41: Chapter 41 Inhibitors

Zhou An slumped in the captain's chair, his hands frantically rummaging through the system space like a madman, stuffing everything that could increase SAN values—Spirit Fruits, high-tier potions, and even bitter, low-tier calming roots—into his mouth all at once.

He chewed and swallowed desperately, trying to use these supplies to delay the drop in his SAN value.

However, those supplies, usually extremely precious, were like a drop in the bucket under the unshielded, terrifying, direct contamination from the [Unknown Abyssal Behemoth Limb].

His vision began to twist violently, overlapping with double images, and the crisp sound of Luo Ning tapping on the control platform gradually turned into the nauseating sound of writhing flesh.

He gasped for air, his eyelids heavy as if made of lead.

In the final second before his consciousness sank completely into endless darkness and twisted whispers, his extremely blurred vision only caught the scarlet light outside the porthole and the petite back of Luo Ning, who was frantically operating the fortress at the main console in a "Blood Lock Berserk" state.

...

When Zhou An opened his eyes from the endless darkness and twisted whispers, the first thing that came into view was the familiar ceiling.

Because the "polar night" had not yet ended, the indoor lighting was extremely dim, and the air was filled with the faint scent of herbs and a lingering, rust-like smell of blood.

He sat up abruptly, feeling as if his head had been smashed by a heavy hammer; a wave of dizziness washed over him—the extremely intense aftereffect of overdrawing his SAN value.

"Boss, you're awake?"

A slightly weak voice sounded by the bed.

Zhou An turned his head and saw Luo Ning lying on the edge of the bed with no regard for her image.

She looked extremely disheveled; her originally neat combat uniform was tattered, and her exposed arms were wrapped in layer after layer of blood-stained bandages. Especially around her neck, thick gauze showed a glaring, bright red stain, with blood still seeping out.

"Luo Ning... what happened to your injuries?"

Zhou An's voice was extremely hoarse, and his heart tightened sharply.

He remembered that, in the end, he seemed to have completely passed out because he couldn't withstand the contamination.

Luo Ning looked up and made a face at him, her large eyes full of mischief: "Oh, you mean this? It's nothing. You know, I have 'Blood Lock Berserk,' so I recover super fast. I'll be back to jumping around by tomorrow, guaranteed!"

"Don't try to brush me off." Zhou An stared fixedly at the wound on her neck, his tone becoming extremely serious. "When the Colossus was self-mutilating, you were supposed to be hiding in the invisible fortress. Who could possibly have hurt you?"

Luo Ning pouted and shrugged mischievously: "Who else could it be? When you went crazy, Boss, you were way more terrifying than those Colossi outside. Your SAN value had bottomed out, and you were there dancing like a shaman. I tried to pull you away, but you thought I was a monster and insisted on sparring with me. See, this is what I got from your 'guidance.' In the end, I had no choice but to pin you to the ground and beat you up, and only then did you calm down."

After saying this, she stood up with some difficulty and stretched very reluctantly.

"Muzi is sleeping in the next room; she's fine too. The loot is all piled up in the warehouse; you can check it yourself, Boss. This young lady is going to catch up on her beauty sleep. Don't disturb me for a while, or I'll be charging top-tier materials as emotional damages!"

Watching Luo Ning's swaying back as she walked out of the room, Zhou An did not feel the slightest bit relieved.

He knew Luo Ning too well; the more nonchalant this Mad Scientist acted, the more horrifying the things she was covering up were.

Zhou An did not go to check the warehouse but instead walked quickly toward the main control room.

Pushing open the broken metal cabin door, the scene inside the main control room made his heart sink.

The once-impenetrable fortress was now in shambles; the composite armor plate on the right side had been pierced by some kind of terrifying force, splitting open a hideous gash. However, under the effect of the [Smallest Giant], those dark gray metals were emitting faint "click-clack" sounds, slowly healing like biological tissue.

On the radar screen, it was no longer the ancient gladiator arena dense with red dots, but had returned to stable, green scanning ripples. The fortress was in a completely safe, dead-silent, pitch-black airspace, cruising automatically at a very steady speed of 65 km/h.

Zhou An walked straight to the cracked main console, entered the highest-level authorization command with practiced ease, and with trembling fingers, opened the panoramic cockpit surveillance footage from the past few hours.

The video began.

It was twenty minutes after the tentacles had latched onto the fortress.

On the screen, Zhou An was frantically stuffing various SAN-increasing foods into his mouth, but the value representing his mental state had completely fallen below the critical point.

Suddenly, the Zhou An in the video let out an extremely shrill, inhuman roar; his body twisted violently, and his bones emitted a teeth-grinding friction sound. Immediately after, a terrifying scene occurred—the skin on his right arm instantly tore open, and several writhing, fleshy tentacles dripping with corrosive dark purple mucus sprouted out like bamboo shoots after a spring rain!

That was physical aberration resulting from deep mental alienation.

