118: Chapter 118 The Demise of the Predators

"Sir, my knight is not particularly afraid of fire."

By the time those words were spoken, The Blade had already collided with Brute.

The Blade's arms transformed into silver-white metal blades, slashing with full force against Brute's petrified forearms.

The sound was deafening.

The crisp, explosive clang of metal striking rock echoed three times beneath the dome.

Then, a crack appeared down the middle of The Blade's right arm blade.

Brute's petrified arm remained completely undamaged.

The Blade looked down at his cracked blade, his expression shifting from ferocious to blank.

Brute did not give him time for a second look.

The petrified right arm swept in from the side, slamming into The Blade's waist.

The dull thud of shattering bones and the crash of The Blade's body hitting the wall came almost simultaneously.

As he slid down the wall, the silver-white metal blades reverted to flesh and blood, bending at the elbow joints at an impossible angle.

Both arm bones were completely snapped.

The Flame User gritted his teeth, a fireball twice the size of the previous one condensing between his hands.

"Web! Bind that big one! Shadow! Sneak over and kill the one wearing glasses!"

Web fired with all ten fingers, dozens of silk threads wrapping toward Brute's joints from different angles.

If the threads couldn't reach the knight, they would bind Brute instead.

This judgment was not wrong.

Brute's petrified arms were hard, but the gaps in the joints were exposed bone surfaces covered in inscriptions; once the threads embedded into the gaps, they could indeed restrict some degree of freedom of movement.

Brute's movements slowed by thirty percent.

But Web had forgotten one thing.

Brute had not come alone.

Yan Zheng's voice drifted over calmly from thirty meters away.

"Mr. Brute, ignore the threads. Continue hitting The Blade."

A dark red pulse flickered.

Brute ignored the thread bindings on his body, his two petrified arms hammering down like pile drivers toward The Blade, who was collapsed in the corner.

Web's threads were pulled to their limit by the violent tugging; his feet carved two friction marks into the ground, and his entire body was dragged forward two meters by Brute's Brute force.

"Fuck!"

Web changed the angle of the threads, trying to disperse the force.

He did not notice that he had been dragged into the knight's firing range.

The knight's shoulder armor firing port lit up.

It was not the light beam from before.

It was a scatter shot.

Fan-shaped, pale blue light particles erupted from the shoulder armor, covering a three-meter radius in front of Web.

The threads curled and melted in the high-temperature light particles like cotton candy touching a flame.

Web's hands were scorched, forcing him to pull them back, and a wisp of burnt smoke rose from the silk gland openings on his ten fingers.

"My hands!"

While Web was still screaming, Shadow moved.

Its form merged completely into the shadows on the ground, like a drop of ink seeping into black cloth.

On Yan Zheng's system panel, the light spot marked as Shadow suddenly shifted from normal brightness to semi-transparent.

Shadow fusion state.

Signal tracking accuracy dropped by seventy percent.

Yan Zheng looked down at the ground beneath his feet.

The lighting in the switching yard had long been destroyed; the only light sources were the fireball in The Flame User's palm and the knight's phosphorous fire.

The light sources projected from different directions, causing the shadows on the ground to intersect and overlap, covering an area far larger than the illuminated zones.

Shadow could appear from any shadow.

Yan Zheng took three steps back, positioning himself entirely within the circle of light cast by the knight's phosphorous fire.

There were no shadows in this position.

"Smart," Shadow's voice came from somewhere, carrying a low, nasal tone characteristic of a woman.

"But you cannot stand in the light forever."

"Indeed, I cannot," Yan Zheng spun his scalpel between his fingers.

"However, I do not need to stand forever either."

He turned to look toward the side track on the east side of the switching yard.

In the Mental Link, an ice-blue pulse was rapidly approaching.

He had issued the order thirty seconds ago.

When Frost Archer crawled out from the pipe network interface at the east side track, its entire skeletal surface was coated in a layer of frosty white ice crystals, and the ice-blue phosphorous fire in its eye sockets flickered at an extremely high frequency.

It did not pause.

The moment it landed, Frost Archer extended its arms flat toward the ground, spraying a large area of ice mist from the tips of its finger bones.

The ice mist spread across the ground in all directions, covering it with extreme speed.

The ground temperature plummeted from twelve degrees to minus fifteen degrees within three seconds.

All shadow areas began to frost over.

The ground turned white.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ᗜ ≖ ˵ )

Shadow's scream erupted from a frosted area on the west side of the platform.

It was forced to materialize.

Half its body popped out of the shadows, its lower body still embedded in the ground, while frost spread upward along its waist, freezing the half of its torso that had emerged from the shadows.

Yan Zheng did not look at it.

He was looking at The Flame User.

