121: Genetic lock level two! The pleasure of being bombarded with nuclear radiation, I am a living reactor!

"Thump... Thump..."

Heavy armor fragments sank slowly through the deep blue seawater like a rain of black iron, eventually vanishing into the bottomless darkness.

Without that thick shell of lead-tungsten alloy,

Jiang Ran's body, clad only in a thin, black nano-bodysuit,

was exposed without any protection at the center of this "dead zone," where the concentration of nuclear radiation was at its highest.

This was eight hundred meters deep in the ocean.

The pressure here was enough to crush steel into a pancake.

The radiation dosage here would cause even an elephant to rot and die within three seconds.

Normally, Jiang Ran should have felt a bone-chilling cold at this moment.

He should have felt the agonizing pain of his internal organs being squeezed and the burning sensation of invisible death rays penetrating every cell nucleus.

But strangely... there was no pain.

Not a single shred of it.

On the contrary, when those invisible streams of high-energy particles carrying staggering amounts of energy

washed violently over his body like a rainstorm, Jiang Ran felt an unprecedented... hunger.

It was a greed from the depths of his genes, originating from the very foundation of life.

Every one of his cells and every mitochondrion felt like a desert parched for ten thousand years suddenly welcoming a sweet rain.

They frantically opened their mouths, gulping down this lethal radiation energy.

"Is this... the true form of an Abyssal Walker?"

Jiang Ran slowly opened his eyes.

His originally pitch-black pupils now emitted a heart-palpitating, dark golden halo.

He looked down at his hands.

Under the reflection of that deep blue Cherenkov radiation,

his skin did not rot; instead, it began to take on an eerie dark red hue.

This was the result of countless capillaries beneath the skin becoming extremely congested and dilated.

It was an overloaded state presented in order to transport that terrifyingly massive amount of energy.

"Sizzle..."

Faint bubbling sounds echoed off the surface of his skin.

The temperature inside his body was soaring at an alarming rate.

It even instantly boiled the layer of cold seawater clinging to his skin, turning it into countless tiny white bubbles that rose upward.

He suspended there in the sea of light, looking like a piece of red-hot iron, radiating a violent aura that one dared not look at directly.

The shackles that once bound his physical body had snapped.

The fragile protective shell of being "human" had shattered.

In its place was a brand-new life form awakened to adapt to this cruel abyss, born for slaughter and devouring.

Jiang Ran clenched his fists, his knuckles letting out a string of crisp pops like crackling beans.

That sense of power, so full it felt like it might explode, made him want to roar at the heavens.

"Come."

He looked up at the giant beast in the distance that was eyeing him with confusion, a savage curve forming at the corners of his mouth.

"Let's get reacquainted."

"Thump—"

"Thump—"

Dull, massive booms exploded against Jiang Ran's eardrums.

The sound did not come from the outside world.

It wasn't an underwater volcanic eruption or the footsteps of a giant beast; it originated from within his own chest.

It was his heart.

This organ, which originally belonged to a human, was now beating frantically at a terrifying frequency of over three hundred times per minute.

Every contraction was like a high-power hydraulic pump running at full speed.

It violently pumped that radiation-enhanced, scalding blood—as heavy as mercury—into every capillary throughout his body.

"Whew..."

Jiang Ran exhaled a breath of turbid air, which was instantly squeezed into a string of dense bubbles by the high-pressure seawater the moment it left his mouth.

But in his vision, the speed at which these bubbles floated upward... was infuriatingly slow.

It wasn't just the bubbles.

It was as if the entire world had been put on slow motion.

The deep blue Cherenkov radiation that had filled his eyes was now somehow covered by an eerie, blood-colored filter.

Within this crimson vision,

the outlines of everything became clearer than ever before; even the trajectories of tiny dust particles floating in the water were perfectly visible.

"Roar—!!!"

In the distance, the Fission Sea Lizard was clearly infuriated by the provocation of this "tiny bug."

It let out a silent roar, its massive body suddenly exerting force as it bore down on Jiang Ran like a collapsing mountain.

Its speed was incredibly fast, stirring up stormy waves in the deep sea.

But in the eyes of Jiang Ran, who had now activated the Second Stage of Gene Lock,

this pounce, which should have been as fast as lightning, turned into a frame-by-frame slow-motion movie.

He could clearly see the tightened lines of the monster's thigh muscles as they contracted;

he could see the vacuum cavitation bubbles generated as the giant claw sliced through the water, slowly forming and bursting;

he could even see his own red-tinted reflection in the monster's pupils.

"Too slow."

At this moment, Jiang Ran's brain operated like a supercomputer, processing countless pieces of combat data in an instant.

This was the absolute control brought by the Second Stage of Gene Lock—[Partial Alienation].

In this state, the limitations of what was originally a human brain were completely removed.

Adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins... these hormones that originally required precise regulation were now surging through his blood vessels as if they cost nothing.

His muscle fibers began to writhe and reorganize.

They became denser and more resilient, even surpassing the limits of carbon-based organisms.

This was no longer a human body evolved for survival.

It was a perfect biological weapon born for slaughter in the abyss.

"Come on, big guy."

Jiang Ran watched the giant claw slowly enlarge in his field of vision, the blood-red color in his eyes deepening.

He did not dodge, nor did he retreat.

Instead, he slowly raised his right arm, which seemed insignificant in front of the giant beast.

With his five fingers spread and palm facing upward, he struck a pose as if he were holding up the sky.

"Let's see if your bones are harder..."

"Or if my life is tougher."

"Boom—!!!"

The Fission Sea Lizard's giant front claw, large enough to cover half a basketball court,

slammed down with the pressure of tens of millions of tons of seawater, like a collapsing mountain.

Before it, Jiang Ran, suspended in the water, was as tiny as a reckless insect.

This strike required no skill.

It was pure, absolute crushing force from mass and kinetic energy.

The undercurrent stirred up by the wind from the claw alone was enough to tear a light submarine into fragments.

However, facing a blow that could flatten even steel, Jiang Ran did not dodge.

He only, at the final moment,

casually raised his right arm, fingers spread and palm up, in a gesture as if he were holding up the sky.

In the next instant, a disproportionate collision occurred.

"Thump!!!"

An incredibly dull boom exploded in the deep sea, and a terrifying shockwave centered on the two of them

was like a visible white ring of gas, instantly sweeping through the entire power compartment.

The surrounding thick lead-plate walls and tangled pipelines twisted and cracked like paper under the force of this shockwave.

But Jiang Ran, at the center of the storm, remained motionless.

That palm, which wasn't even as large as one of the sea lizard's claws,

incredibly and firmly held back the giant claw that was pressing down like a mountain.

Everything between them seemed to freeze.

"Crack—Boom!"

Although Jiang Ran did not retreat, the half-meter-thick special alloy baseplate beneath his feet could not withstand the pressure.

Under this terrifying conductive force, the alloy steel plate instantly shattered and buckled.

Jiang Ran's legs sank directly into the steel ruins, buried up to his knees.

But he still stood.

His right arm, which wasn't particularly thick, had muscle lines tightened like steel cables.

The blood vessels beneath his skin writhed frantically like dark red dragons, radiating heart-palpitating heat.

"Is this... your full strength?"

Jiang Ran slowly raised his head.

Within that crimson vision,

he looked at the giant beast above him, which seemed somewhat dazed by the resistance, and his mouth slowly widened, revealing pearly white teeth.

There wasn't a trace of human emotion in that smile.

Only pure violence and arrogance belonging to an abyssal predator.

The Fission Sea Lizard clearly couldn't understand what had happened.

Its simple reptilian brain couldn't process the information before it—

Why could this soft little bug, without even a protective shell, block its city-leveling strike?

It roared in anger, attempting to exert force again to crush this obstacle.

But it was too late.

"Too weak."

Jiang Ran's voice was low and raspy, like two rusted iron plates rubbing together.

His five fingers suddenly tightened.

"Puchi!"

It was the sound of flesh being pierced as if it were metal.

His seemingly ordinary human fingers were harder than diamond at this moment.

Without any resistance, they pierced through the thick leaden scales on the sea lizard's palm, digging deep into its flesh and bone.

"Break... for me!!!"

Accompanied by a violent shout, the dark golden patterns on Jiang Ran's arm shone brilliantly.

He used no fancy techniques, just pure brute force.

Exerting force from his waist and abdomen, his spine twisted like a great dragon turning over. He yanked his right arm back while lunging forward.

"Crack—Bang!!!"

An ear-piercing sound of bones shattering echoed through the deep sea.

Under that irresistible, monstrous strength,

the Fission Sea Lizard's front limb, as thick as a bridge pier, was actually snapped backward at the joint by Jiang Ran!

White bone fragments pierced through the flesh, exposed to the water, and blue radiated blood instantly surged out.

An ant shaking a tree?

No.

This was a mayfly snapping the tree... "Roar—!!!"

The agonizing pain of its limb snapping sent the Fission Sea Lizard into a complete frenzy.

It let out a silent roar powerful enough to shatter rocks, its massive body twisting violently.

That ten-meter-long giant tail, covered in bone spikes and hard scales,

swept out with the momentum of an army-crushing blow, stirring up a turbid undercurrent as it lashed out at the tiny figure.

The speed of this strike was so fast it even pulled a white shockwave trail through the deep water.

If it were the previous Jiang Ran wearing powered armor, he would have had no choice but to take such a wide-range sweep head-on.

But now... "Too slow."

