Chapter 865 - 713: Triple Advantage Is Mine_2

"I've already explained this to you. Whether a fight breaks out isn't something I can decide on my own.

If they're coming for us, I have to be prepared for every possibility."

The man from the Mechanical Department had a face as black as the bottom of a pot, hammering his bottom line over and over:

"I don't care how you get ready, the point is, Li Shang cannot die. If he dies, even if I catch ten Feng Mu, the whole thing loses most of its meaning!

Do you understand?!"

This time, Zhang Shenyi finally stopped typing, slowly turned his head, and looked at the man from the Mechanical Department.

His gaze was no longer calm; a cold, icy chill seeped out:

"In a fight, people die. If it's not the enemy, it's my people. I have to complete the mission, and I have to be responsible for my people.

So from now on, shut your mouth and stand quietly to the side and watch. If you dare make another sound, messing with my judgment and my command, I'll rip your tongue out."

The man from the Mechanical Department was so angry his lips were trembling, bluffing with a guilty heart:

"Is this how you people operate? I… I'm definitely going to go back and…"

He wanted to say that once he got back he'd lodge a vicious complaint, but he wasn't even sure who he should complain to.

Zhang Shenyi's expression didn't change; he said seriously:

"The mission you gave us is to secretly capture Feng Mu and leave no survivors on site. So if the people in the same vehicle as him die, that's also part of fulfilling the mission."

The man from the Mechanical Department blurted anxiously:

"Then I'm modifying the mission right now, I demand that you…"

Zhang Shenyi cut him off:

"You've already laid out the mission, and we've already taken the order. We don't accept mid-mission changes or cancellations.

This is the Spirit of Contract that Worries Relief Studio has always strictly adhered to. I expect you to adhere to the Spirit of Contract as well."

The man from the Mechanical Department gaped, his mind full of question marks.

What goddamn Spirit of Contract, all I know is that the customer is God.

He still wanted to speak, but another team member had already finished planting the explosives and walked over. The guy spat out a sticky wad of chewing gum, then roughly shoved it into his mouth.

A taste of someone else's saliva mixed with gum exploded through his mouth in an instant.

The team member immediately raised a finger, placed it in front of his own lips, and made a "shh" gesture at him.

The man from the Mechanical Department stared wide-eyed, fuming as he spat out the second-hand gum and scrubbed his mouth hard with his sleeve.

But after that flurry of motion, it was as if all the strength had been sucked out of him. He slumped, shut his mouth, and didn't dare make another sound.

There was only one thought left in his head now—pray for Feng Mu and Li Shang, pray that their vehicle wouldn't stop halfway, that it would just drive straight on, and please, for the love of God, don't do any extra stupid shit.

Otherwise, given the excessive caution Worries Relief Studio had shown, they were very likely to strike first—and it would very likely be a saturation attack.

In a sense, the man from the Mechanical Department wasn't far off in his assessment.

He just guessed the outcome wrong. The moment the Second Prison's vehicle stopped on the road, the first wave of attack did not come from Worries Relief Studio.

It came from…

...…

On the roof of the abandoned gas station, years of accumulated dust were stirred by a faint airflow.

Fire Raven hooked his fingers around the ragged window ledge with one hand, his five fingers like steel pincers. With a casual tug, his heavy exoskeleton-clad body floated up like a weightless feather, flipped once in midair, and his feet landed on the rusted, cracked edge of the roof without making the slightest sound.

The first thing he did was look toward the source of the strange pong pong noises.

The distance was indeed quite far, and a large patch of tall grass swaying in the wind lay between them, putting a serious damper on visibility.

But that huge, lively steel spider, reflecting a cold metallic sheen, was way too much of an eyesore; it was hard not to see it.

"What the hell is Iron Claw doing?"

Fire Raven's left pupil kept refocusing, zooming in on the distant scene.

Through the highly magnified view, he could clearly see several mechanical auxiliary limbs behind Iron Claw clawing frantically at the ground, chasing a few yellow-green insects darting rapidly through the blades of grass.

Under the mask, Fire Raven's brows knit together as he weakly complained:

"He's chasing… leeches? That idiot, has he really started thinking he's a bug-catching spider?"

