Chapter 136-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 136 The Company You Can't Leave (XIV)
Outside Hengsheng Mechanical Park.
Two hours and forty-one minutes had passed since Zhu Ning entered the Contamination Zone.
Xu Meng sat in the car, still puzzling over Cheng Mofei's password. It was like facing a riddle he'd left behind—in theory, she should know the answer, but she was completely stumped.
A man sat in the back seat. He wore a black hoodie with a metal mask over his face, revealing only his sharp brows and piercing eyes.
Xu Meng had called Lynx over as a safety net for Zhu Ning. If Zhu Ning went three hours without contact, Lynx could go in and pull her out.
Lynx's brow had been furrowed the entire time. Xu Meng had just briefed him on Zhu Ning's situation, but he couldn't relax. The information overload was staggering—anyone would need a moment to process.
Lynx asked in a low voice: "So you just let her go into an S-Level Contamination Zone alone?"
Most Demon Hunters preferred to work in pairs, especially for S-Level Contamination Zones. Nobody with a will to live would consider going in solo.
S-Level Contamination Zones were larger, more complex—you might not even be able to predict what would happen inside.
Sometimes what destroyed you was the loneliness. Time flowed differently from the outside world. You could easily be assimilated inside, and then you'd start losing your mind.
S-Level Contamination Zones could inflict real physical damage. Lynx had needed a full month to recover. For the first week after getting out, he'd had nonstop nightmares.
As far as people willing to enter an S-Level Contamination Zone alone, even Xu Meng had only known one—Lynx. Now there was a second: Zhu Ning.
Xu Meng: "I think she might have something up her sleeve."
After all, Zhu Ning was the only person Xu Meng knew with S-Level sanity—and she was an experimental subject on top of that.
Lynx: "You trust her that much?"
Zhu Ning was, after all, an experimental subject from Eternal Pharma. She'd only just allied with Xu Meng. If she died, they'd lose a valuable teammate.
Xu Meng looked up, catching his reflection in the rearview mirror, and teased: "You're that eager to rush in and save her? Playing the knight in shining armor?"
Lynx shifted his gaze to the window. "No."
Lynx had never been much of a talker—not particularly warm, either. Xu Meng couldn't read what was going on in his head.
Suddenly, Xu Meng frowned. Something felt off. Lynx sensed it too—Ability Users like them had an uncanny instinct for danger.
Sure enough, the moment Xu Meng and Lynx locked eyes, a tremendous boom erupted from the distance.
BANG—!
It was like a sudden earthquake, rocking the entire car. Xu Meng immediately started the engine. The car lifted off the ground and hovered in midair.
This was the age of technology. A flying car's maneuverability avoided a great deal of risk.
Xu Meng's instinctive reaction pulled the camera wide, giving them a bird's-eye view of the full scene below. Dust billowed in the distance. The building in the very center of Hengsheng Mechanical Park had collapsed.
The explosion had started underground—the foundation must have been destroyed, causing the entire structure to tilt northward. The collapsing tower crashed into the neighboring office buildings.
In an instant, it was as if the earth had split open. A chain-reaction collapse ensued. Even Xu Meng had never witnessed destruction on this scale.
This went beyond brute-force demolition. This was a wrecking crew.
"What is she doing?" Lynx asked.
Blowing up an entire building. A commotion this big would definitely attract the Sanitation Center.
"She blew up the Contamination Zone?" Even Xu Meng wasn't sure. What kind of explosive was this? Zhu Ning had something like that on her?
A building that size—no normal Demon Hunter would choose to level it by force. If Zhu Ning hadn't dodged in time, she'd be buried under the rubble. If the blast didn't kill her, the crushing weight would.
Lynx observed for over ten seconds. The dust hadn't fully settled. He scanned the collapse site below and delivered a highly professional assessment: "The Contamination Zone is still sealed. No Contamination Spores."
The Contamination Zone was still sealed. No Contamination Spores had escaped. That meant the Contamination Zone hadn't been fully purified.
Xu Meng wanted to take back what she'd said earlier. Zhu Ning had already resorted to brute force and still hadn't eliminated the Contamination Source.
This time she might actually be dead.
......
Zhu Ning really was on the verge of death—and she'd been swindled into coming here by that damned artificial intelligence.
The Red Tentacle squirmed behind her, producing wet, slimy sounds. Utterly nauseating—on par with fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
Zhu Ning could feel the tentacles exploding into a mass behind her, filling the 3D Defense Space until it was cramped and suffocating, about to swallow her whole.
The 3D Defense Space was only 2×2×2 meters. It lasted thirty minutes. She had nowhere to run. The underground space had become a cramped arena, designed to trigger the most primal survival instinct.
Zhu Ning's hand was already reaching for the gun at the small of her back. She still had half her usable weapons. Remaining health: 84.
All Zhu Ning could do now was gamble—bet that the Black Crystal was merely its outer shell, its fortress. She'd already punched a hole in it, then hit it with the bomb. Maybe its core wasn't as tough.
Zhu Ning re-entered combat mode, calculating how to strike first and break through.
That was her plan. The Black Slime on her body had a different idea. Zhu Ning could feel the anomaly at the back of her neck—the Xenomorph's Black Slime was frantically retracting, as if it had spotted the final boss and wanted nothing to do with it.
Zhu Ning: "......"
What use are you? Absolutely gutless.
The instant Zhu Ning raised her hand, the tentacle behind her moved. She felt a sudden tightness around her waist—the tentacle had coiled around her torso and neck.
Her feet left the ground. Her body was yanked into the air without warning.
It happened too fast. The thing moved quicker than she could react—they weren't even in the same league. Before Zhu Ning could process what was happening, countless tentacles spiraled upward. She was engulfed in an instant.
