Cyberpunk: I didn't cheat.

Vito then moved the next body, and soon the bodies of these poor people were lined up in a long row.

Vito could roughly determine that these people were all from the Snake Gang, and there were both men and women among them. Some of them who did not have combat prosthetics had military technology Parallel Line Type 2 installed, and were hackers.

In Night City, bringing hackers on missions is standard practice, but in the Badlands, a group of twenty or so people, a quarter of whom are hackers, seems quite strange.

“Johnny, they were running away and then they got caught. They didn’t have any signs of a fight and barely resisted. I guess their captors must be someone they know, and they made sure they wouldn’t be hurt.”

"But that guy went back on his word. That's it, this is Night City."

"Stop being a straight man, Johnny. Can you use your rock 'n' roll brain to give me some useful analysis?"

"I'll analyze it for you? Then listen carefully. Twenty-odd homeless people were caught and executed by acquaintances. This is making an example of them, letting those who fired the shots see what happens when they try to escape. What do you think of this analysis?"

"If they're so skilled, why did they run away?"

"Why don't you shoot yourself in the head and ask them?"

Vito turned over another body, and at that moment, his prosthetic eye caught sight of a black dot in the sky, which looked like a high-altitude reconnaissance drone.

Whoosh!

A bullet came flying.

Vito's reflexes allowed him to duck and dodge the bullet aimed at his head.

Then, the sound of a bullet being fired came from afar.

"Kinetic sniper rifle!"

Vito quickly dodged behind the demon hound. The gunman was accurate, but the distance was too far, and the strong winds blowing in the bad soil also affected the gunman's performance.

Vito quickly pulled out the Machine Heart kinetic sniper rifle from the back seat of the Demon Dog and aimed it at the source of the gunshot.

"Damn it, I'll give you a bullet back right now!"

Vito raised his gun to engage in a sniper duel. Four seconds after the bullets hit, the gunshot rang out. Vito had already calculated the distance to the shooter in his mind. Vito is a genius when it comes to sniping. Don't assume that Uncle Vito is a wheelchair athlete just because he likes to build smart sniper rifles.

boom!

Vito scanned the area with his prosthetic eye and spotted an off-road vehicle parked behind a small hill in the wasteland. He immediately recognized it as a local, someone adept at using small mounds for cover.

Vito fired a shot at the SUV. Whether he hit anyone or not was another matter. The shot was a warning that the sniper's position had been exposed, and he could also fire the bullet there himself.

Sure enough, the gunman got into the SUV. At that moment, several motorcycles approached rapidly from both sides. They were all wearing sand masks. Judging from their clothing and equipment, these people were homeless, but it was unclear which family they belonged to.

"Hehe, it might be the unlucky guy's family coming over. Run, Vito!"

"Run? Can I avoid his attack?"

The off-road vehicles behind the mound also started up. Fearing that Vito would snipe the motorcyclist, the people in the vehicles used their machine gun turrets to suppress Vito with fire.

In fact, they were completely making a fuss over nothing. Even if Vito were stupid, he wouldn't snipe a few speeding motorcycles in the windswept wasteland.

Just as Vito was about to switch to the Sany heavy machine gun to give the local villagers a little bullet storm, his prosthetic eye swept across the area and saw a Thunderway that he recognized from his previous life.

"Panan?"

Chapter 308 You Can't Run From Me

To verify his suspicions, Vito put down the Trinity heavy machine gun and instead tucked the Punishment Kinetic Revolver behind his waist and covered it with his clothes.

Seeing that Vito did not resist, Tingwei did not waste bullets, and the group quickly surrounded Vito.

Four men came down from the Thunder, and the machine gun turret locked onto Vito.

"An off-road vehicle on a smart turret? Looks like it's time for the Badlands folks to share their cutting-edge technology with Night City."

Vito's old Merrimack Magician had a turret, but that was a small program that Vito himself had created. This thing in front of him is obviously more intelligent than Vito's half-finished product.

"Stop talking nonsense and put down your weapons!"

Panan took the lead, pointing a pistol at Vito. She saw Vito handling a large number of corpses and assumed he was a cruel murderer.

"Don't worry, Panan, I don't mean any harm!"

