Chapter 152.1 – Fire Seed (22)
◎ “Utopia” ◎
A faint figure appeared in front, and Song Ke suddenly turned around, trying to hide her tail.
Although she didn’t understand why her legs had disappeared, the disastrous situation clearly couldn’t be discovered by others, and she couldn’t explain it at all!
The newly grown snake tail was heavy and slippery, and it didn’t behave. Song Ke tried to coil it up several times, but it quickly unraveled.
The moving figure gradually approached, and Song Ke tightened the spiritual weapon in her hand.
The other party’s face was fully revealed.
It was Su Cha.
Song Ke breathed a sigh of relief, too lazy to coil her tail, letting it relax and sway gently in the sea.
After Su Cha found her, he raised his right hand, ready to make a gesture, but his movement suddenly froze.
His eyes widened in disbelief, and upon closer inspection, even his pupils were trembling.
Song Ke: “…” She shook her tail, opened her hands, indicating her helplessness.
Su Cha was indeed Su Cha. His mental resilience was exceptionally strong. He was only stunned for less than two seconds before he came to his senses.
He took off the combat jacket on him, swam over and tied it around Song Ke’s waist. The two sleeves were tied in the middle to create a barrier. He lifted the forked tail, making it less noticeable from the front, although it looked a bit strange.
Song Ke patted his shoulder, indicating that she was about to suffocate and needed to go up first to breathe.
With a strong force from her snake tail, she shot out into the distance, moving twice as fast as before, instantly creating a distance between her and Su Cha.
Splash! Song Ke suddenly emerged from the sea, gasping for breath. Three or four minutes later, Su Cha followed suit.
Looking up, the Elderly People’s Nation had completely collapsed, and debris of various sizes floated on the sea.
In the distance, awakeners were still fighting the bloodthirsty sea turtles, while also being distracted by the mutant shark group, gradually finding it difficult to cope.
Song Ke was shocked: “What happened to the island?! Collapsed?!” She still had two companions who couldn’t swim!
Su Cha’s face also changed, and Song Ke quickly pressed the communicator on her collar: “Are you okay? Report your location.”
Lu Xiaoyu’s indifferent voice immediately sounded: “We’re fine. It would be even better if there weren’t so many man-eating sharks at the drop point.”
The mechanical arm made a faint sound of movement, accompanied by Fang Zhixu’s weak groan: “Xiao Lu! Take it slow while swimming, I… feel a bit dizzy.”
Then came Xu Xing: “I’m fine! I was picked up by Dylan’s bodyguard.”
He and Dylan were thrown onto an inflatable boat, far away from the center of the battlefield. Dylan’s azure eyes looked at him with confusion, and he muttered in the Cario language, “Where did this little brat come from?”
Xu Xing: “?! What little brat? I’m a year older than you!”
Only Zhuang Qingyan obediently reported his coordinates. He coughed weakly and said with a breathless voice, “Song Keke, come and save me.”
Song Ke looked somewhat distressed: “I have some trouble here.”
Zhuang Qingyan’s “fragility” disappeared in an instant, his voice calm and deep: “Where are you? I’ll come to find you.”
Song Ke reported her location and asked, “What about Youyou?”
While the others were talking, Lin Youyou had remained silent.
Su Cha frowned, a vague sense of unease rising in his heart. Lin Youyou was the worst swimmer among them, and she also had a severe fear of water.
“Youyou?” Song Ke raised her voice, “Can you hear me? Respond if you hear.”
No one answered; there was silence on the channel.
“Lin Youyou! Are you there? Speak!”
Su Cha pressed the microphone on his collar, shouting sternly, the muscles in his cheeks trembling from excessive tension.
His nerves were like a taut string, ready to snap at any moment.
After a full five seconds, Lin Youyou’s faint and fragile whisper came: “Here, here…”
Su Cha took a sharp breath, then exhaled, as if a drowning person had regained their breath.
“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”
“Uh…” Lin Youyou choked on some water, sounding hesitant, “The situation here is… a bit complicated. Don’t worry about me, first deal with the ferocious beasts. I’m safe, I’ll come to you guys in a while…”
Su Cha casually took care of two or three approaching man-eating sharks, and replied in a low, hoarse voice, “Alright.”
