120: Chapter 120 She was trembling, but very excited.

The moment his voice fell, the silver glow at his fingertips, long held in reserve, silently merged into the shadows beneath his feet.

Xia Lengbai did not turn her head; her breathing did not even falter by a single beat.

Under her deliberate guidance, the dark red mark on her left arm was no longer suppressed; instead, it began to flicker like a breath. Wisps of red light escaped through her torn sleeve, standing out like a torch in the dark night across this dead-silent Gobi Desert.

"Hum!"

The detection beam of the nearest Metal Beetle suddenly contracted, shifting from an aimless area scan into a solid, searing white pillar of light that locked onto Xia Lengbai's arm.

The rhythm of its limbs striking the ground accelerated sharply—thud, thud, thud. Each sound felt like a strike against her heart, carrying a cold, metallic echo as it rapidly closed the distance.

Twenty zhang... fifteen zhang... twelve zhang...

Shen Xiao crouched behind the scattered rocks, his breathing kept extremely low, his entire focus fixed on the faint glimmer at his fingertips.

The Silver Pattern flowed with difficulty through his body, each pulse tugging at the stinging pain of his severed Meridians, yet his eyes remained terrifyingly calm.

He was "watching" the Mechanical Beetle, not with his physical eyes, but through the faint perception of the Silver Pattern, analyzing the subtle ripples of energy flowing within its chest cavity.

Just as the Mechanical Beetle raised its forelimbs, gathering strength to pounce, at the very moment it was about to step into the ten-zhang range.

"Now."

Shen Xiao moved.

There was no earth-shattering commotion; only his right hand blurred into an afterimage.

An unremarkable pebble, stained with black grime, shot out from his fingertips.

The surface of the pebble was wrapped in a strand of Silver Pattern, as fine as a cow's hair but condensed to the extreme. It vibrated at high speed, emitting a nearly silent hum.

Its target was not the Mechanical Beetle's black iron-hard carapace, nor the cold, gleaming blades of its limbs, but the gap on the right side where the third limb connected to the main body. There, the flowing halo of several dark red runes used for reinforcement and energy conduction had a nearly imperceptible, periodic sluggishness.

This was a structural flaw left by an old repair, which Shen Xiao had captured just moments ago while his Silver Pattern was fully activated in a near-suicidal analysis.

The pebble sank in silently.

Time seemed to freeze for a split second.

Immediately after...

"Click... Screech!!!"

A piercing noise, like rusted gears being jammed by a hard object, erupted from within the Metal Beetle!

Its forward momentum came to an abrupt halt. The detection beam on its head, which had been locked onto Xia Lengbai, flickered frantically—dimming and brightening like a faulty lightbulb.

Its massive metallic body froze in place, then began spinning uncontrollably. Its sharp limbs flailed wildly, hacking at the surrounding gravel and sending shards flying everywhere, but it could no longer lock onto its target.

"It worked!"

A flash of brilliance crossed Xia Lengbai's eyes. Almost at the same moment the Mechanical Beetle stalled, the dark red mark on her left arm flared with intense light.

But this time, she did not merely release a wave. Her thoughts raced, and the phantom of the ancient Tomb Guardian Seal within her Sea of Consciousness trembled slightly. It separated a wisp of cool, moonlight-like radiance, carefully wrapping it around a thread of the dark red mark's crimson glow. Like a probe, it gently "touched" the chaotic and violent energy circuits of the Mechanical Beetle.

This was not an attack, but rather a tentative "frequency adjustment."

The Mechanical Beetle's struggle significantly lessened, and even the piercing, jammed noise quieted down.

But strangely, the brightness of the dark red runes on its surface climbed uncontrollably, as if flooded with excessive fuel, emitting an unsettling and unstable fluctuation.

"Something's wrong!"

Shen Xiao's pupils constricted. He felt the warning sent back by the Silver Pattern; the energy inside the Mechanical Beetle was expanding exponentially. It wasn't an orderly explosion, but a kind of out-of-control boiling on the verge of collapse.