Pong!

Another dull thump. The leech exploded into a small fireball, its brief flash lighting up the swaying grass stems around it.

Fire Raven's pupils contracted sharply, and he immediately said:

"The leeches exploded. Mimetic recon! Enemies nearby!!!"

Fire Raven's right-arm exoskeleton twisted and rotated, the composite armor plates on the surface shifting like transforming blocks, rapidly rotating, twisting, and assembling along preset tracks and interfaces into a weapon whose shape was so bizarre it was… a sniper rifle?!!

It looked nothing like a conventional sniper rifle: the body was three meters long, its whole surface an icy bone-white, the same source as his armor.

The slender barrel wasn't a smooth cylinder, but tightly encased in dark-blue conduits spiraling around it in ring after ring. It looked like a shed snakeskin with a dead serpent coiled around it.

On the "snakeskin" itself were countless fine, complex patterns etched in ghostly blue.

Those strange patterns seemed to be infused with some invisible energy as they suddenly lit up with dim blue light.

Starting from the end of the chamber, the light flowed forward along the lines like blue blood, quickly spreading, segment by segment.

The entire "snakeskin" seemed to come alive, turning into a charging energy band. On the rifle body there was no conventional optical or electronic scope.

No aiming, no warning—at the instant the ghostly blue glow flowed to the muzzle—

"Wmmm…"

The air in front of the muzzle seemed to twist; a single blinding white star condensed at shocking speed, then blinked out.

It wasn't a bullet being fired, but more like a stroke drawn by God, laying down a straight white line across the wallpaper of yellow-green grass.

The space between Iron Claw and Fire Raven—exactly 1.74 km—was pierced straight through by that white stroke, and it didn't stop. It kept going, penetrating forward for who knew how many more miles.

Iron Claw suddenly halted his hunt, eight mechanical legs plunging deep into the soil as his massive body leaned back slightly from the abrupt stop.

The white gleam had plowed past almost brushing the front edge of his spider torso.

The next second, the white glow vanished.

Only then did the horrific scene fully reveal itself.

Everywhere the white gleam passed, the dense grass along the way—whether tough shrubs or supple tall grass—was severed at the roots.

For miles on end, half a meter wide, flame surged up nearly a meter high, like a flaming serpent suddenly crawling out of hell and thrashing wildly across the wasteland.

Firelight leapt, and the heat distorted the air.

Only at this moment did the sharp gunshot, thrown far behind—"ssshhh"—finally reach them, creating a bizarre sense of time-space dislocation with the burning wall of fire.

Only then came the furious "crackle" of flames whipping in the wind, grass rapidly charring and carbonizing, and the faint sound of several sparrows that had been foraging in the grass and didn't have time to fly, falling from the sky trailing black smoke.

Only then came the sound of flame swaying in the wind, grass withering to ash, and several foraging sparrows in the grass that didn't manage to fly away, burned and dropping.

And only then…

Pongpongpong!

A chain of explosions erupted in front of him, and Iron Claw's face beneath the mask looked terrible.

He stared at the four leech corpses blasted by a single shot, the shattered scraps splattered all over him, and he lifted his foot away from the wall of fire, pulling back the half of his foot that had been in it.

The half of his exoskeleton closest to the fire wall was bathed in red, leaving his spider body half red, half white, like half of it had been brought to red heat.

"Busybody. Did I ask for your help?"

Iron Claw turned his head irritably to look behind him, his masked voice feeding into the comm channel.

Fire Raven didn't hear a thing.

He wasn't like Shadow Scorpion, who liked to bicker with Iron Claw all day; he just blocked Iron Claw completely most of the time.

Only when combat started would he unmute the channel.

Shadow Scorpion cursed Iron Claw for being stupid every day, yet was "addicted" to arguing with him. In Fire Raven's eyes, Shadow Scorpion wasn't much better than Iron Claw—both idiots.

At best it was the difference between extremely stupid and very stupid.

Sure enough, the next second he heard Shadow Scorpion gloating on the side:

"Fire Raven, you're just too soft-hearted. Iron Claw's never gonna appreciate it."