Within that crimson vision, this giant tail capable of crushing a tank looked like a slowly waving branch.

Jiang Ran didn't even block.

His legs bent slightly, and his thigh muscles, reorganized by genes and filled with explosive power, instantly tightened.

"Bang!"

He kicked off in the water, creating a ring-shaped airburst.

In the next instant, his figure vanished.

The sea lizard's giant tail lashed out at empty space, the turbulent water sending the surrounding steel wreckage flying in all directions.

And within that turbid water,

only a ghostly dark-red afterimage remained.

The moment the giant tail swept past, he refracted upward at an eerie angle that defied physical common sense.

When Jiang Ran reappeared, he was already standing on the giant beast's back.

"Sizzle, sizzle—!!"

The moment he landed, an ear-piercing burning sound came from the soles of his feet.

This was the core area of the Fission Sea Lizard, the place where radiation and heat were most concentrated.

Scalding radiation fluid constantly spewed from the gaps in its back scales.

That temperature was enough to instantly cook an adult human.

Jiang Ran's bare feet stepped on it as if stepping on a red-hot iron plate; his skin was instantly scorched black and curled.

An ordinary person would have already gone into shock from the pain.

But for Jiang Ran, who had activated the Second Stage of Gene Lock, his pain nerves seemed to be blocked.

Or rather, this extreme pain had instead turned into a powerful stimulant.

It stimulated his brain to secrete more dopamine, making the red light in his eyes even hotter and more crazed.

"So warm..."

He looked down at his smoking feet, his mouth widening into a neurotic smile.

He even stomped his feet as if enjoying it, crushing the scalding scales.

Then, his gaze locked onto the front.

Before him, along the beast's spine, stood two rows of crystal-clear giant spines emitting a brilliant blue light.

Each of those spines was half a meter thick and deeply rooted in the spinal column.

Like control rods inserted into a reactor, they constantly regulated the nuclear reactions within the monster's body.

That was its power source.

And its fatal weakness.

Jiang Ran strode forward, walking on the swaying back of the beast as if on level ground, heading toward the largest and brightest main spine.

The Fission Sea Lizard seemed to sense the anomaly on its back.

It writhed in terror, trying to shake off the "tyrant" standing on its back.

But Jiang Ran's feet were as if rooted, firmly nailed to its back.

"Found you."

Jiang Ran walked up to the crystal spine emitting terrifying heat and radiation, and slowly reached out his arms to embrace it.

The posture was like a lumberjack hugging a tree about to be felled.

"Since you like to glow..."

Jiang Ran's muscles began to bulge, and his blood vessels wound like angry pythons beneath his skin.

"Then I'll help you—turn off the lights."

"Get... UP!!!"

A violent shout exploded in Jiang Ran's chest.

Every muscle in his body tightened to the extreme at this moment.

The dark golden patterns beneath his skin flowed and boiled like lava.

Within that not-so-massive body, a terrifying strength capable of shaking mountains erupted.

"Creak—Creak—"

The two-meter-long crystal dorsal spine, deeply rooted in the Fission Sea Lizard's vertebrae, began to groan under Jiang Ran's embrace.

The hard muscles around it were forced apart, and the ligaments connecting nerves and blood vessels snapped one by one.

The sea lizard felt an agonizing pain from deep within its marrow.

It rolled and crashed frantically, trying to shake off the demon on its back.

But in his Second Stage of Gene Lock state, Jiang Ran's feet were as if welded to its back, completely motionless.

"Out you come!"

Jiang Ran's arms suddenly exerted upward force, his back arching into a fully drawn bow.

"Puchi—!!!"

Accompanied by a bone-chilling sound of tearing flesh,

the giant dorsal spine emitting a blinding blue light was actually pulled out by the roots from the monster's spine by Jiang Ran!

In that instant, it was like pulling the pressure relief valve off a pressure cooker.

"Zzz—Boom!!!"

A stream of scalding fluorescent-blue radiated blood, mixed with fragments of broken organs,

shot up from the massive wound like a high-pressure fountain, reaching several meters high.

The scalding beast blood instantly drenched Jiang Ran.

But he did not dodge.

He didn't even blink.

Amidst the blue blood raining down,

Jiang Ran held that still-throbbing crystal spine, which was emitting terrifying heat and radiation, in one hand as if he were holding the head of an enemy.

He was covered in blood, his dark red skin appearing savage and eerie under the blue light.

In that crimson vision, the giant beast beneath his feet, having lost its energy center,

was letting out a dying wail, its massive body beginning to twitch violently and go limp.

And standing atop the giant beast's remains, Jiang Ran slowly raised his head.

In those pupils shimmering with golden light, there was no trace of mercy, only the coldness and tyranny of an abyssal creature.

At this moment, he was no longer human.

He was an Abyssal Demon God who had just completed a massacre, radiating an aura of destruction.