From a third-person perspective, the sight would have been bizarre. Deep beneath the rubble, Red Tentacles had completely filled the 3D Defense Space.
Zhu Ning's vision went red. Tentacles coiled and writhed across the surface of her helmet—like falling into a pool of eels. No matter how she struggled, eels were everywhere.
At the same time, the tentacle around her neck constricted tighter and tighter. Even with the Protective Suit's protection, she was on the brink of suffocation.
She was going to be strangled alive.
She couldn't sense any liquid, so Liquid Manipulation was useless. She didn't know its weak point. The Dentist's Drill was meaningless.
CRACK—
A sharp snap rang from Zhu Ning's right calf, crushed by the tentacle. Her bone had fractured. Searing pain shot up from her leg, draining the color from her face.
Worse than when Chu Ling had broken her scapula—because the shattered bone was still being ground further, nearly making her bite through her own tongue.
Blood filled her mouth. Agony assaulted her from every direction. The air inside Zhu Ning's helmet was running out, and simultaneously, the thing inside her brain was twitching.
Zhu Ning carried a Contaminant and a Xenomorph. In theory, they were merely parasites. If Zhu Ning's body was destroyed, whether they'd be freed or die was uncertain.
For the first time, Zhu Ning felt truly alone. Not a single person was here. The System, the Xenomorph, the tentacle behind her—they were all monsters.
They were the ones who were kin.
Zhu Ning had said she would tame them, but she'd never actually done it. She'd only ever been pushed forward by System missions, hunting prey to sate the Xenomorph's hunger.
There was no taming here. Only a temporary alignment of interests.
She couldn't lift a single finger. Her right arm had already been crushed by the tentacle. CRACK— This time it was her right hand.
Had you ever experienced being swallowed and chewed by something enormous? Zhu Ning had now. The process was agonizingly slow—pure torture.
You could hear your bones snapping one by one. Then your flesh being ground apart, blood bursting out.
Her right hand's bones had punctured through the Protective Suit. The suit was too badly damaged—it couldn't even announce the breach.
Compared to this thing, all products of technology were meaningless.
[Use Skin Hardening?]
[Use... it.]
Skin Hardening activated immediately, shielding her neck and chest—her two most vulnerable areas.
[Skin Hardening activated. Remaining health: 84. Duration: 5 minutes.]
After fighting the Sheep-Head, Zhu Ning had only 84 health left. 84 bought five minutes of Skin Hardening—but it also bought her five minutes. She had to escape within five minutes.
If she couldn't find a solution in five minutes, her health would burn to zero.
Zhu Ning's hand touched something soft and slimy—the Contaminant's true body. This thing was trying to strangle her completely.
She'd never faced pressure this overwhelming. Human strength was infinitesimal before it.
If Zhu Ning couldn't kill this thing, the Contamination Zone would likely revive in short order. The collapsed tower would rebuild itself.
The burned company rules would rise from the dead. Sheep-Heads would fill the offices again. Wang Qinqian, who had finally found peace, would be dragged back into the loop—jumping from the rooftop over and over.
Like pressing rewind. Everything would reset.
How would an ordinary Demon Hunter get past this stage? Brute force? Or find an Ability User with apocalyptic power?
The Contaminant behind her was her own kind.
Possibly even worse off than Zhu Ning. She was a Defective; this thing was scrap—nothing but a brain.
Biomechanical. Song Zhizhang had once said Zhu Ning was the most perfect fusion of technology and Contaminant he'd ever seen. If this thing was also the brain of an experimental subject—
Then its structure had to be identical to hers. Half Contaminant, half precision machinery.
Machinery.
She felt it. In that instant, Zhu Ning's senses latched onto the tentacle's structure. The surrounding tentacles unfurled before her mind's eye, revealing their true nature.
Wires and gears were buried inside the tentacles. Within the 2-meter 3D Defense Space, her Metal Manipulation ability had an effective range of exactly 2 meters.
Absolute power within 2 meters.
The tentacles had been pressing in from all sides—like a human clapping two hands together to kill a mosquito. Zhu Ning should have been the mosquito in between.
To humans, mosquitoes were fragile. A little pressure and you could rip off a leg, a wing—crushing them was effortless.
Humans felt no pity when killing insects. They didn't even feel fear. This Contaminant was the same.
It had been just one step away from grinding Zhu Ning to dust. But its movement froze.
Like a pair of human hands pressed tightly together around a trapped insect—suddenly unable to close. A tremendous force pushed outward from within, and it couldn't advance a single fraction further.
At the same time, the tentacles were pried apart inch by inch, forcibly peeled away from Zhu Ning's limbs.
Zhu Ning gasped for air. Finally, a moment's reprieve.
[Do not overuse sanity.] The System warned.
[Sanity is decreasing.]
The System was issuing alerts. Blood ran from beneath her nose. The Metal Manipulation ability was prone to overuse. Her vision kept going dark.
In that instant, all thought receded. Only the most primal instinct remained—as if she'd devolved from a human into a wild beast.
A beast on the edge of death had only one desire: survive.
The Black Slime at the back of Zhu Ning's neck was squirming. It enveloped her bones, spreading outward from the crevices of her spine.
The Xenomorph fed on fear. It would never miss a single drop—like a deep-sea shark catching the scent of blood.
This time, the one who was afraid wasn't Zhu Ning. It was the Contaminant across from her.
Zhu Ning was going to devour it.
Author's Note
Ningning's having a midnight snack~
The comments are right—Ningbao is going to keep eating garbage from now on......
I took advantage of my day off to get a gastroscopy. How to put it... to exaggerate a bit, it was like someone shoved a golf club down my throat into my stomach and twisted it. Oh, you're asking about the little balloon man inflating things inside my stomach? He was running away screaming: "Murder! Murder!"
Comments
Post a Comment