Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 173: Legendary Creature

The two vehicles crept onto the bridge, the drivers’ nerves frayed to the breaking point.

Chen Ye could hear his own heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic, rhythmic thumping that felt loud enough to echo in the dead air. It felt as if, at any second, the organ would simply burst out of his chest, grow legs, and bolt into the fog.

Due to the persistent, damp gloom, the Doomsday Pickup’s solar-powered electrical system had long since failed. The meager charge remaining in the batteries was nowhere near enough to sustain the engine, forcing Chen Ye to rely on the internal combustion motor. He cursed under his breath; under normal circumstances, he would have switched to the silent electric drive mode to minimize noise. Now, the low rumble of the engine felt like a dinner bell for whatever lurked in the mist.

Captain Chu Che’s SUV was barely three feet away. With a sharp turn of his head, Chen Ye could see the captain’s profile—his face was ashen, and a thick bead of cold sweat was tracking down his temple. In the passenger seat, Xiao Wang looked even worse; his skin had taken on the translucent, sickly pallor of wet parchment.

They were moving at a snail’s pace, barely faster than a walking trot. The heavy bumpers of the two cars pushed through the dense gray soup, leaving twin vortexes of swirling mist in their wake. Even with their high-intensity headlights cut to high beam, the light only penetrated a dozen feet before being swallowed by the gloom.

Chen Ye checked his watch: 5:14 PM. Winter had brought an early dusk. Within the hour, the city would be plunged into total darkness, making the already impossible visibility a death sentence. He wanted to suggest they hole up and wait for morning, but he knew Chu Che would never agree to stop on an exposed bridge. He didn’t bother wasting the breath.

“Captain,” Chen Ye whispered over the radio, his voice barely a breath. “Is the ‘big guy’ here yet?”

Chu Che didn’t reply verbally. Instead, he raised a single trembling index finger to his lips—a frantic shushing gesture. His eyes were wide, fixed on the void outside his window.

Chen Ye went rigid, immediately cutting the radio. Chu Che’s reaction confirmed the worst: they were already being watched.

Chu Che then pointed a finger straight down, toward the bridge deck.

Chen Ye understood, and a fresh wave of panic flooded his system. The visibility was so abysmal that seeing whatever was beneath the bridge was physically impossible, yet the mental image was worse than the reality. He had zero desire to lean over the railing and peer into the abyss; he wasn’t that curious. It was the not knowing that made his nerves feel like they were being scraped with a rusted file.

The three ordinary survivors were paralyzed with terror. Uncle Zheng, sitting in Chen Ye’s passenger seat, had lips so white they looked bloodless. His body was wracked by intermittent, jerky spasms. Chen Ye was genuinely concerned the man was about to suffer a lethal heart attack—or at the very least, wet the seat.

As the truck rolled forward an inch at a time, Chen Ye felt the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. An icy chill radiated from the soles of his feet, climbing his legs, spine, and neck until it settled at the roots of his hair.

He kept one hand locked on the steering wheel and the other white-knuckled around the hilt of his Heavy Machete. Even though he knew the upgrade timer still had dozens of hours to go, he couldn’t help but check. He cursed the system silently. An Artifact ranked in the late four-thousands was a toothpick against a high-tier monster, but he needed the psychological comfort of the steel.

Inside the cab, a thin layer of smoke began to swirl around his ankles. If things went sideways, he was prepared to summon his shadow clone and the Death God’s aura instantly.

Uncle Zheng was now shaking so violently that the entire passenger seat was vibrating. In the truck bed, the other two survivors were curled into fetal positions, their faces pressed into the metal.

This was the aura of an apex predator—the crushing, spiritual Pressure a high-level Anomaly exerted on lesser life forms. It was the same primal fear an eagle inspired in a field mouse.

Chu Che’s SUV was in no better state. The captain’s jaw was set so tight it looked like it might shatter. This was the most intense sensation of dread he had encountered since the sky fell.

What Chu Che failed to notice was that his two passengers had already reached the end of their road.

In the backseat, Uncle Bao suddenly stopped trembling. His hollow eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, his chest collapsing in a final, shallow exhale. He simply ceased to be.

In the passenger seat, Xiao Wang’s gaze drifted, the light of intelligence evaporating from his pupils as they lost focus.

Both men had been hanging onto life by a frayed thread. Under the suffocating weight of the Anomaly’s presence, that thread had finally snapped. They wouldn’t be waking up.

