Two Worlds in the Apocalypse: Each journey through the modern world lasts 60 seconds.

Chapter 150 Disposal (4700 words)

After several rounds of probing, Xu Mo roughly figured out the opponent's attack rhythm and the power of the glass beads. The force was enough to pierce ordinary wooden boards, and hitting a person would either kill or maim them, but it posed a limited threat to himself.

Xu Mo decided to change the passive situation. He continued to use his knife to parry the swarms of projectiles flying at him with his right hand, while his left hand reached behind him and grabbed the AK-47 slung across his back. With a smooth and powerful movement, he swung the rifle from behind to in front of him, and with a "click," he completed the one-handed cocking!

The entire process was completed in less than a second, during which the right hand swung the knife without pausing at all, knocking away three more glass beads that were aimed at his head and face.

Xu Mo slightly raised the muzzle of his AK-47, not immediately aiming and firing, but instead speaking calmly towards the cloud of smoke swirling around him: "Friend, is this how you all greet strangers these days?"

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly in the gaps between the metallic scraping of a gun being cocked and the clinking of glass beads being shot.

The moment the words left his mouth, "Bang!"

A crisp gunshot suddenly shattered the monotonous "clanging" melody between the two! The bullet wasn't aimed at the fast-moving figure, but rather struck precisely about two meters ahead of the trajectory the opponent was circling! The dry ground was kicked up with dust, leaving a shallow crater.

The figure moving at high speed paused noticeably, its detour slowing down for a moment. It was clear that it hadn't expected Xu Mo to be able to draw his gun so quickly while dealing with the hidden weapon attack, and to use shooting to block the way as a warning and deterrent.

But after just one pause, the opponent seemed to be enraged, or unwilling to give up, and its speed increased again, the circle it circled seemed to shrink a little, and the frequency of launching the glass balls became higher and more rapid!

“Swish, swish, swish—!

"Ding ding ding ding—!"

The sounds of machetes parrying echoed once more, but Xu Mo remained firmly standing in the center of the circle, his right hand flashing with the light of a blade, his left hand holding a gun but no longer firing.

This stalemate lasted for about four or five minutes. Xu Mo noticed that the frequency and force of the opponent's shots began to weaken almost imperceptibly in the later stages. After all, maintaining that kind of ultra-high-speed movement and continuous high-intensity throwing was extremely taxing on physical strength.

Finally, at a certain moment, the sound of something cutting through the air came to an abrupt end.

The figure that had been moving at high speed also slowed down.

Xu Mo smiled faintly, his gun still pointed at the other person, and said, "Want to stop and talk?"

The young man's expression shifted as he stared at the gun in Xu Mo's hand, especially the seemingly ordinary machete that had just displayed astonishing defensive power. His eyes were filled with resentment, fear, and a hint of—annoyance.

"Hmph!" He only snorted coldly in the end, without answering Xu Mo's question. Instead, he suddenly turned around and darted behind the rear of Xu Mo's SUV in a few steps, using the vehicle as cover.

Xu Mo thought he was going to regroup his attack or catch his breath behind the car, and was about to move to keep his line of sight.

But then the young man poked his head out from behind the car, glanced at Xu Mo, and then ran off in the direction he had come from without looking back.

Moreover, this time he was smarter; instead of running in a straight line, he began to maneuver in a serpentine pattern, swaying left and right, trying to increase the difficulty of being targeted and shot.

Xu Mo watched the young man flee, his back view showing his self-righteous attempts at tactical evasion, and couldn't help but curl a somewhat helpless smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Isn't this guy a bit too naive?" Xu Mo muttered to himself. Did he think running in a serpentine pattern would evade shooting? Perhaps it would work on an ordinary gunman, but it wouldn't be effective against any precision shooter, let alone himself.

Xu Mo lightly leaped onto the roof of the off-road vehicle, watching the figure twisting and turning in the wilderness raise an AK47.

"Bang!"

The first shot hit about five meters ahead of the enemy's serpentine movement, kicking up a cloud of dirt.

The young man, who was running wildly, was startled and suddenly swerved to the side.

"Bang!"

The second shot rang out almost at the same time the young man changed direction, and the bullet hit his side in front of his new direction, blocking his path once again.

"Now, can we talk?" Xu Mo's voice carried clearly through the wilderness. His tone remained calm, but carried an undeniable sense of pressure.

Upon hearing Xu Mo's words, the young man froze completely. He stood still, his shoulders trembling slightly, as if he were breathing heavily or struggling internally.

A few seconds later, the young man slowly turned around, his face no longer showing the arrogance and excitement he had shown before.

Xu Mo pointed the gun at him and ordered, "Hands up, walk over slowly. I don't know if you're hiding any toys in your pockets," he added, "and it wouldn't be good if you accidentally hurt me."

Upon hearing the words "little toy," the young man's face darkened further, as if he had been insulted, but dared not retaliate.

He did as instructed, raising his hands high and walking back to the SUV, step by step, very slowly, towards Xu Mo who was standing on the roof.

When he reached the front of the car, Xu Mo was still standing on the roof, looking down at him with the muzzle of his gun steadily pointed at him.

