From the openings, thick dark-red tentacles burst out in a vast, overwhelming mass, ready to crush Fang Chang into pulp.
Fang Chang released her control over the gravity field and rode the air, but she was still unfamiliar with her own power. How could she match the reaction speed of the enraged Zombie Mother Nest? Just as the dark-red tentacles blotted out the sky and were about to engulf her, Li Zirong’s attack arrived.
The Zombie Mother Nest’s body was protected by a shield, but its outstretched tentacles were nothing but great slabs of muscle, good for nothing but brute strength. Under Li Zirong’s barrage, black and red, young and old, dry and wet, flew in every direction.
Fang Chang bit down on her teeth. She watched the enormous Corpse-Bloom fall from the Zombie Mother Nest’s head, then glanced at Li Zirong’s powerful covering fire. She turned in midair, changed course, and charged toward the falling Corpse-Bloom instead of retreating.
Propelled by the airflow, she quickly overtook the falling Corpse-Bloom and grabbed its enormous stem. The system’s notification rang out in her mind.
[Side Quest: Pluck the Corpse-Bloom — Complete. Received 500 reward points.]
With the quest complete, Fang Chang was about to leave when she realized tentacles had already surrounded her on all sides.
She controlled the airflow to steady herself in midair and looked toward the Zombie Mother Nest. Every ripple across its body was glowing now. It had fully descended.
No wonder the tentacles had blocked her escape. They weren’t reacting on instinct anymore. They were under conscious control.
Dark-red tentacles surged above and below her. After the Zombie Mother Nest’s true body descended, it drew on the immense bioenergy within itself. In an instant, shields flared across the tentacles. They weren’t as strong as the shield protecting its body, but they could still just barely withstand Li Zirong’s firepower. For a moment, all Li Zirong could do was watch as the tentacles closed in.
“Oh no! I can’t fly out!”
Fang Chang turned. The tentacles had replaced the deep-blue sky, and panic rose in her chest—but her mind remained calm.
“One of my abilities should let me get out of this…”
She searched through her abilities. Soon, the power of the Gold-Hunting Tail surfaced in her memory.
“The real and the unreal.”
A metallic sheen blossomed from her leather pants, instantly covering her entire body. It even spread to the Corpse-Bloom, turning both her and the flower gold.
The boundless wave of tentacles came crashing down. The golden Verris and the Corpse-Bloom seemed like phantoms, their bodies twisting like reflections in water. No matter how the tentacles crushed them, they couldn’t harm their true substance.
When the tentacles had passed, the sky stretched wide above and the sea lay open before her. The gold faded, and almost all the beast-demon energy in her body was spent.
Having narrowly escaped disaster, Fang Chang instinctively figured out how to expand her talent. She used Demonflame for propulsion, controlled her body and direction with airflow, then reduced her own gravity and shot out of the Zombie Mother Nest’s attack range.
She didn’t forget to call out to Li Zirong: “Senior! I’ve got the Corpse-Bloom! Retreat!”
The gun platform began to transform, mechanical wings unfolding from it. Li Zirong was ready to make her escape, too.
The Zombie Mother Nest seemed to understand Fang Chang’s words. Its strange, single-mouthed head lifted, and it let out a furious roar.
High-frequency sound waves swept past. Unlike the ultrasonic waves Fang Chang used to blur the senses and consciousness, the Zombie Mother Nest’s cry had far greater physical destructive power. Under its high-frequency vibrations, stones crumbled into dust.
But both of them had ways to deal with sound attacks. Li Zirong solidified the air around herself, while Fang Chang simply endured it.
The hybrid body stitched together from a hundred beasts had given her the constitutions of several kinds of magical beasts. When it came to heat resistance, she could bathe in lava; when it came to cold resistance, she could run naked in Antarctica. As for sound waves, she could adapt to frequencies of up to ten million hertz.
The Zombie Mother Nest’s roar didn’t cause the two of them much trouble. But it was only a prelude—a declaration that battle had begun.
The ground shook violently. Amid the rubble of the ruins, countless tentacles surged out and pushed the enormous body of the Zombie Mother Nest up onto the surface.
Only then could Fang Chang see what it really looked like. It was a gigantic creature, almost round in shape, over 120 meters long and about 100 meters wide. It had no tail, just a bare backside. Its head was completely smooth, without any features—only a mouth. Beneath it were fourteen pairs of short legs. They would’ve looked sturdy and powerful if not for the massive body they had to support. But this was a Zombie Mother Nest.
It had plenty of short legs, but supporting the Zombie Mother Nest’s enormous body was still a struggle. No wonder Li Zirong had once said that Zombie Mother Nests moved like plants: once they put down roots, they basically never got back up.
It wasn’t that they chose not to get up. Their bodies simply weren’t built to support that kind of movement.
This Zombie Mother Nest, however, seemed to be an exception.
Fang Chang had no idea what the Corpse-Bloom meant to the Zombie Mother Nest. She thought it was simply a plant that grew alongside it, so she plucked it without a second thought. Little did she know that, to the Zombie Mother Nest, this was like castrating a man or imposing seclusion on a woman. Its fury was only to be expected.
Its fourteen pairs of short legs moved at a furious pace, finally hauling the Zombie Mother Nest’s body forward. The ground split apart as it went, and the violent tremors shook the entire district. Nearby buildings already on the verge of collapse came crashing down to the sound of its pounding steps.
The Zombie Mother Nest made a tremendous racket as it ran, but it still couldn’t catch up with the two women’s flight speed. If Verris hadn’t been unfamiliar with her power and carrying the enormous Corpse-Bloom, she would’ve left it in the dust already.
“Jeez!” Li Zirong was at a loss over Fang Chang’s lack of common sense. She sighed, then shouted through gritted teeth, “Open your inventory!”
An inventory was one of the perks players got. It had ten slots and could store only items owned by the player. But an item’s size didn’t matter: a single slot could hold a grain of sand or an entire planet.
Fang Chang remembered that she had this ability and hurriedly stuffed the Corpse-Bloom into her spatial inventory. She flew crookedly over to Li Zirong, then extended a flexible metal tail from her palm and wrapped it around Li Zirong’s left foot. Only then did she smile sheepishly.
“Hehehe. The Zombie Mother Nest was so scary, I forgot.”
Li Zirong made no effort to hide the contempt in her gaze as she gave Fang Chang a once-over. Then she tugged at her foot to signal that she was about to speed up. Just then, the Zombie Mother Nest realized it couldn’t catch them and finally stopped. But it didn’t give up. Countless tentacles spread out, silver light flaring at the tip of each one.
“This is bad!”
Abnormal data fluctuations came through her sensors. Uneasy, Li Zirong roared the words out. Her mechanical voice was so raw and piercing that Fang Chang froze in surprise.
But she didn’t have time to stay stunned for long.
The sky suddenly darkened. In the distance, something went crack—and the landscape slowly slid apart, as if a pair of scissors had cut it in two. An unnatural tension rippled through the air. Fang Chang focused her gaze and saw the deep sky beginning to collapse, layer by layer, pressing down the clouds like the palm of the Buddha descending from heaven.
Li Zirong’s body jerked to a halt, and she shook off Fang Chang’s metal tail. For once, her voice was edged with panic. “Spatial lockdown? Spatial bubble generation? The Zombie Mother Nest has ‘locked’ us in here. If we can’t find a way out, we’ll be trapped here forever!”
Fang Chang no longer felt like joking. The sight before her shook her to the core. Fear rose within her, along with a yearning: she wanted to have power like this someday.
Power enough to make even the sky come crashing down.