Vito told Panan not to get excited, then looked at the people behind Panan. He had wanted to see if Scorpion and Mitch had come with Panan, but he saw a whole bunch of familiar faces.

"Holy crap, everyone's at Edo-Tu team building? And Yueyang, didn't you go back to your hometown? What are you doing at Edo-Tu?"

"Ugh! You... I'm going to die! Vito!"

Tiger recognized Vito's voice first. Although Tiger hadn't had much contact with Vito, he had long since memorized Vito's voice and smile.

(Vito whispers: Uh, it's like I'm gone.)

Vito ripped off his dust mask, only to find that the gunmen were all familiar faces, and the floodwaters nearly washed away the Dragon King Temple.

"How did you end up with Adcardo?"

"It's a long story, well, how should I put it? There have been too many unexpected events in this dilapidated city of Night!"

Yueyang put away his weapon and introduced Vito to Panan.

Carmela, who was at the back, looked somewhat dazed. She had just connected to the mobile signal terminal of the high-altitude reconnaissance drone, and her mind was still a little fuzzy.

"Vi...Vito?"

"Carmela? What are you doing here? Never mind, let's not talk about that. Can you help me see if these people are from the Snake Gang?"

Everyone had something to say, but everyone felt that the occasion was somewhat inappropriate. Carmela went to identify the corpses, and with each face she recognized, her expression darkened.

Her prosthetic fingers unconsciously rubbed against the flesh of her clansmen who had grown up with her in the Serpent Kingdom. She knew who the executioner was.

“Their behavior before they died was strange; they hardly resisted the enemy. I suspect they knew the killer. Carmela, do you have any clue?”

Max.

"Oh, um? Who?"

"It must have been Max who ordered it. Sammy and Carlo died because of him!"

Carmela practically squeezed Max's name out from between her teeth; the man who had cared for them like a father since childhood was now destroying their former relationship with his own hands.

Carmela shoved a cigarette into her mouth with trembling hands. If Carlo was trying to stop Max’s so-called great plan and Max was going to break ties with Carlo, then what about these people?

They just wanted to leave the Snake Village, which was unfamiliar to them. Why was Max so heartless as to kill them and then just dig a hole and dump them there?

Click!

The prosthetic arm unleashed flames, which flickered in the strong wind but were never extinguished. Carmela's heart was as turbulent as the fire; she wanted to rush to Max and demand to know why he was so cruel.

Vito hadn't expected so much to have happened in Snake Village in such a short time. He could feel Carmela's sadness, but now was not the time for sentimentality. He needed to clarify a few questions.

"Please accept my condolences, Carmela. I'd like to ask some questions about the Snake Kingdom first."

Carmela wiped away her tears with her back to everyone, not noticing that she wiped all the sand from her hands onto her face.

"Go ahead and ask."

"How did Snake Gang recover its strength and grow to such a large size in such a short time? Just with those few robots?"

The wind grew stronger, whipping up sand and clods of earth that stung my face.

"We quickly wiped out the remnants of the Bayonet Gang by capturing them and using robots. Carlo and his men later discovered the Bayonet Gang's servers hidden in a cave, and Max carried these things back to the camp."

After that, our task was to find generators and Alcohol 2 to power those power hogs. Max said he had found a new deal that could make the Serpent Clan stronger. We bought airships from the Vortex Clan, and Max even went to the East himself to negotiate the business.

"Set up servers in this treacherous land? And then, someone started paying you guys?"

"Yes, we have taken control of the eastward expansion of the Badlands, and Max has been actively communicating with other families about mergers since then. New faces are coming to Snake State every day."

Johnny, supporting the demon dog, scrutinized Carmela. He saw the girl's sorrow clearly and pieced together what he believed to be the truth from her fragmented answers.

"The old guy has defected to the company. I've seen too many of these sudden rising forces. They're all just sitting around taking advantage of the company."

"Then, uh, Max, why would he turn on his own people?"

“Carol’s behavioral data says that Max is connected to NCX. He and Carol had a fierce argument. Maybe we didn’t see the real Max before.”

Okay, now Max will have to sit at the same table as Dutch.

