Chapter 49

Raymond: "!!!"

Inside his mecha, Raymond's pupils contracted and his heart pounded like a drum at the sight.

Qin Su had descended like a god and forcibly snatched his life from the hands of death. No one could be more excited than Raymond himself! From this day forward, he would allow no one to defy Qin Su. If Qin Su told him to go west, he would never so much as glance east!

Qin Su had dropped from the sky and decisively intervened at the critical moment between life and death, allowing Raymond to escape with his life. The sight sent every viewer, both on and off the screen, into an indescribable frenzy.

"!!!"

When the comic showed the scene, the screen filled with so many exclamation marks that viewers had to turn off the bullet comments temporarily to see what was happening.

[!!! Holy shit, that was possible? My heart can finally settle down.]

[That's great, it's Qin Su! We're saved!]

[That was so close and exciting! I love it! I, Lin, swear to follow Boss 1 to the death!]

[Waaah, this is so moving. Thank you, really, thank you, Boss 1, for saving our Zihan. From today on, I'll strike wherever Boss 1 points!]

[Peerless beauty and strength in one person. Kill me now!]

[I admit it, I'm spineless. (Kneels on one knee) (Pulls out a ring box and opens it)]

[Help, he's already this handsome. What am I going to do in the future?!]

[Deal with it.]

[There's nothing else to do but keep slaughtering everyone, I guess.]

Too excited to speak for the moment, they nevertheless kept their burning gazes fixed on that streak of silver light.

"Jeffrey, come here." The instant Qin Su leaped out of the "tiger's jaws," he gave an order to Jeffrey, who had narrowly escaped disaster thanks to Raymond's collision. Pushing his piloting to the limit, Qin Su had no time to read the bullet comments.

Every second was precious to Qin Su now. He had to get the two stragglers away as quickly as possible, or all his earlier preparations would be for nothing.

The rest of Team 1 had already retreated toward Cen Yuan. Only Jeffrey, who had nearly met with disaster, and Raymond, who had saved him, were lagging behind and were closest to Qin Su.

Raymond's warship had been destroyed and fallen into the water, and Qin Su needed his mecha. Raymond could only leave aboard Jeffrey's warship.

Jeffrey had barely managed to steady his warship and was still a little dazed. When Qin Su's cold, sharp voice rang in his ear, his instinct to obey orders made him immediately pilot the warship swiftly toward Qin Su.

Almost the instant Jeffrey approached, Qin Su gave him another order in a low voice. "Catch him."

"Roger!"

Having recovered, Jeffrey shouted his response. He stood on the warship with his arms outstretched, ready to catch him.

Whatever Qin Su wanted to do, following his orders couldn't go wrong!

Immediately afterward, Qin Su used Z-X307's mechanical arm to toss Raymond in a precise arc into Jeffrey's hands.

"..."

Raymond blinked as he was transferred from the mecha's arms to those of his childhood friend.

At the same time, Qin Su swiftly emerged from Z-X307 and landed precisely beside Jeffrey like a flash of lightning.

The warship was too small. If the mecha stepped onto it, Jeffrey's entire warship would plunge straight into the water, so Qin Su had to leave the mecha for the moment.

Jeffrey: "!"

Raymond: "!!"

The two stared blankly for a moment at Qin Su, who had landed in front of them less than a second after Raymond.

They had never expected Qin Su to leave his mecha at a time like this.

Raymond almost immediately jumped out of Jeffrey's arms and stood up straight.

A sharp pain shot through the flesh grazed by the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's teeth. He involuntarily sucked in a breath, his face turning pale.

[What's going on?]

[Is he going to leave on the warship with them?]

[What are you thinking? They haven't used the "mountain of explosives" they worked so hard to build yet.]

Before anyone could figure out Qin Su's intentions, he landed steadily in front of Jeffrey and Raymond after leaping down from above. His gaze fell on Raymond's torn inner special protective suit and outer mechanical combat suit, and he gave Raymond a concise order. "Take it off."

