No sooner said than done. Holding Lin Xia in his arms, Chi Zheng leaped onto the top roof platform of the central supermarket in just two or three bounds.
Lin Xia was completely dumbfounded. Although he had always known that Chi Zheng was in excellent physical shape, he had never seen him jump up several stories so casually before. As expected, was this the physical enhancement brought about by the Great Cataclysm?
But very soon, he hoped this enhancement could come even more intensely. This was because their opponent this time was far from ordinary. It caught the various ability user squads completely off guard, causing them to fall into the flooded waters one after another with miserable shrieks.
It was a massive centipede-like creature.
The reason it was called “centipede-like” was that while its head and legs still maintained the appearance of a centipede, its entire body was covered in thick, uneven, obsidian-like scales, looking very much like the skin of a giant python.
Three rows of mouthparts grew on its colossal head. As it swayed, fluorescent green digestive fluid occasionally dripped down, kicking up waves of foul-smelling mist upon the water’s surface.
The most terrifying parts were those two pairs of scythe-like jaw teeth. Their color resembled congealed, filthy blood, and three rows of jagged serrations were densely arranged along the inner sides. Right now, these serrations were opening and closing without a single moment of pause, producing an ear-grating friction sound.
Because the centipede’s head was large enough, Lin Xia could see the dark, cavernous mouth cavity behind its teeth. It was packed with dark red structures that constantly extended, contracted, and squirmed. From a certain angle, it actually bore a few resemblances to the venom glands of the Sac-Gland Tiger.
Lin Xia subconsciously fished out his simple tier tester.
Up until now, the local mutant creatures hadn’t grown structures similar to venom sacs or glands. Whether it was water snakes, piranhas, or lobsters, mutation had only elevated their attack power, defense, and size. Lin Xia had only seen this kind of mutation—one that fused the traits of other organisms—on the black mist creatures.
Therefore, he suspected that this thing wasn’t an ordinary mutant beast, but rather a Tophet Star sample that had escaped due to the cataclysm.
“It might have been washed over by the floodwaters,” Chi Zheng proposed a possibility.
Lin Xia felt that his words made sense. He held up the simple tester to run a check, only to discover that the result showed the water centipede’s tier was actually R1.
This big guy was actually two tiers higher than the Sac-Gland Tiger, making it the strongest opponent they had encountered to date!
Fortunately, they weren’t fighting a lone battle this time.
When the mutant water centipede manifested, there were a good eight or nine survivor squads trapped on the supermarket’s top roof, and many of them possessed abilities.
Now, everyone was gathered on the roof terrace. It was simply because the incident had happened so suddenly that everyone was a bit at a loss, and for a short while, no one dared to make a reckless move.
But the monster clearly wasn’t going to give them time to adapt. The water centipede reared its body up, and every single one of its full fifty torso segments was covered in a carapace as hard as iron. It brandished its jointed legs like tempered steel scimitars, their tips gleaming with an ominous green cold light.
It was venomous!
The water centipede twisted its body a few times. Its swinging jointed legs sliced through the concrete guardrail at the edge of the roof terrace with absolute ease. Like a hot knife through butter, stone fragments rustled down. Several ability users standing on the outermost edge failed to dodge in time, falling off the top floor with miserable cries.
Fortunately, their teammates struck in a timely manner. For a moment, colorful abilities were released mid-air, barely managing to deal with the first round of the crisis.
However, this single strike frightened the majority of the people on the roof terrace.
Their prior understanding of mutant beasts was limited to water snakes and piranhas. They had never even seen a giant water centipede like this, let alone the fact that this thing was incredibly sinister, growing to look exceptionally hideous and terrifying.
The sentiment of fearing battle began to spread. At this moment, water surrounded them from all directions, and besides the centipede, water snakes and piranha swarms lurked in the water. Although those unlucky bastards who fell off the roof terrace luckily escaped the centipede’s sharp claws, they couldn’t escape the highly toxic digestive fluid and other mutant aquatic organisms. Before long, patches of rust-red floated to the surface of the turbid water.
At this exact moment, the water centipede moved again.
The front portion of its torso suddenly contracted to build up strength, then extended and sprang outward like a spring. The accumulated water was instantly blasted open into a gap by its violent power, kicking up a two-meter-high wall of muddy waves. Seizing the opportunity, it lunged onto the slick surface of the shopping mall’s roof terrace, the front half of its body rearing high into the air like a cobra preparing to strike. Those two rows of light-sensitive spots distributed across its head carapace—as grayish-white as rotten pearls—clearly lacked pupils, yet they made every person “watched” by it feel as if they had plunged into an ice cellar, as though their souls were grabbed by invisible hooks.
“Dammit! I’ll burn you to death!” a fire-system ability user roared. Clawing at the air with both hands, roaring flames erupted and rolled forth, violently engulfing the front carapace of the water centipede.
That monster let out a sharp, piercing shriek—not just from pain, but also from the frantic rage of being provoked. Its massive body twisted violently, and its tail section, covered in a verdigris-colored carapace, suddenly flared open, revealing a hidden three-pronged venom gland inside. The grayish-black gland pulsed repeatedly, and an ink-green liquid faintly dripped from the needle-sharp tips.
“Watch out! It’s going to spray venom!” Lin Xia shouted a warning to the crowd.
The fire-system ability user who had been the first to strike reacted very quickly. Almost in the next second, he dropped his body low, and the venomous stinger, carrying a foul wind, scraped past his scalp by a hair’s breadth.
