Chapter 44: The Advantage of Battle

The most vulnerable parts of the red-armored beetle are its head and anus. During a frontal confrontation, Chu Yunsheng usually only faces the beetle's head. As long as he succeeds, he can quickly end the battle.

This injured beetle, having lost its jaw, had a greatly reduced defense. Its other blade-like leg barely managed to stab Chu Yunsheng's battle armor. Chu Yunsheng sidestepped and, without much effort, slashed open its head with one strike.

A soldier, who had been fighting fiercely, was thrown out by the beetle and lay on the ground, barely alive. His two comrades quickly embraced him.

"Team leader!..." One of the soldiers, his voice choked with sobs, tried to push the intestines back into the soldier's body but trembled and couldn't bring himself to do it.

Life was quickly draining from the team leader. His left hand, almost reduced to flesh, hung limply on the ground. His head drooped, and it took his comrades shaking him a dozen times before he managed to half-open his eyes. He tried to speak several times, and his comrades immediately leaned their ears close to his mouth.

"Qiangzi, ..., give, give, find, find a, a place, to, to bury, me, ..., I don't want, ..., to be, like, a, dead, dog, ..., dog!"

The team leader's mouth foamed with blood as he mumbled.

Qiangzi, with a runny nose and tears, nodded and sobbed, "Yeah!... Team leader, team..."

The team leader suddenly convulsed violently, struggling to keep his heavy eyelids open. He gazed at the dim sky and mumbled indistinctly, "... If, if, you, see, your, sister-in-law..."

He didn't finish his sentence. His open eyes remained fixed on the sky, a faint, bitter smile on his lips, as if in memory or longing.

Qiangzi and the other soldier buried their heads in the team leader's body, sobbing uncontrollably, their fingers tightly gripping the dirt, clenching it into a ball.

"Brother Qiang, let's fight the beetles to the death! The company commander is dead! The platoon leader is dead! The team leader is dead! All our brothers are dead! What's the point of living!?" Another soldier suddenly jumped up, his face contorted with rage.

...

Chu Yunsheng stepped over the beetle's corpse and silently left. He often thought to himself that if he were to die one day at the hands of a beetle, being buried in the ground rather than lying like a dead dog on the street might be his final happiness.

He often mocked himself for having such thoughts. When alive, he couldn't even take care of himself, yet he worried about so many things after death, which was indeed laughable.

Not far away, Qian Deduo, Jiang Ye, and others were already engaged in battle with the beetles. The soldiers accompanying them fired their bullets in a frenzy, beetles falling one by one, and humans bathed in blood.

Chu Yunsheng quickened his pace, leaped high, and slashed at the shell of a beetle that was trying to attack a team member from behind.

Under the influence of Chu Yunsheng's pure essence energy, the sharp red-armored beetle fiercely broke through the beetle's defensive layer and struck its shell with great force, causing a crack to appear with a crisp sound.

Chu Yunsheng, following the force of gravity, thrust his sword into the crack. With a "thud," it firmly pierced the beetle's back.

The red-armored beetle, in pain, jumped wildly, trying to throw off the person on its back. Unfortunately, Chu Yunsheng didn't give it much chance to struggle. He pulled out the Qianbi Sword and stabbed it several times in quick succession until the beetle was completely immobilized.

Wiping the beetle's sticky fluid from his face mask, Chu Yunsheng turned and slashed off the pincers of another beetle that was trying to grab him. His entire body, like a bullet, shot past the beetle's missing pincer.

He forcefully thrust the entire Qianbi Sword into the beetle's mouth, roared, and pushed the hilt, forcing the beetle to stagger back several steps. He then sharply cut downward with the Qianbi Sword, dragging out a dirty, corrosive fluid.

The severely injured beetle staggered backward, spewing green fluid from its mouth, and finally collapsed to the ground.

At this point, only three red-armored beetles remained on the battlefield, their defensive layers already broken by the awakened warriors. They were being suppressed by the soldiers' frenzied gunfire, on the verge of death.