The plan was ninety-five percent complete. Jeffrey was in a sorry state and had even been slow to respond to his order. The two of them were at the rear, and Jeffrey's warship had developed some problems as well. Who knew whether something might happen to them on their way to the spaceship Cen Yuan was piloting?

Although a small accident had occurred during the plan, its overall course remained unchanged. He still had about fifteen seconds to carry out a minor branch of the original plan:

Take off his outer combat suit and dispel the rumors about himself.

Before Raymond had even processed the order, his body instinctively obeyed, and he quickly stripped off his torn outer combat suit.

No sooner had Raymond taken it off than Qin Su's undamaged combat suit came flying toward him and covered his head.

The instant Raymond grabbed the suit, he caught sight of Qin Su's ordinary inner combat suit, no different from those worn by the other students.

"!"

Sure enough, just as everyone had guessed, with Qin Su's heaven-defying strength, he didn't need any special modifications to his combat suit to utterly crush them all.

"Go."

Qin Su tossed his outer combat suit to Raymond and gave the two of them the order. Without pausing, he glanced at the communication channel, where all the students except Raymond and Jeffrey had already been picked up by Cen Yuan's spaceship.

Cen Yuan was also diligently making his way over to pick the two of them up.

Without hesitation, Qin Su gave Cen Yuan his final order for this mission. "Cen Yuan, once you've picked them up, take the spaceship to maximum speed and head for Viterra Tower 5286 Jump Point at full speed. Don't look back."

Every word was an order from Qin Su that brooked no defiance.

He had timed everything down to the last second. It would be bad if the shock wave arriving a few minutes later shattered the spaceship and sent everyone aboard plunging into the water. All his calculations would be wasted.

What about you?

The thought flashed through Cen Yuan's mind almost immediately. He bit his lip and obeyed. "Roger!"

[!!!]

[Who said Qin Su was getting special treatment?!]

[I knew it! Qin Su is so strong that he doesn't need to waste effort on his combat suit!]

[Shouldn't the point be that Qin Su gave his own combat suit to Raymond?!]

[Well, congratulations to Raymond. (Eye roll)]

As he brushed past Jeffrey and Raymond, Qin Su, having finished giving his orders, reached out and deftly grabbed the damaged outer combat suit from Raymond's hand. Without looking back, he strode toward the mecha hovering in wait for him, draping Raymond's torn suit over himself as he went.

The bloodstained suit traced an arc through the air and fell over Qin Su's body. At that instant, he used his Optical Brain to adjust Z-X307's position, then leaped neatly into the mecha.

The silver mecha seemed to carry a certain resolve as it headed toward the Jump Point at full speed, never looking back.

[Help... If it's really what I guessed at first, Qin Su knows the path ahead leads only to death, that he's certain to die. So anything on him would be wasted, and he simply gave his intact combat suit to Raymond and took the damaged one to meet his death! Waaah, no!]

[That's the truth.]

[Me too... I have a worse and worse feeling about this.]

[Didn't you notice? Qin Su's departing figure seemed weighed down and oppressed.]

[Spit, spit, spit! Don't jinx it!!!]

[No matter how strong Qin Su is, he's still flesh and blood. Now he doesn't even have a normal combat suit, and the one he's wearing is damaged. There's no way he can withstand the force of nearly a thousand tons of explosives detonating. That's also why he told Cen Yuan to leave at full speed after picking everyone up. That highly upvoted comment earlier was right. From the moment Qin Su discovered what was underwater, he was already prepared to die.]

[I suspect the new character has a white moonlight death script.]

[What kind of white moonlight lifts hundreds of kilograms bare-handed?]

The standard-issue combat suits were identical and completely interchangeable precisely so that, when someone died, the next person still alive could strip off the suit and put it on, preserving human lives as much as possible.

In any case, having successfully entered the mecha within the allotted time, Qin Su thought that his name was clear from now on.

Everyone would think, "He's so ridiculously strong that he doesn't need a special combat suit to give him extra protection."

