107: Chapter 107 City Defense Cleanup Mission: Su Xiaoqi Goes Berserk!

Shen Wanbing expanded the holographic projection on the command console, and the real-time distribution map of seventeen red light dots covered half the carriage.

"The cluster is in the northeast corner; five of them are huddled together, surrounding a building ruin. The heat source is very concentrated; there should be a nest."

"What about the remaining stragglers?"

"Twelve are distributed along the southern and western perimeters, with intervals ranging from one hundred to three hundred meters. Three are moving, while the rest are stationary."

Chen Chen glanced at the projection.

"Clear the stragglers first. Xiaoqi and I will push from the south, and Jiang Yanxue will take Blood Rose around to the west. Qin Hongye, set up your gun on the second floor and prioritize marking the two larger ones."

"Shen Wanbing, keep an eye on that nest in the northeast corner and call out immediately if there's any unusual activity."

"Understood."

"Shen Wanxing, stay in the vehicle and collect the bodies after the battle."

Shen Wanxing nodded obediently, took off her nude pink high heels and changed into flat boots, then crouched by the folding table, ready to receive the loot.

The armored door opened, and cold wind poured in.

Su Xiaoqi was the first to jump down, cracking the ground with two fissures upon landing.

The mammoth tenderloin she had stuffed down ten minutes ago had already finished converting; her entire body was wrapped in a thin layer of pale golden energy film, and her twin tails were blown upward by the airflow.

Chen Chen landed after her, drawing his void-rending ship-slaying blade and holding it horizontally in his right hand, its purple patterns lighting up.

"Let's go."

Su Xiaoqi followed three meters to his right, her short legs moving rapidly.

The first aberration on the south side was eighty meters away.

It was a two-meter-long subterranean centipede, its grayish-white carapace covered in barbs, currently gnawing on metal beneath the chassis of a burnt-out truck.

Qin Hongye's voice came down through the communicator:

"Target locked: seventh abdominal segment, heat vent."

"Fire."

Hum—

The gauss rifle projectile silently traversed the eighty-meter distance, drilling into a gap in the centipede's abdominal carapace.

The centipede's body shuddered violently, and most of its torso sprang out from under the truck chassis, dozens of its jointed limbs clawing frantically at the ground.

A scarlet cross mark flashed on its abdomen—Fatal Lock triggered.

Chen Chen dashed to it in three steps.

He swung the void-rending ship-slaying blade horizontally from right to left, the blade edge stacking with a gravity pulse, slicing the entire centipede in half at the waist.

The upper half was still writhing.

Su Xiaoqi rushed up, stepped on the centipede's head carapace, bent down, and dug into the split with her bare hands, pulling out the core.

It was a fist-sized dark green crystal, still steaming.

She glanced at Chen Chen.

"Eat."

Su Xiaoqi stuffed the core into her mouth and crunched it, her cheeks bulging as she chewed twice and swallowed.

The energy halo brightened another notch.

System prompt: Killed Tier 2 Aberrant Centipede. Loot +3.

Three low-tier material cores and a fragment of the aberrant carapace fell to the ground.

Chen Chen swept them all into his silver-grade storage ring without stopping.

The second one.

The third one.

The fourth one.

Chen Chen and Su Xiaoqi cleared the six stragglers on the south side within ten minutes.

The process was extremely simple—Qin Hongye marked the weak points from a distance, Chen Chen slashed them open, and Su Xiaoqi was responsible for digging out the cores to eat.

The Abyssal Plunderer affix was active the whole time, with the loot for every monster increased by a fixed amount of three.

The more Su Xiaoqi ate, the more excited she became, and the brightness of her energy halo was visibly increasing.

Several muffled sounds came from the west.

In the communicator, Jiang Yanxue's panting was mixed with the sound of metal clashing.

"Four cleared on the west side. Blood Rose's poison is really effective; the bugs start convulsing after one bite."

Blood Rose's voice followed lazily: "My poison can paralyze the nerves of even Tyrant-class creatures; what are a few Tier 2 bugs compared to that?"

"Enough talk. How many are left?" Chen Chen flicked the green bodily fluids off his blade.

"There are still two running on the west side; I'm chasing them."

Shen Wanbing's voice cut in: "South side cleared. The remaining two on the west side are moving toward the northeast—they're running toward the nest."

"Stop them."

"It's too late; they've already run into the range of the cluster."

Shen Wanbing paused for a beat.

"The heat source at the northeast nest has surged; there are seven. Including the two that ran back, there are seven in total. And—"

"That quasi-Tier 3 one has woken up."

Chen Chen stopped in his tracks.

"How big?"

"The heat source area is four times that of a normal Tier 2. It's climbing up from underground."

There was silence in the communicator for two seconds.

"Xiaoqi, are you full?"

Su Xiaoqi licked the remaining core debris from the corner of her mouth and nodded vigorously.

