Ground Spike

Without the slime's scent to conceal him, Li Wei was attacked by a fog monster after moving about thirty meters away from the supermarket.

Another grotesque creature emerged as a shadow in the fog, its crab-claw-like arms reaching for him.

His hands transformed into claws as he raised them to block the creature's two massive pincers. Then he yanked it toward himself. The enormous monster, over five meters tall, was instantly dragged down, its ugly, bizarre head slamming into the ground with a heavy crash.

Though they were only thirty meters apart, the fog muffled the sound so thoroughly that the anxious people in the supermarket could not hear a thing. They could only feel a faint tremor beneath their feet.

His claws pierced the monster's head and torso. Blood-red threads spread upward, instantly assimilating and absorbing it.

Li Wei looked at the Key and found that the energy increase had exceeded his expectations. It had risen from 11.34% to 18.88%. The creature's biomass content had truly lived up to its size; it was exceptionally plentiful.

But he did not linger to lure in and eliminate more monsters. Instead, he shifted into flight mode, beat his wings, and flew into the air.

As he ascended, chilling winds howled around him. Flocks of strange birds appeared in broad daylight and tried to attack him, only to be slaughtered and absorbed.

Only after rising to nearly a hundred meters did he fly beyond the fog's effective range. The fog seemed to have grown much larger.

A blazing sun hung in the sky, dazzlingly bright as it pierced the fog's veil. It was like stepping from hell into heaven; everything seemed so beautiful and peaceful.

The sun was still warm, birds still flew through the sky, and more than a dozen American military helicopters were still in the air. The world had not changed. There was simply now a patch of fog below that did not belong to this world.

After climbing high enough, Li Wei looked down. White fog churned beneath him, making it impossible to see any buildings or facilities through it.

But he did not need to search for a route bit by bit. He only had to fly toward the helicopters circling in the distance.

More than a dozen Black Hawk helicopters and several Apache attack helicopters circled in the air, occasionally firing unguided rockets at the ground below.

They were the forces America had dispatched to clean up this mess. Aside from the aerial units, a large number of armored forces were fighting below, dealing with the monsters that had climbed through windows into their world.

Besides providing fire support, many Black Hawk helicopters were carrying large quantities of equipment and supplies, responsible for delivering them toward the locations where green signal flares had been fired.

In this battle where they could not see a thing, they could only rely on this relatively primitive method of warfare.

If the fog had not blocked radio transmissions, they could have used carpet bombing or overwhelming firepower to wipe out the enemy.

Moreover, the higher-ups still refused to give up on the other world. They would not allow them to use overly powerful firepower and destroy the underground base.

The soldiers aboard the helicopters looked miserable. Staring at the fog below, where nothing could be seen, they cursed the higher-ups under their breath.

They had long heard that the higher-ups were capitalists without any bottom line, while the scientists were brainless lunatics. Whatever those two groups came up with, the military had to clean up afterward.

When they enlisted, they had thought those were merely rumors. Who would have thought that something would happen after only half a year?

Thinking about it now, those rumors that had spread around were probably all true!

"Number Six! Number Six! A monster is approaching from six o'clock! Take evasive action!"

An urgent call came through the radio headset. Hearing that a monster was approaching, the pilot and copilot were both momentarily stunned. Only when they looked toward six o'clock did the headset erupt with shouts from the rest of the crew.

Then they saw a gray-black monstrous bird flying toward the helicopter from their six o'clock position!

"Shit! Is that the monster?"

"Turn and open fire! Fire!"

"Fire!"

Knowing that monsters lurked within the fog, the helicopter formation had never lowered its guard. In an instant, they adjusted their guns and fired the aircraft-mounted cannons at the rapidly approaching "monster."

Faced with the dense barrage, Li Wei handled it with ease. Having regained special means of observation such as Pulse Sensing, he effortlessly evaded the formation's fire coverage.

He did not rely solely on his wings to fly. Against the hail of bullets, he could execute rapid ninety-degree turns, leaving the pilots' scalps tingling.

They fired thousands of rounds, yet not a single bullet hit him!

Li Wei did not bother arguing with them. He dove straight into the white fog and vanished from the helicopter formation's sight.

The moment he descended, he became a blind man without Pulse Sensing again and was nearly blown away by a shell that grazed his scalp.

His auditory system picked up sounds that could not be heard outside the white fog—gunfire, artillery fire, screams, and wails... He had fallen from heaven into hell once more.

He completed his transformation dozens of meters above the ground. Li Wei turned his hands into claws and glided toward the source of the explosions.

Before he had gotten very close, a massive beast charged out of the fog. Enduring shells fired from who knew where, it staggered all the way toward the gliding Li Wei.

Seeing this, Li Wei ended his flight and used a midair shockwave to accelerate. His entire body landed atop the beast's body, which was covered in enormous curled tentacles.

The suckers on his feet latched onto the beast's body, and he quickly discovered that this giant beast was genuinely pathetic.

It had seven long, powerful legs, yet it was astonishingly slow. The gray flesh covering its body offered no protection whatsoever; a light swipe could slice through its tissues. Those ugly-looking tentacles existed only to make it seem mysterious. In reality, they were completely useless.

After confirming that this giant beast was good for nothing but its size, Li Wei decisively switched to armor form and used a skill for the first time—Ground Spike!

After condensing a large amount of biomass and virus and allowing them to brew briefly, his hands became wrapped in threads containing vast amounts of biomass and virus.

He crouched and drove both hands fiercely into the beast's back. Biomass and virus were injected into its body together. In less than a second, countless sharp spikes expanded a hundredfold, and hundreds of sharp black spikes spun as they drilled out through the beast's surface.

A long, profound cry came from some unknown part of the giant beast. Then, the seven-legged creature was killed by the hundreds of sharp spikes blasting out from within its body, and its massive form began to tilt.

After shredding the beast's body, the spinning biological spikes transformed into countless tentacles that spread outward. Upon touching the beast's flesh, blacklight displayed its greed, endlessly breaking down and assimilating the flesh into biomass that flowed back to Li Wei.

The Key's energy surged wildly at that moment, instantly reaching 31.56%. Li Wei nearly became bloated from the sudden influx of energy and could not even maintain his weight.

He jumped down from the giant beast's corpse, now reduced to a shriveled sack of skin. The moment Li Wei landed, a cloud of dust exploded around him. With a huge amount of biomass accumulating inside him before he could digest it, his weight skyrocketed to nearly a thousand tons.

Even though he had fallen from only a dozen or so meters, the contact area caused the ground beneath his feet to crack across a wide stretch.

He realized that blacklight's method of storing biomass was rather crude. Perhaps he should change to a different way of storing energy.