Chapter 211 To catch the thief, first catch the king

"Sizzle — —"

The world around them felt like a giant, festering stomach.

The wreckage of the great xia dragon sparrow, once a point of pride, was dissolving like a sugar cube dropped into a pool of strong acid. The alloy deck beneath their feet was thinning, and they could even feel the teeth-grinding vibrations — the giant beast was digesting its "food."

"This place has quite the unique interior design, all flesh-based wallpaper."

Lin Yuan lifted his foot and shook it; the spot he had just stepped on sprayed a yellow-green liquid, causing his Void Energy boots to hiss with white smoke.

If not for the layer of purple Void Energy shielding holding firm, the three of them would likely have been digested into nutrients for this Leviathan by now. But even so, the light on the shield's surface was flickering wildly, and the energy readings were plummeting like a high-dive.

"Boss! The soles! The soles are leaking!"

A Ji was clinging to Lin Yuan's leg like a koala, his legs curled up desperately, crying with snot and tears streaming down his face. "I don't want to be turned into poop and excreted! I haven't even gotten married yet, and I still have two hundred bucks left in my bank account..."

"Shut up, or I'll throw you down to plug that acid spray hole."

Lin Yuan frowned, his gaze sweeping sharply around. There was no path here; everywhere was filled with writhing blood vessels and giant tumors resembling lymph nodes. This wasn't just a biological warship; it was a living labyrinth.

Just then, the folds on the surrounding flesh walls contracted violently.

"Careful!" Alita's red warning light flashed.

Whoosh!

This time it wasn't a spray, but a torrential flood of acid pouring down from holes in every direction.

It was a "bath of aqua regia" in the truest sense.

The Void Energy shield let out a groan of overload, the purple light curtain buckling inward, and a few splashes of acid landed on the back of A Ji's hand.

"Ahhh! It hurts like hell!"

A Ji screamed, his physiological tears flowing like an open faucet. He shook uncontrollably in pain, and as he flung his hand, tears inevitably splashed out, landing right in the encroaching pool of acid.

Sss —

A strange thing happened.

There was no violent chemical reaction, no explosion.

Those terrifying acids, capable of melting titanium alloy, acted as if a basin of ice water had been poured into boiling oil when they touched A Ji's seemingly unremarkable tears—they instantly boiled, then — turned into clear, bright water.

That's right, water.

The highly toxic, yellow-smoking strong acid in that small area was directly neutralized into harmless liquid.

Lin Yuan had been preparing to unleash his energy to tank the wave, but seeing this, he froze for a second.

He looked down at the puddle of clear water on the ground, then at A Ji, who was crying like a two-hundred-pound child.

"... I've never heard of the 'Thief' profession having a purification aura?"

Lin Yuan grabbed A Ji by the back of his collar, hoisting him up like a chick, his expression odd: "Don't stop, keep crying."

"Boss, are you even human?! I'm hurting to death and you're still telling me to... *hic*?" A Ji gave a tearful hiccup, looking completely bewildered.

"Your tears can neutralize the acid." Lin Yuan pointed to the ground. "It seems that while this big bug's stomach acid is fierce, your constitution is even more perverse. Hurry up, for the sake of survival, think of every sad thing that's ever happened to you."

A Ji was dumbfounded.

"Can't cry?" Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes, his tone chilling. "Do you want me to stick your other hand into the acid to help you find the feeling?"

"No, no, no! I'll cry! I'm crying right now!" A Ji was so scared he shuddered, tears instantly gushing out. "Waaaah, I miss my late grandma, her braised pork was the best..."

As A Ji's free-flowing tears splattered everywhere, the once-hopeless circle of strong acid was actually "cried" into a Safe Zone.

Taking advantage of this eerie gap, Lin Yuan's gaze locked onto the front.

"Move!"

He didn't want to know what kind of freak A Ji was; that was a matter for future research. Right now, behind that membrane of flesh ahead, an extremely dangerous aura was emanating.

Just as the three of them rushed past the acid zone, the flesh wall ahead suddenly burst open.

There was no expected bug-sea tactic.

Standing there were only six bugs.

But the moment he saw these six guys, Lin Yuan's casual stance instantly tightened, his body leaning forward slightly—the posture of a leopard about to pounce.