Jeffrey, who knew what had crossed his mind, carried out Qin Su's order and piloted the warship at full speed toward Cen Yuan's location with Raymond aboard. All the while, his nose prickled and his eyes grew wet.

Seeing Qin Su's resolute departing figure, as though he were facing death without fear, Raymond, who had obeyed the order and put on Qin Su's outer combat suit, thought of the same thing Jeffrey had. He had wanted to seize control of the warship and go back for Qin Su.

He should have died long ago, but Qin Su had saved him. He couldn't stand by and watch Qin Su die. If there was no way to change the outcome, it would be his honor to die alongside Qin Su.

But there was only one warship, and doing that would drag Jeffrey to his death too.

"Raymond, come to your senses!"

Jeffrey shouted sternly. Having grown up together, he didn't even need to think to know what Raymond was thinking from the look he gave him.

Although... thinking about it, there was no way out of this situation, that was Qin Su. If it was Qin Su... he could definitely... definitely do it... right?

No matter how he tried to comfort himself, Jeffrey's eyes grew wetter, and the mist was quickly cleared away by his helmet.

"...Okay," Raymond answered, swallowing hard.

Once Jeffrey entered Cen Yuan's spaceship, Raymond would immediately seize control of the warship.

Raymond had made up his mind to return the combat suit he was wearing to Qin Su, who might still survive given his terrifying abilities. He hadn't fully fastened it, so it remained inactive.

With the students no longer holding them back, the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's enormous tentacles converged from afar on the central portion rising farther and farther out of the water.

At 23:57 in the Comic World, Qin Su reached the Jump Point platform.

Inside the mecha, where no one could see him, Qin Su silently injected himself with five full doses of K-110 at once. After spending Life Points to activate the comic capture camera, he leaped out of the mecha and landed.

He strode up to the Explosives Depot. His reason was a second away from spiraling out of control, and before his soul left his body, Qin Su had no time to hesitate. He placed both hands on the fulcrum used to build the depot and heaved with all his strength.

In light as bright as day, the tall young man lifted nearly a thousand tons of explosives with both hands in an instant. The comic camera froze on the scene.

[!!!]

[The authorities have always delivered!]

[Terrifying indeed!]

[Waaah, I can't take it. Just thinking about his impending death, I can't be happy at all right now.]

[Seriously, why are people always jinxing it? Don't borrow trouble before the end, okay? Aren't you tired of steering the discussion like this?]

[To put it bluntly, isn't he just a fictional character? Do you really need to get so emotionally invested?]

[Please, can you not pour cold water on something other people love?]

After Qin Su lifted the nearly thousand tons of explosives, the terrifying illusion that his blood was boiling and about to burst out of his vessels, the sensation that his body was so light it might ascend, as though his entire body had become a soul, faded as his soul slowly sank back into his body. His crimson pupils gradually returned to black.

Qin Su secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

With Mutian Tuo as a data reference, five doses had indeed done the trick without fail.

At 23:58 in the Comic World, with no time to waste, Qin Su held up the mountain of "bombs" bound together, turned, and strode toward Z-X307 waiting at the edge of the platform...

At the same time, the approaching spaceship and warship met on the way. Before Raymond could seize control of the warship, Jeffrey hefted a gun barrel and knocked him unconscious with a hard blow.

The moment he knocked Raymond out, Jeffrey hoisted him up and quickly entered the spaceship. The warship was also put away at that moment.

Following Qin Su's orders, Cen Yuan concentrated fully on piloting the spaceship and flew away at full speed.

Inside the spaceship, Jeffrey laid Raymond's body on a chair and looked up to see every student staring intently at the live feed in the middle of the spaceship, which showed the Jump Point from the maximum long-range viewing distance.

The visor helmet revealed only Qin Su's cold, sharp black eyes, so familiar to them.

