Chapter 242: Hunting the A-Rank! p1
On the plains at the border between the ash area and the Oasis Area in Kun City, a huge canvas sheet was spread out.
Dusk had fallen, and powerful searchlights illuminated the entire area.
Lin Xiwan and the others had temporarily paused their work on the ash area’s defenses and were gathered around the people lying on the ground.
Besides the Awakened, there were also many ordinary people who had finished their work, standing not far away and watching.
In the monotonous life of farming, watching others was one of the few entertainments.
“Xiwan, I just had the medic examine them. They’ve only been poisoned by some kind of paralytic toxin, and they’re malnourished. After some vegetable soup and a full stomach, they should recover quickly.”
Wan Zi stood beside Lin Xiwan and whispered.
“Mmm…” Lin Xiwan nodded.
Actually, she really wanted to ask Wan Zi if she had just mispronounced her name.
After all, “Xiwan” (夕晚) and “washing dishes” (洗碗-Xǐ wǎn) sounded very similar, and it was easy to mispronounce them accidentally.
But before Lin Xiwan could ask, the Awakened lying there began to stir.
Lin Xiwan blinked, looking at the man who was propping himself up with his left hand, his right hand bandaged, his eyes bloodshot and staring at her.
What was going on?
What exactly had her sister done to them? Why did they all have such looks of intense hatred?
“Uh…” Lin Xiwan originally wanted to greet them, but she didn’t know how to start, so she gave Wan Zi a look.
Wan Zi naturally understood that the people sent to the ash area had to be dealt with by the ash area, otherwise, her existence would be meaningless.
So when she saw Lin Xiwan give her a look, she knew this was a test. She stepped forward and said:
“Hello, friend, my name is Wan Zi, and I’m the temporary administrator of the ash area. May I ask where you come from? And what is your purpose for coming here?”
Wan Zi calmly asked these questions, clearly and slowly.
But to Wan Zi’s surprise, the other party’s expression didn’t soften at all after she asked these questions.
“You… are you also using this method to trick other survivors?!”
The man with the broken hand spat and said fiercely:
“Don’t give me that bullshit, if you have the guts, just shoot us, you bastards!”
It could be seen that all of the man’s actions seemed to be deliberately provoking them, and his purpose… was actually to seek death?
These people came from the Oasis Area. What exactly did they see in the Oasis Area?
Was it really that traumatizing?
Wan Zi hadn’t been to the Oasis Area either. After a moment of silence, she turned and looked at Lin Xiwan, who seemed to be watching the show with the onlookers not far away.
Lin Xiwan also knew that she couldn’t avoid it, otherwise, her sister wouldn’t have used the green bugs to write words in front of her. This was her sister asking for her help to clean up the mess.
They must have seen something…
The walking Building-Tree Guardian? The previously corpse-strewn “arena”? Or…
As Lin Xiwan thought about what else in the Oasis Area could scare the Awakened, something quickly came to her mind.
Oh no… could it be that they stumbled into Waterfall Park?
After thinking about it, Lin Xiwan felt that only this place could cause such a big reaction from the Awakened.
“Did you… go to Waterfall Park?” Lin Xiwan asked.
Hearing the words “Waterfall Park”, not only the man with the broken hand who had already sat up, but also the other people lying on the ground began to tremble.
It seemed that it was indeed the case.
Pitiful…
“Uh…” Lin Xiwan pondered for a moment.
She had to figure out how to explain things without revealing her sister’s abilities.
After all, exposing an Awakened’s abilities was a taboo, and Lin Xiwan didn’t want others to know about her sister.
Even she herself felt that her sister’s evolutions were too numerous, let alone other people, they definitely wouldn’t believe it.
“This is the evolutionary ability of an Awakened in the Oasis Area…”
Soon, Lin Xiwan slowly fabricated a non-existent Awakened’s ability.
The cloning of the Black Stem Fungus, the people from Wangxi City all knew about it, so Lin Xiwan didn’t hide it and directly said that those brains were all copies.
As for the reason for accumulating brains, Lin Xiwan attributed it to a non-existent control-type Awakened, saying that those things were stored to feed the controlled zombies, as zombie “rations”.
Finally, Lin Xiwan specifically added that no one in the Oasis Area liked to eat brains, they were all normal people, emphasizing that the brains were all for the zombies.