Carmela then briefly recounted what had happened before. After Carlo was killed, she accidentally hired Tiger and Yueyang, and for the past few days they had been waging guerrilla warfare against the Snake Gang's groups of gunmen who were hunting down homeless people.

Vito felt a surge of resentment upon hearing about the Snake Clan's atrocities. He thought Max, that old man, looked respectable at first glance, but he turned out to be just like the Blue and White Hexagram.

"I'm here to see my friends Jack and Vincent; they might also be involved in the Snake Gang's affairs."

"Don't worry, Carmela, we'll have a chance to shoot Max and send him to hell, so he'll have to repent for what he did."

Even if his goal was to lead Earth to the Trisolarans, Vito would still send a bullet into the brain of this scoundrel who had committed such a bloody crime.

The sandstorm intensified, and together with Adcado's motorcyclists, they buried the bodies of the victims from Snakebang.

The burial place was very simple. Carmela noted the coordinates, cut off a piece of her clothes with a dagger, and buried it in the ground.

If she returns alive, she will give her people a decent place to live; if she dies, she hopes she can keep up with them.

In the distance, a fierce wind whipped up sand and surged towards us, the yellow sand that blotted out the sky like a wall of wind, swallowing everything in front of us.

"It's Ha Dabo! We need to find a place to hide!"

Panan quickly reminded everyone that in the face of such a strong sandstorm, humans appear so small.

"Let's retreat first, Vito. You stay with us. The GPS might not work in the sandstorm, so you have to stay close!"

Carmela quickly ushered Tiger and Yueyang, who had never met Ha Dabo before, into the car.

The group rushed toward a temporary camp.

Unbeknownst to them, a convoy of more than a dozen demonic hounds was speeding through the sandstorm, trying to break through the wind curtain.

On the vehicle, the Snake Gang emblem is constantly battered by wind and sand.

Chapter 309 The Sound

From above, a few black dots struggle to move forward. The sandstorm is unaware of its own existence; it simply moves forward with the strong wind, fairly tormenting every unfortunate soul trapped in the yellow sand.

Vito followed Parnan's thunderous advance, the sandstorm already binding them.

Vito felt that the visibility around him was less than two meters, and the Demon Dog's body was constantly crackling and popping. He guessed that the dents on the Demon Dog's body had long been filled with sand.

An Adcado motorcyclist was blown over by a strong wind, and Vito only saw him roll a few times on the ground before he could see him again.

"This is terrible! I should have let them ride my magic hound!"

This was the first time Vito had faced such a sandstorm. In the face of the power of nature, even the strongest human being appears so insignificant.

"Panan! Your people have been overthrown!"

"Damn! It's like...squeak...sizzle..."

All I could hear was profanity; the communication was full of static. Panan's voice sounded like an alien talking.

The sandstorm has started to affect the Demon Hound, and the fully enclosed armored vehicle's full-function radar system is malfunctioning intermittently.

"You've really struck gold, Vito. Should I say you're lucky or unlucky? This kind of sandstorm probably only happens once every few hundred years, and you just happened to run into it."

I suggest you take a picture now, so that when someone digs this iron coffin out, they can use this photo for their funeral portrait.

Johnny remained calmly leaning against the passenger seat. Judging from his emotional state, Vito showed no sign of panic, so Johnny had even less reason to panic.

"It's not about taking pictures now, we're doomed, Johnny. Hopefully, the next person to stick a Relic is also a fierce fan."

"Hmph, I see you've run out of new jokes. But I'm quite curious, aren't you worried at all?"

Vito gripped the wobbling steering wheel and stared intently ahead. The car wasn't going fast, but it was still around 50 or 60 kilometers per hour, and visibility was only two meters. Even in rough terrain with fewer obstacles, it was still quite dangerous.

"Johnny, why do you have to ask so many questions at a time like this? I'd like to panic, but I need to focus on driving this clunker, I don't even have time to panic!"

At that moment, a hurried warning came through the radio.

"Little... Stone...!"

Suddenly, Tingwei swerved the steering wheel, the car scraped past a large rock, and then disappeared into the sandstorm.

Faced with the sudden burst of energy ahead, Vito quickly turned the steering wheel to the left, and the car screeched as it scraped against the rocks.