Zhuang Qingyan had already swum over, his speed astonishing in the wind and waves. He lay streamlined in the water, and each stroke of his arms was textbook-perfect. In the final stretch, he alternated swinging his legs like a sword leaving its sheath, reaching Song Ke in an instant.
Song Ke looked at him expressionlessly, thinking, ‘Not good at swimming, my foot. He swims exceptionally well.’
The seawater slid down Zhuang Qingyan’s chin into his collar. He reached back to smooth his hair, revealing a perfect forehead. “What trouble did you encounter?”
Song Ke looked nervously, “I got infected by a shark!”
Zhuang Qingyan was slightly puzzled, “Infected?”
Their location wasn’t exactly at the center of the battlefield. Song Ke looked around and slowly lifted her tail.
Zhuang Qingyan’s pupils contracted. “Let me see.” He reached out to touch.
“Don’t touch, don’t touch,” Song Ke whispered, “It’s poisonous.” She explained the cause and effect of her recent battle with the shark, healing her right leg injury, which then transformed into a snake tail.
“It has nothing to do with that man-eating shark,” Zhuang Qingyan’s eyes darkened, “It’s radiation.”
During this time, Song Ke had absorbed too much excessive radiation, first at Ning Rong’s laboratory with 130%, and then staying for over an hour under the 30% intensity in the Elderly People’s Nation. Although there were no obvious symptoms at the time, the unknown genes in her body had issues.
“Can you control turning back?” Zhuang Qingyan asked.
“No,” Song Ke honestly shook her head.
In the distance, the armored sea turtle, under the relentless attacks, finally showed signs of exhaustion, with another level-4 man-eating shark seizing the opportunity to tear off half of its hind limb.
Zhuang Qingyan glanced at the battlefield. “Deal with it quickly, and let’s return to the Northern Base.”
“I’ll go below,” Su Cha volunteered, sticking to the original plan to continue attacking the armored sea turtle’s abdomen.
“Then I’ll go head-on,” Song Ke said. The armored sea turtle was blinded and heavily damaged, making it the perfect time to kill it.
Her long snake tail twisted and moved, slithering, instantly shooting out more than twenty meters.
Zhuang Qingyan’s eyes flickered slightly, surprised by her speed. He sighed faintly and made an effort to catch up from behind.
Yang Xiaobo was being chased by a level-4 man-eating shark.
He got too carried away after fighting the sea turtle, accidentally using up his awakened energy, and was violently pushed forward by a huge wave. Bang! He collided with the tail fin of the man-eating shark. The ferocious beast slowly turned its head, and its gray-white eyes stared fixedly at him.
Yang Xiaobo’s messy hair stood up like a chicken coop, and his legs swung frantically. “Don’t eat me! I’ve had malnutrition since childhood, more bones than meat!”
While shouting wildly, he struggled to gather his awakened ability and threw it forward regardless of the consequences. The man-eating shark, thoroughly angered, opened its massive blood-filled mouth and bit toward his head.
Woe is me! Facing imminent death, Yang Xiaobo let out a desperate scream.
Swoosh! A slender figure swiftly swam by, and in a flash, the strongest V587 slacker had already positioned himself in front of Yang Xiaobo. The toxic forked tail pierced ruthlessly into the man-eating shark from below the sea surface, freezing the ferocious beast’s hefty body. Song Ke acted swiftly, her dual short knives flashing blue light as she mercilessly slashed open its head.
The scalding black blood poured over Yang Xiaobo’s head and face.
Song Ke extracted the crystal quickly, pulled out her tail, sank and floated, then continued swimming towards the armored sea turtle.
Yang Xiaobo wiped his face and muttered to himself, “Damn, your Brother Yang made a mistake…”
In the center of the battlefield, the life-and-death struggle between awakeners and the armored sea turtle continued.
Dark clouds covered the sky, and Veronica, holding Vladimir’s head, closed her eyes slightly as lightning struck.
Gu Ruoyi’s awakened ability “Gather” finally came into play. The invisible traction brought the scattered shark group together, while Jennifer and others with AOE attacks skillfully unleashed their abilities to clear the monsters.
Song Ke took a deep breath, submerged her head into the sea, and with her snake tail swinging rapidly like a flexible ribbon, she leaped across the center of the battlefield.