"Why?" Xu Mo asked, voicing his doubts. He believed he hadn't shown any hostility when he got out of the car, even waving to them. Why did the other party attack without saying a word?

The young man looked up at Xu Mo, his lips moved as if he wanted to come up with a reason, but when he met Xu Mo's calm yet penetrating gaze, he finally gave up in dejection and uttered a concise sentence: "I also want the supplies in your car."

"Want one too?" Xu Mo keenly caught the word "too," his eyebrows twitched slightly, and his heart sank slightly.

He felt that a number 100 had at least become 99.

"Where is your camp?" Xu Mo asked a different question, his tone revealing neither joy nor anger.

The young man's eyes flickered, seemingly reluctant to speak, but under the threat of the gun, he raised a hand and pointed to the left rear of the SUV, roughly the direction from which he had initially appeared: "Over there."

"Over there?" Xu Mo looked in the direction the young man was pointing, his gaze passing over the barren fields and scattered ruins, looking into the distance.

Just as Xu Mo turned his gaze away, seemingly diverting his attention, a sudden change occurred!

A fierce glint flashed in the young man's eyes. He suddenly reached his raised left hand towards the back of his neck, his fingers seemingly hooking something. Then, with lightning speed, he swung it violently at Xu Mo on the roof of the car!

A fainter, almost silent beam of dark light, moving at a speed far exceeding that of the previous glass bead, shot straight at Xu Mo's throat.

However, although Xu Mo seemed to have his attention diverted, his entire body was actually on high alert. He had already noticed the slightest twitch in the other person's shoulder muscles!

Standing on the roof of the car, he didn't even move much. He simply flipped his right wrist, which was holding the machete, and the blade stood upright in front of him as if it had a life of its own!

"Ding!"

A clearer, louder clang, accompanied by a metallic tremor, rang out as the dark light struck the blade, sending sparks flying before bouncing off and landing on the ground with a soft "tap."

Xu Mo caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye; it was a three-edged steel dart that had been polished to an extremely sharp point.

After deflecting the steel dart, Xu Mo's expression didn't change. Instead, he continued to ask, "How far? How many people?"

The ambush failed again, and the last trace of color drained from the young man's face, leaving only a despairing ashen. He weakly raised his hands again, his voice hoarse as he replied, "I ran at full speed for about two thousand minutes. There were seven people in the camp, including me."

"Oh." Xu Mo nodded knowingly and didn't ask any more questions. He picked up his AK-47 and jumped lightly off the roof of the car.

He walked up to the young man and looked him up and down. The young man felt a chill run down his spine from his gaze, and his hands and feet turned ice-cold.

After scrutinizing the young man, Xu Mo turned around, walked to the trunk of the SUV, took out a folded military entrenching tool, and threw it on the ground at the young man's feet.

"Take this." Xu Mo gestured with the muzzle of his gun to the right front of the SUV, about twenty meters away, to a relatively flat, soft-soiled open space. "Go over there and help me dig a hole."

"Dig—dig a hole?" The young man was stunned, completely bewildered as to what Xu Mo was trying to do.

"Yes, dig a hole." Xu Mo's tone was calm, as if he were talking about something very ordinary. "As for the dimensions—1.75 meters long, 80 centimeters wide, and half a meter deep will do."

The young man looked at the entrenching tool at his feet, then at the dark muzzle of the gun in Xu Mo's hand and the chilling knife, and finally bent down to pick up the entrenching tool.

He knew he had no right to refuse.

Under the blazing sun, in the still, windless wilderness, only the merciless rays of sunlight relentlessly baked the earth.

The young man was sweating profusely, digging the soil shovel by shovel. Xu Mo stood a few meters away, his gun lowered, but his eyes remained fixed on him.

During the digging process, the young man seemed unwilling to give up, or perhaps to alleviate his inner fear, he began to casually try to get information out of Xu Mo.

"Brother, where are you from? Where are you going?"

"Just passing by."

"Are there any large, safe survivor settlements around here? We've been hiding in the mountains and we're out of touch with the outside world."

"Northwest direction, Jiangcheng."

"Jiangcheng? How big is it? How many people are there? Is it safe?"

"fine."

The young man asked cautiously, and Xu Mo answered concisely, a mix of truth and falsehood. When the young man tentatively asked Xu Mo what he was doing driving alone in this dangerous area, Xu Mo glanced at him and calmly replied, "I received a mission from Jiangcheng to deliver a message to the Pearl Harbor shelter that has lost contact."

Upon hearing this, the young man visibly paused in his digging, a look of disbelief and doubt on his face. Alone, traversing thousands of kilometers of dangerous terrain to deliver a message to a lost shelter? It sounded like a fantasy, more like suicide.

But with his life in the other party's hands, he dared not utter a word of doubt, and could only chuckle twice before continuing to dig.

Midway through the journey, the young man was sweating profusely and claimed to be extremely thirsty, asking Xu Mo for some water. Xu Mo didn't make things difficult for him and took an unopened bottle of drinking water from the car, tossing it to him.