At this time, the crazy melee of the Colossi outside the porthole was still raging intensely, and the entire airspace was shaking violently.

Luo Ning was focusing all her attention on maneuvering the fortress to survive in the gaps, but her keen intuition seemed to detect the strange, bloody wind that had suddenly erupted behind her.

In the video, Luo Ning, who had just turned her head from the pilot's seat with extreme vigilance to check on Zhou An, didn't even have time to say a word before her limbs were instantly entangled by the tentacles that had sprouted from Zhou An's arm, and she was violently hung upside down in mid-air!

"Zhou An! Wake up!"

The Luo Ning in the video screamed loudly, struggling frantically.

But at this moment, Zhou An had completely devolved into a beast dominated by the abyss. He lunged at Luo Ning, one hand gripping her slender neck tightly; the terrifying power erupting from his Tier 3 constitution caused Luo Ning's face to instantly turn purple.

Following that, Zhou An lowered his head, opened his mouth filled with foul-smelling saliva, and like a true aberrant monster, bit down hard on Luo Ning's neck!

"Rip!"

A chunk of bloody flesh was actually torn off by Zhou An. Luo Ning let out an extremely shrill, pained grunt, and fresh blood instantly stained her combat uniform red.

She struggled desperately in mid-air, grabbed a metal wrench from the console, and frantically struck Zhou An's head, but the Tier 3 Zhou An, who was in an aberrant state, didn't react at all, just pinning her down as if he were feeding.

Luo Ning's breathing became increasingly difficult, and her eyes began to glaze over.

At this final moment, Luo Ning utilized the bone-shrinking technique from her combat skills, and accompanied by the extremely crisp "crack" of a dislocated shoulder, she managed to pull one hand out from the binding of the tentacles with great difficulty. With extreme effort, she reached into her waist and pulled out a syringe emitting a very faint blue light.

She decisively stabbed it backward, plunging the thick needle hard into Zhou An's neck!

In the video, Zhou An's whole body shuddered violently, but his grip did not loosen; on the contrary, due to nerve stimulation, the dark purple tentacles coiled tighter, almost crushing Luo Ning's bones. Luo Ning was suspended in mid-air, her face turning from red to purple, her legs kicking unconsciously, and her vital signs were fading rapidly.

It was a whole minute of an extremely long, dead-silent tug-of-war.

Finally, the high-tier potion took effect. Zhou An's eyes rolled back, he lost consciousness, and his whole body collapsed to the ground like a pile of mud.

As he passed out, those eerie, dark purple tentacles slowly retracted back into his skin, completely disappearing. Freed, Luo Ning fell heavily to the ground, clutching her spurting neck, and crawled back to the pilot's seat with extreme difficulty to steer the fortress away from the arena.

The video ended there, the screen freezing on the blood-soaked cockpit.

Zhou An sat blankly in the pilot's seat, watching the scene on the screen, his palms covered in cold sweat.

That monster who almost strangled Luo Ning with his own hands and tore at her flesh like a beast... was actually himself.

And that silly girl Luo Ning, in order not to let him blame himself, actually smiled and said she was just "beaten up" by him.

"Damn it..."

Zhou An gritted his teeth, his eyes turning red, and slammed his fist hard against the main console, blood seeping from his knuckles.

...

Zhou An washed his face vigorously with cold water in the bathroom.

After adjusting his state, Zhou An stood in front of Luo Ning's bedroom door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

"Wait a second!"

A slightly flustered voice from Luo Ning came from inside the room, accompanied by the crisp sound of a few metal parts falling.

Zhou An ignored it, pressed the door handle directly, and pushed the door open to enter.

"Hey! Do you know any manners, Boss!"

Luo Ning was sitting on a chair piled with parts, holding a roll of bandage, and was struggling extremely hard to wrap it around her neck with one hand.

Seeing Zhou An enter, she rolled her eyes impatiently, "What if this beautiful girl was changing clothes? Or are you saying you calculated that Sister Muzi was still sleeping and wanted to stage a 'breaking into a beautiful girl's boudoir at night' scenario?"

Zhou An did not take the bait. He strode over to Luo Ning, his gaze locked firmly on her shocking neck, then, without a word, he reached out, grabbed her wrist, and pulled it away.

"Hiss—easy! It hurts!"

Zhou An looked at the glaring, lacerated wound on her neck where the carotid artery could almost be seen pulsing, and the several purple-red welts on her arms that were deep enough to show bone, and his heart twitched violently once more. This wound was far more severe than he had imagined from the surveillance; a moment of carelessness could have been fatal.

Without any hesitation, Zhou An reached into his system space and pulled out the [Epic-Grade Self-Healing Injector] that was emitting a golden halo.

"Holy crap!"