These six bugs lacked that disgusting, slimy sensation; instead, they presented a strange "aesthetic."

They had a bipedal structure similar to humans, their entire bodies covered in dark gold bone armor, with sharp barbs growing at the joints. The most outrageous part was their forelimbs — they didn't have claws, but were wielding two... light swords extending from their wrist bones?

No, those were high-frequency vibrating biological plasma bone blades, emitting a heart-stopping hum.

"Imperial Guards." Alita's voice was a bit strained. "The database doesn't have these... but I just scanned them. Their reaction speed is a hundred times that of a normal Zergling, and their individual combat power is equivalent to an S-class mech."

Whoosh!

Before the words faded, the leading Guard bug had vanished from where it stood.

Fast.

So fast that even the afterimage couldn't be seen.

Almost at the same time, above Lin Yuan's head in the Void, a bone blade with scorching high heat slashed down.

In this narrow flesh cavity, large-scale Void sword energy couldn't be unleashed; it would easily bury them alive.

"Playing the technique game with me?"

Lin Yuan's mouth curled, a flash of violent excitement in his eyes. He didn't retreat but advanced, the Void longsword in his hand instantly dissolving into two pitch-black short daggers.

Clang!

A crisp sound rang out.

Lin Yuan's short daggers precisely caught the thunderous strike. The shockwave from the collision of the two energies sent ripples through the surrounding flesh walls.

The Guard bug didn't seem to expect this carbon-based monkey to be able to catch its attack, a trace of human-like astonishment flashing in its compound eyes.

That was the moment of pause.

"Die."

Lin Yuan's voice was very soft.

[System Vision: Weakness analysis complete.]

[Target: Three inches below the third thoracic vertebra, neural center node.]

Without any flashy movements, Lin Yuan blocked with his right hand, while the short dagger in his left hand struck like a viper, piercing into the only gap in that hard armor at an incredibly tricky angle.

Void Energy erupted instantly—not as an explosion, but piercing into its neural network like a needle.

That arrogant Guard bug's movements instantly stiffened, like a robot that had its power pulled, and it fell straight down.

"Too slow."

Lin Yuan kicked the corpse away and looked at the remaining five approaching Guard bugs. "Come at me together, I'm in a hurry."

The narrow passage instantly turned into a slaughterhouse.

There were no sky-filling light effects, only the most dangerous hand-to-hand combat.

Lin Yuan was like a precision killing machine, strolling leisurely under the siege of six light swords. Sidestep, glide, backhand stab, throat slit. Every movement was precise to the millimeter, and every strike took a life.

This was the "scalpel-style" fighting method he had honed through over a decade of struggling in the apocalypse.

Even if it's a god, as long as it has a health bar, I can dismantle you.

A mere thirty seconds.

Six complete corpses lay on the ground, only their neural centers thoroughly pulverized.

"Alita, how much further?" Lin Yuan shook the purple blood off his daggers, his breathing not even ragged.

"That's the problem..."

Alita was floating in mid-air, several data cables forcibly inserted into the writhing nerve bundles on the flesh wall. Her expression looked very painful, and her holographic body was constantly flickering with garbled code.

"Boss... this isn't just a ship."

Alita opened her eyes abruptly, her electronic eyes full of horror. "These flesh walls... this entire structure... this is the cerebral cortex! We are inside her brain!"

"What?"

"This Leviathan isn't a vehicle; it is the external brain of that Empress! All the bugs are her neurons!"

Alita's voice suddenly became sharp, two streams of bright red data flowing down the corners of her eyes, looking like blood tears. "No... her mental power is too vast... it's a collection of hundreds of millions of consciousnesses... She is reverse-hacking me! Ah —!"

Alita clutched her head and screamed, the blue light on her body beginning to shift into an eerie purple-red.

"Trying to hack me?"

Lin Yuan's eyes turned cold. He took a step to Alita's side and pressed his right hand directly onto the top of her head.

Boom!

The pure and domineering Void Energy didn't attack, but transformed into a barrier of absolute stillness, forcibly severing the connection between Alita and the surrounding biological neural network.

"Wake up!" Lin Yuan roared like a temple bell.

