The Immortal Ruins - Chapter 2 A Change From Heaven
### Chapter 2 A Change from Heaven
Just then, a roar like a thunderclap resounded behind Jiang Shaoliu. He turned around and screamed in surprise.
The monkey king was also growing, glowing with golden light.
It was originally under a meter tall even when standing erect on its hind legs, but now this monkey king’s bones were popping and its limbs were slowly elongating. Within ten seconds it was almost as tall as Jiang Shaoliu.
It was staring at the big cat beside Jiang Shaoliu and emitting warning sounds from its mouth.
The big cat glanced at the monkey king and bared its fangs. Then, it leaped.
Jiang Shaoliu almost passed out on the spot.
By now, the monkey king was already about 2 meters tall, like a scrawny gorilla, but it kept on growing.
Slam!
The monkey king and the big cat crashed into each other in midair, howling terribly. Jiang Shaoliu scrambled away in horror, not even noticing that he had cut his hands on the shards of broken glass littering the street.
The monkey king grabbed the big cat’s hind leg and threw it heavily to the ground.
The cat was crying and struggling, and the monkey king was roaring. Now the monkey was more than 3 meters tall, its arms thicker than Jiang Shaoliu’s waist. He couldn’t help thinking of the movie ‘King Kong’.
The monkey king lifted the cat up by its hind leg and grabbed one of its front paws with its other arm, and dashed the feline heavily against the ground.
The cat was torn in half, splashing blood and guts all over the sidewalk at Jiang Shaoliu’s feet.
Then, the violent earthquake suddenly stopped.
“Mommy, I’m scared of the monster!” A little girl in her mother’s arms looked away from the gigantic monkey king in fear.
The panicking mother quickly covered the little girl’s mouth.
“Is that a dog?!” A taxi driver stuck his head out of his car window, an aghast expression on his face. A Pekingese as big as a cow had just turned the street corner, its eyes red and saliva dripping from its mouth, sharp canines gleaming in the sunlight like white pickaxes.
The dog jumped on a nearby girl and easily brought her to the ground. It held her down with its sharp claws and tore off her arm amid shrill screams.
“Ah!!!”
The girl fainted. Soon, she was torn apart by the dog, blood flowing everywhere.
Screams filled the air as people fled in pandemonium.
Then came a rumbling sound, like a wing of attack helicopters. It was a swarm of mosquitos, rolling over the rooftops down the street. Each was the size of a bicycle, the barbs on their limbs shining with a dangerous light. Their sharp stingers accurately stabbed into the back of the man’s head.
They were chasing a man.
With a sharp sucking sound, the man’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he trembled for a moment before collapsing to the ground. There was a big hole in the back of his head, and his brain had been sucked out.
The ground shook again, but it was not an earthquake this time. It was the plants and the grass, still growing at an impossible rate, rising higher and higher like outstretched ghostly fingers. One weed covered with thorns as sharp as swords pierced the bottom of a car, smearing the windows with the passengers’ blood amidst desperate screams before bursting through the roof.
“What is happening? Is this real?” People ran and screamed. Many pets grew to massive proportion and lost their minds, chasing down their previous owners and tearing them to pieces.
Soon, the whole city became a desolate jungle. Huge trees rose 4 or 5 stories high, growing so fast just touching them could scrape the skin off your palms.
Bang!
A police officer stood in the middle of the street, firing his pistol at a humongous Newfoundland who was chewing on an unfortunate passerby. The dog yelped in pain and leaped towards the cop.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Shots rang out one after another. The dog was limping but it didn’t stop moving. When it reached the policeman it crushed him with its paw and bit his head off.
Even a gun couldn’t shoot them dead?
“Demons! They are all demons now!” Terrified people began running into the nearby buildings to get away from the horrors of the street.
But it was not safe in the houses either. Thumb-sized fish in people’s aquariums were also growing rapidly. Toothed exotic fish, grown to a dozen times their original size, were breaking free of their glass confines and jumping at their owners, leaving behind only bones and blood.
Luckily, those fish soon died without water.
Jiang Shaoliu was staring blankly at the ground when the monkey king suddenly turned around and trotted over to him. It grabbed him and put him on its shoulders.
