Chapter 71 - 69: Earthquake

’How could that man have possibly spotted them from so far away, and so quickly?’

Jiang Si’s thoughts suddenly turned to the locators on Jiang Linhai and her mother. ’He must have taken them.’

Jiang Si stared at him, her fists clenched tightly. ’If he dares lay a single finger on Jiang Linhai or Shen Baoying, I’ll make sure there’s nothing left of him to bury.’

Suddenly, the man said a few words to his underlings. A moment later, Jiang Linhai and Shen Baoying were brought before him, their hands bound.

Jiang Si held her breath. Thankfully, they were still unharmed.

By bringing them forward, the man was sending a clear threat to Jiang Si, who he knew was lurking in the shadows: Don’t make a move.

Otherwise, their lives would be in immediate danger.

Her parents were Jiang Si’s Achilles’ heel. Right now, she truly didn’t dare to make a reckless move.

Jiang Chengwu asked Jiang Si, "What’s it look like? What’s the situation? Do they have guns?"

Jiang Si nodded. "They have guns, and they’ve spotted us."

A jolt went through Jiang Chengwu’s heart. He asked urgently, "Then what do we do?"

Jiang Si frowned. "Either we sneak over and rescue them, or we charge straight in."

"The risk is that if we provoke them, they’ll just kill them on the spot."

"We need a foolproof plan."

Jiang Chengwu mused, "They’re wary of us, so they won’t be quick to kill. Shouldn’t we look for a chance to rescue them quietly?"

Jiang Si only had her dimensional space. While she was a powerful fighter, she couldn’t possibly take out several people at once.

’If Qin Shen were here, we could cover each other. That might work.’

But alas, Qin Shen was nowhere to be found.

Just as Jiang Si was trying to think of a better plan, Big White suddenly shot forward like a gale.

Jiang Si quickly slapped his back. "Big White, stop!"

Not only did Big White ignore her, he charged straight for the enemy camp.

Jiang Si had no choice but to say to Jiang Chengwu and Zhang Qingfang, "Don’t follow us! Big White and I will be fine. Wait for us to come find you!"

Big White’s movements were agile, and cloaked by the darkness, he was difficult to spot.

Jiang Si guessed he was trying to rescue her parents for her. She quickly pulled out a gun, threw on a bulletproof vest, and prepared for a fight to the death.

Despite Big White’s enormous size, his thick paws made only the faintest sound as they padded across the mountain path, like the whisper of a passing breeze.

But the terrain around the encampment was flat and dotted with bonfires. Despite his speed, Big White’s pale fur was inevitably spotted. "What is that!" someone exclaimed.

"God! It’s a tiger!"

"Hahaha, looks like we’re eating well tonight!"

One man was even cheering, already planning how the pelt from such a massive white tiger could make at least two thick winter coats.

Xiao Xiong, however, paled the moment he made out a human figure on the white tiger’s back.

’Someone can actually ride a mutated beast from the apocalypse!’

’This is unbelievable.’

’If I can capture this person alive, I have to find out how they do it.’

But the sheer size of the white tiger and the woman on its back were too much of a threat.

’Compared to anything else, my safety is what matters most.’

Without hesitation, Xiao Xiong struck first, firing a shot straight at Jiang Si.

BANG—

The gunshot was deafening in the dead of night.

But it missed.

In the blink of an eye, the white tiger leaped into the air. At the same moment, the woman on its back fired a shot back at him. BANG—

Xiao Xiong had been a mercenary for twenty years. He just barely managed to twist his body in time to avoid taking Jiang Si’s bullet in a fatal spot.

Clutching the bloody wound on his stomach, his expression turned grim. He ordered his men to open fire on the white tiger and Jiang Si, then yanked Shen Baoying over and pressed a gun to her head. "Come any closer, and I’ll blow her brains out!"

Jiang Si’s heart seized. She gripped Big White’s neck tightly. "Stop! Stop now!"

But not only did Big White not listen, he did something that left Jiang Si utterly stunned.

In a flash, Big White carried her across several dozen meters, appearing instantly before Xiao Xiong and pinning him to the ground with a single massive paw.

Jiang Si’s pupils contracted. Fortunately, she had lived through ten years of the apocalypse and seen plenty of mutated animals. She’d never seen one with a superpower, but she had heard of them. She recovered quickly, and while the others were still reeling in shock, she raised her gun and opened fire.

Many of the men had been scared witless by the giant white tiger’s sudden appearance and hadn’t even thought to shoot back. In the time it took Jiang Si to gun down a few of them, the rest had scattered.

Jiang Si quickly leaped down and used her knife to slice through the ropes binding Jiang Linhai and her mother’s hands.

Before she could utter a single word, the ground began to shake violently, so intensely that Jiang Si felt her head spin.

No meteors were falling from the sky. This was clearly an earthquake.

In her past life, after the meteor shower, earthquakes of all sizes had continued for a long time. Later, there had been a terrifying, magnitude-10 earthquake.

It triggered volcanic eruptions and melted the ice caps. The Earth’s tectonic plates had fractured in an instant. Jiang Si was lucky to have survived as the continents split into countless islands of varying sizes.

Big Black bit through his ropes and ran desperately toward Jiang Si and the others.

Fissures suddenly tore through the ground, like the ravenous maw of hell opening up.

With a single leap, Big White snatched Big Black from the air, just as he was about to fall into a chasm.

Everyone scrambled to avoid the fissures opening up beneath their feet. The earthquake felt as if it would never end.

It had already been going on for two full minutes and showed no signs of stopping.

The once-flat campsite was collapsing chunk by chunk. If not for Big White carrying them all, constantly dodging and leaping, they would have long since been buried alive in the pitch-black night.

Suddenly, a massive RUMBLE echoed in their ears.

It was as if the mountainside was being split apart by an axe.

There were too many people on Big White’s back. Jiang Linhai lost his balance and fell. Jiang Si lunged and grabbed his hand, but another violent tremor hit. As Big White struggled to protect them, the ground beneath his feet gave way, and a landslide of earth instantly buried them all.

Fortunately, it was dirt, not rock. The massive quake finally stopped. Jiang Si crawled out from under Big White’s neck, shaking a layer of soil from her hair.

They opened their eyes to a world that had been completely transformed. They were still in a daze when Shen Baoying asked, "Sisi, where are my parents?"

Jiang Si pulled a flashlight from her pocket and pointed it in the direction where her grandfather and grandmother had been.

There was nothing but collapsed earth and rubble. The entire hilltop was gone.

Jiang Si took out the locator and immediately ran toward her grandparents’ position.

She found their location, only to be confronted by a massive, bottomless chasm.

In that instant, her heart plunged into an abyss. ’I saved my parents... does that mean the price is losing my grandparents?’

Jiang Si fought back tears and placed her hope in Big White. She gently stroked his head. "Big White, can you still sense my grandparents’ presence?"

Big White’s luminous eyes met hers. He sniffed the air, then suddenly licked her palm as if to tell her that they were still alive.

Hope flared anew in Jiang Si’s heart. Heedless of exposing her ability, she prepared to pull rescue equipment from her dimensional space to save her grandparents.

But then Big White suddenly leaped into the fissure, vanishing from sight in an instant.