105: Chapter 105 "No Voluntary Labor!"

"City defense mission, what's the time limit?"

"Complete it within twenty-four hours."

"And the reward? Besides the transit pass."

Yi Chang's vertical pupils narrowed slightly.

"You want even more rewards?"

"I don't do voluntary labor."

Yi Chang fell silent for four seconds.

Her snake tail slowly swayed twice behind the chair, her scales scraping against the iron floor with a rustling sound.

"Fine." She pulled out a yellowed piece of paper from beneath a stack of documents, which was covered in a hand-drawn map of the underground.

"After the clearing is complete, you get the transit pass plus this partial map of the Underground Factory. It marks three known safe routes and two resource-dense areas."

She paused and added another sentence.

"Additionally, I can give you a piece of intelligence—for free."

"Speak."

"On the bottom floor of the Underground Factory, besides the refinery furnace and energy components you're looking for, there's a sealed warehouse left behind by the military. No one has ever opened the contents of that warehouse, but my people have scanned the energy signatures from the perimeter."

Yi Chang leaned forward, lowering her voice, her breathy words squeezing out from between her thin lips.

"Rank A or higher. At least three items."

Chen Chen's finger paused for a beat on the hilt of his blade.

Rank A equipment, starting at three items.

Plus the refinery and transit station components the proprietress wanted, and the nuclear reactor parts needed to manufacture the Void Annihilation Matrix—

This trip underground was going to be incredibly lucrative.

"Fine. I'll take the mission."

Chen Chen stood up, the chair legs scraping a sharp sound against the floor.

"Wait a moment."

Yi Chang's snake tail suddenly lashed out, coiling around the desk leg.

Her entire person slid down from the chair, her snake tail supporting her body as she stood—

No, it was "propped up."

Once her half-human, half-snake body unfurled, her total length from the top of her head to the tip of her tail exceeded three meters.

Her upper body's height was similar to a human female's, about 1.7 meters, but with the snake tail coiled on the ground, her overall mass far exceeded that of an ordinary person.

She moved around the desk, her snake tail sliding silently across the metal floor, stopping a meter in front of Chen Chen.

Her vertical pupils looked directly at him.

The distance was too close.

Silver-gray scales extended from both sides of her neck down below her collarbone, disappearing at the edge where her shirt covered them.

The fabric of the shirt was very thin, and one could vaguely see the blurred silver line where the scales met human skin.

Yi Chang raised her hand, her sharp, slender fingernails scratching lightly against the tactical long-sleeve on Chen Chen's chest.

She didn't use force, but the hardness of her nails left a white mark.

"Your heartbeat," she said, tilting her head as her vertical pupils contracted and then dilated.

"Forty-three beats per minute. Half as low as the last human who came to talk business."

"Are you comparing heart rates with me?"

"I'm judging whether you truly have the ability to come back alive."

Yi Chang withdrew her hand, her snake tail coiling back two loops. "Dead people have no value to me. Only the living strong—"

An extremely strange light flashed in her vertical pupils.

"—have room for cooperation."

Over the communicator, Shen Wanbing's tone gained a layer of chilliness: "She's interested in you. And not just in a business way."

Chen Chen didn't respond to Shen Wanbing.

He turned and walked toward the door.

Halfway there, Yi Chang's voice chased after him from behind.

"You have the Lord of Flesh's hatred mark on you."

Chen Chen's footsteps stopped.

"The residual aura of divinity. It's very faint, but I can smell it."

Yi Chang's breathy voice became extremely soft. "Have you killed one of its Apostles?"

"A projection."

"...A projection?"

Yi Chang fell silent for three seconds.

The tip of her snake tail tapped rapidly against the floor several times—Chen Chen judged this to be the Snake Scale Tribe's way of expressing shock.

"A projection is also an Apostle-level spiritual body. You, a human—"

"Is there anything else? If not, I'm leaving."

Yi Chang opened her mouth but ultimately didn't ask further.

"Twenty-four hours. The outskirts of the East District. Come find me for the permit after the clearing is done."

Chen Chen pushed the door open and left.

In the hallway, the communicator rang.