Qian Deduo, having completed his mission, looked at Chu Yunsheng, who was covered in sticky fluid, with amazement and asked Yu Xiaohai, who was standing beside him, "Your friend is really strong, right? Didn't he hear the captain say that breaking the beetle's defensive layer is enough?"

Yu Xiaohai glanced at him disdainfully and said proudly, "Breaking the defense? I've never seen a beetle survive after being attacked by Brother Chu!"

Clearly, Yu Xiaohai was exaggerating. Not long ago, Chu Yunsheng had to set up an escape mechanism to shake off the three beetles chasing him to conserve his essence energy. However, at this moment, he had killed three beetles without needing any support from the soldiers, which made Qian Deduo believe Yu Xiaohai's words.

"Truly a master. Apart from the captain, I've never seen anyone as strong as him. Oh, no, even the captain can't compare! He's so strong, so great. It's a good thing he's in our group, hehe!" Qian Deduo said excitedly.

Jiang Ye, hearing this, smiled awkwardly. The captain had decided the groupings, and he couldn't do anything about it. However, he was somewhat comforted by the fact that the young man named Yao Xiang had decent abilities.

Finally, the last three red-armored beetles fell. The team members who had helped kill them gradually returned to Jiang Ye and Qian Deduo's side. Looking at the ground covered with human and beetle corpses, everyone lost the mood for conversation. They counted the personnel and battle losses, greeted the only surviving military instructor, and then left the battlefield, each with their own thoughts.

Chu Yunsheng didn't leave. He stood to the side, smoking, telling Qian Deduo and the others that he needed some time to himself. He wanted to wait until the awakened guard team and the soldiers had left before quickly collecting the beetle corpses. Every second of wasted essence energy made him feel heartbroken.

After each intense battle, various situations arise, and it's common for team members to experience intense emotional fluctuations. Qian Deduo and Jiang Ye didn't pay much attention. After greeting everyone, they led the team back to the truck. At Chu Yunsheng's request, Yu Xiaohai also returned to the truck to ask Zhang Zicheng about the progress of the research on ability training.

The surviving soldiers stubbornly insisted on cremating and burying their fallen comrades. Chu Yunsheng roughly understood their somber thoughts: now it's their comrades, but in the future, it could be them.

The beetles were killed, and the refugees who had been fleeing followed. They hadn't even left the outer ring of Shen City, and everyone was anxious, not daring to stay for long.

Chu Yunsheng didn't mind exposing the power of the essence symbols in front of ordinary people. For them, using an essence symbol to absorb essence energy and Yao Xiang's Fire Wheel Slash were equally incomprehensible, and they didn't find anything particularly special about it.

He absorbed the essence energy from sixteen beetles, continuously creating new essence symbols and absorbing more. Some beetles had leaked energy for a longer time, so the sixteen beetles were equivalent to fourteen freshly killed ones. He created two full-flame-pattern essence symbols and stored the remaining two beetles in a storage symbol for later use.

He still had three layers of essence energy left in his body, but he didn't plan to fill them immediately. With two full-flame-pattern essence symbols on him, he could replenish at any time, so there was no rush.

More importantly, cultivation required completely releasing the essence energy in his body to complete a full cycle. So, he decided to use up the remaining essence energy in his body first.

Chu Yunsheng's mood improved slightly. The long-standing problem of insufficient essence symbols had finally been resolved, indicating that his cultivation speed would increase again. The realm of the Second Essence Heaven no longer seemed so distant.

When he returned to the truck, Yu Xiaohai excitedly told him that Dongshen University had made preliminary results in researching his ability and recommended a training plan.

After Yu Xiaohai's trials, the recovery speed of his ability was indeed faster than before, but Chu Yunsheng still found it too slow, not even half the speed of his meditation. Not only Yu Xiaohai, but he also learned that the recovery speed of other team members was very slow, which was why they had to fight in groups.

Chu Yunsheng found Captain Zhong Nan and requested to accompany all the groups on every mission. He urgently needed to improve his strength.