The Flame User was the last of the five who still maintained full combat capability.

Bone Breaker had a severed arm and lay on the ground convulsing, blood gushing from the stump and freezing into a thin layer of ice.

The Blade had been smashed into the wall by Brute's third punch, his entire upper body embedded in the shattered concrete, unmoving.

Web's hands were ruined; he crouched on the ground, hugging his scorched fingers and shivering.

Shadow was frozen halfway.

The Flame User's hands were still raised.

The fireball in his palm flickered with increasing intensity, its size expanding from a fist to a basketball, the heat causing the frost within a five-meter radius to evaporate into white mist.

"Who the hell are you!"

Yan Zheng walked out of the knight's circle of light, taking two steps toward The Flame User without haste.

"I have already said. The Collector."

"Your things aren't something humans can build! You're a Mutant! Which organization are you from!"

"Sir, your voice is too loud," Yan Zheng tapped the hilt of his scalpel twice beside his ear.

"Besides, your questions are meaningless for someone about to die."

The Flame User brought his hands together, merging the two fireballs into one, its volume expanding to a diameter of one meter.

"I'll take you down with me!"

Yan Zheng stopped in his tracks.

He did not retreat.

He turned his head to look in the knight's direction and nodded.

The knight's shoulder Photon Ray firing port lit up for the third time, this time at full power.

The diameter of the pale blue beam expanded from the previous five centimeters to fifteen centimeters, its speed unchanged.

The beam pierced through the one-meter-diameter fireball.

The fireball split down the middle, the two halves scattering to either side, slamming into the walls and ceiling of the switching yard, igniting the hanging cable insulation.

The beam did not stop.

The remaining energy after passing through the fireball struck The Flame User's right shoulder.

The right arm was severed at the shoulder joint; as it flew away, the ball of fire in the palm flared for a moment before extinguishing.

The Flame User's body was pushed backward by the impact, his spine slamming into the concrete curb at the edge of the platform before he tumbled headfirst over the edge.

He did not get up again.

Yan Zheng walked to the edge of the platform and looked down; The Flame User lay face down on the railroad ballast, the wound at his severed arm instantly cauterized and sealed by the high-temperature beam, with no bleeding, only charred muscle texture and a section emitting white smoke.

Still alive, but unconscious.

"Mr. Brute, go down and move him."

A dark red pulse responded.

Yan Zheng turned and walked back to the center of the platform, flipping the scalpel between his fingers.

Five Predators, from the first exchange of fire to total loss of combat capability: one minute and forty-seven seconds.

The system panel refreshed in the center of his vision one by one.

[Material collection preparation. Target 1: Fire Generation Gene, Quality: High.]

[Target 2: Metalized Limb Gene, Quality: Medium-High.]

[Target 3: Bone Manipulation Gene, Quality: Rare.]

[Target 4: Biological Silk Secretion Gene, Quality: Medium-High.]

[Target 5: Shadow Fusion Gene, Quality: Rare.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ✧ ᗜ ✧ ˵ )

Two Rare grade.

He walked over to Bone Breaker and crouched down, pressing his white-gloved palm against the wound on the other's severed arm.

Bone Breaker was already unconscious, his face deathly pale, but his chest still had a faint rise and fall.

"Mr. Bone Breaker, your Bone Manipulation Gene is very precious."

Yan Zheng's voice was gentle, as if comforting a patient about to undergo surgery.

"Don't worry, the extraction process won't take long."

The scalpel cut in.

The extraction work lasted forty minutes.

Five people, five sets of genes, all sealed into portable airtight tubes carried on his person.

Brute was responsible for loading the bodies into the storage chamber.

The knight stood guard on the perimeter.

Frost Archer maintained the low-temperature state of the ground, ensuring Shadow's body would not melt back into the shadows before the extraction was complete.

When Yan Zheng stood up, his knees made a cracking sound.

He wiped the bloodstains from his white gloves and put the scalpel back into his pocket.

Then he turned and looked toward the group of Morlocks in the corner on the north side of the platform.

More than thirty faces.

More than thirty pairs of eyes.

Looking at him.

Fear, confusion, and something more complex, somewhere between gratitude and a deeper, more profound terror.

Yan Zheng pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, the expression on his face seamlessly switching from the focus of surgery to the gentle, refined smile of an Antique Shop owner.

"Everyone, it is safe now."

No one responded.

In the corner, a child's crying was muffled by its mother, turning into stifled sobs.

Yan Zheng did not approach, standing in place, his fingers rubbing along the edge of his coat pocket.

"Where is your leader?"

Silence for five seconds.

The few people at the front of the crowd looked at each other, then opened up a narrow gap.

A person walked out from the depths of the crowd.