Under Lin Xiwan’s explanation, the originally tragic and angry man gradually calmed down, and his ferocious expression turned into confusion.
Because in his opinion, the people here all seemed very friendly, and there was a strong sense of human activity… especially the large farmland in front of him, which made it impossible to doubt their words that they didn’t lack food.
And just now, they were indeed not injured, nor were they killed by the B-rank blood crystal called the Black Stem Fungus.
At the Black Stem’s speed, if it wanted to kill them, there was no need to go through so much trouble and put on such a show.
After their emotions calmed down, Lin Xiwan let Wan Zi continue to communicate with them. She said goodbye, agreed on a meeting time for tomorrow, and then walked towards the Oasis Area.
What Lin Xiwan didn’t know was that after tonight, the rumors about the Oasis Area would become more and more outrageous.
Things like a kept B-rank blood crystal, a perverted B-rank Awakened who liked to raise brains to feed zombies…
This added another layer of mystery to the powerful organization of the Oasis Area, and made others even more convinced of the Oasis Area’s combat power.
Meanwhile, Lin Jiayao, this “hands-off manager”, after leaving the difficult problem to her sister, directly exchanged for ten bags of Blood Crystal Serum and chose to log into Mask.
When she was at the login interface, Lin Jiayao had already seen that the place where Mask was located was basically covered in crimson.
It seemed that the “seabed army” had already swept through Mask’s location.
But just a little behind Mask, the red had receded, it seemed that it had been blocked by the system-controlled Mask.
And at A4’s location, towards the inland, it was all light red. It seemed that the blood crystals that passed by had all been killed by A4.
This looked a bit like tower defense, but Lin Jiayao’s “combat units” were too few to stop so many invaders.
Now Lin Jiayao’s purpose in logging into Mask was to move it to a safer environment and quickly extract to get some abilities.
After all, she didn’t know when the Blue Serpent would arrive, and she had to save some mental power to use “Descend”.
After clicking login, Lin Jiayao’s consciousness instantly switched to Mask.
The surroundings were pitch black, only the blood on the lake surface shimmered with red light, making the entire lake look crimson and translucent.
Various crawling and footsteps could be heard through Bone Spike Lurker, and there were even quite a few zombie fish swimming and gnawing in the lake, but not many zombies came towards Lin Jiayao.
Were there so many seabed zombies now…?
This place was at least one hundred kilometers away from the Great Rift at the mouth of Yangzhou City.
At this terrifying marching speed and scale, it wouldn’t be long before the inland was in chaos.
Fortunately, most of the camps in Guangnan Province had fled because of the Voodoo Cult, otherwise, there would definitely be a large number of casualties.
She had to solve the problem at the source before the seabed zombies completely spread. The number of camps fleeing to Kun City would definitely increase, eventually exceeding the capacity of the ash area.
By the way… what about the Blood Crystals from the zombies killed by the system?
Were they swallowed by the system?
Lin Jiayao felt the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus body she was currently controlling, and it was no different from before extraction, neither injured nor stronger.
It seemed that the system wouldn’t actively collect Blood Crystals during extraction. Most likely, those Blood Crystals were devoured by the seabed zombies lurking around.
Glancing at it, the Extraction Point to the west wasn’t very far, about a hundred kilometers, and the extraction time was five hours, which was enough for her to collect a wave of Blood Crystals first.
She moved her huge body and went towards the Xiliu River reservoir, which was already filled with corpses.
This originally freshwater reservoir was now filled with zombie corpses, and under the layers of corpses, there was a large group of zombies continuously gnawing on the corpses.
There were even some seabed zombies that had sunk to the bottom of the reservoir and were evolving.
Those were all her Blood Crystals.
“Thump—”
Lin Jiayao, controlling the Tyrannosaurus, stepped into the reservoir, abruptly extended her hand into the water, and grabbed a zombie fish about six or seven meters long that was gnawing on a corpse with both hands.
“Crack—”
Lin Jiayao squeezed hard with both hands, and the zombie fish exploded in her hands, the shattered corpse falling back onto the lake surface, adding another layer to the mountain of corpses.
Killing them like this was too slow…
Just in time, using the current B-rank zombie skeleton as a base, she could create a new, faster skeletal body for Mask.
Lin Jiayao, controlling Mask, quickly retracted the Bone Crystal Threads that had extended throughout the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus.
