The group didn't take the minor interlude with the roving bandits to heart.
The only thing that slightly caught Li Ban's attention was the guy who ran away.
He wondered if it was a certain unlucky Little Cat.
But even if she was, she wasn't the Little Cat that Li Ban knew.
After learning the general situation here at the Recycling Station, Li Ban had thought he might run into people he knew.
But he never expected that after spotting a familiar face like Zhu Yao right off the bat, he would so quickly run into someone who might be Little Cat.
The Wizard World was incredibly vast, and so many people ended up falling into the Recycling Station.
Zhu Yao focused on pedaling, Ed focused on zoning out, and Li Ban lowered his head, pondering the Recycling Station's situation and his future plans. A quiet settled over the Tricycle.
After they rode for nearly another hour, a steep slope appeared before them.
Rows of towering skyscrapers lay toppled inside the sinkhole.
These buildings, ranging from thirty to sixty stories high, had been sliced apart by some unknown, mysterious force and scattered haphazardly across the bottom of the pit.
Some buildings rested atop others. Their torn reinforced concrete exposed hideous wounds, which, mixed with the black moss and lichen on their surfaces, formed scars that would never heal.
Zhu Yao stopped before the steep slope, leaning on the handlebars as she gazed into the distance.
"The areas near the camp have basically been picked clean. There's nothing of value left," she said. "If we want metal and precision parts, fragments of low-level technological worlds like this one are much more valuable."
Products from high-tech worlds relied far too much on energy sources.
And the vast majority of energy sources were completely dead inside the Recycling Station.
They had a much greater need for power generated by mechanical and kinetic energy.
"We need to be extra careful now that we're here," Zhu Yao said, motioning for the two to get off the Tricycle. "The monsters waiting to eat people mostly hide in places like this."
She was reminding the other two members of the team.
Li Ban was a newcomer and didn't know.
Ed was empty-headed and couldn't remember.
Li Ban took out the bow and arrows he had snatched from the roving bandits, while Ed raised his axe and spun it in a circle above his head.
Zhu Yao tucked her wooden spear into the back of her waistband, kept one hand on the handlebars, and used the other to pull out the pointed iron shovel resting on the Tricycle.
The scavenger team entered the site.
Even though this sinkhole was quite far from the camp, the supplies near the entrance ramp had still been swept clean.
They passed through two high-rises stripped of all their glass like skeletal remains, and trudged with some difficulty through dark gray weeds that grew past their knees.
The Tricycle in Zhu Yao's hands creaked and groaned in protest, as if unwilling to enter a place that would scrape its undercarriage.
But considering that leaving the Tricycle outside would guarantee its theft, Zhu Yao had no choice but to drag it along, trying her best to stick to the flatter patches of grass.
As they were passing a third row of hollowed-out buildings, Li Ban suddenly turned his head toward the structure beside them.
"Something's there."
He turned and drew his bow.
He had to shoot for the head; otherwise, the arrows would be completely ineffective.
But when Li Ban saw the thing crawling out of a window five meters above them, he didn't loose his arrow right away.
'What is that thing? Where is its head?'
Li Ban never expected to see a monster that resembled a jellyfish on dry land.
Except, it was—a human-jelly.
The human-jelly was draped in a massive layer of skin, looking as if it had been ripped raw from human bodies and stitched together.
He could see empty holes for eyes, a nose, and a mouth on one patch of skin, and next to it, nipples and a belly button on another.
And beneath this patchwork human skin, there were at least twenty arms and legs crawling along.
If those limbs weren't pointing in every direction with missing fingers and toes, Li Ban might have thought it was a group of people scrambling on all fours beneath a giant human skin.
"Hss—" Zhu Yao's expression soured visibly upon seeing the monster. "I'd heard the monsters were getting smarter, that they even know how to hide their heads now."
She put away her machete and switched back to her wooden spear.
"But any monster that can move is bound to have a head. All we have to do is find its head before it kills us, and impale it!"
Zhu Yao charged forward, and Ed followed, swinging his giant axe.
Though confusion lingered in Ed's eyes, it didn't stop him from picking a random spot to hack at first.
Li Ban didn't rush forward immediately. He kept his bow drawn, taking aim.
'Making itself look bizarre so no one can find its weak point?'
The tip of his arrow tracked across the monster's body, searching for where the head might be hidden.
'Since the monster is already a product of madness with little rationality left, it should instinctively protect its head to the greatest extent possible.'
'The human skin on the surface isn't very thick. It should mostly serve as camouflage.'
Li Ban's arrow tip shifted slightly downward.
By this time, Zhu Yao and Ed were about to clash head-on with the monster.
'Feet are for support and movement, while hands can grab and attack. But hands have another task: grabbing food and stuffing it into a mouth hidden inside.'
Li Ban analyzed the function of every part of the monster's body.
Finally, the tip of his arrow settled just a bit above the arms.
'The brain might be behind the mouth. Of course, it could be hidden even deeper, but... it's worth a shot.'
He abruptly released the bowstring.
The sharp arrow tore through the air, seeming to carry the force of lightning. It threaded the gap between Zhu Yao and Ed and violently buried itself beneath the monster's skin.
The human-jelly, which had already lunged into the air to launch an attack on Zhu Yao and Ed, suddenly went limp.
Having lost control, its body carried forward on momentum but could no longer land on its feet.
The front portion of its skin hit the ground and began to slide forward.
The trailing arms and legs slammed down onto the edges of the skin, arresting its forward slide.
But as the rear limbs collapsed onto the front ones, coupled with the forward momentum, the entire monster tumbled head over heels, flipping completely upside down.
A massive sheet of human skin sprawled out on the ground in a wrinkled heap.
The thirty-plus twisted arms and legs now exposed to the sky thrashed around instinctively, but lacking any target or active command, they could only extend and retract helplessly.
At the last possible second, Zhu Yao dove to the side, dodging the falling human skin.
Ed, whose reaction was half a beat too slow, managed to back up two steps but failed to escape. The human skin flopped right over his face, enveloping him.
Having evaded the drop, Zhu Yao confirmed that the monster was no longer attacking on its own—its limbs were merely twitching pointlessly every so often. Only then did she step forward to yank Ed out from under the human skin.
When Ed was dragged out, he was still gripping his axe tightly; the tip of the blade had torn a massive slit into the human skin.
Li Ban walked over at this moment, looking down at the overturned monster.
The arrow he had shot had been snapped when the monster flipped over, but the arrowhead had driven even deeper into the creature's body.
From the inside, a small iron plate was exposed.
Zhu Yao looked down at the little iron plate and the chrysanthemum-like mouth situated right next to it. She turned back and gave Li Ban a thumbs-up.
"Spot on."
"It was just a lucky guess," Li Ban said modestly.
He believed, however, that even if his first arrow hadn't pierced the monster's head, it would have taken him three shots at most to uncover its vital spot.
Zhu Yao turned to Ed, who was slowly clambering back to his feet, and said, "Next time, I'll charge the front, and Li Ban will figure out how to hit the weak point. As for you—"
"You're on guard duty for the Tricycle."