With a loud bang, the venomous stinger struck an abandoned outdoor air conditioner unit behind him. The hard metal casing was instantly corroded and deformed, exposing irregular holes as a pungent white smoke billowed from the edges.
“Everyone, let’s charge together! It has climbed up; no one is getting away today!” Chi Zheng yelled out.
The crowd seemed shaken awake by his words. Colorful abilities smashed down onto the water centipede as if they cost nothing. The monster had already rushed right before their eyes. If they couldn’t kill it in one fell swoop, everyone on the roof terrace would die. Only by working together with one heart was there a way out!
Chi Zheng handed a crossbow to Lin Xia.
“You use this. Try to hide as far away as possible. Watch the battle progress, and find an opportunity to deliver the finishing blow to the centipede.”
Lin Xia nodded in understanding.
It wasn’t every day he ran into an R1, so he definitely couldn’t let it slip by. However, the roof was packed with people right now, making a solo kill unrealistic. He wondered if a partial kill could activate the one-click collection function. Looking at this water centipede, there should be quite a bit of meat on it, which would be perfect for filling up his inventory.
“Its crystal core is on the left side of the tenth limb segment counting from the top, close to the connection point of the left jointed limb.” Lin Xia lowered his voice to remind Chi Zheng.
Just now, he had been secretly observing the water centipede’s movement trajectory and “saw” a dim yellow light pulsating rhythmically beneath the thick carapace of the tenth segment. Lin Xia verified it several times and felt that it should be where the crystal core was located. It was just that for some reason, the brightness of this water centipede’s crystal core wasn’t even as bright as the mutant sea crab’s, causing him to almost miss it.
“Because it’s about to die,” Chi Zheng said with a look of disgust as he watched the water centipede showcasing its formidable power in the distance.
“A forced product grows fast and dies fast. Just aim and shoot right at the crystal core. In any case, what we want is the meat. A decaying core won’t yield many Energy Points, and they won’t give the crystal core to us when dividing the spoils afterward anyway.”
Lin Xia actually wanted to ask Chi Zheng how he could tell this centipede was artificially forced, but now wasn’t the time for gossip; they needed to resolve the R1 in front of them first.
He narrowed his eyes, locked onto the target, and specifically picked the vulnerable joints of the water centipede to fire his crossbow bolts.
What Chi Zheng had given him was a crossbow modified using a crab’s giant claw, which was lightweight and sturdy, capable of inflicting damage upon an enemy inadvertently. Enraged by the phantom-like bolts, the water centipede grew increasingly frantic and violent. It suddenly snapped open several carapace gaps along its midsection, and several streams of ink-green liquid emitting a pungent sour odor shot out violently, targeted straight at a few physical enhancers who were laying siege to it.
“Chi Zheng! Get out of the way!”
Chi Zheng’s reaction was extremely fast, leaping behind the rooftop pump room in a single bound. The other few ability users weren’t nearly as composed; they rolled and dodged in a wretched manner. The acid liquid scraped past their bodies and splashed onto the ground, instantly eating through the concrete and leaving deep pits that billowed white smoke.
By this time, the water centipede’s feral nature had been completely unleashed. It bit with its jaw teeth, sliced with its blade-like legs, ambushed with its venomous stinger, and blasted out corrosive acid liquid. Its colossal body displayed astonishing agility on the far-from-spacious roof terrace, and every single attack carried a destructive power. However, only Lin Xia knew that this giant beast’s movements had already begun to stall. That dim yellow mass in the tenth segment of its abdomen grew increasingly obscure. Before long, this overwhelmed core would fail to support the consumption of its massive body, exposing its total decline.
Now is the time!
Lin Xia narrowed his eyes, his finger hooking tightly around the crossbow’s trigger mechanism.
The fatal blow had to be delivered by him. Only in this way could it possibly be recognized as an independent kill, activating the one-click collection to claim the water centipede’s rewards completely undetected.
The water centipede seemed to sense the threat as well. Its massive body twisted uneasily a few times, letting out a low, warning-filled hiss. The yellow light in its abdomen abruptly became glaringly dazzling, as if it were preparing to build up strength for a decisive strike, entirely unaware that this light had already become its final death warrant.
Lin Xia took a deep breath. The water centipede was about to unleash its ultimate move.
This was his best opportunity. After this clash, the water centipede’s crystal core would rapidly dim, making it harder than hard to lock onto it again.
He focused all of his mental energy onto that single point of bright yellow. Every single subsequent movement of the water centipede presented itself clearly in his mind—first feinting to the left, then thrusting to the right, and finally, there would be a 0.5-second stiffening period…
Now!
The mechanism triggered, and the tip of the bolt flew at top speed, piercing right into the glowing point of the water centipede’s tenth abdominal segment.
In the next second, the water centipede let out a tragic, piercing shriek. Its massive body convulsed and thrashed violently. The long-schemed attack failed to launch, and the suddenly arriving bolt directly shattered its crystal core. The water centipede was like a steam engine whose engine block had blown; although residual inertia still caused it to frantically swing its jointed limbs, its life force, left with no backing, ultimately dissipated completely. It crashed down, breaking through the concrete floor of the top floor and hanging halfway within the floorboards.
Lin Xia hid in a corner panting heavily, his cramping fingers still gripping the crossbow tightly without letting go.
At this moment, the system notification sound he wanted to hear the most echoed within his mind:
System Prompt: Congratulations to the Host for successfully completing the kill of the R1-tier water centipede. The contribution ratio is 51%, and the corresponding spoils of war can be obtained according to the contribution ratio.
System Prompt: Would the Host like to spend 1 Energy Point to activate the one-click collection function?