As Chen Ye prepared to strip the vehicle, his eyes flickered with a sudden calculation.

Why cannibalize this machine just to upgrade his tricycle?

Why not attach a tow cable to the Bull Head off-roader and drag the whole thing with them? He could repair it slowly during the nightly rest stops.

This alternative seemed far more cost-effective than wasting a superior chassis to upgrade his broken tricycle. Even if he didn’t have enough Slaughter Points right now, he could fix it piecemeal.

The only hurdle was extracting the Bull Head from the sand.

The engine was dead. It was dead weight. Dragging it out of the dune would require brute force.

Even with his enhanced physique, Chen Ye couldn’t move a bogged-down SUV by himself.

Unless… he had a Titan Sequence like Iron Lion.

They were about to depart. Speed was critical.

The vehicle was situated quite a distance from the tarmac. For an ordinary human, hauling two tons of steel back to the road without heavy machinery was a pipe dream.

But for a Titan? It might just be a warm-up exercise.

If only I had a working watch, Chen Ye thought, annoyed. The electronic watch he had scavenged in Longevity Village was still dead, refusing to hold a charge.

Just as Chen Ye turned to find the big oaf and discuss the logistics of towing the SUV, the sand shifted nearby.

A rotting desert lizard pushed its head through the grit. Its milky green eyes scanned the convoy, seemingly confirming their numbers.

Then, as if transmitting data, the creature snapped its head around and scurried into the distance with unnatural speed.

It wasn’t the only one.

The moment Chen Ye’s group had disembarked, dozens of these rotting lizards had been watching them, their green eyes unblinking in the sun.

At the head of the convoy, Captain Chu Che’s face went pale.

Stumbling upon this massive accident site had been an unexpected variable.

As a Pathfinder Sequence, his senses were tuned to Anomalies. But his detection of mundane objects—like cars or people—was fuzzy at best.

Searching for supplies was necessary; neither Chen Ye nor the other survivors would have agreed to leave empty-handed. Even Chu himself wouldn’t have passed up the fuel.

But this stop had broken their rhythm.

In his sensory map, the nearest Anomaly had been a stationary blip twenty kilometers away. It hadn’t moved in ages.

There was also the Anomaly that had been stalking the convoy for days. When they broke camp this morning, they had successfully outpaced it, leaving it outside his detection range.

But when Chu saw the rotting lizard sprint away, the pieces clicked together.

His expression curdled.

He focused his mental energy, locking onto the retreating lizard.

This signature…

It’s the aura of an Anomaly.

These weren’t just desert scavengers. Every single rotting lizard was a minor Anomaly!

Their aura was incredibly faint, almost masked by the background static of the wasteland. If he hadn’t focused specifically on them, he would never have noticed they were part of a hive mind.

Chu Che expanded his sensory net to its limit.

His blood ran cold.

The stationary Anomaly at the twenty-kilometer mark had moved.

It was charging.

It was now only eighteen kilometers away. Two kilometers gone in a blink.

Cold sweat beaded on Chu Che’s forehead and trickled down his nose.

“Dead! You’re all dead! Not one of you will get away!”

The sudden shriek from the Eavesdropping Radio spiked Chu Che’s anxiety into pure terror.

Whatever frequency the radio was tapping into, the voice that came through was thick with a spicy, rural dialect—a heavy Sichuan accent screaming doom.

“Ah-Che!”

Uncle Abao had just finished stowing a barrel of gas. He saw Chu Che’s trembling face and heard the ghastly prediction from the radio.

“Uncle Abao! Tell everyone! Now! We leave immediately!”

“Don’t we have half an hour left?”

“No time! Immediately! GO!”

Chu Che’s face was a mask of grim panic.

Uncle Abao didn’t ask questions. He dove into the driver’s seat.

“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!”

“ALL CONVOY MEMBERS! DEPART IMMEDIATELY! RIGHT NOW!”

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

The frantic blare of the loudspeaker shattered the looting frenzy. Survivors who were happily scavenging froze, heads snapping toward the command vehicle.

Meanwhile, near the wreckage:

“Don’t worry, Yezi. You helped me back in Apricot Blossom Town, and again in Longevity Village. Your business is my business.”

Iron Lion thumped his massive chest. “I’ll definitely help you pull that car out.”

