Mutants - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Fatal
A large contingent of armed personnel, and in the end, only the people in one of the enemy's vehicles managed to escape. Although that included the young leader, it was still a decisive victory.
Their side had also suffered casualties.
When Sui Xin was helped up by both Jenny and Ye Chen, she was still a bit dizzy and couldn't figure out how to unfasten her helmet.
So incredibly weak.
Ye Chen felt the soft, fair skin under his fingers and glanced down at her small body topped by the large, cool, black helmet. A realization dawned on him: her helmet was different from theirs.
According to the Tianxi Group's salary and benefits structure, the Armed Division, the Technology Department, and the even larger and more complex Economics Department were all graded on a P1-P9 scale.
Within this, even the lowest-level employee in the Technology Department was rated at a P3 base salary. Only the low-level combatants on the front lines of the Armed Division and personnel with low technical skills in the Economics Department were at the P1 standard.
This was because the Technology Department required a highly knowledgeable workforce that was more difficult to cultivate, so their salaries were naturally higher.
Thus, Ye Chen and his team were frontline personnel of the Armed Division. Due to their years of hard work and individual abilities, the others had mostly reached the P2 level. Ye Chen was P3, and with the additional bonus for being a team leader and the bounty from completed missions, his income was higher than the others. But Jenny was also P3, second only to Ye Chen.
P1: 100-500 Alliance Credits (per year, Alliance Credits abbreviated as LB. For conversion, 1 Alliance Credit is one day's food ration. Assuming a single adult's frugal daily food expense is 30 RMB, this annual income is equivalent to what we would recognize as 3,000-30,000 RMB. However, the world's setting is unique, with severe price inflation on goods. Nutritional paste is the cheapest product. If you consider that one sausage equals a day's food expense, you can understand the purchasing power and the wealth gap here).
P2: 400-1500 LB.
P3: 1400-5000 LB.
P4: 4000-10000 LB.
P5…
Only Sui Xin was different.
She belonged to a mid-level knowledge reserve department within the Technology Department, equivalent to a mid-level Think Tank. Normally, any auxiliary knowledge required by the Technology Department came from this department. It wasn't controlled by the Technology Department's upper management; its direct superior was the group's highest-level Think Tank, and above the Think Tank was the corporation's decision-making echelon.
To put it simply, her salary was at the P4 level, but with the project shares from her department and bonuses from the Think Tank, her annual income was likely the sum of everyone on this team combined.
She was considered mid-level staff in the massive and powerful Tianxi Group's M City branch. Although it was just Tianxi's branch in M City, with the headquarters located in the much more distant and higher-echelon Federal core, her income in this city could crush 90% of its population.
Only a corporation could defeat a corporation, and only a more powerful elite could defeat a corporate elite.
You see, even her helmet, combat suit, and the energy configuration she carried were far superior to theirs.
It was blatant.
It was just that her physical constitution was truly terrible.
Ye Chen was somewhat puzzled but said nothing, nor did he waste time asking questions. After gunning down the bandits, he had his people quickly clear the battlefield, take anything valuable, and siphon the gasoline and energy cells from the enemy vehicles.
And what about the wounded?
Some got on the vehicle, others…
After Sui Xin got into the vehicle and took off her helmet, she was so drenched in sweat she looked like she had just climbed out of a pool. Even her soft, ink-black hair seemed to have been soaked, plastered wetly to her head and still steaming.
She was completely dazed. Coupled with her small, pale face, she looked like a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl at first glance. Although she was over 1.6 meters tall, her appearance was remarkably youthful. She looked blank and wooden, nothing like a mature 25-year-old woman.
She was probably stunned by the continuous series of events, or perhaps just dizzy from the heat. She obediently hugged her helmet, her thoughts a mystery. She just heard a pleading voice from outside, followed by a bang. She had a stress reaction and instinctively glanced at the rearview mirror, just in time to see Ye Chen and the others executing the heavily wounded men on the open ground outside.
As the screams overlapped, one of them sounded somewhat familiar.
Sui Xin opened the window and stuck her head out, just in time to see a Sahr Hyena, which had been shot by someone else, pounce on a person.
Zhang He was injured.
Just now, he had been attacked by a Sahr Hyena that had been hiding underground. Caught off guard, he was severely wounded. Looking at Ye Chen, he cried and begged for mercy, but all he received was a single bullet from Ye Chen's gun.
As Zhang He fell to the ground, his gaze was pointed right at Sui Xin.
Strangely, in his dying moments, he vaguely saw the girl in the window… did the corner of her mouth just curve up?
Was she smiling?
Sahr, why did the Sahr suddenly attack him?
The first thing it bit was his thigh.
On his thigh… that sausage… a tiny bit…
His pupils trembled, filled with shock and venomous resentment. His mouth opened as if to shout something, but only blood gurgled from his throat.
Sahr Hyenas fed on carrion, and their teeth and saliva carried deadly bacteria.
Zhang He's body convulsed one last time, then fell still.
Ye Chen came over to deal with the body. Turning his head, he saw the consultant in the window, who seemed terrified. She looked at him timidly, then slammed the window shut, clutching her backpack and helmet tightly. Her eyes were a little red as she looked blankly at the others.
She looked just like some kind of bird from those old historical documentaries.
Right, a white titmouse?
He couldn't remember the name, just that it was snow-white, timid, and cowardly.
The others were somewhat silent, yet they seemed accustomed to it.
"Couldn't we save him…?" she asked weakly, unable to bear it.
Ye Chen suddenly got into the vehicle. This time, he didn't take the front passenger seat but directly replaced Zhang He. He said one thing.
"We couldn't."
