Chapter 60: The Bird Trainer Expert—Jiang

Chapter 60: The Bird Tamer – Jiang

Beneath the blood-red moon, countless people with crazed expressions sprinted frantically through the streets.

Roars, gunfire, and screams blended into an endless cacophony of terror.

Suddenly, an abnormal sound tore through the sky.

A burning large passenger plane was seen hurtling downward, crashing violently into a bustling commercial street just seconds later.

In an instant, a thunderous explosion erupted, flames slithering outward like fiery pythons, instantly charring both ordinary citizens and maniacs alike into blackened corpses.

Nearby madmen, drawn by the commotion, merely glanced at the wreckage before continuing on their way, circling around it at varying speeds.

Most ordinary people hiding in covert shelters heard the noise and wondered if rescue had finally arrived, but a small handful of people watching Mike's livestream knew exactly what had happened.

That was the sound of an aircraft colliding with buildings.

Just a day ago, Mike was an obscure streamer whose channel barely attracted a thousand concurrent viewers at its peak. Right now, however, his livestream had broken into the top ten of the platform, with true viewership surpassing twenty thousand and still climbing rapidly.

Valuable virtual gifts poured in without a single interruption.

After all, at a time like this, wealth was useless, and no one knew how much longer they would live. They might as well experience the thrill of scattering money like dirt in the virtual world.

High above the city, Mike and Robert drifted slowly downward, their descent slowed by parachutes.

The camera of the phone linked to the broadcast was aimed squarely at the flames sparked by the plane crash.

Faced with this spectacle, the chat feed scrolled by in a mad frenzy.

— "First time seeing a plane crash live-streamed. Beats top-tier special effects by a mile!"
— "So magnificent, so beautiful..."
— "Have you people lost your humanity? What if there were people hiding in those burning buildings? Can you imagine how desperate and helpless they must feel right now?"
— "It's the end of the world, and you're lecturing me about humanity?"
— "White-knight hypocrites, get lost. If you're so benevolent, why are you still hiding? Why don't you offer yourselves to the lunatics?"
— "Streamer, what are you daydreaming for? I want to see the big guy! Switch to the big guy right now!"
— "What big guy? That's pronounced 'Jiang'!"
— "Streamer, stop spacing out. Your mother brought you two crates of milk..."

Recovering from the shock of the blazing inferno below and seeing the chat urging him on, Mike hurriedly swung the camera toward the upper side.

There hovered the culprit responsible for bringing down the plane.

It was a gargantuan, monstrous bird stretching dozens of meters long, resembling a colossal eagle. Its body was entirely devoid of feathers, its dark-red flesh covered in rotting decay and teeming with dense clusters of glowing green eyes.

Dangling right beneath the monster's neck was a single human figure.

"I missed hitting you by just that much, and yet you still managed to ruin my ride. Where are your manners?"

A faint chill laced Jiang Ren's smile as his hands and feet locked tightly around the creature's neck.

Faced with this grotesque bird—whose only noteworthy traits were a slightly larger size and slightly stronger explosive bursts of speed and power—he saw no need to trigger his transformation, as his normal state was more than sufficient to handle it.

"Screeech!"

The monster opened its jagged, tooth-filled beak, letting out a piercing, bone-chilling screech.

The next moment, it began to twist wildly, soaring upward and plunging downward in rapid succession, desperately trying to shake Jiang Ren off its body.

"It seems talking reasonably gets us nowhere."

Jiang Ren freed one hand to plunge deep into the creature's flesh, then anchored his other hand in place. Alternating his hands and feet, he climbed directly to the top of its neck.

Throughout the process, the monster's shrieks grew increasingly shrill and frantic.

"I'll give you a chance at redemption. As long as you fly me where I need to go, I'll forgive you. So, are you going or not?"

Under the gaze of the bird's numerous eyes, Jiang Ren began to pummel its head with rapid, merciless blows, an unhealthy smile blooming across his face. "Are you going? Are you going...?"

