148: Chapter 148 A passionate embrace with the Commander of Ceremonies... in mid-air!

The 3D mobility provided by her snake tail gave her aerial flexibility far beyond that of a human, every swing and movement precise to the millimeter.

But her face was turning pale.

She had only just recovered from a serious illness, and the healing fluid had been drained for less than an hour.

Her stamina simply couldn't sustain such high-intensity output.

After the third spear thrust, Yi Chang's arms began to tremble.

Five pterodactyls pounced from three directions simultaneously, spraying fluorescent green venom from their maws.

Yi Chang's snake tail released the broken branch as she tried to dodge, but her body was already half a beat slow.

A glob of venom grazed her shoulder and splashed onto the trunk of the giant floating tree, sizzling and smoking as it instantly corroded a hole the size of a fist.

A second glob of venom came straight at her.

Yi Chang raised her spear to block, and the venom splattered, a few drops landing on the medical bandages wrapped around her waist and abdomen.

Under the venom's corrosion, the medical bandages rapidly dissolved, fragments flying everywhere.

Her upper body was completely exposed to the air.

The five pterodactyls let out sharp screeches, closing their circle.

A flash of resolve crossed Yi Chang's vertical pupils.

Then, she heard the sharp sound of something much heavier and faster than a pterodactyl tearing through the air.

It was coming from directly above.

A five-hundred-meter freefall.

The moment Chen Chen's toes stepped off the edge of the fortress shield and he jumped, Absolute Control: Gravity Field exploded outward with his body as the core.

Twenty times gravity.

Everything within a twenty-meter radius was violently slammed toward the ground—including the five pterodactyls that were closing in.

The wings of the dark purple beasts with six-meter spans snapped instantly under twenty times gravity. Their muscles and bones could not withstand the twenty-fold increase in their own body weight, emitting a dense sound of bone fractures.

Two were crushed into lumps of meat on the spot and fell into the acid marsh.

The other three struggled and shrieked, their wings no longer able to flap.

The void-rending ship-slaying blade was unsheathed.

Purple gravity pulses spread along the blade's edge as Chen Chen completed a horizontal sweep during the inertia of his freefall.

Three purple arcs of light flashed across.

The three pterodactyls were split into six pieces from the middle.

Dark purple fragments and fluorescent green venom splattered in all directions.

Chen Chen's left hand reached out amidst the rain of blood.

Five fingers gripped Yi Chang's waist.

The sensation was the same as last time—the upper part was warm, soft skin close to a human's, transitioning rapidly from the small of the back down into cool, slippery, fine scales.

But this time, there were no medical bandages.

There was nothing at all.

Yi Chang was scooped entirely into his embrace.

With a constitution of 167 points, his body temperature was nearly forty-one degrees Celsius. In the biting currents of the rapid descent, this temperature was like a mobile furnace.

At this moment, the physiological instinct of a cold-blooded animal completely overrode her reason.

Yi Chang's snake tail suddenly coiled around him.

The silver-grey snake tail, over three meters long, began winding from Chen Chen's thighs, tightening all the way up, circling his waist and abdomen, with the tip resting against the side of his ribs.

The scales made a slight friction sound against the fabric of his tactical long-sleeved shirt.

She coiled around him tightly.

Yi Chang's face was buried in Chen Chen's chest, her nose pressed against his collarbone.

Her whole body was trembling—between the excessive blood loss of a cold-blooded animal and the low temperatures at high altitude, her body temperature had dropped to a dangerous level.

Meanwhile, Chen Chen's body was burning hot.

"...Let go," Yi Chang's muffled voice came from his chest.

"You release your tail first."

Yi Chang's snake tail tightened another notch.

It was completely unconscious—her body was desperately absorbing heat, and the command from her brain to let go was directly overruled by her spinal reflexes.

"I... can't control it..."

Chen Chen didn't say anything more.

He held Yi Chang with one arm and returned the void-rending ship-slaying blade to his waist with the other.

The gravity field contracted into a thin buffer layer, and the descent speed of the two slowed abruptly.

Above them, the remaining pterodactyl swarm began to scatter after losing their leader.

Qin Hongye's gauss rifle fired every three seconds, and combined with the machine gun barrage from the military armored vehicles, the pterodactyls were shot down in droves.

