Chapter 243: A4 Descends!
“Mommy, Sister Blue Serpent says she’s arrived at a shore where she won’t be detected. It seems to be called…”
After waiting for about ten minutes, Huayibai, who had kept her eyes closed, suddenly spoke.
Hearing her voice, Lin Jiayao quickly exited the training ground and opened her eyes.
Just now, Lin Jiayao had been controlling A4 in the training ground, honing her control and proficiency.
She was mainly practicing using the black scales for vector thrust, improving her turning and speed when dodging attacks.
The enemy could make countless mistakes, but if A4 was hit even once, it would be half-dead.
Exiting the training ground, Lin Jiayao saw Huayibai gesturing, seemingly trying to write words on Lin Jiayao’s hand with her finger.
Lin Jiayao cooperated, letting fine mycelium sprout from her skin where Huayibai’s finger traced, turning her skin red.
It looked like she was writing on her hand with a red marker.
But Lin Jiayao quickly stopped Huayibai.
Although Huayibai’s gestures seemed correct…
She was writing each stroke in the same spot.
This resulted in a red blob on Lin Jiayao’s hand, completely illegible.
Since Huayibai’s writing was already abstract, like drawing, Lin Jiayao couldn’t even guess the characters from her strokes.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Huayibai looked up at Lin Jiayao, puzzled.
She was writing seriously, why did Mommy stop her?
“Simulate the characters directly on your hand.”
Lin Jiayao raised her hand, letting the mycelium form the characters for “Huayibai.”
The Blue Serpent and Huayibai must also communicate using a combination of language and memory images. Having seen the images, Huayibai should be able to do this.
As Lin Jiayao expected, Huayibai looked at her own palm, tried for a moment, then raised her hand excitedly, presenting it to Lin Jiayao.
“Done!” Huayibai said with a smile.
Shantou City Commerce Bureau Port.
Shantou City Commerce Bureau Port?
In Guangnan Province, nearly three hundred kilometers from Yangzhou City.
This was the shore where the A-rank couldn’t detect them? So far?
Fortunately, A4 also had extremely high movement speed and mobility; this distance wasn’t too outrageous.
“Is Huayibai still with the Blue Serpent’s clone on the west coast of Japan?” Lin Jiayao asked, rubbing Huayibai’s head.
Huayibai nuzzled against Lin Jiayao’s palm. “Yes! I’ve gathered a lot of people, we can leave soon!”
“Good, stay with the Blue Serpent, don’t wander off, okay?” Lin Jiayao instructed.
“Okay~”
It was good that Huayibai wasn’t coming along. Her CPU was currently overloaded; she couldn’t participate in this level of battle.
Huayibai mainly relied on devouring to fight. The creatures she simulated after devouring were weaker than the originals.
With her mental capacity maxed out, Huayibai couldn’t devour anything more, or she risked a “CPU meltdown.”
After instructing Huayibai, Lin Jiayao picked up the pen and paper left by her sister on the bedside table and wrote on the back:
[Something came up, I’ll wake up later.]
Placing the pen on the note, Lin Jiayao glanced at the vine curtains, which were pulled open for better observation, and saw the Black Stem Fungus spreading its arms for balance, wobbling as it followed the mycelium flesh-person in circles.
It seemed to notice Lin Jiayao’s gaze and turned to look at her.
But this glance made it lose its balance, its foot catching on a vine, and it tumbled to the ground.
Everything was normal.
Lin Jiayao looked away, burrowed under the covers, and closed her eyes.
How peaceful.
“Login.”
Lin Jiayao opened the system’s login interface and looked at the ninth slot, the red login slot that was different from the others.
[Descend]
Lin Jiayao directly chose Descend, and an identical login map appeared.
She found the approximate location of Shantou City on the map and clicked on it with her consciousness.
Soon, a detailed map of Shantou City appeared, with a line of text above it.
[Please select a descend location.]
And on the right, there was a row of zombies. On No. 1, Mask, there was a golden “√”.
Lin Jiayao switched the “√” to No. 4, A4, and then clicked on the coast of Shantou City.
[Descend here?]
A bright, fluorescent blue dot appeared at the location Lin Jiayao marked, standing out against the blood-red map.
After checking to confirm she hadn’t chosen the wrong zombie, Lin Jiayao clicked “Yes.”
Her consciousness faded into darkness.
Unlike the direct control before, this time, Lin Jiayao felt like her consciousness was rapidly falling through a cloud-filled sky.