He was so scared he didn’t dare to move a muscle.
The oversized monkey adjusted his weight with a shrug and started in the direction of Mount Huaguoshan.
It was now 5 meters high, its two arms like huge pillars, as thick as wine barrels. Its muscles flexed with explosive power as it galloped down the street on all fours.
People screamed and fled left and right as the gigantic monkey came barreling through. One man tripped and lay limp on the asphalt, shivering as he looked at the monstrosity hurtling his way.
An eagle as big as a millstone came swooping down, but the monkey king caught its wings and tore it in half! Feathers, entrails, and blood drenched the poor man on the ground who couldn’t get away in time. He squealed miserably and fainted, his eyes rolling in their sockets.
The streets were full of huge, feral, mutated animals. They were not only hunting humans everywhere but also tearing and killing each other. The monkey king’s fur was soon drenched in blood, emitting a sickly odor that only attracted more of those mad beasts’ attention.
The monkey lifted up a car and dropped it on two huge dogs rushing at it from across the street. Jiang Shaoliu hugged the monkey king tightly and stared into the distance Now he understood that the monkey king was saving him, but why did it want to take him to Huaguoshan?
He didn’t know why it was trying to save him, but the monkey king was the only thing he could rely on in this world gone mad.
“Look, there’s someone riding that thing!” Finally, someone noticed Jiang Shaoliu on the monkey king’s shoulders.
The monkey king’s fighting prowess had people’s attention. Before, all they could do was run for their lives wherever their legs carried them, but seeing this human-friendly, gargantuan monkey seemed to instil some hope in their hearts.
“Help me, please” An injured middle-aged person lying the floor begged Jiang Shaoliu, “I can give you money, as much as you want”
“Please help my daughter!” a woman hugging a baby knelt on the ground in tears. “She’s so young! Can you take her to a safe place? We will be forever indebted to you!”
“Please ask your monkey to clear a path for us! We can just follow it and escape.”
“Yes, please help us, young man!”
A more cautious person in the crowd asked him: “Hey, young man, did you raise this monkey yourself? Where did you get it?”
Seeing those people drawing nearer and surrounding it, the monkey king grew increasingly anxious. It kept on looking up at the floating mountain in the sky with what could only be described as great concern.
Jiang Shaoliu patted the monkey on the neck to comfort it.
Did he have to save them? Other than the monkey king, the oversized animals all around were completely feral, and it was impossible for the monkey to make it by itself. Jiang Shaoliu understood that they would surely die if they stuck around any longer, no matter how strong the monkey king was.
But would he be condemning them all to death if he didn’t take them with him?
“Ah!!!”
While he was thinking, the wild beasts were getting closer, and a huge mastiff shot out of nowhere and tore a fat man in half with claws as sharp as knives.
A yellow bird, even bigger than the eagle, perched on an old man’s head and plucked his entrails out.
“Squeak!” A mouse the size of a wild boar sliced through one youth’s arm with a bite like a guillotine.
The crowd dispersed amidst panic and screams, people running in all directions. The monkey king attracted too many beasts. The oversized animals pounced back and forth in the chaos, biting and slashing with their sharp teeth and claws.
Within moments, the street had been turned into a bloody hellscape.
The heavy, disgusting smell of blood spread far and wide, attracting even more beasts.
Just two blocks away, at the city zoo, a huge tiger with shiny golden-yellow fur slowly paced away from its breached enclosure. The stripe patterns on its face formed the character for ‘king’. Its body had swelled to the size of an elephant, with four sturdy limbs and two sword-like fangs jutting out of its huge maw.
This tiger had mutated and became similar to an oversized prehistoric sabre-tooth. The mauled carcasses of the zoo’s other denizens lay all around it, including an equally gigantic male African lion.
This tiger sniffed the air and turned around suddenly. It gazed far into the distance, a dangerous gleam in its green eyes. Its roar shook the trees around it and made leaves tumble to the ground.
Hind paws carving shallow trenches in the earth, the tiger stormed off like a whirlwind in the direction of the monkey king and Jiang Shaoliu.