"Full! Especially full!"

"Good, charge the nest with me."

Golden light dots lit up in Su Xiaoqi's pitch-black pupils, and her twin tails were blown into a horizontal position by the energy airflow.

She clenched her fists, her knuckles cracking.

"Charge!"

Both of them accelerated simultaneously.

Chen Chen burst with speed, leaving afterimages on the gravel ground, while Su Xiaoqi followed closely behind, relying on the burst from Gluttony Evolution.

Four hundred meters away, the building ruins in the northeast corner could already be seen.

It was a concrete factory building that had largely collapsed, with several mounds rising from the surrounding ground; each mound had an opening with edges coated in grayish-white secretions—the nest of the subterranean aberrations.

Six Tier 2 aberrant centipedes poked half their bodies out of the holes, their compound eyes turning toward Chen Chen's direction.

The ground was shaking.

A three-meter-wide fissure split open in the ground at the very center of the factory, and a massive grayish-white carapace arched out from the crack.

Quasi-Tier 3.

Its body size was five times that of a normal centipede, and the width of its head alone exceeded two meters.

The surface of its carapace was covered in a layer of translucent crystals, refracting cold light under the gloomy daylight.

The most disgusting part was its mouth—it had three rows of serrated fangs on both its upper and lower jaws, and corrosive liquid constantly oozed from the gaps, sizzling and smoking as it dripped onto the ground.

"Qin Hongye, mark it."

"I'm already looking for weak points... The carapace is too thick; the conventional heat vents are sealed by the crystals."

Qin Hongye's voice carried a rare hint of hesitation,

"Let me check again—found it. There's a gap between the second and third segments of the neck where the crystals don't completely cover it."

"Fire."

Hum—

The gauss rifle projectile hit.

The electromagnetically accelerated alloy projectile struck the gap in the quasi-Tier 3 centipede's neck, splashing out a cloud of white debris.

But it didn't penetrate.

The projectile became stuck after embedding two centimeters into the carapace.

"The hardness exceeds our estimates."

Qin Hongye gritted her teeth. "The armor-piercing efficiency of the D-grade gauss rifle against it is less than twenty percent."

A scarlet cross mark flashed on the centipede's neck, but the marked area was very small, a whole circle smaller than the weak points of the Tier 2 ones hit earlier.

The quasi-Tier 3 centipede let out a sharp hiss, its entire body ejecting from the ground fissure.

Its fifteen-meter-long body coiled in mid-air and slammed heavily onto the ground, the resulting shockwave sending surrounding gravel flying.

The six Tier 2 centipedes rioted at the sound, lunging toward Chen Chen and Su Xiaoqi.

"Xiaoqi, clear the small ones. I'll handle the big one."

Su Xiaoqi let out a howl, golden light surging from her entire body, and smashed her fist onto the head carapace of the nearest centipede.

With 54 points of constitution plus the burst amplification from Gluttony Evolution, this punch directly smashed the centipede's head carapace inward.

The centipede rolled its eyes and collapsed to the ground, convulsing.

Su Xiaoqi took the opportunity to jump off the corpse of this one, her knee striking the side of the second centipede's abdomen.

Chen Chen's attention was entirely on that quasi-Tier 3 one.

Its movement speed was more than a notch faster than the Tier 2 ones; its fifteen-meter body wound along the ground in a charge, the gravel kicked up by its jointed limbs pelting the surrounding buildings with a pattering sound.

Chen Chen dodged the centipede's rushing giant jaws, and swung the void-rending ship-slaying blade onto its side carapace.

Gravity pulse stacked with 117 points of arm strength—

The blade cut three centimeters into the carapace before getting stuck by the crystal layer.

Hard.

Fucking hard.

Chen Chen pulled his blade out and retreated two steps.

The centipede turned its head to chase and bite, its three rows of fangs closing, corrosive liquid splashing.

Chen Chen ducked to avoid it and pressed his left hand toward the centipede's abdomen—

Absolute Control: Gravity Field.

Twenty times gravity slammed down.

The front half of the centipede's body was pressed to the ground, its jointed limbs deeply embedded in the soil; the carapace, bearing the dual pressure of its own weight and twenty times gravity, emitted a dense sound of cracking.

But it didn't break.

The quasi-Tier 3 skeletal strength held up.

The rear half of the centipede's body was not within the coverage of the gravity field and was lashing out at the ground frantically, its barbed posterior jointed limbs sweeping across.

Chen Chen raised his blade to block, the tail barb slamming into the blade, transmitting a massive force.

He slid half a meter, his military boots plowing two furrows into the gravel.

"Qin Hongye, fire another shot. The same spot."

"Received."

Hum—

The second projectile drilled into the same gap, pushing the previously embedded warhead further in.

The gap widened.

The brightness of the scarlet weak point mark increased.