She could feel her body being constantly reshaped in the air.
But whenever she tried to turn and see what was reshaping her, she couldn’t move her perspective.
She could only watch as she plummeted through the clouds, falling towards the ground with the rain.
“Boom—!”
Her body slammed into a building like a missile, crashing straight through the four-story structure and collapsing almost half of it.
After a brief moment of mental paralysis, Lin Jiayao’s vision went black. After an unknown amount of time, she slowly opened her eyes, feeling the power coursing through her body.
It was the same state as A4 at an Extraction Point.
Lin Jiayao pushed herself up, slowly stood, and looked around.
There was no persistent extraction timer, and no Extraction Points in any direction.
Even the Safehouse, which usually appeared at her call, was gone.
If it weren’t for the consciousness switching box in the upper left corner and a 24-hour countdown timer for the end of the descend, Lin Jiayao would have thought she had lost the system.
“Twenty-four hours…”
Lin Jiayao murmured, then extended her hand, looking at the smooth arm that hadn’t yet transformed into Perfect Form.
The smooth skin on her arm, moistened by the rain, looked delicate and flawless…
But that wasn’t what Lin Jiayao was focused on.
This descended body was identical to A4 in every way.
Even its blood crystal levels were maxed out.
She reached out and touched the mycelium tubes on the back of her neck used for storing Blood Crystals.
Using the bone spur on her fingertip, she lightly pricked one. Blood spurted out, but the wound quickly healed.
But the spurting blood, before even reaching the ground, dissipated into red light spots, undetectable even by her senses.
As if it had been teleported away.
Too bad… she couldn’t harvest Blood Crystals.
If the severed body parts and Blood Crystals could be retained, she could log into a fully charged Goldie every 24 hours, chop off its tentacles, and rake in the Blood Crystals while safe.
With the dream of passively earning Blood Crystals dashed, Lin Jiayao didn’t dwell on it and jumped towards the sea.
Running quickly along the coastline, before Lin Jiayao even reached the seemingly port-like building in front of her, a bolt of lightning struck her.
“Boom—”
The purple lightning bolt struck in front of Lin Jiayao, the residual energy conducted through the water on the ground causing a slight numbness. She instantly became alert.
Who? Using lightning?
She didn’t believe she had just been struck by random lightning. There must be a blood crystal being involved.
Soon, the waves on the shore began to surge, a large amount of seawater rising like a curtain.
In the rainy night, a huge, pale blue head slowly emerged from the water.
It was the Blue Serpent.
Why was it attacking her?
Could it be that it didn’t recognize the descended A4 as Lin Jiayao?
To avoid being directly struck by a second lightning bolt, before the Blue Serpent fully surfaced, mycelium rapidly formed three pairs of red, angel-wing-like wings behind Lin Jiayao.
Seeing the wings, the purple light in the Blue Serpent’s eyes instantly vanished. Its narrow, scarlet snake eyes widened, and it slowly approached.
Lin Jiayao waited for the Blue Serpent to approach, preparing to explain the situation when it got close enough for mental communication.
The Blue Serpent opened its mouth and spat out a “small” blue serpent, over ten meters long, which slithered across the beach towards Lin Jiayao, raised its head, and pressed its head against Lin Jiayao’s forehead.
You are very beautiful.
Before Lin Jiayao could even speak, the Blue Serpent made this blunt statement.
“It’s me, the one who saved you,” Lin Jiayao said, a little exasperated.
Huh?
Confusion flickered in the little blue serpent’s eyes. It blinked, and the light on its forehead glowed again.
Impossible, the scent is wrong, you’re lying to me.
Wait.
As the Blue Serpent said “wait,” Lin Jiayao’s thoughts stuttered, her memories rewinding, forced to recall her earlier conversation with the blue serpent.
It really is you.
The Blue Serpent’s eyes widened in disbelief.
It looked up at the sky, then back at Lin Jiayao, and asked, puzzled,
How did you come down from the sky?
“I don’t know,” Lin Jiayao shrugged helplessly.
She really didn’t know how she got here.
And, in the memories just now, there was no trace of the system… The system hid itself better than she had imagined, even an A-rank couldn’t detect it.
What was its origin?
Oh.
The Blue Serpent seemed to accept Lin Jiayao’s explanation easily, as if it had the ability to discern lies.
Are you going to use this body to… be sent to… battle?
Lin Jiayao: “…”
Perhaps because of the Blue Serpent’s way of communicating, it really wasn’t good at lying. The change in topic was particularly abrupt.