The young man took the water and drank more than half of the bottle in one gulp. If it weren't for the gun in Xu Mo's hand that was constantly pointing at him, the scene would have looked like a foreman supervising a worker, and the atmosphere would have been somewhat harmonious.

In about ten minutes, a rectangular pit that met Xu Mo's requirements began to take shape as the young man dug diligently.

The young man straightened up, wiped the sweat and dirt from his face with his filthy sleeve, and forced a fawning smile at Xu Mo: "Brother Xu, the pit is dug. Look how hot it is, I've put in a lot of effort, could you give me another bottle of water? My throat is parched."

Xu Mo nodded and readily took another bottle of water from the car and handed it to him.

After thanking him again, the young man unscrewed the cap and, while drinking, secretly observed Xu Mo's expression out of the corner of his eye.

After finishing his water, he put down the bottle, rubbed his hands together, and said with a mixture of expectation and caution, "Brother Xu, look, I've dug this pit for you. Can I leave now? I promise, I'll leave immediately and never show my face in front of you again! I swear!"

Upon hearing this, Xu Mo frowned slightly: "Leave? If you leave, what will happen to this mess I'm in?"

"Huh?" The young man was stunned, not understanding Xu Mo's meaning. "What do you mean, what do we do? The pit's been dug, right here?"

Xu Mo looked at him and explained calmly, "What I mean is, there needs to be a corpse lying in here, otherwise why would I have you go through the trouble of digging this pit?"

"There has to be a corpse lying in there?" the young man muttered repeatedly. At first, he didn't react, but looking at Xu Mo's calm eyes and thinking of words like "digging a hole" and "lying in there," a thought that made his soul fly away suddenly burrowed into his mind like a venomous snake!

The young man's face instantly turned deathly pale, his eyes widened in utter terror and disbelief, and his trembling finger pointed at Xu Mo: "You're going to bury me alive?! No, you're going to kill me and bury me here?!"

Xu Mo didn't answer directly. Instead, he walked to the edge of the pit, looked it over, and then at the young man's height and build. He nodded, as if inspecting a project: "Hmm, the size is just right. 1.75 meters high and 80 centimeters wide, quite spacious. By the way," Xu Mo pointed to the half-finished bottle of water on the ground, "this bottle of water is for you too. Take it with you when you lie down; you might need it on the way."

"No! Brother Xu! No! I was wrong! I really know I was wrong! I'll never do it again! Please forgive me! My girlfriend is still waiting for me at the camp! I still have my companions! I'll give you all the supplies from our camp! Please! Let me go!" The young man completely broke down, fell to his knees with a thud, tears streaming down his face, and begged incoherently.

Xu Mo listened quietly to his cries and pleas for mercy, as if watching a farce that had nothing to do with him.

"What goes around comes around. You tell me, isn't that the truth?" Xu Mo waited until his crying subsided a little before speaking slowly, his voice sounding like he was coaxing a child, or like he was explaining a principle.

"Come on, lie down and find a comfortable position. And remember to say thank you."

"You still have to say thank you?" The young man looked up, his face covered in a mixture of tears and dirt, as if he had heard the most absurd thing in the world.

Xu Mo looked at him, shook his head, and said with a sigh, "Rude."

The moment the words fell, Xu Mo stepped forward, his left hand reaching out like an iron clamp, easily grabbing the young man's shoulder, which was weak and limp from fear.

The young man felt an irresistible force coming at him, and all his struggles seemed ridiculous and futile under that hand. The next second, the world spun around him, and he was lifted up by Xu Mo and then gently "placed" into the pit that Xu Mo had dug himself, as if he were throwing away a bag of garbage.

The young man shuddered violently as his body touched the still-warm soil at the bottom, as if he had been scalded. He lay on his back at the bottom of the pit, and through the opening, he could only see Xu Mo's face, backlit and expressionless, and a small patch of intensely bright blue sky and white clouds.

The sun was still scorching, but he felt icy cold all over, as if his blood had frozen. The boundless darkness and the fear of death completely overwhelmed him.

"Get into a comfortable position and say thank you." Xu Mo's voice came from above the pit, his tone as calm as a casual conversation.

There was no response from the bottom of the pit, only suppressed, intermittent sobs and the sound of teeth chattering.

Xu Mo waited a few seconds, and seeing that the other party did not intend to "thank you", he stopped waiting.

He raised his AK-47, pointing the muzzle downwards at the trembling figure curled up at the bottom of the pit.

To prevent the young man from turning into a zombie, he kindly blew his head off.

"Bang!"

A gunshot rang out, sounding particularly abrupt and brief in the empty wilderness.

The sobbing and trembling at the bottom of the pit stopped abruptly.

Xu Mo put away his gun, bent down to pick up the mud-covered entrenching tool from the ground, and turned back to the SUV.

As for why the pit wasn't filled in, it wasn't his who dug it, so why should he fill it in?

Xu Mo got into the driver's seat and started the engine.

The SUV roared, turned around, and drove off in the direction the young man had pointed.

The sun still blazed high, the wilderness was silent, and the only person nearby was a young man lying in a pit who rudely refused to say thank you.