Alita's body went limp, collapsing into Lin Yuan's arms, gasping for air as the terrifying garbled code gradually faded.

"Tha... thank you, Boss..." She looked at the writhing walls around her with lingering fear. "It was too terrifying... that feeling was like being thrown into a gladiator arena full of lunatics."

"Did you find the way?" Lin Yuan didn't waste words.

"Found it." Alita pointed weakly at their feet. "Three thousand meters in a straight line. But there are forty-eight biological gates in between, plus countless labyrinthine corridors. If we walk normally, it will take us three days..."

"Who said we were going to walk normally?"

Lin Yuan looked at the despairingly thick flesh floor beneath his feet, stretched his neck, and cracked his knuckles.

"A Ji, hold onto Alita and stand back."

"Huh? Boss, what are you doing?"

"Renovating."

Lin Yuan took a deep breath and slowly spread his arms.

This time, he held nothing back.

That heart-stopping purple Void Energy compressed and rotated crazily between his palms, finally forming a visible black sphere. The space around the sphere was cracking, emitting a sound like shattering glass.

"Void · Crusher."

Lin Yuan sneered and pressed the black ball in his hands fiercely against the flesh wall beneath his feet.

There was no huge explosion.

Only a hair-raising "humming" sound.

The indestructible biological tissue, the moment it touched the black ball, was directly pulverized into the finest dust. A two-meter-wide hole extended straight down, with no bottom in sight.

"Paths are things that are meant to be walked out."

Lin Yuan looked back at the two stunned people. "Jump!"

The three of them descended rapidly along this "straight ladder" drilled out by force.

Passing through layers of flesh membranes, bones, and even some giant organs that were still pulsating.

Finally, the three-thousand-meter distance, with the physical breakthrough, took less than three minutes.

Bang!

Lin Yuan kicked through the final translucent membrane with intricate patterns and landed steadily in an open space.

The atmosphere here was completely different.

No stench, no slime.

A faint, exotic fragrance permeated the air, and the ground was made of biological armor as smooth as obsidian.

In the very center of the hall was a flesh throne a hundred meters high.

And on the throne, that figure who had once appeared in the global broadcast was looking down at the three "ants" who had trespassed.

The Zerg Empress, "Embrace of Agony."

Up close, the pressure she brought was enough to suffocate an ordinary person.

Her lower body was connected to a massive incubator like a small hill, countless translucent oviducts delivering eggs one by one. And her upper body was that of a human female with a breathtakingly beautiful face.

Her purple hair hung down like a waterfall, her skin fair to the point of transparency, and starlight shimmered in her vertical pupils.

Breathtakingly beautiful, and chillingly evil.

"You are rougher than I imagined."

The Empress's voice echoed in the hall, with a hint of lazy anger. "Actually digging holes in a lady's brain."

A Ji was already kneeling on the ground, trembling, not daring to lift his head.

Lin Yuan didn't speak.

He stared fixedly at the Empress on the throne.

No, to be precise, he was staring at the things on the Empress.

He hadn't seen clearly on the screen earlier, but now that he was close, the dissonance was practically overflowing.

This Empress, who appeared to dominate everything, had thick golden chains inserted into her hands, neck, and even the spine connected to the incubator.

Those chains were deeply embedded into her flesh, complex runes flashing on them.

Those weren't decorations.

Lin Yuan was very familiar with those runes.

Those were sealing inscriptions unique to titan technology.

"Alita..." Lin Yuan's throat felt a bit dry as he pointed to the chains. "Am I seeing things?"

"No... you're not." Alita's data eyes were also flickering wildly, her tone filled with disbelief. "The energy flow... is reversed."

"Reversed?"

"Yes! She isn't the one absorbing the ship's energy... it's these chains, extracting her life force to maintain the swarm's rampage!"

Lin Yuan raised his head abruptly, meeting the Empress's eyes, which seemed arrogant but actually hid endless desolation deep within.

"Auntie."

Lin Yuan suddenly smiled, a smile that was somewhat cold and somewhat sarcastic.

"So that's what it is, this so-called apocalyptic catastrophe..."

He raised the sword in his hand and pointed at the collar on the Empress's neck.

"Turns out you're just a dog on a leash."