155: Giant Python Evolution

The Giant Bat's dive speed was astonishingly fast. Almost at the exact moment Shen Mingyuan had steadied himself and his vision had yet to fully recover from the dust and smoke of the explosion, the high-frequency vibrating ripples distorting the air were already descending upon his head!

Shen Mingyuan's pupils constricted as his body instinctively performed a swift tactical roll to the side. While rolling, he raised both arms, and his "twin stars" pistols were almost pressed against the side of the bat's massive diving body as he fired two shots—bang, bang!

At such close range, the dark red energy bullets slammed into the connection between the Giant Bat Evolution's relatively fragile wing membrane and its torso!

"Gah—!!!" The bat let out an incredibly shrill scream, and dark green blood splattered out along with charred bits of tissue. The intense pain caused its dive trajectory to instantly skew, but the murderous light in its eyes grew even stronger. Enduring the pain, its hideous mouthparts suddenly aimed right at the nearby Shen Mingyuan!

It wasn't a physical pounce, but rather—a close-range sonic cannon!

Wring————————!!!

A visible, highly concentrated beam of grey-white sound waves, like a solid cannonball, spewed from the bat's mouth, instantly engulfing the space where Shen Mingyuan stood! The air vibrated violently, and gravel and dust were pulverized into even finer powder!

Shen Mingyuan's face under his helmet changed drastically! He tried to retreat further, but the speed of the sound waves far exceeded his movements!

Thump!

The sonic beam slammed solidly into his hastily raised arms and chest armor. The massive impact sent him sliding backward, and fine cracks instantly appeared on the silver-black biological carapace of the armor's surface, its internal structure letting out an overburdened groan.

But this physical impact wasn't the most terrifying part. What was truly lethal were the pervasive high-frequency vibrations and noise that followed!

The armor's auditory System had already been greatly enhanced to capture extremely subtle sounds, filter noise, and even passively receive a certain range of ultrasonic waves to assist in tracking enemies. At this moment, this highly enhanced auditory System, when subjected to such a violent and targeted sonic attack at close range, instantly became a terrifying amplifier and a source of agony!

"Ugh—aaah!"

Even with the isolation of the helmet and internal buffers, an irrepressible groan of pain escaped Shen Mingyuan's throat. He felt as if both his ears were being pierced by red-hot steel needles and frantically stirred!

Indescribable, sharp tinnitus instantly stripped away all other sounds; the entire world was left with nothing but an endless shriek that seemed ready to tear his Soul apart!

A severe sense of dizziness and nausea crashed through his sense of balance and combat rhythm like a tsunami. His vision went black in waves and distorted, and even the armor's energy flow experienced a momentary disruption.

He staggered, almost unable to stand, relying entirely on willpower to keep from falling, but his movements were already sluggish, leaving his defenses wide open!

At this critical juncture, a ghost-like figure, like a boneless snake, slid silently out of the shadow's blind spot behind Shen Mingyuan's side—it was Zhu Zicong!

With a cold, scheming smile on his face, he seized the perfect opportunity while Shen Mingyuan was stiff and his senses were muddled from the sonic attack. With a twist of his body, his right leg lashed out like a whip in a bizarrely flexible arc, kicking silently yet with extreme ferocity toward Shen Mingyuan's defenseless lower back!

Bang! The kick landed solidly!

Shen Mingyuan's already unbalanced body had no way to resist. He was sent flying off the ground as if hit by a high-speed train, letting out a muffled groan before slamming hard into the nearby cracked concrete wall!

Boom! The wall shattered into fragments upon impact, and dust filled the air. Shen Mingyuan was embedded in the indentation of the wall, momentarily unable to move. The cracks on the armor's surface visibly expanded, and the dark red light of his eyepieces dimmed and flickered. The bat's sonic attack and Zhu Zicong's premeditated, vicious kick had instantly plunged him into an extremely disadvantageous position!

Zhu Zicong landed lightly and brushed off non-existent dust from his pant leg, looking at the temporarily incapacitated Shen Mingyuan.

He glanced at the bat not far away, which was even more frenzied due to its injuries and was staring fixedly at Shen Mingyuan—the "source of harm"—with bloodshot eyes. He also looked at the Golden Python on the other side, which was still in the midst of a painful metamorphosis, its body twisting into spiral patterns and its head forming a terrifying conical structure. His smile grew more pleasant.

"It seems, Mr. 'Black Knight,' that your luck isn't very good today."

With the composure of someone who had already won, Zhu Zicong walked step by step toward Shen Mingyuan, who was embedded in the wall and temporarily unable to move.

He first bent down and picked up the two matte black pistols from the ground that had just caused damage to the bat—the "twin stars." They felt slightly heavy in his hand, with a strange sensation that was a mix of the warmth and coldness unique to biological metals.

"Tsk tsk, is this what you rely on? The design is quite unique." Zhu Zicong toyed with them for a moment, then without hesitation, he raised the muzzle and pressed it firmly against the side of Shen Mingyuan's helmet, just below the eyepiece.

A cruel smile hung on his face, but there was a hint of curiosity in his eyes regarding this peculiar weapon.

"Goodbye, Mr. Knight who minds everyone's business." He pulled the trigger.

Click. There was no expected energy beam, no roar, only a slight, almost idling sound of mechanical engagement.

Zhu Zicong frowned and, refusing to believe it, pulled the trigger several more times in quick succession. Click. Click. Click. There was still only the empty sound, with no reaction at all.

"Out of bullets? Or..." The smile faded from Zhu Zicong's face, replaced by confusion and impatience.