"Screeeeech—!"

Realizing there was no way to shake Jiang Ren off, and suffering excruciating waves of pain far worse than before with every blow to its head, the monster finally relented. It veered sharply and flew toward the crimson beam of light planted in the center of the city.

This entire sequence was witnessed simultaneously by over twenty thousand netizens in the livestream via Mike's phone.

Due to the distance, the image was somewhat hazy, and while they could hear the bird's shrieks, Jiang Ren's voice remained inaudible.

Even so, the visuals were more than enough to ignite a firestorm of discussion.

— "Am I hallucinating?"
— "A bird that huge is getting utterly beaten up by someone smaller than one of its talons? Doesn't that bird have any sense of shame?"
— "It's not just a beating. Look, the bird stopped struggling entirely and is just carrying the big guy away. I suspect it's been domesticated."
— "The Bird Tamer: Jiang!"
— "Dealing with over a thousand lunatics was already exaggerated enough, but now he's tamed a giant bird with his bare hands? Is he even human?"
— "Anyone saying that is clearly a newcomer to the stream. Spend just a few minutes here, and you'll know Jiang is definitely not human!"
— "Speaking of which, does anyone know what that red pillar thing is? Why is Jiang heading there?"
— "I want to know too, does anyone have a clue?"
— "No idea. But I feel like we should be paying attention to the fact that Jiang rode away on a bird while our streamer is still dangling from a parachute. What are we supposed to watch next?"
— "Watch the streamer deliver his head to the lunatics across a thousand miles..."

The grotesque bird may have been hideous to look at, but its flight speed was respectable.

Within dozens of seconds, it reached the heart of the city. Yet, when it was still a little over a thousand meters away from the crimson beam of light, it flatly refused to move an inch closer.

Even as Jiang Ren hammered its head a few more times, it stubbornly resisted.

Beneath its pained shrieks lay a deep, primordial terror of that pillar of red light.

"Fine. Seeing as you know what's good for you, I'll spare you."

Jiang Ren leapt into the air, dropping straight down from a height of several hundred meters.

Boom!

He crashed onto the roof of a three-story commercial building, the sheer force instantly smashing through the structure.

A few more loud impacts followed before absolute silence settled over the ruins.

Creeeak—!

The ground-floor door pushed open, and Jiang Ren stepped out, brushing the rubble and stone dust from his hair before glancing up at the sky.

Only a speck-sized shadow of the monstrous bird could be seen fleeing in the distance.

Clearly, the moment he landed, the creature had turned and flown away as fast as its wings could carry it; otherwise, it wouldn't have put that much distance between them so quickly.

"That intelligence puts it leagues ahead of those mindless lunatics who only know how to throw their lives away."

Jiang Ren shook his head, gazing toward the end of the street at the crimson beam of light rising from the ground straight into the center of the "dome" and the blood-colored moon.

No.

More accurately, it was a pillar of red light!

At such close proximity, one could clearly see that the red pillar was roughly fifty meters in diameter, enshrouded in a dense, crimson haze so thick that even running his right eye at full capacity failed to pierce through it.

Jiang Ren broke into a sprint, arriving right at the edge of the light pillar.

"Let me see what on earth is hidden inside here..."

Jiang Ren extended his left hand, pressing it against the boundary of the light.

Suddenly, his muttered words ceased. The slight upward curve of his lips grew steeper and steeper, while his eyes took on a crazed, blood-red tint, his pupils slitting into vertical reptilian shapes.

Blood-red energy bled outward from his left arm, dyeing his skin a deep, ominous crimson within seconds.

"What an interesting world. Such feeble creatures, yet they wield weapons capable of obliterating themselves ten thousand times over."

A hoarse, ancient voice spilled from "Jiang Ren's" lips. His slightly parted mouth was lined with razor-sharp teeth, occasionally spitting out sparks carrying the scent of sulfur.

Chuckling softly, he stepped directly into the pillar of red light.