82: Chapter 82 The Sixth-Order Phantom Descends! It Speaks!

Mass Engine, ignite!

The ten-ton body instantly accelerated to its limit.

But this time, he did not choose to collide head-on.

[Inertial Drift] activated.

Su Ming's body traced an incredible arc during his high-speed sprint, forcefully shifting away from the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's charge trajectory, grazing past the outside of its horn by thirty centimeters.

The wind pressure tore at his hair, and the blood-colored steam scorched his exposed skin, leaving only a flush, as if he had just stepped out of a sauna.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros missed its target, its massive body surging forward dozens of meters due to inertia, its hooves plowing two deep trenches into the ground as soil flipped up and splashed into mid-air.

And Su Ming had already circled to its side and rear.

Everyone watching from behind saw it.

A bare-chested youth, facing the charge of a Tier 4 Source Beast, used an inconceivable maneuver to complete a textbook-level evasion.

Of course, even if taught, no one else could learn it.

"That kid..." Station Chief Zhou Ke's pupils contracted sharply.

The mercenary captain almost dropped the phone in his hand.

"How did he do that? How is it possible to change direction at will at such high speed?"

No one answered him.

Because something even more outrageous happened.

After dodging, Su Ming did not create distance. His footsteps carved an arc-shaped crack into the ground, gravel bounced and flew along the crack, and he circled back to the side of the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros along the arc.

He pulled his right fist back to his waist. He clenched his five fingers. The bones between his knuckles made a faint clicking sound.

[Mass Heavy Cannon]. Ten tons times five. Fifty tons. All poured into this one punch.

"Bang!!!"

The fist smashed into the exposed wound on the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's flank where the skin armor had been torn off by Huang.

The flesh without the protection of the carapace was no different from paper in front of the fifty-ton heavy cannon.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's body caved in from the middle, and the entire twenty-plus-ton body was pushed laterally by two meters from this punch. The ground was dragged into four parallel trenches by its hooves, and gravel splashed like rain.

Blood gushed out. A large mouthful of blood foam sprayed from its mouth.

"Roar!!!"

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's feeling had been right all along. The beast before it was the true threat!

The damage this blow caused was several times greater than what had been scraped for the past few minutes.

It went completely insane. The red light on its horn surged to the extreme, and its body rolled violently, intending to crush Su Ming into the ground.

Su Ming had anticipated this. The Mass Engine ignited again, Inertial Drift operated simultaneously, and his body slid out of the blind spot of the rhinoceros's roll.

Continue the melee!

In the distance, Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng watched this scene, forgetting even to repair the cracks on his frost armor.

He was Tier 5. He could tell that this kid's fighting style was unlike any known system. It wasn't military combat technique, it wasn't academic Source Energy technique, and it didn't even look like the fighting style of a regular Awakened.

Purely... beastly. Using body collisions, using mass to crush, using the most primitive violence to solve problems.

But, every single timing of his strikes was precise to the point of being abnormal.

"What exactly is this kid's background?" Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng muttered.

He suddenly remembered the sentence he had just said: "Stand back, leave this to me."

His face felt a little hot. Not because the frost armor was cracked and leaking air. It was really hot.

He subconsciously touched his nose, deciding to slightly edit this part out in today's mission report.

Another loud bang!

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros rolled to its feet, the blood-colored steam thicker than before. The surrounding bushes withered and curled in the heatwave, and the leaves turned to ash before they even hit the ground.

The light of the brand on its forehead had changed from dark red to a blinding bright red. It looked as if it were about to set its entire head on fire.

This time it did not charge again. Instead, it raised its head.

"Roar————!!!"

This roar was different from all the previous ones. It was not anger, not pain, but a kind of... summoning from the depths of life's instinct.

Su Ming's expression changed. He had heard this kind of sound before.

The Wolf King had also emitted a similar screech before it died, and then the brand on its forehead exploded, erupting with power far exceeding its own body.

But the Wolf King was Tier 3. This thing was Tier 4.

If the brand erupted at full power again— Su Ming quickly did the math in his heart, and the conclusion he reached made his brows knit into a ball.

This deal was a massive loss.

"Everyone retreat!" Su Ming suddenly turned back and roared at the rear, his voice so loud that even Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng shivered.

Station Chief Zhou Ke reacted the fastest, grabbing the mercenary beside him who was still holding up his phone, his voice severe. "Did you hear me? Retreat!"

The mercenary was yanked and stumbled, and on the phone screen, the barrage was frantically scrolling "WTF, WTF, WTF."

Shen Qingci also rode over on Huang, helping to cover the crowd as they fled.

In this level of battle, if they went, they would only be a hindrance.

However, the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros did not give them time to retreat.

The moment the roar stopped, the brand on its forehead suddenly exploded. Not shattering. Blooming.

A dark red pillar of light shot up into the sky from the brand, piercing straight into the clouds. The air around the pillar of light was burned into twisted ripples, and the heatwave spread in all directions at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The stones on the ground were shaken into bouncing, and the earth itself trembled.

Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng's extreme cold domain was like an ice lolly meeting a furnace in front of the pillar of light, rapidly melting with the contact point as the center.

"This is not the power of a Tier 4!" Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng's voice carried genuine fear for the first time.

He felt it. That mass of dark red Source Energy was rapidly condensing in mid-air.

Then it transformed into a huge turtle phantom!

The barbs on the turtle shell gleamed coldly under the moonlight.

Everyone present was stunned by this violent and surging Source Energy.

Only Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng recognized this phantom.

"This... this is... a Tier 6 Source Beast, Iron-Armored Dragon Turtle?!?"

His voice was trembling.

Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng had dealt with the classified archives of the Southern Military Region for over a decade, and the name Iron-Armored Dragon Turtle had only appeared once in a top-secret deep-layer Source Abyss exploration report, with only four words in the remarks column—Do Not Contact.

In the blink of an eye, the phantom dove down and merged with the Rhinoceros King's remains.

Turtle shell patterns emerged on the surface of the Rhinoceros King's body, and dark red light flowed through the patterns, like magma filling every crack.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's body began to swell. The already massive body grew further in the red light, and dense dark red patterns emerged on the carapace, spreading from the forehead all the way to the tail.

Its four legs were nailed into the ground like pillars, and every breath brought up a wave of heat.

In its vertical pupils, the last trace of instinctive fear and pain belonging to a beast vanished.

Replacing it was a kind of cold wisdom that did not belong to a creature of this level.

It was looking at Su Ming.

Not the look of a beast looking at prey. It was scrutiny.

A superior existence, through a pair of borrowed eyes, was sizing up an anomaly that shouldn't exist here.

Su Ming's hair stood on end.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's mouth opened.

Not a roar. It was a syllable.

A garbled, twisted syllable that seemed to come from the deepest depths of the earth.

No one understood it. But everyone simultaneously felt a chill rising from the depths of their bone marrow.

Su Ming's pupils contracted to the size of pinpoints.

It was speaking. A Source Beast, speaking.

Source Beasts above Tier 5 already possess a certain level of intelligence. This Iron-Spine Rhinoceros had already touched the threshold of Tier 5.

In the cockpit of the high-altitude aircraft, the adjutant stared at the energy monitoring screen, his voice already changed in pitch.

"Sir! The target's energy reading is still climbing! It has broken through the Tier 4 limit and is approaching—"

He swallowed. "Approaching the Tier 5 threshold!"

...!