"It's calling for help... or preparing to self-destruct!"

He let out a low roar. The Silver Pattern, held back no longer, shot out like a spiritual serpent, wrapping around Xia Lengbai's arm and pulling her backward with all his might!

"Retreat!"

Almost as the two figures retreated violently, the spinning Metal Beetle made a horrifying move. It raised the cold, gleaming blade of its foremost limb and, without hesitation, viciously stabbed at its own head-mounted detector!

"Puchi!"

A teeth-grating sound of tearing metal.

The tip of the limb dug precisely into the gap, gouging out the pebble embedded with the Silver Pattern, along with a small piece of the core structure that was flickering with unstable dark red light!

The next second, having lost the "foreign object," the Mechanical Beetle's body did not stop its mutation.

On the contrary, its entire body swelled violently as if being inflated. Dark red light erupted from every gap in its carapace and every crack in its runes, the radiance so intense that it even overwhelmed the somber blood-red color of the sky.

As Shen Xiao retreated rapidly, the Silver Pattern poured out frantically, weaving into layers of dense, scale-like, arc-shaped barriers in front of him.

Each barrier was extremely thin, yet contained resilience compressed to the extreme and a strange, vibrating power.

There was no earth-shattering explosion as expected.

There was only a muffled, deep "Thud!" that seemed to come from the depths of the earth. Immediately following, a visible ring of shockwaves, mixed with dark red and pitch-black energy, swept across the ground, centered on the Mechanical Beetle!

Wherever the ripples passed, the black gravel on the ground instantly turned into powder, and the air emitted a hissing sound of being scorched and twisted.

The shockwave slammed violently against Shen Xiao's Silver Pattern barrier!

"Pfft!"

Shen Xiao's body shuddered violently. A sweet taste filled his throat, and a mouthful of blood surged uncontrollably to his lips. He forced himself to swallow most of it, with only a small amount spilling from the corner of his mouth, which was instantly evaporated by the dry, hot air, leaving a trace of dark red.

The Silver Pattern barrier before him groaned under the unbearable strain, shattering layer by layer while simultaneously regenerating, finally managing to withstand the destructive shockwave just before the last layer broke.

The barrier did not break, but his face had turned as pale as gold paper.

However, the true mutation occurred at the core of the explosion.

The countless metal fragments from the exploded Mechanical Beetle did not scatter as usual; instead, drawn by some invisible force, they hovered eerily in mid-air.

Immediately after, in the distance, the two Metal Beetles that had originally been further away raised their forelimbs almost simultaneously. The detection beams on their heads were no longer ghastly white, but shot out two solid, viscous beams of dark red light!

The beams crossed the space instantly. They were not aimed at Shen Xiao and the other, but precisely connected to the mass of floating fragments at the center of the explosion!

Hum!

A more ancient, more indifferent energy fluctuation, carrying strong characteristics of the ruins, surged out along the connection of the dark red beams.

This fluctuation swept over Shen Xiao's Silver Pattern, causing the Silver Pattern within him to become chaotic and restless. But when it swept over the dark red mark on Xia Lengbai's left arm.

A sudden mutation occurred!

The mark on Xia Lengbai's arm felt like a branding iron that had been instantly ignited; the temperature soared abruptly!

Even through her clothing, Shen Xiao could feel the scorching heat wave.

Xia Lengbai's body shuddered violently, the blood draining from her face in an instant, and fine beads of cold sweat broke out on her forehead.

She bit her lower lip tightly with her teeth, preventing a groan of pain from escaping her throat.

But strangely, deep within her eyes, which were slightly unfocused from the pain, there was no pure expression of agony.

On the contrary, amidst the violent trembling and paleness, a dim, nearly excited glimmer—like a star stirred in the depths of a cold pool—quietly ignited and then vanished in a flash.

Her arm was trembling.

But in the frequency of that trembling, there was mixed a trace of indescribable... excitement.