But before the echo of his promise faded, Uncle Abao’s desperate warning blasted over the airwaves.

Chen Ye’s expression darkened. Iron Lion looked confused and uneasy.

Around them, the spell of greed broke. Panic set in. Survivors dropped their tools and scrambled toward their vehicles like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

Up on the road, Captain Chu Che’s modified off-roader roared to life. The word “FAIRNESS” painted in bold strokes on the door seemed to vibrate with the engine’s RPM.

The engine howled. Chu Che didn’t wait for a lane to clear—he made one.

Crash!

His reinforced bumper plowed into the empty wrecks blocking the highway, shoving them into the ditch.

The sudden chaos caught Chen Ye off guard. His face twisted in anger.

He knew Chu Che wasn’t the type to panic without cause. If the Captain was running, death was knocking.

But the frustration was a physical weight in his gut.

He had finally found the perfect vehicle. The Bull Head off-roader was right there.

To leave now? It was agonizing.

The prize was slipping right through his fingers.

Unwilling. I am so unwilling!

“Yezi… what do we do?”

Iron Lion looked torn. His group, packed into the yellow school bus, was already revving the engine. Old Li was leaning out the window, frantically waving for the big guy to get on board.

Chen Ye looked at Iron Lion. Then he looked at the distant Bull Head SUV.

He gritted his teeth.

“Iron Lion, help me just this once! I’m not leaving empty-handed.”

Hearing the desperation in Chen Ye’s voice, Iron Lion’s gaze hardened.

“Alright. But Yezi, the time…”

Chen Ye cast one last, longing look at the Bull Head Toyota. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth creaked.

“Change of plan!”

Up on the road, Chu Che’s vehicle had stalled. The wall of wreckage was too dense; even his modified ram couldn’t push through the sheer mass of steel alone.

Suddenly, another engine roared.

A second modified off-roader surged forward—Long-Legged Nana.

She didn’t brake. She slammed directly into Chu Che’s rear bumper.

Crunch!

With the combined horsepower of two engines, the lead vehicles groaned and began to slide. Metal screeched against asphalt as a narrow path was forced open through the center of the accident site.

The convoy began to move, crawling into the gap.

Simultaneously, Chen Ye moved.

“Follow me!”

He sprinted not toward the Bull Head, but toward the overturned Wrangler near the roadside.

It was a compromise born of necessity. The Bull Head was too far, but the Wrangler was within reach.

He couldn’t take the whole car, but he could gut it.

Chen Ye reached the wreck, tools already in hand. He moved like a blur, his enhanced agility on full display.

Lug nuts flew. In seconds, he had stripped the four wheels, rims and all.

“The engine!” Chen Ye barked.

“I got it!”

Iron Lion roared, his body swelling as he activated his Titan Sequence. He grew to a towering three meters, muscles tearing through his clothes.

He reached into the mangled engine bay, his massive hands gripping the engine block like a toy.

RRRR-RIP!

With a sickening crunch of tearing metal and snapping hoses, Iron Lion ripped the engine straight out of the chassis.

It looked like a barbarian ripping the heart out of a beast.

Chen Ye stared, momentarily stunned by the raw violence of it.

That big oaf is terrifying.

“Iron Lion! Chen Ye! Move it!” Chu Che’s voice screamed over the loudspeaker, cracking with fear.

Chen Ye snapped out of it. “Go! Run!”

“On it!”

Iron Lion grunted, cradling the heavy engine block in one arm like a football. With his free hand, he grabbed a loose wheel and hurled it toward the road.

The tire whistled through the air and slammed down next to Chen Ye’s tricycle, shaking the fragile frame.

There was no time for finesse.

Iron Lion thundered toward the moving yellow school bus, clutching the engine.

Chen Ye scrambled to his tricycle, tossing the four heavy all-terrain wheels into the cargo bed. The little vehicle groaned, swaying violently under the sudden weight.

He keyed the ignition.

Cough—Chug—ROAR!

Overburdened, the tricycle’s exhaust belched a cloud of thick black smoke before finally lurching forward.

Chen Ye let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He glanced back one last time at the Bull Head SUV fading into the distance, a pang of loss in his chest.

But as he turned his head, his gaze snagged on something else.

The ‘Chili Fish Head’ Mini EV.