As the thick fog churned through the open cracks of the SUV’s windows, their bodies began to subtly lose definition, their physical forms slowly fading into the mist as if they had never existed. Chu Che, hyper-focused on the road, didn’t see them vanish.

At the bridge entrance they had just vacated, several blurry silhouettes materialized. The monsters shifted uneasily at the threshold, swaying back and forth, but not a single one dared to set foot on the Fog River Bridge.

Then, Chen Ye heard it—a massive splosh from the dark waters below.

The sound wasn’t the natural flow of a river. It was the rhythmic, heavy displacement of water caused by something colossal swimming against the current. Just the volume of the sound alone gave Chen Ye a sickening sense of scale. Whatever was under them was the size of a naval vessel.

For a split second, Chen Ye’s foot hovered over the accelerator. He wanted to floor it and hope for the best. But he knew better. Between the engine’s roar and the graveyard of abandoned cars littering the bridge, a high-speed escape was a fantasy.

They kept crawling.

“Click-click-click-click…”

A sharp, rapid rattling sound filled the cab.

Chen Ye’s brow furrowed in fury. Uncle Zheng’s teeth were chattering so hard they sounded like a telegraph.

You idiot, Chen Ye hissed internally. I’m trying to be a ghost, and you’re broadcasting our location!

Smoke surged from the floorboards. The passenger door clicked open, and before Uncle Zheng could even realize what was happening, a tendril of gray mist physically hoisted him out of the seat and dropped him onto the asphalt. As the man fell, Chen Ye noticed a dark, foul-smelling puddle on the upholstery.

Chen Ye wanted to scream at the man, but he didn’t dare make a sound. He simply watched through the rearview mirror as the smoke-tendril unceremoniously dumped the terrified man onto the middle of the bridge.

In the truck bed, the remaining two survivors watched their companion get exiled but didn’t dare speak. Uncle Zheng scrambled on the pavement, trying to claw his way back to the truck, but his limbs were like jelly.

Suddenly, the fog directly above the vehicles began to boil.

Chen Ye slammed on the brakes and killed the ignition in one motion. He flipped every toggle on the dash, cutting the lights and the electronics. Beside him, Chu Che mirrored the action. The bridge fell into a tomb-like silence.

Chen Ye exhaled a massive plume of smoke. The mist rapidly expanded, forming a localized zone of Absolute Aura Shielding that swallowed both vehicles.

Chu Che added his own layer, flipping his palm to manifest a shimmering, translucent Concealment Barrier.

They had reached their absolute peak of stealth. Not a single calorie of heat or a whisper of spiritual energy escaped the dome.

Chu Che and the survivors in the truck bed were now functionally blind and deaf, trapped in the sensory void. They lay perfectly still, holding their breath.

But Chen Ye, using the Abyssal Blood Eye, could see through the layers.

Through the churning gray soup, a nightmare descended from the sky.

It literally dropped from the heavens.

Due to the limited visibility, Chen Ye couldn’t see the creature’s full body, but the fragment he saw was enough to induce a soul-deep sense of powerlessness.

The giant snake’s eyeball was the size of a compact car. Its head was a massive, triangular fortress of scales, easily the size of a luxury penthouse.

In this moment, Chen Ye truly felt his own insignificance. The pride he had felt after reaching Sequence 2 was incinerated. Rule-Based Anomalies and Sequence Beyonders were irrelevant toys in the face of this—a legendary, mythic creature that belonged in the dawn of time.

Chen Ye stopped breathing entirely. He gripped his machete so hard his knuckles turned white. His skin began to shimmer, the Shadow Drag ability on the verge of hair-trigger activation. If that head moved toward him, he was abandoning the truck and the captain to become a wisp of smoke.

He wouldn’t give up. Not even now. Survive. Survive. Survive!

He bit his lip so hard it split, a trickle of blood running down his chin. He was a drawn bow, ready to snap.

As for Chu Che… Chen Ye didn’t even look at him.

The captain sat hunched over his steering wheel, his hand buried in his coat, likely gripping his own final trump card.

The giant snake lowered its head further, its massive, forked tongue flicking out to taste the air. The sound was like a wet bedsheet snapping in a hurricane.

Suddenly, the car-sized eyeball rotated. It locked onto the exact patch of fog where the two cars were hidden.

The creature had sensed them.

Without warning, the snake head lurched forward, stirring up a gale of toxic mist as it lunged straight for the vehicles.

It’s over.