Chapter 818 - 690: Snake Eggs

"When the core body temperature drops to 30°C, the hypothalamic temperature regulation center fails, blood vessels abnormally dilate, and skin blood flow surges, causing a feeling of heat,"

Maxwell examined several snake-man corpses with a grave expression, pondering, "The brain’s pain and fear perception disappear, facial muscles relax, and the corners of the mouth naturally lift, forming a ’frozen smile’."

"Wait,"

Dylan hesitated, "I remember watching on the Discovery Channel when I was a kid, snakes are supposed to be cold-blooded, right?"

"Snakes are cold-blooded, snake-men are not,"

As he spoke, Maxwell used a little knife to cut open along the spine to the tail of a snake-man corpse, revealing brown fat, "Snake-men are between warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals, with a basal metabolic rate relatively lower than humans but can rely on the thermal inertia of their thick, long tails to regulate body temperature."

"Hiss—" Li Cheng gasped, prompting Maxwell and the others to quickly ask, "What happened?"

"Have you noticed,"

Li Cheng squinted his eyes and said seriously, "All these snake-men are wearing pants."

"??? "

Everyone looked bewildered,

These snake-men, regardless of age or gender, generally wore shirts and jackets on the upper body (made of cotton, linen, silk),

And loose, single-tube pants with elastic bands on the lower body to cover the cloaca lower down their snake bodies.

"They actually have two separate excretory and reproductive systems, which they can choose to use at will."

Li Cheng explained enthusiastically, "Do you know how amazing this is? In a habitable and safe environment, snake-men can use the upper body’s human reproductive system, bear offspring after ten months of pregnancy,

In an inhospitable and unsafe environment, the snake-men can also lay eggs, compressing the offspring gestation period from ten months to 30-90 days.

Furthermore, since they’re at the top of the food chain and eat refined diets, snake-men don’t need to conserve water resources like snakes do by turning nitrogenous waste into white pasty uric acid.

Instead, they excrete like humans.

This also makes their digestive system weaker than that of snakes. Gastric acid pH value rises, the variety and number of gut microbiota decrease, the jaw opening angle becomes smaller..."

Li Cheng chatted away, while Dylan was totally confused, whispering to Gouchen beside him, "Mr. Gouchen, what’s so amazing about this?"

"Amazing in that it can be used for water-cooler talk, perhaps."

Gouchen scratched his head. [Exotic Biology] has always been quite a popular field, not only producing a large number of research papers but also integrating academia and research, bringing significant economic benefits.

For instance, extracting gut microbiota from the Behemoth to be sent into a sterile bio-pharmaceutical workshop to make slimming capsules;

Introducing sand worms that can digest garbage for processing the ten thousand tons of waste produced by large cities, recycling precious metals from feces;

Many parents of Killing Field Players or members of guild peripheries who know about killing field existence,

Recommend their children to study [Exotic Biology], graduate and directly work in big guilds’ research departments,

The reason being nothing more than "The 21st century is the century of biological sciences," "Less work, more money, higher status," "Never laid off."

Uh... these parents seem to have forgotten that the last discipline touted as never laid off was computer science, and the one before that was civil engineering...

As they casually chatted away, Maxwell’s drone had already flown out of the subway station platform to the surface.

The snake-man city is enormous and three-dimensional, using a lot of brick walls, glass windows, pipes, displaying a steam-punk style.

Buildings are connected by bridges and light rail.

Metal street lamps are installed on both sides of cobblestone streets, where steam grids of subterranean pipe systems are visible every so often.

Everywhere else is frozen, but only near the steam grids is there no frost, still occasionally emitting white steam.

This steam heating technology isn’t considered advanced, often malfunctioning and hard to repair, so in US movies set in the real world, scenes of steam swirling around New York streets, using the same technology, are frequently seen.

"This place... was cut right from the killing field?!"

Even the usually calm Maxwell couldn’t help his voice from changing pitch. The snake-man city’s dome was prominently a metal arc, the entire city built inside a colossal brown pipeline.

"Indeed it was."

Divine Era Rain Prayer took out a sniper rifle, without even looking, shooting directly at the distant metal pipeline walls of the city as if they were fortress walls.

A high-explosive armor-piercing bullet smashed onto the surface of the metal pipeline wall and exploded, not even leaving a white mark.

"So many died..."

Gouchen looked around with furrowed brows, sighting countless snake-men frozen to death on the street, with many bodies frozen in poses as if crawling towards shops on either side of the streets.

"The extreme cold descended abruptly, covering the whole city in a matter of seconds, leaving nowhere to run. Even hiding inside buildings would mean freezing to death."

