Chapter 56 - 52: Kings Do Not Meet

Chapter 56: Chapter 52: Kings Do Not Meet

Out on the vast ocean.

Nan Jiamu led Cole as they made another strenuous swim toward the drilling platform. However, the tentacles and Mutants that should have been dormant surged from the sea once again, ignoring the fierce sunlight to block their path.

This was the third time!

This time, Nan Jiamu didn’t waste her Extraordinary Abilities on these tentacles and Mutants. She immediately pulled Cole back.

Once she retreated past some hidden boundary, the tentacles and Mutants reverted to their "normal settings" and sank back to the ocean floor.

Cole looked completely bewildered. "What the hell is going on?"

Nan Jiamu stared with deep, brooding eyes at the drilling platform, which was half-submerged and completely enveloped in mutated flesh.

"Two kings cannot share the same board."

"What are you talking about, Ms. Nan?"

Nan Jiamu sighed. Her protagonist aura was indeed severely weakened in the Red Corpse World. This was the home turf of the Red Corpse World’s protagonist, giving them the home-field advantage.

What Nan Jiamu couldn’t figure out was why the protagonist of the Red Corpse World would appear in this event. The Guardian Night City event was clearly only a Silver Card event.

An event featuring a protagonist should be ranked Golden. What went wrong?

She wondered, "Did the author change the outline?

"Or did the protagonist of the Red Corpse World awaken early like I did, realize this is a novel’s world, and do something outside the plot’s settings?"

"What do we do now?" Cole asked.

Nan Jiamu also felt helpless. If she couldn’t lead a team to destroy the β-type Biomass Aggregation, her attempt to recruit Adeline would definitely fail.

But right now, she couldn’t even set foot on the drilling platform. There was no point in staying.

"We abandon the current event and return to the coast," Nan Jiamu decided. "The Slaughter event is tallied after we return. We still have three and a half days. We’ll gather the others and hunt down other Mutants and Fallen Species to close the point gap. We’ll win by sheer numbers."

Cole shrugged indifferently. "Alright, you’re in charge, Ms. Nan. I’ll follow your lead!"

The two of them turned around and swam through the ocean toward the coast.

Atop the drilling platform’s high tower.

Adeline sneered as she watched Nan Jiamu and Cole leave in the distance.

"I really overestimated you," she muttered. "Speaking of which, where the hell is the core of this aggregation!"

Adeline was lost. Even with her Shadow Manipulation, which allowed her to ignore obstacles and freely traverse the pitch-black interior of the drilling platform, she simply couldn’t find the aggregation’s core.

"This dump isn’t even that big. This is so weird!"

Adeline intentionally sought higher ground, standing on a slanted crossbeam to overlook the entire area.

Below her was a dense tangle of pipes and decking. Red fleshy membranes covered most of the area, resembling massive spider webs.

"Don’t tell me Lucia and the others really beat me to it!"

BOOM!

An explosive roar erupted from deep beneath her feet. A force strong enough to overturn an entire building surged up from below, accompanied by flames. A wave of heat carried debris upwards, and the crossbeam beneath Adeline’s feet shattered from the shockwave.

She executed a Shadow Instant Teleportation, emerging from the shadows to land on a higher steel frame.

Dozens of tentacles of varying thickness burst from the seawater. The thick ones were like smokestacks, the thin ones like whips. Emitting ear-piercing shrieks, they frantically thrashed and coiled, peeling off the drilling platform’s outer walls piece by piece in an attempt to extinguish the flames rising from within.

The seawater was churned into white froth, mixed with black blood and shredded flesh, splashing more than ten meters into the air.

Adeline continuously teleported, dodging a sweeping tentacle and then a flying piece of steel framing. A gash was sliced into her Diving Suit, but fortunately, she remained uninjured.

She dove into the seawater, doing her best to avoid the blazing midday sun and prevent the light from hitting the tear in her Diving Suit.

Wiping the water from her helmet’s visor, Adeline spotted two figures not far away.

Z13 dragged the injured Z49 as they jumped into the sea from a fracture point. A tentacle whipped toward them from behind, instantly smashing both of them beneath the waves.

"Lighthouse—!"

White Phosphorus’s voice was utterly heart-wrenching. Adeline abruptly looked up.

At the edge of the shattered platform, a tentacle was wrapped tightly around Lighthouse’s waist. He used all his remaining strength to hurl White Phosphorus toward the sea’s surface before he was dragged into the sea of fire and disappeared.