Knowing full well that the situation was extremely dangerous and that death... was right before him, Qin Su lifted the nearly thousand tons of "assembled bombs" without a ripple of emotion. His eyes calm, he turned and stepped toward the edge of the platform without looking back.

The Kisslip Tree Armadillo's tentacles churned in the water, while its central body rose above the surface, turning the former whirlpool into what looked like a flood pouring outward from the center and washing over the Jump Point platform again and again.

In the footage, several tentacles seven or eight meters in diameter had already wrapped themselves around the support columns beneath the Jump Point platform.

With every step Qin Su took, the Jump Point platform shook.

Everything hung by a thread.

Even the dullest person, witnessing this scene, would suddenly come to their senses and guess how elaborate a plan Qin Su had set in motion from the beginning until now, what he intended to do, and how... from the moment the plan began, Qin Su had already put his own life and death out of mind...

All of this made Qin Su's greatness stand out even more.

"Is there really... no other way to save him?"

Someone in the crowd suddenly said those words, breaking the suffocating silence.

Soon, someone asked quietly, "If Cen Yuan turns the spaceship around now, is there still a chance to turn things around?"

Hearing the voice on the channel, Cen Yuan, who had to use his mental power intensely to keep the spaceship moving at full speed, wiped the sweat from his forehead and rejected the idea in a dejected voice. "No."

"If we go back, all we can do is die alongside Qin Su. We won't be able to do anything else."

Cen Yuan's words brought the atmosphere down to freezing once again.

"Qin Su could have just left with us and ignored everything... Anyway, sooner or later... the upper-year students would come back and take over. We only needed to leave everything alone... As long as Qin Su decided to leave it alone, he could have gotten away safely just like us."

"The last time..." He Muzhi clenched his hands and stared at the footage on the screen, which grew increasingly blurry as the spaceship got farther away. Suppressing his emotions, he said, "When the upper-year students joined forces to hunt down a Kisslip Tree Armadillo only a third the size of the one before us, nine warships crashed and seven people died."

"To this day, no one has ever faced a Kisslip Tree Armadillo this large and returned with everyone alive."

"No matter who comes, casualties are inevitable."

"There's nothing Qin Su doesn't know. One person's death, or the inevitable deaths of even more people—as soon as he learned what was underwater, Qin Su chose the former and decided to bear it alone."

He Muzhi's quiet account plunged the cabin into suffocating silence once more.

"Sacrificing Qin Su alone in exchange for..." Sophia swept her steaming eyes over everyone present. "Our safety, and that of the upper-year students who may be on their way here too. Is it worth it?"

"How could it be worth it?"

"What are we? We're nothing."

"Qin Su... is far more important than any one of us. No... even all of us put together can't compare to the significance of Qin Su's existence."

He Muzhi took a deep breath and interrupted them.

"But Qin Su thinks it's worth it."

"Perhaps..." He Muzhi took a deep breath and spoke with a sliver of hope. "Perhaps Qin Su has a way that we can't understand with our current abilities?"

Those words plunged the cabin into deathly silence. No one could relax.

They absolutely hoped such a way existed, but... reason told them the chances were slim.

[Stop, my eyes are peeing. (Crying)]

[Why? You're killing him off because he's popular? @Author]

[Waaah, if I could choose, I'd rather Baby 1 didn't have such a strong sense of responsibility and didn't take on such a heavy burden.]

[I burst into tears. From now on, whether it's the cinnabar mole over my heart or the white moonlight in my memory that will never fade, there will only be Boss 1!]

[I can't bear to watch.]

At 23:59 in the Comic World, Qin Su stood at the edge of the Jump Point, holding up the explosives.

At the platform's edge was Z-X307's shoulder, which it had brought in front of him.

Under the Jump Point's bright lights, the cold, spacious mechanical arm gave off a chill gleam.

There had been no wind over these waters, but now the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's furious, frenzied thrashing against the surface stirred gusts of cold wind heavy with a foul stench.

Qin Su stood facing the wind, his dark eyes lowered as he silently watched the scene in the water.

