149: Chapter 149 Jiang Jiuyou's Arrogant Promise!

The carriage fell silent.

Chen Chen walked to the fourth floor.

Jiang Jiuyou was already at the sub-command console.

She had switched the holographic panel into six split screens—fleet formation, weapon status, ammunition reserves, terrain analysis, communication channels, and a blank tactical deduction board.

"How long until they arrive?"

"At their current rate of advancement, no more than two hours."

Chen Chen glanced at her.

Jiang Jiuyou was wearing a dark red tactical cloak; he wasn't sure when she had changed into it.

The cloak's drawstring hung loosely at her collarbone, over a form-fitting black high-neck lining, with a tactical short blade and a large-caliber sidearm strapped to her waist.

Her silver-white low ponytail swayed behind her head.

Chen Chen walked over.

Jiang Jiuyou didn't move.

He reached out and helped her tighten the cloak's drawstring.

As he fastened the buckle, his knuckles brushed against her fair chin.

Jiang Jiuyou's breath hitched for a moment.

"Your Dark Division will cut through the flank. It's a three-thousand-man formation; I'll take the front, and you tear through the side."

"I know."

"Don't die."

Jiang Jiuyou raised her icy-blue eyes.

The distance between the two was less than ten centimeters.

She stared at Chen Chen for two seconds.

"If I survive and tear open the flank today—"

She paused.

Her lips moved slightly.

"Regarding your proposal from last time, I'll allow you to... let me be ranked seventh."

Chen Chen's hand was still on her cloak buckle.

"You were the one begging to be seventh."

"You—"

Chen Chen let go and took half a step back.

Jiang Jiuyou gritted her teeth and turned to jump off the fortress.

Her dark red cloak flapped violently in the 500-meter high-altitude air currents.

She landed on the roof of her off-road vehicle, her combat boots making a dull thud.

"All Dark Division members, follow me."

The engines of nineteen modified off-road vehicles roared simultaneously.

...

Two hours later.

The horizon changed color.

A dark red mist drifted from directly ahead, carrying a pungent odor of rot mixed with scorched flesh.

Over three thousand believers in grey-white cloth robes, driving tens of thousands of low-level Aberrations, formed an overwhelming torrent of flesh and blood.

In the very center of the torrent—

A thirty-meter-tall flesh-and-blood fusion mecha advanced slowly.

It was a horrific creation welded together from countless corpses, mutated tissues, and industrial steel frames.

Four thick mechanical legs supported a bloated torso covered in organic tentacles and bone spikes.

At the very top, a grey-white humanoid was embedded within the flesh—the true body of the Bishop of Ashes.

Two clusters of dark red flames burned in his hollow eye sockets.

"Heretic."

A metallic voice came through the public channel.

"I gave you a chance."

Chen Chen stood before the fourth-floor panoramic window, his left hand on the control lever and his right hovering over a red button.

He glanced at the fleet status.

All vehicles had entered combat positions.

The purple-black force field of the faith deprivation tower covered the entire fleet.

"All forces, hear my command."

Chen Chen pressed the button.

The faith deprivation tower activated at full power.

Within three seconds, the effect rippled across a two-kilometer radius.

For the believers who were the first to step into the force field's boundary, the faith marks forcibly infused into their bodies were like red-hot iron doused in cold water—hissing with smoke before being extinguished.

Sense of pain returned.

Rejection reactions from the mutations returned.

Fear returned.

Hundreds of believers at the very front let out heart-wrenching screams almost simultaneously.

They rolled on the ground clutching their mutated limbs, as the agonizing pain previously suppressed by mental paralysis surged into their nerve endings all at once.

The formation collapsed.

The swarms of Aberrations driven by mental control also broke free at the same moment.

Having lost their orders, the low-level Aberrations followed only their most primal instinct—to attack the nearest living thing.

The believers were the nearest living things.

Tens of thousands of Aberrations turned around and began tearing into their own people.

Within thirty seconds, the battlefield descended into purgatory.

The faith deprivation tower had torn a hole in their ranks, but the Bishop of Ashes did not panic.

A crack opened in the chest of the thirty-meter-tall flesh mecha, and dark red mental ripples poured out from the gap.

The intensity of these ripples far exceeded those of his previous clones.

The force field of the faith deprivation tower and the mental pollution ripples collided violently at the two-kilometer boundary line.

Purple-black and dark red lights intertwined and twisted, and a sharp sound like shattering glass echoed in the air.

The tower's force field was compressed by about two hundred meters.

"The tower's peak load is too high—"

Shen Wanbing's voice quickened, "He's using his true body's Mental Power to resist! The deprivation tower can only suppress ordinary believers within two kilometers; its effect on the Bishop of Ashes' true body is less than forty percent!"

Chen Chen didn't plan on relying solely on the tower to solve everything.

"All units, attack."

The armored doors of the Ghost Fortress burst open.

Jiang Yanxue was the first to leap out.

Her Shadow Instant-Kill Blade was coated with Blood Rose's pink toxin, and the blade left a dark red afterimage as it sliced through the air.

She landed on the roof of a believer's war vehicle and slashed down, splitting both the vehicle and the person inside in half.

"One."

Second strike. Third strike.

"Three."

Every strike was so fast that only red lines could be seen.

The toxin caused the believers' mutated bodies to go limp instantly; Jiang Yanxue didn't even need a second strike.

Su Xiaoqi was thrown out forcefully by Jiang Yanxue.