White Phosphorus crashed into the sea not far from Adeline.

A massive shadow, reeking of foul seawater, crashed down from above. Adeline’s entire body tensed. Just as she prepared to use Shadow Instant Teleportation to dodge, the frantically writhing tentacles all froze simultaneously, as if someone had hit the pause button.

They began to fall. One after another, they drooped limply and crashed into the ocean, kicking up massive plumes of water.

The drilling platform continued to collapse, the groaning of stressed metal mingling with the echoes of the explosion. But the tentacles remained perfectly still, as if something had killed them from the inside out.

[Guardian Night City Event Has Ended]

The system’s cold notification rang in her mind. Adeline floated on the sea’s surface, staring at the burning ruins as she murmured, "What exactly happened?"

A few minutes earlier.

Yin Zhen transformed into a Raven and lunged toward Zoe in midair. The hanging fleshy membranes seemingly came to life, curling toward her.

She darted through the gaps between them, reverting to her human form right in front of Zoe.

The Hand Axe slashed down!

The red fleshy tube connecting Zoe to the cocoon was severed, spraying black liquid.

Zoe snapped her eyes open. Her dilated pupils instantly focused, widening as she looked at Yin Zhen.

"Go!"

Yin Zhen barely managed to shout that single word. While her body was still suspended in midair, over a dozen tentacles formed from twisted fleshy membranes surged forward and entangled her. They dragged her away from Zoe and pulled her toward the cocoon.

"May!"

Zoe reached out to grab her but caught only empty air as her body plummeted downward.

The fleshy membranes ensnaring Yin Zhen were covered in countless tiny, razor-sharp spikes. They pierced through her Diving Suit and dug into her skin. A numbing sensation spread to her limbs like an electric current.

A powerful spiritual force also bore down on her, and Yin Zhen once again heard that woman’s raving whispers.

The voice was faint and distant, as if echoing from the deepest abyss of the ocean. A chaotic jumble of images began flashing through Yin Zhen’s mind—a chaotic, maddening barrage of completely incomprehensible visuals. It was absolute spiritual corruption!

The images flashed faster and faster. Surges of a foreign power flooded in through the spikes. Yin Zhen felt her very cells expanding, mutating into something else.

Yin Zhen desperately focused all her willpower onto a single point to resist this mutating force, screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Take Ian and go! Trust me!"

Falling below, Zoe looked up at Yin Zhen and saw the explosives strapped to her back. Zoe immediately transformed into a stream of water and shot toward Ian’s location.

Yin Zhen was dragged right in front of the entity.

The pure white creature had pitch-black eyes that contained absolutely nothing, yet simultaneously seemed to harbor the entirety of the deep ocean.

It watched Zoe flee but didn’t pursue her. Its gaze drifted back to Yin Zhen, as if to say, "You’ll do just fine, too."

Its arms guided its colossal fleshy wings to close around Yin Zhen.

Yin Zhen’s brain was screaming. Countless voices and images exploded within her skull, like ten thousand people shrieking at her simultaneously at maximum decibels. The system notification was ringing, but she couldn’t make out what it said.

She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue. The taste of blood brought back her last shred of lucidity.

[Talent: I’m afraid of myself when I go crazy - Activated]

[Burns 50% Life Value, All Attributes +50%, Pain Sensation -50%, Immune to any Spiritual Attack.]

The mental pressure abruptly vanished, and an immense Strength erupted from deep within her body. Yin Zhen violently tore free from the fleshy membranes’ bindings, raised her Hand Axe, and hacked viciously at the cocoon in front of her.

The axe blade pierced the cocoon’s membrane, biting into the colossal humanoid creature’s closing wings. Using the momentum, Yin Zhen left herself suspended in midair.

"Is that all you’ve got?"

Yin Zhen sneered with a cold expression. The entity was enraged.

All the surrounding fleshy membranes violently reared up simultaneously, morphing into countless spikes that shot toward her from every direction with inconceivable speed.

Yin Zhen ripped off her explosive crate and hurled it forward, releasing her grip on the axe and letting herself fall right as the spikes were less than half a meter away from her body.

[Title: Why aren’t you dead yet - Activated]

The entity let out a hoarse howl. All the fleshy spikes abruptly halted in midair, and the falling Yin Zhen smiled as she raised her gun.

"See you in the next Chapter!"

BANG!

The High Explosive Bomb blew the explosive crate wide open. Blazing fire mercilessly engulfed the pure, angelic-looking creature, while Yin Zhen completely vanished into thin air.