Chapter 128 – The Decline of Vitality

Cheng Xiaomei had never had an intuitive concept of just how strong Su Lifeng had become. That remained true even though she had once personally witnessed Su Lifeng fight.

But now it was different. That female Xenospecies, and the wooden-faced male Xenospecies who had been ripped open by Su Lifeng in a head-on clash the moment they met, had both left Cheng Xiaomei with extremely terrifying memories. In her eyes, the two of them had practically been invincible.

Yet opponents like that, so frightening she had been unwilling even to recall them, were like two insects before Su Lifeng.

“So… so strong.” Cheng Xiaomei sighed inwardly, while lowering her head to look at her own right arm. “Can I become that strong too?” As a Mutant, stronger than Xenospecies themselves. Could she do such a thing too?

Whoosh!

The surrounding Xenospecies also pounced at this moment, and their target was not Cheng Xiaomei at all. Clearly, as Xenospecies, they were very good at distinguishing the strong from the weak among opponents.

“Stay away from him!” Cheng Xiaomei instantly came back to herself. Seeing all the Xenospecies pounce toward Su Lifeng, she immediately shouted in anxious reflex. Almost at the same time as her shout left her mouth, her right arm abruptly lengthened, and the spikes on it stabbed out. In the blink of an eye, they wrapped around one of the Xenospecies.

“Ah!” Cheng Xiaomei swung her arm with force, and that Xenospecies flew out, smashing into another Xenospecies. The spikes pulled out of its body, but no blood flowed from the wounds they left behind. On the contrary, that Xenospecies’s body seemed to become somewhat shriveled, as if the blood inside it had been sucked away by Cheng Xiaomei’s spikes.

Hearing Cheng Xiaomei’s shout, Su Lifeng swept the corner of his vision over her, then turned his gaze back to the female Xenospecies in front of him.

She was still struggling desperately and screaming, but not only was her true body being forced out, even her skin shell had been smashed by Su Lifeng’s punch and was slowly beginning to dry up and decay, as if its vitality had been scattered in an instant and it had rapidly begun to age.

Perhaps it was precisely because of this that she could not even actively separate from her skin shell to escape this pain. Her current true body was more like it was being forcibly pulled out bit by bit by Su Lifeng.

“I said, you’re the experimental material.” Facing the female Xenospecies’s gaze full of rage, Su Lifeng spoke with a calm expression.

“Ah! Ah!!!” Under the condition of being firmly pinned by the Bone Wings, this female Xenospecies suffered in agony for two full minutes before her true body finally separated from the skin shell. Aside from a small portion of the true body entering Su Lifeng’s body, the rest of the corpse of the true body rapidly became a mass of withered Black Threads.

“What was absorbed was all of its energy. The remaining stuff is its… waste, I suppose.” For a moment, Su Lifeng truly could not find a suitable description. If he had absorbed it normally, this portion of waste would have rotted together with the skin shell.

“What a waste. I wanted to reuse it, maybe bring it back for Shen Fei.” That was what he said, but the result of experimenting with the Exoskeleton just now had actually already satisfied Su Lifeng greatly. With just one punch, he had killed an E-class Xenospecies. Although that had happened while the opponent was completely unprepared, Su Lifeng was confident that even if she had been prepared beforehand, under the dual assault of the Exoskeleton and Bone Wings, this Xenospecies would still have had no chance of surviving before him.

“At most, it would let you live five minutes longer.” Su Lifeng glanced at the female skin shell slowly rotting and collapsing in front of him and thought.

Cheng Xiaomei had also dealt with several ordinary Xenospecies by this time. After Su Lifeng made a move and quickly finished off the remaining Xenospecies, he grabbed Cheng Xiaomei at once. “Go.”

Although this place was not very close to the main street, there was no guarantee that the female Xenospecies’s screams had not carried out. Leaving the scene quickly was the most important thing.

Sure enough, not long after Su Lifeng and Cheng Xiaomei left, soldiers arrived at the scene.

Looking at the Xenospecies corpses all over the ground, especially that female Xenospecies whose eyes bulged and whose death was miserable, as well as that male Xenospecies who looked frightening at a glance but had been taken care of with one slash, the expressions on these soldiers’ faces were rather complicated.

However, the one with the most complicated expression was a young soldier who looked like a captain. He wore a special operations uniform and had a leather jacket over it. After staring at the corpses for a while, he suddenly walked forward, crouched in front of the female Xenospecies corpse, and used a dagger to pick up those Black Threads for a look. “The one who screamed was her, right? Take this back for an autopsy.” He tossed the Black Threads directly at a soldier’s feet.

That soldier hesitated, then asked, “Captain Yu, is… is that necessary?”

“I said just call me Yu Zai. I don’t know how to lead a team.” Yu Zai said this, and seeing that none of the soldiers responded, he could not help sighing. Then he continued, “I suspect this Xenospecies was at least above F-class, perhaps even E-class. What kind of death would make her scream?”

“E-class…” These special operations soldiers all drew in a breath of cold air at once.

But some people still did not understand the concept of an E-class Xenospecies very clearly. One of them asked in some confusion, “So, does that mean even you, Captain Yu, couldn’t make her scream?”

When he asked this, subtle changes appeared on the faces of the other soldiers. From the way they looked at Yu Zai, one could tell that deep within their eyes, there was wariness.

Yu Zai, however, seemed not to care. He gave a dry cough, tugged up the leg of his pants, revealed something like an electronic watch strapped to his leg, and said, “You don’t have to be so afraid, do you? I’m fully equipped with a monitor, a listening device, and a detector, and there are all of you, who are called subordinates but are really guards. Besides, I eat rabbits. In the Mutant world, that counts as vegetarian. Moreover, as the first Mutant put into use, I shoulder the mission of letting all brothers who have undergone mutation see the light of day again! For the sake of such a lofty goal, I’m begging you to trust me, all right?”

Yet still no one answered…

“…In short, not only could I not make her scream, I couldn’t beat her at all. At most, I could have fought that one.” Yu Zai glanced at the wooden-faced man’s corpse, then ignored everyone’s incredulous looks, clapped his hands, and stood up. “Ningnan is not simple. All right, clean this up. I’ll keep going out onto the streets to help you identify Xenospecies.”

“Is there really a Mutant who can beat Xenospecies into this state? If there’s a chance, I really want to meet him.” Yu Zai turned his head to look at the alley that was already empty and could not help sighing with emotion.

Meanwhile, Su Lifeng led Cheng Xiaomei in a circle through the greenbelt, then casually slipped into a storefront and changed clothes. After confirming no one had followed them and that there were no other Xenospecies trailing them, they headed toward the place they had agreed on with Xiang Qianyan…