146: Chapter 146 Five-Choice Blind Box Drops S-Rank Item

When Chen Chen opened his eyes, the settlement notification on the system panel had already been hanging there for six hours.

The heat wave from the Physical Overlimit at midnight had scorched him awake once in the middle of his sleep.

The dense crackling in his bones and the aching sensation of muscle fibers tearing and reorganizing lasted for about forty seconds, and then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

It was now 6:03 AM.

He glanced at the panel.

constitution 167, agility 78, Spirit 100, luck 68.

The muscle contours of his forearms stretched the tactical long sleeves into exaggerated curves, and the veins on the back of his hands bulged like earthworms.

When he rolled over, a section of the bed collapsed under him.

Beside him, Shen Wanbing had not yet woken up.

The billionaire CEO didn't have a hint of her usual sharpness at this moment.

Her ink-black curly hair covered half the pillow. Three buttons on her white shirt had popped off last night and hadn't been found yet, leaving the collar wide open. A long tear ran through her micro-pressure black stockings from her upper thigh to her knee.

She was curled up in the blanket, her breathing long and even, her brow occasionally furrowing and then relaxing.

Chen Chen reached out and patted her shoulder twice.

"Wake up."

Shen Wanbing didn't react.

He patted her twice more, with more force.

"Mmm..." A muffled nasal sound came from under the blanket.

"The blind box has refreshed."

Those five words were ten times more effective than a shoulder pat.

Shen Wanbing's eyelashes fluttered twice, and her ink-black pupils opened a crack.

"What time is it..."

"Six o'clock. The Lv.6 five-choice targeted blind box. Today is the first day; get up and get to work."

Shen Wanbing tried to push herself up with her arms, but her limbs went weak and she collapsed back down.

The aftereffects of last night's three sessions of dual cultivation were still there; her waist and upper thighs were numb with soreness.

She gritted her teeth and slowly sat upright, pulling her scattered shirt around her and pressing the activation button on her concentration ice heart necklace.

As the blue light flickered on, the emotional suppression function came back online.

Her hazy eyes regained their usual clarity within three seconds.

"Five-choice..." She opened the panel, where a golden blind box icon was slowly rotating.

"Minimum quality is Gold-grade, with S-rank options possible."

Chen Chen leaned against the headboard: "Open it."

Shen Wanbing triggered it with her Mental Power, and five options popped up on the panel.

The moment the gold and purple light burst forth, Shen Wanbing's pupils constricted sharply.

Five options.

Option A: A-rank High-Density Nano-Ammunition Manufacturing Module.

Option B: S-rank Bio-Fusion Chamber Blueprint—Can perfectly purify foreign race bloodlines, repair any limb deficiencies, and activate latent genetic sequences.

Option C: S-rank Magnetic Storm Field Generator—Once deployed, it can create continuous magnetic storm interference within a one-kilometer radius.

Option D: S-rank Spatial Rift Stabilization Anchor—Can establish a fixed teleportation node at any location.

Option E: A-rank Military-grade Medical Capsule Refill Pack x50.

Three S-ranks.

"Three S-rank options..."

Chen Chen stared at Option B for two seconds.

Bio-Fusion Chamber, purifying foreign bloodlines, repairing limb deficiencies.

The snake in the medical pod immediately came to mind—more than half of its silver-gray scales had peeled off, its wounds were barely healed, and six of its tribesmen were near death.

Given that the entire second map was teeming with foreign race natives, the strategic value of this item was immeasurable.

"B."

Shen Wanbing had no objections and confirmed the selection.

The storage ring grew hot.

A roll of metal blueprints emitting a faint dark-golden glow condensed out of thin air in her palm.

Chen Chen felt the thickness of the blueprints and stuffed them directly into his silver-grade storage ring.

“This blueprint...” Shen Wanbing pushed up the frame of her contact lenses which had slipped to the tip of her nose.

“If my calculations are correct, using the refinery on the third floor, the manufacturing cycle will be about twelve hours. One of the material requirements is crucial—it needs a live foreign race bloodline sample as the basic culture medium for the fusion chamber.”

“What a coincidence.”

Chen Chen stood up and tossed his shirt to her.

“There’s one ready and waiting in the medical pod downstairs.”

Shen Wanbing was stunned for a moment, and once she realized what he meant, a blush crept up her face again.

She shook out the shirt to put it on, only to find it was Chen Chen's.

It was three sizes too big.

