229: Chapter 229 The Vanguard of Godslayers Officially Assembles!

"Commander-in-Chief Lei!"

Chen Xi stood up abruptly and grabbed the file.

"It's him!"

"I'm going to the Ruins Hospital to pick him up right now! Arrange a stealth transport plane to the Extreme North Ice Field for me immediately!"

"Tonight, the God-Slaying Vanguard formally assembles!"

Western suburbs of the Imperial Capital, Military Ruins Sanatorium.

In name, this was a sanatorium, but in reality, it was more like a death camp for veterans who had been completely broken and lost their value in the fight against fierce beasts. The air was thick with the scent of disinfectant and the stench of decaying despair.

Bang!

Chen Xi kicked open the rusted iron door of the intensive care ward.

Inside the cramped, dark ward, there were no nursing staff, and not even a single intact window. On a dilapidated hospital bed lay a young man as withered as a dried corpse.

His body was covered in life-sustaining tubes. Due to the long-term backlash of the 'Tenfold Pain Amplification' curse, his cheeks were sunken, and his teeth had been crushed from the intense agony. Hearing the sound of the door opening, his lifeless, ashen eyes flickered slightly, but he didn't even have the strength to turn his head.

"Kill... kill me..."

A desperate plea, faint as a mosquito's buzz, squeezed out from his cracked lips. This was the sentence he had spoken most often over the past year. Lin Shan, once high-spirited and determined to become the world's number one shield, now only sought a quick death.

Chen Xi walked to the bedside. Looking at this tough man who had ended up like this just to save the ungrateful teammates who abandoned him, a trace of respect and pity flashed in his eyes.

"Kill you? That would be far too wasteful."

Chen Xi looked down at him. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a penetrating power that struck the soul.

"Lin Shan, your teammates abandoned you, and the Federation gave up on you. But now, I need you."

"I am Chen Xi, the captain of the Nirvana Battle Team. I'm going to the Extreme North Ice Field to kill those so-called high-dimensional gods."

"I need a shield that even gods cannot break."

"I can heal your injuries and break your curse. But what I'm giving you isn't a new life—it's an even more brutal hell."

"Do you still dare to stand up and go to your death with me?"

Hearing the words 'gods' and 'death,' a tiny but frantic spark suddenly erupted in Lin Shan's ashen eyes, like a final surge of lucidity before death.

He loathed this broken body, and he loathed the feeling of powerlessness from being abandoned even more. If he could go wild one last time before dying, even if it meant killing gods, so what?!

"Heh... heh..."

Exerting all his strength, a wheezing roar escaped his throat as he blinked his eyes desperately. It was a silent—[I am willing]!

"Very well. Remember the look in your eyes right now."

Chen Xi didn't waste any more words and suddenly opened his right hand.

A brilliant dark-golden light instantly illuminated the entire dark ward. It was an SS-grade Core Card that Chen Xi had specially custom-made for Lin Shan using countless rare materials on his way here!

[Mythic Card: Undying Blood Core (SS-grade)]!

"Miracle Creation! Miracle: Sublimation! Fuse for me!!!"

Chen Xi's gaze sharpened as he slammed the card, which radiated a majestic life force, directly into Lin Shan's shriveled chest!

Boom—!!!

A miracle was born in this tiny ward.

As the SS-grade Core Card fused, the 'curse power' that had been rampaging inside Lin Shan's body was actually forcibly captured, absorbed, and restructured by this higher-dimensional power of laws!

Crackle, crackle—

The agonizing sound of bones shattering and restructuring rang out. Lin Shan's shattered meridians and bones healed at a speed visible to the naked eye, even becoming plated with a dark-golden luster. His shriveled muscles swelled rapidly like they were being inflated, perfectly displaying lines of explosive power!

The tenfold pain curse was completely reversed, turning into a heaven-defying passive ability that converted every attack received into self-healing—[Masochistic Frenzy]!

"Aaaaaaah—!!!"

With a wild roar toward the heavens that had been suppressed for an entire year, Lin Shan violently ripped out all the tubes on his body and leaped up from the hospital bed!

A terrifying heavy-armor defense aura of Lv.65 erupted, shattering the ward's windows!

He looked at his power-filled hands in disbelief, then suddenly dropped to one knee, kneeling heavily before Chen Xi like an iron tower.

"Lin Shan is willing to die for the Captain!!!"

"Put on your gear. Tonight, let's deliver a big gift to those alien bastards."

Chen Xi threw over a set of pitch-black heavy armor and turned to stride out of the ward.

...

Three hours later, in the sky above the Extreme North Ice Field.

A "Kunpeng" class supersonic stealth transport plane, painted entirely in pure black, was weaving through a blizzard strong enough to tear steel apart like a ghost.

Inside the cabin, the temperature had dropped to minus fifty degrees, but the five members of the Nirvana Battle Team were boiling with hot blood.

Chen Xi sat in the main seat. Beside him were the cold-as-snow Su Xiaoxiao, Li Murou excitedly wiping her zither strings, and Ye Fei stroking the mutated wolf king, Little Si. And then there was the new member—Lin Shan, who stood like an immovable iron tower, holding two giant tower shields in silence.

Beep, beep, beep—!!!

Suddenly, a piercing red alarm rang out from the cockpit!

"Reporting to Major General Chen! An extremely terrifying high-dimensional energy barrier has been detected ahead! Our stealth system has failed!"

The pilot's voice carried a hint of uncontrollable panic. "Unknown high-energy rays have locked onto us! Evasive maneuvers are ineffective!! The plane will disintegrate in ten seconds!"

"Finally can't hold back anymore?"

Chen Xi stood up abruptly, killing intent boiling in his eyes. Instead of fear, he was filled with a wild battle spirit.

"Open the rear cargo door!!"

"But Captain, we're ten thousand meters up, the temperature is minus seventy degrees, and the wind speed..."

"Open the door!!!"

Rumble!

The cargo door at the tail of the transport plane slowly opened. The violent blizzard poured in like knives, instantly freezing everything in the cabin.

Through the wind and snow, everyone finally saw the scene below.

At the center of the endless glacier, a thousand-meter-high polyhedral [star gate] radiating a strange blue light was slowly rotating. In the sky around the star gate, hundreds of [High-Dimensional Observers]—creatures with only upper bodies and geometric heads—were suspended in a dense formation!

The polyhedrons on their heads were converging blue rays of destruction, aiming them in unison at the transport plane in the sky.

"Xiao Xiao! Mu Rou! Ye Fei! Lin Shan!"

Chen Xi faced the fierce wind, his coat fluttering loudly. His voice thundered through the blizzard.

"Show these alien insects that humans are not lambs they can push around!"

"Nirvana Battle Team, drop!!!"