The 1.6-meter-tall loli flipped several times in mid-air, her twin tails spinning like propellers.

She landed by smashing both feet into the hood of a ten-ton bone chariot—

The entire vehicle was crushed into a V-shape.

Before the four believers inside chanting prayers could even scream, they were squeezed into meat paste by the folding metal.

"Fun!" Su Xiaoqi pulled her feet out of the vehicle wreckage and lifted a believer by his collar.

That believer was over two meters tall, with mutated muscles bulging in lumps.

Su Xiaoqi swung him around twice and let go.

The human cannonball flew forty meters, knocking down a row of believers.

On the fifth-floor dome, Qin Hongye lay on the firing platform.

The electromagnetic acceleration rails of her gauss rifle had been replaced with new ones, improving accuracy by a notch.

The automated ballistic correction auxiliary aim locked onto targets, and her A-rank Eagle Eye talent operated at full power.

One shot every three seconds.

Every shot precisely hit the weak points of the believer leaders.

Fatal Lock—a forty-five percent weak point marking rate.

The leaders fell one after another.

Qin Hongye's kill count rang out coldly over the communication channel: "Number seven neutralized, number eight neutralized, number nine—reloading."

Reloading took less than two seconds.

The automated ammunition loading module on the third floor delivered pre-made magazines directly to the firing position.

"Number nine neutralized."

Blood Rose didn't charge to the front line.

She stood at the edge of the fortress platform, opening her mouth to exhale a large cloud of thick pink mist.

The Mutated Lust Venom, output at full power by her SS-rank Succubus Poison Body, diffused through the air currents, covering an area of about three hundred meters in the middle of the battlefield.

Believers and Aberrations within the poison mist zone all lost their physical coordination—some knelt, some spun in place, and some began attacking nearby allies.

The level of chaos tripled.

Jiang Jiuyou's Dark Division cut in from the flank.

Nineteen modified off-road vehicles formed three arrow formations, their vehicle-mounted rapid-fire cannons providing crossfire coverage that tore away the entire left wing of the believer formation.

Core members of the Dark Division got out for close quarters combat, coordinating with the off-road vehicles' mobile maneuvers to harvest the remaining enemies with extreme efficiency.

Jiang Jiuyou stood on the roof of the lead off-road vehicle, her dark red cloak billowing in the smoke.

She held a large-caliber sidearm, every shot landing in the gaps of the believers' mutated carapaces.

"Vehicle Three, flank the right! Vehicle Seven, block the retreat! Vehicle Eleven, push forward and drive those Aberrations toward the poison mist zone!"

In the communication channel, the Dark Division members' execution responses were crisp and decisive.

Seven minutes.

Of the over three thousand believers, two thousand had been cleared.

The remaining thousand, under the dual suppression of the faith deprivation tower and the poison mist, had lost their will to fight and were kneeling on the ground, clutching their heads and screaming.

The Aberrations were even worse off—tearing into each other after losing control, then being harvested by the cross-barrage of the military and the Dark Division. In less than ten minutes, only scattered remnants remained.

But that thirty-meter-tall flesh mecha was still there.

The Bishop of Ashes' dark red flame pupils swept over the remains of the believers scattered across the ground, the two clusters of fire flickering violently.

"Ants... all of them are ants..."

The metallic voice carried a twisted fury.

The mecha's four mechanical legs suddenly exerted force, and the entire thirty-meter-tall behemoth charged toward the Sky Fortress.

The ground trembled and cracked under its footsteps, each step smashing a three-meter-deep pit.

Over a dozen organic tentacles shot out from the mecha's torso, coiling toward the magnetic anchor pillars at the bottom of the fortress.

"He's going to pull out the anchor pillars!" Shen Wanbing's voice reached its highest pitch.

If the magnetic anchor pillars were torn off, the Sky Fortress would fall directly.

Chen Chen was already standing at the edge of the fortress platform.

The void-rending ship-slaying blade was unsheathed, purple energy lines lighting up from the hilt to the tip.

He jumped.

Five hundred meters, free fall.

His body, with its 167 points of constitution, was incredibly steady during the rapid descent.

The wind blew his clothes and hair upward, but his core muscles remained motionless.

When he was two hundred meters from the mecha, he swung his blade.

Not at the mecha's main body.

But at those dozen or so organic tentacles.

gravity pulse superimposed with purple blade energy.

A semicircular arc of purple light swept out, covering the base of the tentacles.

Over a dozen thick tentacles were severed at the base, their cross-sections scorched and hot.

The Bishop of Ashes was enraged.

The mecha's right arm—a giant arm welded from steel beams and mutated bones—swung horizontally toward Chen Chen.

Chen Chen released a twenty-fold gravity field in mid-air, pulling his descent speed to the limit.

The mecha's arm swept past two meters above his head.

Chen Chen's feet landed on the mecha's knee joint.

The full force of his stomp caused the metal frame at the knee joint to let out a piercing screech of deformation.

He used the momentum to spring up, rushing up the mecha's thigh.

The Bishop of Ashes' dark red flame pupils locked onto him.

The mental pollution ripples concentrated into a solidified dark red beam, blasting toward Chen Chen's head.

100 points of Mental Power plus the mental tolerance granted by Physical Overlimit.

The dark red beam hit Chen Chen's face; his temples throbbed twice, and a metallic scent of rust wafted from his nostrils.

And then, it was over.

He continued to climb upward.

"Qin Hongye."

In the communicator, Qin Hongye's voice was as crisp as could be: "Waiting for you."