Su Xiaoqi had somehow run to the edge of the fortress platform, leaning halfway out while gripping the railing.

A pterodactyl skimmed over her head; she jumped up and smashed a fist into its belly. A row of its ribs shattered with a crack, and it plummeted down screaming.

"Yay!" Su Xiaoqi shook the blood off her fist, her twin tails spinning like windmills.

Jiang Yanxue and Blood Rose also rushed out from the emergency exit on the side of the fortress.

Shadow Instant-Kill Blades combined with pink poisonous mist carved a path of blood through the pterodactyl swarm.

Four minutes later.

The pterodactyl swarm was wiped out.

Chen Chen landed on the first-floor platform of the fortress, carrying Yi Chang.

The vibration of landing finally caused Yi Chang's snake tail to loosen slightly.

"You can get down now."

Yi Chang looked up, her ice-blue vertical pupils meeting Chen Chen's at close range.

Only then did she realize her entire upper body was bare against this man's chest, and her snake tail was still wrapped around his waist.

Her vertical pupils instantly constricted to their limit.

She struggled out of Chen Chen's arms, her snake tail snapping back as she retreated two meters.

Then she looked down at herself.

A large expanse of snowy white.

Yi Chang's face turned from silver-grey to a strange shade of pink.

Her snake tail curled up to block her front, and her two hands covered her chest. Her vertical pupils swirled with anger, shame, and something even more inexplicable.

Chen Chen took off his tactical long-sleeved shirt and threw it to her.

Yi Chang caught it and quickly pulled it on.

The clothes were several sizes too big, the hem hanging down to the base of her thighs.

Her hands trembled as she clutched the hem.

"How... do we settle this?"

"No need to settle it."

Chen Chen turned around. "You just killed three pterodactyls; that's enough to pay for your meal today."

Yi Chang gripped the hem of the shirt tightly and stared at his back for a long time.

...

Third-floor expansion module.

The holographic projection on the fabrication station suddenly lit up.

Shen Wanbing's voice came through the communicator: "faith deprivation tower—fabrication complete."

Chen Chen climbed the stairs to the third floor.

In the center of the expansion module, a dark grey metal tower about three meters high stood quietly.

The tower's surface was covered with dense Mental Power guide grooves, and at the top was a spherical emitter stacked with Tier 3 mental cores, emitting a dim, purple-black glimmer.

S-grade mental-type building—faith deprivation tower.

Once deployed, it could forcibly strip all hostile units within a two-kilometer radius of their faith-based buffs and suppress mental pollution.

Chen Chen tapped the tower body.

The storage ring flashed, and the three-ton tower was sucked into the space.

"Deploy it to the top floor of the fortress."

Two minutes later.

In the very center of the Sky Fortress's dome, a dark grey metal tower rose from the ground.

Purple-black light spread from the tower's tip, and an invisible mental force field covered the entire fortress and fleet with a two-kilometer radius.

Everyone simultaneously felt as if ice water had been poured over their brains, becoming extremely clear-headed.

"Comfortable." Jiang Yanxue stretched her neck. "My head has never been this clear."

Su Xiaoqi was gnawing on a pterodactyl leg, chewed twice, and suddenly looked up:

"Do I seem to have gotten smarter?"

"You're dreaming."

Four voices rang out at once.

Su Xiaoqi continued gnawing aggrievedly.

Before Chen Chen could even sit down.

Shen Wanbing's communicator exploded again.

"One hundred kilometers directly ahead—"

Her voice changed.

The blue light of the concentration ice heart necklace jumped to an unprecedented brightness.

"The main force of the Bishop of Ashes, over three thousand people, all Baptized Believers, carrying an... extremely massive high-energy mobile entity."

A 3D projection popped up.

A massive dark red arrow was pressing down from directly ahead; its speed wasn't fast, but its area was terrifyingly large.

At the core of the arrow was an independent, ultra-large heat source.

"The mobile entity's height is... thirty meters, energy signature—a hybrid of biological and metal."

Shen Wanbing's voice was very low.

"It's the Bishop of Ashes's true form, the Flesh-and-Blood Fusion Mecha."