Maxwell tilted his head slightly, his brain quickly calculating the energy level required to achieve this effect, and said gravely, "Equivalent to a Level 40 attack."

The Execution Committee of the Broken Land requested the players to go to the Snake-man Territory to inquire about the cause of recent seismic activity, offering stars as a reward.

But now the Snake-man tribe has been wiped out completely, the original plan certainly can’t be executed.

"Should we still move forward?"

Maxwell turned to ask his teammates, solemnly saying, "From the Crimson Cinema case, we know that the Snake-men are different from ordinary indigenous civilizations, they truly have considerable supernatural powers,

and it’s suspected that they are an old veteran race collectively ’crossing over’ from the killing field entity."

On the big stage of the killing field, if you dare to come. The Snake-man race managed to develop an advanced civilization, they definitely have some hidden tricks.

Even so, they were still ruthlessly exterminated.

Don Juan heard this, his expression struggled and changed; the number of stars everyone held was far from enough to ascend to the next layer of Four Realms Mountain. It felt too stifling to just retreat like this.

"We’re already here..." Don Juan muttered softly; the others had similar expressions.

"Then let’s depart."

Maxwell took out several rocket backpacks and equipped Dylan, Mei Wenyi with them, who didn’t have long-distance flight capabilities—

No need for them to temporarily master the usage of rocket backpacks, Maxwell remotely controlled the backpacks with his mind.

Gouchen stepped on the flying sword, Don Juan emitted ultrasound downward to propel himself (similar principle to the Sea Demon in X-Men), the Divine Era Rain Prayer fired a hook claw, while Li Cheng naturally floated using the floating engine.

The pipelines twisted and turned, based on the logic that the more important the city’s management institutions are, the higher they are, the group flew upwards along the pipeline.

Looking around, frozen corpses of various shapes were everywhere, young men and women in the cafe, elderly exercising in the park, cleaners wiping windows on the high-rise exterior,

The most shocking scene occurred in the hospital, several Snake-man doctors and nurses wrapped their thick snake tails around shivering sick children, attempting to use their body heat to protect them from freezing to death, even so, they couldn’t stop the doom from descending.

Mei Wenyi’s face turned pale, Gouchen, Don Juan’s expressions looked grim, Dylan, who hadn’t witnessed such a large scene, directly had stomach spasms and threw up messily.

Li Cheng glanced and casually said, "Throwing objects from a height, punishable by detention of up to five days or a fine of up to 1000 yuan."

"Sorry, cough cough."

Dylan wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, hesitantly said, "Mr. Pi Fu... you don’t seem very surprised?"

Gouchen and the others thought, when Pi Fu initiated the London battle, he nearly used a viral weapon to erase the population of 8.6 million on the British Isles, this is nothing.

"Otherworld travelers can encounter all sorts of situations, a Frozen City isn’t the most tragic."

Li Cheng casually said, "Once I got lucky and crossed over to another world, four Gods appeared, each claiming to be the God of Love and Beauty, offering me personal charm to lead people;

The Magic and Arcane God offered me endless wisdom;

The War and Glory God offered me physical strength and courage;

The God of Hope and Rebirth offered me youthful vitality;

The four Gods said I was selected by all four and asked me to fight against an evil God marked by a skull."

"Pft,"

Maxwell was drinking electrolyte water and almost spat it out, "Isn’t that purely the Four Little Traders, it’s so obvious."

"I thought the same, immediately ran away, turned to join the skull, and even helped the skull God initiate a war that swept across the world, causing the deaths of thousands."

Li Cheng shrugged, "Later I found out, that place was the Ferren Continent, those four were actually the Beauty Goddess Shuni, Arcane God Azus, War God Tampas, and Lord of Dawn Losanda.

As for the skull, it was the Evil God Bal.

Now thinking back, really feel a bit sorry for those millions of Ferren people."

You’re called the Evil God’s chosen one.

Maxwell and the others had weird expressions, wanting to tease but not knowing how to start.

Thankfully, as the altitude increased, a Sky Garden finally appeared for resting.

The steam heating system on the circular platform unexpectedly operated normally, the temperature was noticeably warmer than other places, strangely,

the lawn in the middle of the garden was shaped like a bird’s nest by some mechanical machinery, with over a dozen snake eggs placed inside.

"These snake eggs are still active..."

Li Cheng pushed up his information integration glasses, just about to pick up a snake egg to examine, when a sharp... chicken sound suddenly rang out above them.

"Cluck cluck!"