Her body also emerged from the top of the giant skeleton’s spine like a fish out of water.
As Lin Jiayao retracted the last bone thread, the huge Skeletal Tyrannosaurus body collapsed like a touched pile of building blocks, the stitched-together bones falling off in clumps.
And Lin Jiayao, having detached from the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus, controlled Mask’s original body, carrying countless thin, ribbon-like blood crystal threads, and fell onto the lake surface, following the gap created by the Skeletal Tyrannosaurus earlier, and drilled into the bottom of the lake.
As Mask wandered on the lake bottom, the Bone Crystal Threads on its body spread out like a fishing net, drilling into the bodies of the evolving zombies.
Those seabed zombies invaded by the thin lines, after a brief convulsion, were controlled by Lin Jiayao and swam towards the nearest seabed zombie, the bone lines splitting in two and drilling into the new bodies under their guidance.
The entire lake bottom was pitch black, but connected by the crimson threads, it was like a game of connect-the-dots, continuously linking the seabed zombies and controlling them to sweep the seabed.
If Mask was just an ordinary B-rank Bone Spur Zombie, it definitely couldn’t complete these operations.
These were operations that could only be completed with Lin Jiayao’s powerful mental power. When controlling the insect swarm, Lin Jiayao had already mastered multi-line operation.
It took Lin Jiayao about thirty minutes to bring all the zombies in the entire reservoir under her control.
Not only the living seabed zombies, but even the corpses, Lin Jiayao didn’t let go of them. As long as they had bones, they were all connected by Bone Crystal Threads.
Using the bone lines to support her body and climb ashore, under Lin Jiayao’s control, all the zombies began to gather towards the shore, including corpses with only heads or half bodies left.
With such a huge body… she definitely couldn’t continue to rely on two legs to travel.
Among the large zombies Lin Jiayao had seen, the Living Weapon’s body shape was the most suitable for running.
But the remaining B-rank skeleton was relatively long and narrow, and there weren’t many ray bones left, so it couldn’t be assembled into the shape of a Living Weapon.
In that case… let’s create a crawling creature.
Create more legs, distribute the body’s weight to each leg, and try to simplify the skeleton. If it was too heavy, it wouldn’t be able to run fast.
“Crack—”
“Crack—”
“Snap—”
Lin Jiayao’s Bone Crystal Threads waved, tearing at the zombies’ bones one by one.
For a moment, the entire reservoir was filled with the sound of bones shattering and the roars of zombies before death. This area seemed to have become a living hell…
Even the B-rank remains didn’t escape Lin Jiayao’s clutches. She broke off the bones one by one and reconnected them, assembling these various types of bones according to her ideas.
In the middle of the process, Lin Jiayao also switched her consciousness and spent some time in the training ground verifying her ideas, to avoid the assembled bones being inflexible.
Soon, under Lin Jiayao’s modification, a strangely shaped, precisely structured zombie, only about thirty meters long, was assembled.
The ray’s slender pectoral fin bones were pieced together by her, forming thin legs.
The body of the original B-rank seabed zombie was used as the “chassis” by Lin Jiayao, and the legs were installed on this chassis one by one.
And the most crucial parts were the two huge hind legs formed from the corpses of more than a hundred seabed zombies, and the chainsaw bone sickle formed from the remaining materials at the front of the skeleton.
These two thick, curved hind legs and the chainsaw bone sickle in front were where Lin Jiayao spent the most effort.
After the finished product was completed, Lin Jiayao looked at the strange bone mixture in front of her and nodded with satisfaction.
Lin Jiayao drilled into the legs of the giant bone insect, and following the bones, “swam” to the spine.
As Lin Jiayao’s Bone Crystal Threads were inserted, a crimson glow began to appear irregularly at the joints of this giant bone insect, continuously providing power.
Now, the new body looked like a volcanic centipede with a long and narrow body, and the traces of various zombies pieced together made it look even more terrifying than ordinary centipedes.
<Picture of a centipede>
Compared to the typical centipede body, Lin Jiayao also installed two thick, articulated long legs, allowing it to perform quick turns and jumps that ordinary centipedes couldn’t.
And the chainsaw bone blade in front was its main attack method.
Although it looked a bit nondescript, Lin Jiayao was very satisfied, because it had many legs, and she was very used to controlling it.
There was only one last step left.
