271: Chapter 271 It's alive!

Thump.

Thump.

A dull heartbeat echoed through the blizzard, ringing directly inside Hunk's head.

The sound wasn't heard by his ears; it traveled along his bones, leaving his head buzzing.

Hunk tightened his backhand grip on the bone dagger at his waist, his eyes narrowing beneath his mask.

Behind him, fifty Polar Tyrants codenamed "Yeti" also sensed something and came to a halt. These massive creatures, standing over three meters tall, were covered in thick white armor and coarse hair.

They turned toward the black wreckage protruding from the ice in the distance, low growls rumbling in their throats as their hot breath condensed into large clouds of icy mist in the minus-sixty-degree air.

The blizzard seemed to intensify all of a sudden.

Hunk raised his wrist and spoke into the communicator on his arm guard, issuing orders in his flat, emotionless voice.

"Alpha Squad, pull back the defensive line. Switch to thermal imaging search mode and maintain Condition One readiness."

"Roger."

"Roger."

Beneath the ice, over a dozen B-07 "Walkers" that had just finished cleaning up the U Federation fleet also moved. Their scorpion-like metal bodies quietly shifted formation, surrounding the icy rift.

...

Twelve hours later.

A black c-17 transport plane pierced through the blizzard clouds above Antarctica, landing smoothly on the temporary runway cleared with lasers by Hunk's squad.

With a soft hiss of hydraulic rods, the belly cargo door slowly opened.

Chen Feng was the first to walk down the ramp, his hands tucked in his pockets.

The polar subzero temperatures and knife-like winds seemed to have no effect on him; his thin black trench coat didn't even have a single wrinkle.

Behind him, Sarah wore a black tactical coat. On her gloveless right hand, her skin appeared unnaturally pale under the reflection of the snow.

Mia, wearing a thick pink down jacket and fluffy earmuffs, followed at the very rear. She looked around at this world of ice and snow with curiosity, a strawberry-flavored lollipop in her mouth, her little face flushed red from the cold.

"Boss."

Hunk strode forward and saluted Chen Feng.

"How's the situation?"

Chen Feng's gaze swept past Hunk, looking directly at the black wreckage in the distance that resembled the spine of some giant beast.

"The heartbeat frequency is stable at 1.7 beats per minute," Hunk reported briefly. "No energy leakage detected, but the surrounding biological magnetic field is highly chaotic, three times stronger than it was twelve hours ago."

"Smells so good."

Mia suddenly twitched her little nose, her emerald-green slit pupils flashing in the blizzard.

"Boss, inside that big black Hunk of metal, there's a super huge, cool peppermint hidden!"

Chen Feng reached out and patted Mia's head.

"Don't worry, I'll let you have a taste in a bit."

Just as he finished speaking, another transport plane landed.

Before the cargo door could even open fully, Dr. Samantha rushed down like crazy with her team and a dozen crates of equipment.

She ignored Chen Feng completely, rushing straight toward the massive black wreckage as if she had smelled blood, shrieking before she even got close.

"Impossible! This isn't metal! This is the cuticular shell of a silicon-based organism! It's alive!"

Stumbling to the edge of the wreckage, she reached out to touch the black shell covered in bizarre patterns, her entire body trembling with excitement.

"Boss! Its cellular structure consists of closed hexagonal crystals! It has a built-in biological forcefield shield! No wonder the radar couldn't scan its internal structure!"

"Can it be cut open?" Chen Feng walked over slowly.

"Conventional methods won't work," Samantha said rapidly. "The high temperature of plasma cutting would be deflected by its biological forcefield, and physical demolition is too inefficient."

Turning around, she pulled out a massive high-pressure syringe as thick as a forearm from a metal crate. Inside the barrel was a writhing, dark-red liquid.

"We can only use this."

"G-Virus activating enzyme?" Chen Feng raised an eyebrow.

"Exactly." Samantha's eyes shone with a fanatical light. "Only by utilizing the corrosive and assimilative properties of the G-Virus can we open a breach in the cellular gaps of this turtle shell!"

Without hesitation, she gripped the syringe with both hands and plunged it hard into the shell of the wreckage with all her might.

Sizzle—

A plume of foul-smelling black smoke rose.

A fist-sized hole was actually corroded into the surface of the tough shell.

Right at that moment.

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

The heartbeat suddenly accelerated by dozens of times.

A mental pressure far more terrifying than that of the "Yeti" Tyrants erupted from the wreckage.

"Roar!"

The fifty Polar Tyrants nearby suddenly went wild, roaring in agony and clawing frantically at their heads as if steel needles were piercing their brains.

Hunk's vision went black. Groaning, he dropped to one knee, driving his dagger hard into the ice to keep from collapsing.

Samantha's research team, on the other hand, rolled their eyes and fainted, foaming at the mouth.

Only Sarah, with the black Ouroboros pattern on her right arm flashing, emitted a cold aura from her body that neutralized part of the impact, allowing her to barely remain standing.

"Boss, this thing... is rejecting us."

Chen Feng still stood in place, hands tucked into his trench coat pockets.

The pressure capable of driving Tyrants mad crashed against him, but it seemed completely useless.

"Rejecting us?"

Chen Feng sneered.

"On my turf, it doesn't have the right to say no."

He turned to look to the side.

Mia was squatting on the ground, clutching her head with a pained expression, one of her fluffy earmuffs having fallen off.

"So noisy... That big peppermint... It's screaming at me..."

"Mia."

Chen Feng's voice wasn't loud, but it was incredibly calm.

"Go make it shut up."

Mia snapped her head up, her emerald-green slit pupils filled with grievance and the anger of being provoked.

"It won't let me eat it!"

"Then beat it until it lets you."

"Okay!"

Having received permission, the pain and grievance on Mia's face vanished instantly, replaced by excitement, as if she were about to dig into a feast.

Her figure vanished on the spot.

In the next second, she appeared right at the top of the massive wreckage.

Her small body, clad in the pink down jacket, leapt into the blizzard.

Her right arm expanded rapidly in midair, black and red blood vessels and bone growing out to form a bone blade over five meters long.

Aiming at the hole corroded by the G-Virus, Mia let out an excited cry and slashed down fiercely!

Boom—!

With a deafening roar, the entire ice shelf shook violently.

That tough black shell was split open by Mia's strike, creating a rift over ten meters long!

A black, oil-like viscous liquid sprayed out from the rift.

Immediately after, a cold consciousness that did not belong to any human language echoed directly in the minds of everyone who was still awake.

[...Warning... Conspecific devourer detected... Initiating... Purge protocol...]

Inside the wreckage, countless eerie blue points of light lit up like stars.

The massive rift split open by Mia was writhing and healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

A massive tentacle composed entirely of black matter shot out of the rift like lightning with an air-tearing shriek, sweeping toward Mia, who had yet to land in midair.