She went downstairs wearing just that.

Chen Chen brought out two bowls of high-grade marrow soup from the kitchen module on the first floor.

He left one bowl on the folding table for the person getting up, and carried the other toward the fourth floor.

In the Pilot Tower, Jiang Jiuyou sat at the co-command console.

The collar of her military coat was turned up, and her three-point safety belt hadn't been unbuckled all night.

The data stream from the holographic panel cast cold blue shadows across her face.

Strands of silver-white hair hung from her temples, resting against her slender neck.

She hadn't slept all night.

Yet her sitting posture remained ramrod straight.

Chen Chen placed the steaming marrow soup on the cup holder next to her console.

Jiang Jiuyou didn't look back.

"What are you doing here?"

"Delivering food."

"Not hungry."

Chen Chen walked behind the co-command console, leaning one hand on the back of the chair and the other on the edge of the console.

His two arms completely boxed Jiang Jiuyou in.

Jiang Jiuyou's back stiffened.

Chen Chen's chin moved past her shoulder, his lips almost touching her earlobe.

The hot air he exhaled brushed against the stray hairs at her temples.

"What was your heart rate last night?"

Jiang Jiuyou's Adam's apple bobbed.

"What does my heart rate have to do with you?"

"You took off the lingxi ring. I bet you spent the whole night counting your own heartbeat to get through it."

"...You're sick."

Chen Chen's right hand slid down from the back of the chair.

His fingertip brushed across the patch of fair skin above Jiang Jiuyou's black turtleneck, pausing for a second at the hollow of her collarbone.

Jiang Jiuyou's breath hitched.

His finger continued downward.

Following the edge of the high-collared shirt, it slid from the center of her collarbone to a point two centimeters above her chest.

Jiang Jiuyou suddenly grabbed his wrist.

Her ten fingers couldn't even fully encircle that forearm—the muscle density made it impossible for her fingers to even meet.

"Chen Chen."

"Hmm."

"Go down one more centimeter and I'll bite you."

Chen Chen chuckled and withdrew his hand.

"Drink the soup, don't starve yourself."

He turned and headed down the stairs.

Jiang Jiuyou stared at the convoy dispatch map on the panel.

She couldn't process a single word of the data.

Her left hand uncontrollably covered the collarbone he had just touched.

The warmth of that man's fingertip still lingered on her skin.

She took a large gulp of the marrow soup.

It was so hot it made the tip of her tongue go numb.

But her heartbeat still wouldn't slow down.

...

First floor.

Behind the transparent glass of the medical pod, the repair fluid had already been drained.

Yi Chang sat up.

When she was brought in yesterday, she still had pieces of shattered light armor clinging to her body, but after a full night of high-intensity repair in the B-rank medical pod, those metal fragments had long since been automatically removed by the mechanical arms.

Now—she had nothing on.

The three lacerations across her chest had healed, covered by new silver-gray scales that were so thin they were semi-transparent, making the underlying muscle texture faintly visible.

But the scale coverage was far from sufficient.

At least seventy percent of her upper body was exposed.

Her shoulders, collarbones, and the large expanse of skin on her chest were dazzlingly white under the cold lights.

The skin texture of the Snake Scale Tribe was different from humans; it was extremely fine and smooth, with a faint silver shimmer, and its touch would likely be somewhere between silk and ice.

The transition began below the waistline.

Her human-form narrow waist was gradually covered by dense silver-gray scales, and by the hips, it had completely transformed into a snake tail—thick, long, with neatly arranged scales, coiling twice inside the medical pod.

When Chen Chen pushed open the pod door and walked in, Yi Chang was trying to reach a spare medical cloth hanging on the pod wall with the tip of her snake tail.

She couldn't reach it.

She turned her head.

Her ice-blue vertical pupils met Chen Chen's eyes.

"...Get out."

Chen Chen didn't leave.

He scanned Yi Chang's entire body without any intention of looking away.

Yi Chang's vertical pupils constricted into thin lines.

Her snake tail suddenly lashed out, hitting the pod wall with a dull thud.

"You—"

"Don't move."

Chen Chen pulled the medical cloth off the wall and tossed it over.

Yi Chang caught it and quickly wrapped it around her upper body.

The speed of her movements betrayed her extreme embarrassment.

A suspicious blush, uncharacteristic of a cold-blooded creature, appeared on her silver-gray cheeks.

"What did you come here for?"

"To negotiate terms."