Shen Wanbing's voice said: "The tone of her voice changed significantly during that last part. After you mentioned killing the Lord of Flesh's Apostle projection, her heart rate—or rather, the vital sign rhythm corresponding to her race—underwent violent fluctuations."

"What does that mean?"

"Two possibilities. First, she has a grudge against the Lord of Flesh. Second—she's afraid of you."

Chen Chen pushed open the building's main entrance, and the morning light hit his face.

The Ghost Fortress was parked by the square, its armored door open.

Su Xiaoqi was lying prone at the entrance, her two legs dangling and swinging in the vehicle cabin, half an energy bar hanging from her mouth.

Seeing Chen Chen come out, she jumped up and ran to his side.

"Brother! Is there anything yummy in that building?"

"No. Get in the car."

Chen Chen stepped into the cabin and scanned the interior.

"Jiang Yanxue."

"Present." Jiang Yanxue turned her head from the driver's seat.

"Drive to the outskirts of the East District. There's work to be done."

"What kind of work?"

"Exterminating bugs. Fifteen to twenty Second-Order Aberrants. Once finished, we get the transit pass to go underground."

Jiang Yanxue's dark red pupils lit up.

She liked these straightforward killing missions best.

"Xiaoqi, pre-battle extra meal."

Chen Chen pulled two pieces of mammoth tenderloin from his silver-grade storage ring and slapped them onto the folding table. "Finish eating in fifteen minutes. You'll be the first to get off once we arrive."

Su Xiaoqi's twin tails spun like propellers as she grabbed the tenderloin with both hands and stuffed it into her mouth.

Qin Hongye leaned half her body down from the second floor: "What's the distance? Do we need a preemptive sniper shot?"

"Depends on the situation. We'll see when we get there."

Shen Wanbing pulled up the scan results for the East District outskirts on the command console.

A holographic projection floated in the air, with over a dozen red light dots scattered within a five-hundred-meter range outside the city walls.

"Seventeen heat signatures. Two of them are larger in size, with energy fluctuations close to the peak of Rank Two. The rest are ordinary Rank Two."

"Distribution density?"

"Uneven. There's a cluster of five or more in the northeast corner; the rest are scattered."

Chen Chen thought for two seconds.

"Hit the scattered ones first, then deal with the cluster. Qin Hongye is responsible for pinning down the two large ones. Xiaoqi, once you're full, charge straight in."

"What about me?" Blood Rose poked her head out from the back row.

"You coordinate with Jiang Yanxue to sweep the perimeter. Is your poison effective against Second-Order Aberrants?"

Blood Rose grinned, her red lips curving into a dangerous arc.

"Rank Two? Anything with biological nerves in its body is susceptible to my tricks."

"That'll do then."

The Ghost Fortress's engine hum rose in pitch, electric arcs burst from the chassis, and the steel beast took to the air once more.

The vehicle's body streaked over the low-lying building complexes of the ruined city's East District, advancing toward the outskirts.

Shen Wanxing crouched next to Su Xiaoqi, watching her eat, when she suddenly remembered something and leaned in to whisper in Chen Chen's ear.

"That Yi Chang just now... was she also female?"

"Yes."

"Human?"

"No. Snake Scale Tribe. Her lower half is a snake."

Shen Wanxing's expression froze for a moment.

"...You wouldn't even let a snake off the hook, would you?"

Chen Chen glanced at her.

Shen Wanxing pulled her neck back, quickly sat back in the corner of the sofa, hugged a cushion to her chest, and pursed her lips into a thin line.

Jiang Yanxue let out a muffled chuckle from the driver's seat.

The moment the Ghost Fortress rushed out of the city walls, Qin Hongye's voice came down from the second floor, cold and crisp.

"Target visible, four hundred meters to the northeast, five clustered together. The largest one—"

She paused for a beat.

"That one's not right. Its energy signal is fluctuating. It's... eating something."

Shen Wanbing's fingers slid rapidly across the panel: "What it's eating has a metallic reaction. It looks like—"

She looked up.

"It looks like the wreckage of some vehicle. There are still vital signs inside the wreckage. Weak, but alive."

On the wasteland four hundred meters away, a massive Aberrant Beetle was using its serrated mandibles to tear at an overturned high-end off-road vehicle.

Inside the cabin, someone was pounding on the window glass.