She arrived in front of the armored sea turtle, whose size was still astonishing even when only considering its head. In front of it, Song Ke seemed like a fragile little jellyfish, easily swallowed at any moment.
The bloodshot eyes of the armored sea turtle shed bloody tears as it suddenly opened its mouth, fiercely biting toward her.
Song Ke agilely dodged, and her tail forked from bottom to top, accurately stabbing into its neck. The potent poison quickly spread, causing the entire turtle’s head to rapidly discolor and decay, revealing petrified-like cracks.
With successive heavy blows to its limbs and head, and blood pouring out from its abdomen, this level-5 ferocious beast was now clearly on the brink of death.
Its remaining two fins madly slapped the sea surface, and suddenly, it leaped out of the water again, initiating a 360-degree rotation!
Boom!
The counterattack this time was particularly astonishing. The awakeners who had managed to climb onto the turtle’s back were once again thrown off, some directly smashed into mincemeat.
As Song Ke bounced up and down with the sea waves, her snake tail strangely maintained balance. The strong airflow propelled her up to a height of fifty meters. In her palm, a trident appeared, radiating a chilling light. The coiled snake tail hid within her coat, and she plummeted down like a projectile.
All the awakeners on the sea looked up in shock. The short few seconds felt infinitely extended, and the scene before them seemed like a slow-motion replay.
A sapphire light flashed by, and the trident pierced through the right eye of the armored sea turtle, relentlessly pushing through and exiting the left eye!!
The armored sea turtle tilted its head back, violently shaking in pain. Song Ke was tossed up and down, feeling dizzy, but she held onto the trident firmly.
She wanted to find the right moment to jump onto its head but couldn’t find a suitable opportunity.
“Damn… soloing a level-5 ferocious beast.”
“Is she still human?”
“This person is too crazy. Which team is she from? S-level?”
The onlookers, who witnessed the entire process, swallowed their saliva in disbelief and murmured.
The armored sea turtle, realizing death was imminent, struggled even more frantically. A strong and chaotic radiation burst from its body, causing thousands of air columns to erupt on the sea surface. Awakeners who couldn’t dodge in time were lifted into the sky.
“Oh no! It’s going to… self-destruct!!” An awakener from the Cario Empire shouted in panic.
Once a level-5 ferocious beast self-destructed, the power it generated was comparable to a nuclear bomb. It was enough to wipe out the entire sea area, leaving no one alive.
Zhuang Qingyan finally managed to swim to the edge of the battlefield and quickly pressed the communicator on his collar. “Song Ke! Countdown three seconds, dissect its crystal!”
Song Ke, still in disarray from the wind, barely replied, “Ahhhhhh, sure, ahhhhhhh—”
Zhuang Qingyan’s eyes narrowed slightly, locking onto the target. He activated his S-level mental ability, telekinetic piercing!
The dead white eyes of the armored sea turtle suddenly froze, and the remnants of its sanity momentarily dispersed. Where was it? It had been sleeping for many years… Why did it suddenly come out from the depths of the sea?
In an instant, Song Ke let go, somersaulting and landing on the turtle’s head. With both hands gripping a massive shovel, she thrust it into the brain with all her strength!
Immediately, she rapidly stirred left and right until the tip touched something solid. With a forceful pull, a crystal the size of a basketball, dazzling with golden light, shot out. It resembled the newborn morning sun, illuminating the entire battlefield and attracting everyone’s attention. Awakeners nearby, unable to resist the temptation, started swimming toward the crystal.
Song Ke jumped upward, cradling the crystal in her hands. In an instant, she stowed it away in her dimensional space, and the dazzling golden light disappeared without a trace.
Those awakeners abruptly stopped and slowly retreated. After the impulsive urge passed, they regained their senses, beads of cold sweat forming on their backs.
Steal the crystal? Are they kidding? This person just soloed a level-5 ferocious beast. It would be like cutting vegetables for her to kill them.
Really, have they lost their minds? Isn’t it better to live peacefully? Why seek a death wish?
“Awesome, V587!!” Yin Xiao clung to the turtle shell, shouting loudly. The resounding cheers echoed layer by layer, reaching everyone’s ears.
