Chapter 400: Brothers

The four-armed beetle's surface shimmered with flowing light, revealing its true form: a chitinous exoskeleton as thick as tank armor, studded with backward-facing spines, the uppermost pair of limbs curved like scythes and hooked over the Skullcrusher Power Hammer.

A steel flag spear was plunged through its chest.

Two additional limbs extended from its ribs, one gripping a live whip, the other a biological firearm bristling with eyes.

"Sssss."

The divine corruption host opened its bloodied maw, full of jagged teeth, exhaling a searing blast of hot air as if grinning with human malice.

In the next instant, its upper limb joints spun violently—the scythes moving too fast for the eye to track, leaving afterimages as they slashed directly into both sides of Gray Rain's shoulder.

"Huh?!"

Gray Rain's eyes flared with rage; she gripped the hammer's handle and activated the effect.

【Effect 2: Skullcrush. After a powerful swing and impact, the Power Hammer releases a shockwave equal in force to the strike itself.】

Hum!

A torrent of impact surged through the contact point, traveling into the chitinous shell and spreading through the host's entire body.

The force of this blow could overturn an overloaded truck speeding down the highway—or shatter a main battle tank, triggering ammunition detonation.

Yet the host, having taken the full force of the Power Hammer's strike, merely spewed blood from the seam joints along its right side, then acted as if nothing had happened.

It used its scythe limbs to tear Gray Rain into five pieces and flung them away.

Shhh—

Li Cheng lunged forward, delivering a powerful oblique kick to the end of the steel flag spear, causing it to twist inside the host's belly.

The torn organs and gushing plasma did not hinder the host's movements.

It vibrated its wrist, hurling the live whip, which coiled several times around Li Cheng's waist and tightened like a python crushing its prey.

Simultaneously, it raised its left arm, aiming the biological firearm directly at Li Cheng's head.

The gun resembled a hybrid of cockroach, shrimp, and silkworm: its body coiled, its chitinous shell striped gold and white, both sides covered in dozens of black, darting, bead-like eyes.

As the host raised the gun, its body writhed forward, swelling, and a pale blue plasma began to coalesce at the muzzle.

Zzzt!

A spherical plasma bolt shot out, ionizing the air, piercing through the floor, and reaching the fourth basement level—missing Li Cheng, who had vanished mid-air, taking the steel flag spear with him.

Did he log out of the Killing Ground?

No, not at all.

The host instinctively looked upward—Li Cheng had used 【Familiar Swap】 to exchange positions with a paper crane he had earlier released and left hovering on the second basement level.

Boom!

Li Cheng punched through the floor; as concrete rained vertically downward, his invincible 【Blade of Repentance】 sliced through the resilient chitinous shell like a hot knife through butter, driving straight into the host's brain.

The host raised its scythe limbs to block Li Cheng's wrist, halting the twenty-centimeter meat-cutter from advancing further.

The live whip in its second pair of limbs lashed out on its own, stabbing toward Li Cheng's neck.

At the eleventh hour, Li Cheng mentally opened his backpack slot and withdrew the 【Ape Regression Gun】.

One of the Killing Ground's hidden rules: players may choose where their items appear when drawn—left hand, right hand, above head, beneath feet.

This exists because Killing Ground items encompass everything; if a crown or glass slipper had to always appear in the hand, it would be impractical—especially for players without arms.

At this moment, Li Cheng exploited this rule, summoning the 【Ape Regression Gun】 directly against his own abdomen.

The 【Assembled Doll · Modified】 effect activated instantly—the 【Ape Regression Gun】 stuck firmly to Li Cheng's belly.

As he thrust his waist forward twice, in a movement both ungraceful and distinctly lewd, he fired two shots.

The bullets, fired later, struck first—the live whip that had been lashing toward him.

The once python-thick live whip first regressed into ordinary steel cable, then into a plastic toy snake, utterly devoid of power.

All this occurred in the blink of an eye—the host swung its gun around and fired another plasma blast.

Li Cheng kicked off the side of the biological electromagnetic cannon, dodging at his limit and retreating several meters away.

A powerful flashlight fell to the ground, its intense beam reflecting wildly across metal instruments, illuminating the entire level.

"You okay?"

Li Cheng kept his eyes locked on the host, shouting toward the corner.

"Just turned into five pieces of Shang Yang—can't die."

From the corner came Gray Rain's muffled voice; given her durability, being torn into five parts was nothing.

The real trouble was the acid coating the host's scythes—

These acids, comparable to Alien blood, were fiercely corrosive; even nanobot metal self-repair systems took a while to neutralize their effects.

Since Gray Rain was unharmed, Li Cheng refocused entirely on the divine corruption host.

Even from a distance, he could sense the overwhelming, surging vitality within it.

In raw power, it was unquestionably the strongest enemy he'd faced since his debut—stronger even than Xiao Shui Xingjun and Master Miao Yin, those two deranged old man and woman.

Even the frog god capable of crossing space during the 【Homecoming】 quest paled in comparison to this divine corruption host.

He Sai, pinned beneath the biological electromagnetic cannon, let out a terrified wail—he may never have eaten pork, but he'd seen pigs run; instinctively, he sensed he wouldn't escape.

His instinct was correct.

The divine beetle's wounds healed at visible speed; from its back, a slender, ornamental, hair-like tail rose and pierced straight through He Sai's occipital skull.

He Sai's once-clear eyes instantly lost all consciousness; his pupils rolled back, his mouth gaped open, emitting an inhuman shriek. He turned his head toward Li Cheng and said, "Bro… ther."

Li Cheng's pupils contracted—He Sai had spoken in flawless, unaccented Chinese, without any Killing Ground translation.

In other words, the divine beetle's intellect was sufficient to extract knowledge directly from its victims' minds and assimilate it.

Li Cheng took a deep breath and smiled: "Anyone who can't work 996 at the company doesn't deserve to be called my brother."

??

Had the divine beetle ever been online and engaged in abstract memes, it would've definitely replied, "So working 996 qualifies you to cut your brother down?"

"How did you—"

The infected controlled He Sai's head and went on talking on its own: "—detect me."

"Air currents."

Li Cheng was concise. This bio-electromagnetic cannon on the third basement level only looked bloody and ugly on the surface; the sophistication of its internal technology far surpassed that of the real world.

To complete its construction, the Sin Beetle hauled in all manner of instruments, laid down fungal mats, connected power supplies, and restarted the biological laboratory.

By the standards of a BSL-4 laboratory, the pressure differential between adjacent rooms should be -20 to -30 Pa, with a fresh-air system continuously drawing purified gas in from outside,

thereby preventing the leakage of deadly pathogens such as Ebola virus and Marburg virus from the BSL-4 lab.

Because the Sin Beetle had restarted the fresh-air system, Li Cheng had not smelled the thick stench of blood on the third basement level when he was on the second.

And it was precisely because the fresh-air system was continuously pumping fresh air into the room that Li Cheng had earlier detected, through the faint shifts in airflow, a hidden colossus lurking within.

(End of chapter)