The enormous Kisslip Tree Armadillo sprawled like a net spread out in every direction. At its center was a gaping, bloody maw filled with fearsome fangs.

It looked savage and terrifying, yet it was also the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's most vulnerable spot.

It was also the ultimate objective of all his plans.

His classmates had completed their part and withdrawn. Now...

It was his turn.

Qin Su raised his eyes and stepped onto Z-X307's shoulder, using his Optical Brain to send the mecha skyward at maximum thrust.

At 23:59:53 in the Comic World, Qin Su reached the optimal position. Facing the cold wind with a brash, domineering air, he hurled Bomb Mountain downward with one hand.

The mountain-sized Bomb Mountain fell in an arc toward the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's abyss-like maw, which rose above the water.

Standing on the mecha's shoulder, Qin Su looked down and watched as the Explosives Depot landed squarely in the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's mouth.

It would take two seconds for the Particle Pulse Cannons' fire to reach Bomb Mountain.

At 23:59:58, Qin Su seized the moment. In the instant the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's black-hole-like maw snapped shut, he fired every Particle Pulse Cannon on Z-X307 at Bomb Mountain with unstoppable force...

Time's up.

As he watched the particle pulses' light make contact with Bomb Mountain, the corners of Qin Su's lips involuntarily curved upward.

Finally...

It was over.

The Comic World's real world.

"Goodbye." The moment Qin Su bid farewell to the Kisslip Tree Armadillo and heard the violent explosion, a familiar white light flashed before his eyes.

The three minutes of King Time also reached their final second.

One moment, Qin Su's body had been "strong enough to lift a mountain." The next, it toppled straight backward.

"..."

He hadn't expected that one day he would experience what it meant to be "young enough to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow."

Boom!!!!!!!

At the same time, nearly a thousand tons of explosives reacted violently in an instant, and an earth-shattering explosion thundered across the world.

In a flash, heaven and earth were thrown into chaos, the sky darkened, and towering waves surged.

The Kisslip Tree Armadillo's enormous body shattered, its pieces blasting skyward amid a haze of blood, and the Viterra Tower 5285 Jump Point platform collapsed with a thunderous crash.

Everyone's vision was overwhelmed, and the world briefly went physically blank. The tall young man who had stood on the mecha's shoulder, his face expressionless as he brought all this about, was swallowed by the blankness sweeping across heaven and earth...

When the massive shock wave overturned the spaceship and sent it out of control, the final image froze forever on the instant the violent explosion swallowed everything.

Cen Yuan, who had been piloting the spaceship at full intensity all this time, bled from his ears and nose. His head buzzed, and he collapsed to the floor.

He Muzhi hastily wiped away the blood dripping from his nose and, amid the deafening roar and blankness, quickly took control of the spaceship from Cen Yuan, who had exhausted his mental power.

After the world-shattering explosion, who knew how much time had passed? When everything finally fell quiet again, the boundless water was strewn with chunks of flesh like mountains of meat, along with fangs that Bomb Mountain had blasted loose and sent flying in all directions, now lodged at angles in floating wood and chunks of flesh...

Several giant snakes caught the scent of food and converged on the waters from all directions, greedily and silently devouring the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's mangled flesh.

Across the water, the giant pythons' beautiful platinum scales intertwined, bloody and beautiful.

And Qin Su, who had brought about all this with his own hands, vanished without a trace in the earth-shaking explosion.

[Waaah, no! Give my baby 1 back!!!]

[They went this far?! Is he really dead, or is it a fake-out?]

[Baby Su clearly... he clearly could have stayed out of it. Waaah, I'll never forgive the Fourth Military Academy. (sobbing)]

[(Sobbing) Why was this update so heartbreaking? I'd rather the author stopped updating forever and left Boss 1 frozen in this moment for eternity than accept this tragic ending. Waaah.]

[I'll never love again!]

[Trash comic, I'm dropping it! I hate this world!]

[Type 1 to resurrect Boss 1!]