He subconsciously turned the muzzle of one of the guns and brought it close to his eye, as if wanting to see what was going on inside from the barrel or the ejection port—an action that would seem incredibly stupid to anyone with basic weapons training.

Just as his eye was about to align with the deep interior of the muzzle—

Hum! The "twin stars" pistol held in his hand suddenly jolted, and the dark red biological veins abruptly lit up! Then, without him applying any force at all, the trigger snapped back on its own!

"Ah—!! My eye!!" A shrill scream instantly pierced the air. Zhu Zicong's entire face looked as if it had been severely burned by a branding iron, especially near his right eye, which was charred and a bloody mess. The intense pain caused his hands to snap open, and the "twin stars" pistols fell from his grasp.

And at that moment, Shen Mingyuan, who had endured the sonic impact and the heavy kick, finally regained a shred of control over his body through the armor's tenacious life-support System and his own powerful willpower. Seeing this dramatic scene before him, he didn't hesitate for a second. Almost purely by instinct, he struggled out of the wall's indentation and lunged forward!

In the instant before those two "twin stars" hit the ground, his armored hands precisely snatched them out of the air, gripping them firmly once again.

A familiar, faint pulsation, as if connected to his own Bloodline, immediately came from the gun bodies. The brief "silence" caused by energy overload or external interference quickly vanished.

Shen Mingyuan landed stumblingly and knelt on one knee, panting heavily. His dark red eyepieces locked onto Zhu Zicong, who was clutching his face and retreating in agony, as well as the Giant Bat not far away, which was becoming increasingly restless due to its companion's injury and was preparing to attack again.

Just then, "Sss-roar—!!!"

An unprecedented roar, a mix of metallic vibration, biological bellowing, and a certain strange penetrating power, suddenly erupted from the direction of the Golden Python!

This roar drowned out Zhu Zicong's screams and temporarily suppressed the high-frequency vibration of the bat's wings.

Everyone's eyes were involuntarily drawn toward it.

There, amidst the ruins, the creature that had undergone an extreme and painful metamorphosis had finally completed its most critical structural remodeling.

Its massive body was no longer twisting or swelling pointlessly; instead, it presented a streamlined, powerful rigidity and stability.

Its surface was no longer covered in golden scales, but a layer of dull, heavy biological composite carapace with clear spiral-shaped reinforcement patterns. Its color was somewhere between matte grey-black and dark gold, reflecting a cold, hard glint in the dim light.

The abnormally bulging "main shaft" area in the middle of its body had taken shape. Several tendons as thick as an adult's arm, shimmering with a dark red luster, were tightly wound around the main shaft like the toughest steel cables, deeply embedded in the carapace. They were now pulsating slightly with its breath, containing a heart-pounding amount of elastic energy.

And its head had completely transformed into a nearly two-meter-long biological drill with a perfect spiral cone shape and an incredibly sharp tip.

The surface of the drill consisted of nested layers of sharp-edged, grey-white bioceramic plates, gleaming with a lethal luster under the lubrication of mucus.

Its pair of eyes had shrunk significantly and moved to the sides of the drill structure's base. Its pupils had become cold, dark gold vertical lines. The frenzied pain in its gaze had mostly subsided, replaced by a nascent sense of confusion, alertness, and... a certain indefinable clarity.

It slowly turned its terrifying drill-like head, its cold gaze sweeping across the several beings in the area one by one:

Zhu Zicong, who was clutching his bleeding face with a chaotic aura—it clearly remembered that this person had brought the initial thing that made it suffer beyond endurance; he was the source of pain and distortion. An instinctive loathing and alertness arose.

The Giant Bat hovering in the air with injured wings, emitting dangerous sonic energy—a strange and powerful presence, carrying a sense of pressure and interspecies alienation.

And the Armored Man who had just struggled to stand by the wall, holding that pair of strange black pistols.

However, deep within this newly born, chaotic consciousness, besides the loathing for the source of pain and the instinctive wariness toward other powerful beings, there seemed to be a very faint, warm "feeling" tenaciously lingering—

It didn't come from any of the people before it, but from a very brief yet pure memory:

A simple, anxious human face, delivering food at regular intervals, a rough palm occasionally stroking its scales with careful concern. He would call out "Dahuang" with an emotion that it couldn't understand then, but now seemed to vaguely perceive as "care"... That was the simplest and most direct emotional imprint left by Zhao Dayou, transcending species and evolutionary levels. This imprint was completely at odds with the hellish scene and painful evolutionary memories before it, yet it miraculously survived, causing a hint of indefinable confusion and bewilderment to arise alongside its frenzy and power.

Just then, the Giant Bat Evolution stopped its approach toward Shen Mingyuan and instead turned its head toward the newly transformed python. A strange hum, a mix of sound waves and mental intent, issued from its throat as it attempted to communicate: "Sss... gah... you... finally... broke free of the old shell... now... you... count as... true life... one of our... kind..."

Its words were intermittent, filled with interspecies barriers and probing, but the meaning was clear: it was trying to pull this newly born, powerful, and specialized evolutionary individual into the New Federation's scope of recognition.

The python, having just completed its evolution and possessing a still-naive consciousness, turned its drill head and aimed its cold vertical pupils at the vocal bat. It seemed to understand, yet also seemed not to fully comprehend.

Its massive body slightly adjusted its posture. The poised main shaft and the wound tendons let out a slight creak of tension. This was pure alertness and evaluation. Regarding the term "kind," its consciousness—a mix of painful memories, power instincts, and a trace of strange lingering warmth—had yet to produce any clear sense of identification.