“Yes,” Lin Jiayao nodded, ignoring the “sent to” part.
I take back what I said earlier, this is a worthy body.
The Blue Serpent nodded.
Do you have many more bodies like this? I want to lay eggs with it.
“No.” Lin Jiayao flatly refused the Blue Serpent’s request.
Even if she did, she couldn’t give them away. Those were her login zombies, essentially her other bodies.
How could she give her own body to the Blue Serpent to “lay eggs” with?
To be used as a body pillow?
That’s a pity… then let’s go.
The Blue Serpent shook its head, then pointed its tail towards the giant serpent head in the sea, indicating it would take Lin Jiayao to where the A-rank “Sea Urchin” was.
“No need, I can run faster—hey!”
Before Lin Jiayao could finish, the Blue Serpent grabbed her and dragged her towards the seabed, all the way to the Giant Blue Serpent’s face.
Lin Jiayao didn’t struggle. She wanted to see the Blue Serpent’s abilities. Since it wanted to show off, Lin Jiayao would observe up close.
As she was dragged into the sea, the three pairs of shark-like gills on A4’s neck opened, allowing her to maintain optimal combat condition underwater.
Now, the Blue Serpent’s head had submerged, and Lin Jiayao was floating just above it.
Lin Jiayao was curious how the Blue Serpent could carry someone in the sea, or how it could maintain such a massive size and still swim so fast.
If it was because of its structure, she might be able to learn from it and have Mask mimic something similar.
Soon, Lin Jiayao saw how it achieved such speed.
“Pop—”
With a crisp popping sound, the giant Blue Serpent head beneath Lin Jiayao exploded, and several blue serpents coiled around Lin Jiayao’s body, holding her in place.
Even more blue serpents swam ahead, linking head to tail, forming large blue hoops.
This pattern…
Lin Jiayao felt like she had seen it somewhere before.
Except the light last time was red…
The blue serpents began to compress, the initial large hoops tightening into almost solid, azure rings.
“Gurgle, gurgle—”
Blue serpents entered the hoops, transformed into streaks of light, and were ejected. After most of the serpents had “jumped,” Lin Jiayao felt herself being pulled forward.
“Wait, hold on! Let me get ready!”
“Buzz—”
Lin Jiayao was pulled into a hoop, her body propelled forward by a tremendous force, accelerating again as she was flung into the next hoop.
She felt immense pressure, but most of it was absorbed by the small blue serpents coiled around her.
Her world turned blue, the sensation of water fading, replaced by a feeling of being dragged through thick mud.
Was she moving that fast?
Perhaps adjusting her posture would help…
Bone blades emerged from Lin Jiayao’s arms, forming a sharp “warhead” in front of her.
With this bone warhead, the pressure lessened, and her speed seemed to increase.
“Buzz—!”
With a loud buzzing sound, Lin Jiayao was finally “spit out” from a hoop.
Lin Jiayao looked back. The surrounding seascape had completely changed, and blue serpents were still being ejected from the hoops.
Far behind the hoops, Lin Jiayao saw a tiny light spot, seemingly a “relay station.”
Now Lin Jiayao finally understood how it moved so quickly.
Splitting into smaller blue serpents and then launching them one by one? The serpents that arrived first forming new portals?
Consuming four or five small blue serpents per hundred kilometers?
The Giant Blue Serpent, replenished by the smaller serpents, reformed beside Lin Jiayao.
The last little snake was ejected when the distant blue light spot finally disappeared.
Lin Jiayao looked at the giant snake eye beside her and couldn’t help but ask mentally:
“What about the bodies left behind? How do they get here?”
Swim slowly, themselves.
The Blue Serpent replied nonchalantly.
What kind of snake battle royale was this?
Lin Jiayao checked; an hour of her descend time had passed. In less than an hour, the Blue Serpent had carried her nearly three hundred kilometers across the seabed.
If possible, Lin Jiayao really wanted to learn this. The speed was truly incredible, but the consumption seemed quite high as well.
It has found us.
The Blue Serpent’s forehead glowed, warning Lin Jiayao.
Had it arrived?
Lin Jiayao’s eyes instantly turned scarlet, black scales and bone blades replacing her hands. Her body transformed into its highly aggressive Perfect Form in seconds.
Super-Sensory Hunt!
Everything before Lin Jiayao’s eyes twisted into lines. She had no intention of conserving her Blood Crystals.
After all, in a battle between A-ranks, even a slight graze could result in severe injury or death.