"Medicine is only to be used on personnel who can quickly recover their combat effectiveness after treatment. Its purpose is not to save lives."
Jenny sighed. "Sister, you're a member of the Think Tank. You don't understand the hardships of us frontline combat personnel. Human life is the cheapest thing. A bunch die, and plenty of people are eager to take their place. Believe it or not, the people who attacked us today probably applied to our corporation before?"
Sui Xin was silent for a moment. Ye Chen glanced at her, his gaze sweeping over the bloody mark on her neck made by the thumb ring, and asked what he had wanted to know earlier.
"Did you make that sausage yourself?"
At his words, everyone looked over.
Sui Xin wiped the sweat from her face and replied hesitantly, "Not exactly… I just buy some finished products, then combine them, let them ferment and react, and then compress and freeze them."
Jenny said, "That sounds like making cheese. Do people on your side all know how to do that?"
Sui Xin replied, "Not really. We're not usually responsible for this. Other departments make these things, but they're very expensive and not at all cost-effective. It's because I was notified I had to join this mission and knew it would be dangerous. I looked up some information beforehand, thinking we might encounter Sahrs, so I bought some materials and tried to make them. I failed a lot, and only a portion was successful. Here, these are them."
She was being honest, pulling out a few sausages from her backpack.
Probably frightened by the earlier stench, the others shied away slightly.
Ye Chen said, "You should keep them."
He acted as if he had no intention of taking her resources. The other team members instinctively avoided them, but after looking at the sausages and hearing what Ye Chen said, they didn't reach out.
After a pause, Ye Chen continued, "Studying really is useful."
At the mention of studying, everyone present, except for Jenny, who hadn't received much education, fell silent.
In this world, just getting enough to eat was difficult, let alone getting an education.
Right now, more than half of the frontline combat personnel were barely literate, relying on rote memorization to pass some assessments. The first hurdle for those who were eliminated during the corporation's selection process was literacy.
Sui Xin seemed unaccustomed to being praised and was a bit socially awkward. She said with slight embarrassment, "But people like me are also prone to being self-righteous and annoying people by talking too much. That's why I didn't speak before. It's not because I'm arrogant and ignoring you, but because I was afraid of saying the wrong thing and making you angry."
"Annoying people die easily on the front lines."
That's not it, is it? You were just being emo, with a whole low-pressure vibe.
But her attitude was so gentle that no one said anything. Nor did they notice that as she spoke, her gaze brushed over the bodies of certain people outside like a feather.
A few more gunshots rang out from behind.
After dealing with the team members who were dragging them down, the others quickly boarded the vehicle.
The vehicle started up and drove away.
Soon, the bodies left behind would be devoured by the various creatures of this Deep Red Sector.
Sui Xin could already see dark figures in the distance rushing toward the corpses.
She didn't know if they were Sahrs or other creatures.
"Is the route correct? How much longer at this speed?"
Ye Chen asked Jenny. Jenny gave a wry smile. "Unfortunately, it'll take six hours. We won't make it."
After a pause, she looked at Sui Xin.
"If Sister Sui's judgment is correct, there will be an extreme cold spell tonight. We either have to tough it out or find a place to hide."
Ye Chen looked at Sui Xin.
The tissue in Sui Xin's hand was soaked through. She silently looked at the wet mess in her hand and said with little confidence, "I'm not entirely sure, but I just looked at their vehicles and noticed some mud scrape marks on the chassis. Based on the height and length of the scrapes, it looks like they were forced into some kind of cave."
Ye Chen's eyes lit up, and the others also reacted in that moment.
There are caves in the Gobi? Can they provide shelter from the cold?
How much good would that do?
Two hours later, just before nightfall, they found a cave system in a cluster of Gobi rock formations and managed to squeeze the vehicle inside.
"If an extreme cold spell is coming, the creatures here are adapted to high temperatures and can't withstand extreme cold. They will also hide underground and won't come out to hunt. So, the usually dangerous Gobi caves are actually safe."
However, inside the cave, without the vehicle as insulation, it would be impossible to withstand the cold. These animals would only hide in the depths or underground.
When a natural disaster strikes, all creatures can, paradoxically, coexist peacefully.
Ye Chen and the others still scouted the area briefly and found traces that vehicles had entered and exited before.
Compared to the large corporations that often used transport planes to move people and supplies over the years, these bandit organizations and various freelance bounty hunters who lived here year-round were the true natives who knew the area.
They had long known about the extreme low temperatures and had already developed ways to cope.
"Is it okay to hide here?"
"Unless the extreme cold is related to wind. As long as we can block the wind, we can stay warm, or avoid direct exposure…"
This change must have been a recent development; otherwise, Tianxi's intelligence department wouldn't have been completely unaware.
After confirming that they were relatively safe for the time being, following Ye Chen's cautious habit, they quickly got back into the vehicle, even eating their meals inside.
A lone vehicle sped through the Gobi. Inside, the young man from the Red Eye Organization, Chen Mo, had already taken off his shirt. Looking in a mirror, he used tweezers to painstakingly extract the remaining bullet fragments from his shoulder, then applied an ointment to the wound.
The ointment was dark and sizzled the moment it touched his flesh.
He was covered in cold sweat, yet he didn't pass out from the pain.
After all, who in the organizations that operated in the ruins zones didn't get injured? They weren't as delicate as those raised by the corporations. However, this operation was clearly a failure. The survivors were filled with resentment, wishing they could eat the members of the Ninth Exploration Team alive.
"What's there to be angry about."
"When it comes to making money, as long as you're not dead, you can always get even."
After bandaging his wound, Chen Mo looked into the distance, a cold smile playing on his lips, but his fingers were rubbing together.
He had left a little something for that convoy.
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