Chapter 156: Mr. Jian

The third day of the assault began.

Inside the headquarters of the Black Island organization, within the Tyrant Serum injection chamber.

Many high-ranking executives regained consciousness from their stupor, looking blankly into the surrounding darkness. They found themselves bound by metal straps. Some began to struggle, while others shouted loudly, but they soon realized where they were, letting out panicked, mournful cries.

"Mr. Jian!" a man in lavish attire cried out, "Please let us go! That serum was never successfully developed; anyone who injects it will surely die!"

A blurred figure with a neutral voice appeared abruptly in the dim, pitch-black injection room. Standing alone, he kept his hands behind his back atop a spacious, sturdy, dance-floor-like elevated platform.

"In fact, the Tyrant Serum was successfully developed long ago; it is already a relatively mature biological weapon."

His body was covered in a dazzling blue halo, resembling a meticulously crafted suit of sapphire armor from afar.

"Then... then why did all the experimental samples die, leaving only a single survivor to this day?"

"Because the cellular activity was insufficient."

Mr. Jian replied indifferently. "Now I need to test once more whether that person is indeed the one driving the probability engine into a frenzy, so I have no choice but to sacrifice you all."

"No, no, no! What engine, what nonsense! Wasn't the purpose of your organization to help those without the talent to become awakened ones attain extraordinary power? How could it come to this?" The high-ranking members of the Black Island organization screamed wildly.

"Spare us!"

"I don't want to die yet! We still have so many secret weapons unused; we can definitely defeat South Port!"

The elevated platform crackled with electrical currents, illuminating the entire room brightly.

"That purpose was merely my personal vision."

As Mr. Jian's voice trailed off, a thick, humid, and sticky bloody mist surged into the injection room, instantly silencing the clamor.

"After all, I am merely an artificial intelligence lifeform; executing commands is what is written in the deepest depths of my logic..."

"...The probability engine must be shut down."

......

At night, the horizon was illuminated by the glow of fires. By day, billowing black smoke polluted the skies.

Within the battlefield, the mechanical fortresses had been almost entirely dismantled and blown up. Deep behind the fortress defense line, a circular mountain with a diameter exceeding twenty kilometers, seemingly formed by an uplift of rock strata, began to tremble amidst rumbling sounds.

"That should be the headquarters base of the Black Island organization, right?" Ji Cheng looked over. From his perspective, it looked like a giant's toenail, connecting the ground to the lowest cloud at the edge of the horizon.

"I used to guess that Black Island's headquarters might be hidden underground, but I never expected it to be disguised as a mountain range." Fu Ting's synthesized electronic voice came from behind.

"What I find most unexpected is that Black Island's headquarters was right under the noses of you people in South Port, yet you failed to find them for all these years," Tian Gang of the Red Hawk Republic sneered disdainfully. "If it weren't for Ji Cheng coming to power, you lot probably wouldn't have found Black Island's headquarters in your next life either."

"You..."

Liu Fangjian, known as the 'Green Lantern', wanted to speak up in defense of South Port, but the latter half of Tian Gang's sentence was a compliment to Ji Cheng, which choked back the retort on his lips.

"Alright, alright, save this talk for after the battle. Black Island is making a new move." Ji Cheng cut off the conversation, pointing ahead toward the circular mountain range.

Dense crowds of people with cyan-black skin surged out from the narrow crevices at the base of the mountain. With crazed expressions, they shrieked like madmen and charged forward.

"Please trust me, if we cannot eliminate these things—or at least a portion of them—within ten minutes, our army will likely rout." Ji Cheng opened a box clipped near the left shoulder of his chest and extracted an item resembling a metal finger bone.

"What do you mean?" Lei Junming asked with a furrowed brow, a clear trace of worry in his expression.

Although he had never seen these creatures before, since Ji Cheng said so, the situation was bound to be far from simple.

"These test subjects should have been injected with a biological weapon called the Tyrant Serum. Its effect is an unbreakable body of steel that bullets cannot pierce." The moment Ji Cheng saw that familiar cyan-black metallic hue, he understood.

Was the Black Island organization preparing for a desperate struggle?

So many doses of Tyrant Serum were immensely costly, and furthermore, even the pupils of their eyes had turned cyan-black, indicating that their cells had been completely invaded and fused by the Tyrant Serum. After use, it would be impossible to even recover the serum; it was all wasted...

"Then how do we fight them? With such a massive number, are we supposed to rely on the few of us to kill them slowly?"

Ji Cheng's words were like setting a fire beneath the seats of the numerous Tier 2 awakened ones, immediately making some of them impatient. "Is there a way to kill them quickly?"

"Under current conditions, no." Ji Cheng replied while groping the piece of metal finger bone, "However, these are obviously failed products; they will die on their own after holding out for a little over ten minutes. We only need to ensure that the army does not collapse due to casualties during this time."

Biological weapons required the cellular activity of the human body as support; with insufficient cellular activity, the result of the injection would be certain death.

These test subjects had clearly been forcibly injected with a massive amount of Tyrant Serum, with their entire bodies covered in a thick cyan-black metallic sheen. Unless they had all previously been awakened ones, and their genetic archetypes had additionally undergone massive enhancement of cellular activity, they would have no chance of survival.

Otherwise, all the cells in their bodies would collapse and die before long.

"Charge!"

This was no longer the time for discussion, and everyone present undoubtedly knew the gravity of the situation. Immediately, each of them revealed their trump cards and charged toward the incoming crowd.

Tian Gang raised his whining, whirring chainsaw sword and hacked fiercely at a woman as if he were chopping down a tree.

Wail! Wail! Wail!

The chainsaw sword emitted an even more violent screech, yet it only sliced a fraction into the opponent's body before getting stuck fast.

"So terrifying!" he exclaimed in surprise.

This chainsaw sword of his had been meticulously crafted by the Red Hawk Republic using the production line for Kun-steel. In appearance, it resembled a broadsword encircled by saw blades; once the built-in motor was activated, the cutting force generated was terrifyingly formidable.

It was considered one of Red Hawk's proudest weapons.

"Ji Cheng, can you not be so conservative with your words? You call this something bullets can't pierce? F***, even missiles couldn't pierce this!"

What the hell?

Upon seeing this scene, Ji Cheng's pupils constricted as well, looking as though he had seen a ghost.

The power displayed by the Tyrant Serum was far more formidable than he had imagined! Whether a quantitative change had triggered a qualitative one, or if there was some other bizarre factor at play, the physical strength of these crazed test subjects far exceeded his expectations.

After he himself had been injected with the Tyrant Serum and undergone experimental testing, he had originally assumed it utilized at most Tier 1 knowledge. But judging from the performance of these test subjects, it was definitely far beyond that, surpassing it by God knows how many times.

Relying solely on its inherent effects, it was actually enough to block the chainsaw sword wielded by Tian Gang, a Tier 2 awakened one—hacking into it felt like cutting tough cowhide with a dull knife.

"Good heavens... What is going on here..."

Ji Cheng was well aware that Tian Gang's strength and that peculiarly shaped chainsaw sword were not so simple.

In previous battles, that chainsaw sword had easily hacked through alloy-made mechanical fortresses as if cutting vegetables. Furthermore, Tian Gang's Tier 2 archetype was high-grade stock that Ji Cheng had helped select; even if its temporary assimilation rate wasn't high, his muscle strength should still be at the level of tens of thousands of kilograms.

Yet it had been blocked by these test subjects who had been injected with massive amounts of Tyrant Serum?