Seeing that injector, Luo Ning's originally nonchalant expression changed instantly. She suddenly reached out her other hand to press firmly on Zhou An's wrist, cursing loudly: "Are you an idiot?! This is just a minor skin wound for me, and you're using this thing?! We only have one of these; it's a trump card for saving our lives at critical moments, and you're using it to treat a bite wound for me?!"

"If you don't use this, you'll be left with deep scars." Zhou An's voice was low but carried unquestionable determination.

"So what if there's a scar?" Luo Ning sneered and pouted dismissively, "In this damn apocalypse, when you can barely keep your life, who are you keeping a pretty face for? The monsters?"

Zhou An ignored her, and relying on the terrifying power of his Tier 3 constitution, he forcefully broke free from Luo Ning's grip and stabbed the needle hard into her vein!

"You jerk..."

Luo Ning cried out in pain, but immediately after, the heaven-defying effect of the Epic-Grade Self-Healing Injector manifested.

A gentle, life-filled blue light instantly coursed through her entire body. Visibly, granulation tissue began to grow on her neck wound at an extremely exaggerated speed, rapidly healing, scabbing, falling off, and finally revealing new, fair skin, leaving not even a trace of a red mark. Even the welts on her arms dissipated into nothingness in this light.

Seeing Luo Ning's breathing become steady and her complexion return to a rosy hue, Zhou An finally let out a sigh of relief and pulled up a chair to sit in front of her.

"I'm sorry."

Zhou An hung his head, his voice somewhat hoarse and filled with self-reproach.

Luo Ning touched her neck, which was as smooth as before, then looked at the empty syringe on the floor with some heartache, and sighed helplessly: "Forget it, it's already used."

"That needle you stuck me with back then... what exactly was it?"

Zhou An looked up and stared into her eyes very seriously. He knew very well that it was definitely not a normal self-healing injector; a self-healing injector could not make someone instantly stop that kind of deep mental aberration.

Luo Ning's eyes flickered, and she avoided his gaze, then waved her hand very casually: "Oh, that... that's just a little gadget I developed myself. You know, I tend to get carried away when doing research, and sometimes when my SAN value drops too low, signs of mutation appear. It's a 'sedative' I made by extracting some Sky Island plants and adding materials extracted from tentacles, specifically used to forcibly suppress mutation and mental runaway."

"Still in the experimental stage?"

Zhou An's eyes narrowed slightly, keenly catching the main point.

"Yeah... I guess so. That's why I didn't tell you guys before."

Luo Ning rolled up her sleeve, revealing that extremely slender arm, which even lacked some muscle definition: "The only known side effect so far is that it causes a certain degree of muscle fiber atrophy. So you see, my arm is like a matchstick."

Upon hearing this, Zhou An immediately clenched his fist and felt his body. Aside from the fatigue after mental exhaustion, his Tier 3 physical body was still full of explosive power, and he didn't feel any weakness.

"It seems my physical constitution is too strong and I hardened through that side effect." Zhou An thought to himself, then looked at Luo Ning, his tone solemn: "In the future, if there are physical enhancement potions or top-tier items, I will prioritize giving them to you and Muzi."

"Stop, stop!"

Luo Ning jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, waving her hands repeatedly, trying to forcefully shift this heavy topic: "I don't want that! I'm a Mad Scientist who eats with her brain; why would you enhance my body? Turn me into one of those muscle-bound she-devils? Just thinking about it is disgusting!"

In order not to let Zhou An continue to dwell on this guilt-filled topic, Luo Ning rolled her eyes and suddenly leaned in close to Zhou An.

"As for the muscle atrophy, just eat more good food and take care of it slowly. Boss, I'm serious, now that we have Sister Muzi as an 'Agricultural Tycoon,' there are so many purple and blue ingredients in the plantation. While your cooking is edible, you simply can't bring out 100% of the attributes of those high-tier ingredients!"

"So?"

Zhou An raised an eyebrow, following her lead.

"So, why don't we recruit another person!" Luo Ning suggested excitedly, "Recruit someone with a talent for cooking! Think about it, eating a full-course feast that adds attributes every day, recovering stamina while getting stronger at the same time—what a heavenly life that would be!"

Zhou An rubbed his chin. Although this girl Luo Ning was flighty, her words actually made sense. With ingredients, he indeed needed a cook to maximize the benefits.

"Fine, I'll keep that in mind."

Zhou An nodded, looking at Luo Ning.

"Besides this, do you still feel anywhere..."

"Stop, stop, stop!"

Before Zhou An could finish his rare, "mother-hen" style words that sounded like concern, Luo Ning stood up directly and, with extreme disdain, pushed him out the door.

"Stop being sentimental here! It's annoying! This young lady needs to take a bath and sleep! If you don't want to be labeled by me with the perverted title of 'Peeping at a Beautiful Girl at Midnight,' then get out quickly!"

"Bang!"

The door was slammed shut mercilessly, almost hitting Zhou An's nose.

Standing outside the door, Zhou An touched his nose; his originally tense heartstrings finally relaxed completely.

"This crazy girl."