrophically underestimated Chen Ye. In her limited experience, Sequence Beyonders were like Xia Bo—possessors of incredible power who still operated on human logic and empathy.

The man sitting next to her was a different species entirely. His cruelty and cunning were beyond anything she had ever imagined.

“I… I’m sorry!” she gasped, her composure finally breaking. “I forgot to mention it! The Fog Slaves are powerful… we tried to kill them, but without Xia Bo, we were nothing! We couldn’t even fire his modified weapons!”

Chen Ye knew exactly why ordinary humans couldn’t use a Mechanic’s Artifacts, but he remained silent, letting her dig her own grave.

“We lost so many trying to fight them,” she whimpered. “None of our traps worked. We should have all been dead weeks ago! But… the Fog Slaves only appear for three minutes at a time. After three minutes, they just… vanish back into the fog.”

“Three minutes?” Chen Ye’s expression darkened. “Why three minutes?”

He was already thinking of a very specific, very dangerous term from Chu Che’s notes.

The girl shook her head frantically. “I don’t know! I swear I’m not lying! It’s always three minutes! That’s the only reason any of us are still breathing!”

Seeing the skepticism remain on Chen Ye’s face, her panic spiked, causing blood to pump faster from the wound on her hand.

“Bandage that,” Chen Ye ordered coldly. “If you get blood on my upholstery, I’ll throw you out.”

Xiao Hua hurriedly snatched up a small knife, sliced a strip of cloth from her own ragged jacket, and wrapped it tightly around the stump of her thumb. She even picked up the severed digit and tucked it into her pocket, her expression a mask of hollow, bitter laughter. She had always known retribution would come for what they did to Xia Bo. She just never expected it to look like this.

Chen Ye keyed the radio. “Bzzzt… Captain Chu, do you copy?”

He relayed everything Xiao Hua had told him. The silence on the other end lasted for several long seconds.

“Bzzzt… Yezi, that’s not good,” Chu Che’s voice came through, heavy with concern. “That’s a Rule-Based Anomaly. If those ‘Slaves’ are tied to a specific countdown, we’re dealing with a logic trap. At our current level, a Rule-Based Anomaly is effectively invincible. Even if the whole convoy were here, we couldn’t brute-force our way through a set of supernatural laws.”

Chen Ye’s lip curled. The whole convoy? Aside from the Human-Faced Scorpion in the desert, they hadn’t actually “defeated” anything. They had spent the entire trip running from the Eight-Limbed Human Face and the Abyssal Blood Eye.

He had just reached Sequence 2 and felt like he could finally hold his own, only to immediately stumble into a scenario where raw power was useless. It was a never-ending cycle of escalation.

“Captain, how much longer until we’re clear of the city?”

“At this pace? At least two days.”

Chen Ye glanced at his Heavy Machete. The upgrade timer still had over sixty hours to go. Two days was less than fifty hours. He was going to have to survive the heart of Dawu City without his primary weapon.

The radio fell silent. Both men were lost in their own grim calculations.

With Xiao Hua’s directions and Chu Che’s radar, they were moving faster than before, but the city was a labyrinth. Even a “direct” road was often blocked by collapsed buildings or piles of rusted cars, forcing them into narrow side streets. A ten-minute drive frequently turned into a two-hour ordeal.

Eventually, Chen Ye got fed up with the girl’s presence in the cab. He stopped briefly, tossed her into the truck bed with the other two survivors, and dragged the crippled Uncle Zheng into the passenger seat.

Before she was exiled, Xiao Hua had the sense to use a handful of snow to scrub the blood from the passenger seat. She knew better than to test Chen Ye’s patience again.

Uncle Zheng sat in the cab, vibrating with a palpable, sickening fear. Chen Ye ignored him entirely, treating him like a voice-activated GPS.

They spent the next ten hours winding through the Old City district. A route that should have taken two hours under normal conditions was a grueling marathon.

The only saving grace was that their fuel reserves were still high. During a brief five-minute rest stop, Chu Che boiled more water for the dying survivors. Uncle Bao was now little more than a ghost, his breathing shallow and erratic. Xiao Wang wasn’t doing much better.

Chen Ye tried to find an opening to slip into the back of Chu Che’s SUV—he wanted to find those Mechanic guns before the captain did. But Chu Che was like a hawk, constantly hovering nearby, unintentionally or intentionally blocking every move Chen Ye made.

Fine, play it cool, Chen Ye thought. Small delays aren’t worth a confrontation yet.

Two hours later, the gray silhouettes of a massive suspension bridge loomed out of the fog.

It was the Fog River Bridge. Beyond it lay the New City district and the exit to the highway. But looking at the massive steel cables disappearing into the unnatural soup, Chen Ye felt a primal surge of dread.

“Bzzzt… Chen Ye!”

Chu Che’s voice crackled over the radio, sharp and urgent.

“I’ve got some bad news.”

Chen Ye’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Captain, can you just give it to me straight for once?”

“Yezi, my radar just spiked. There is something… colossal lurking beneath the Fog River Bridge.”

“How big?”

“I can’t even get a clear read on its dimensions. It’s massive.”

Chen Ye swallowed hard, his throat feeling like sandpaper. “Then we wait. We sit tight until the ‘big guy’ moves on.”

“We can’t,” Chu Che replied, his voice strained. “I’m picking up multiple high-tier signatures closing in from the rear. We’re being squeezed. We have to cross that bridge now, or we’re going to be cornered.”

“…”