Grilling Taotie

After turning invisible and leaving home, Wang Lei used the thrusters on his Exoskeleton to leap from rooftop to rooftop across the city.

Although this Exoskeleton could not break through the atmosphere on its own, it was capable of short-term flight. However, Wang Lei chose to travel by jumping between the city's skyscrapers in order to conserve its energy.

After all, none of Earth's existing energy sources could recharge the Exoskeleton. The only way to charge it was for Wang Lei to exchange Energy Points in the system for the corresponding Energy Batteries. He had to save wherever he could.

But this also meant that Wang Lei's journey to Feiliu District Airport was not as fast as he had imagined. His shop was located in the heart of the city, while Feiliu District Airport had been built in the suburbs.

There were more than twenty kilometers between them. Even though Wang Lei had flown for half the journey, the sun had already set by the time he reached the vicinity of the airport.

At this point, Wang Lei no longer needed directions. Explosions rang out from the airport, while police cars, military vehicles, and tanks converged from all directions. One look was enough to tell him that Taotie's advance soldier was already rampaging through the airport.

Wang Lei no longer begrudged the energy expenditure. He directly activated flight mode, flew over the terminal building, and rose into the skies above the airport.

Looking down from the air, he saw a mech that looked somewhat similar to his own armor, though its plating was clearly much thicker. It was using laser weapons to slaughter the soldiers gathering below.

Through the Exoskeleton's built-in scanning function, Wang Lei could clearly tell that there was no living creature inside the mech—or rather, the mech itself was the living creature. Eighty percent of its body had been replaced by machinery. Only its brain and part of its skeleton remained original.

Moreover, this mech's technological level did not seem to be rated highly by the Interstellar Peace Corporation. It was merely the handiwork of an ordinary Spacefaring Civilization. It could not even harness Imaginary Number Energy.

But Wang Lei immediately scanned Qi Lin arriving on the scene as well. It seemed he had arrived just in time—at least a little earlier than Qi Lin. This girl could now avoid the suffering of having her chest pierced by a laser.

Come to think of it, Qi Lin could barely be considered his girlfriend now, right? If he could spare someone a little pain, then he should. So he opened the thrusters to full power and charged toward Qi Lin at maximum speed. As he remembered, only seconds after she got out of the car, Taotie's mech would single her out and attack her from afar.

Sure enough, by the time Wang Lei reached Qi Lin's side, the girl had gone numb from watching Taotie's mech take out the arriving helicopters and tanks one shot at a time. She was frozen stiff, unable to move.

Facing the blue laser shooting toward her, Qi Lin felt only regret. Regret that she had not properly said goodbye to her parents before leaving home that day. Regret that her young life was about to end here. And regret that she had been too reserved. If this was going to happen, then even if Wang Lei did not confess, couldn't she have confessed first? Now she was going to die a virgin.

But just as Qi Lin closed her eyes and prepared to meet death, a wave of heat suddenly rose before her. A distinctly synthesized mechanical voice said, "Officer, don't just stand there like an idiot. Hurry up and find somewhere to hide. And see if any of your comrades are still alive. Save whoever you can."

Hearing the voice, Qi Lin opened her eyes and found a somewhat familiar back standing before her. Clad in a highly futuristic suit of armor, he was blocking the successive laser shots aimed at her.

Wang Lei was barely holding on himself. Taotie's lasers were more powerful than he had expected. After taking three shots head-on, the Energy Shield built into this mass-produced Exoskeleton was frantically sounding warnings. One more shot would probably shatter the shield. After that, he would have to rely on the Exoskeleton's own durability.

Wang Lei had no interest in taking a laser with his body after the Energy Shield was destroyed. If the Exoskeleton could not withstand it, then he would be the one getting shot straight through.

Fortunately, Qi Lin immediately hid behind a police car after hearing him. Meanwhile, Taotie's attention was entirely drawn to Wang Lei, clad head to toe in high-tech armor. It had no time to care about the ordinary humans scattering around the area.

Seeing this, Wang Lei took the initiative to fly up, dodging several more laser shots from Taotie.

After being shot at for so long, Wang Lei had figured it out. The Laser Gun in Taotie's hand was likely a sniper type. It could only fire once every three seconds or so, which explained its terrifying range.

Qi Lin's previous position had been at least two kilometers away from Taotie, and that clearly had not even been the weapon's maximum output.

The proof was that when targeting Wang Lei now, its firing frequency had noticeably slowed. It took nearly ten seconds to fire each shot.

As for the power... looking at the laser beam, now three times thicker than before, Wang Lei did not dare take another hit head-on. Relying on the Exoskeleton's superior technological sophistication to predict the firing angles, he easily twisted and darted through the air, evading several shots.

But endlessly dodging without attacking was no solution. After evading the second charged shot, Wang Lei decisively activated his invisibility function again. In an instant, he vanished from Taotie's sight.

Now it was Taotie's turn to panic. Though it could not understand why a civilization that had not even reached the Spacefaring level possessed armor with such advanced technology, its opponent's sudden disappearance clearly did not mean he had run away. It was some kind of stealth method.

However, the repeated alerts in Taotie's mind—stating that the corresponding target could not be located—filled it with an immense sense of danger.

Its survival instincts made Taotie decide to retreat first. It had only come here for reconnaissance and probing anyway, and it had already acquired the data it wanted. It had to preserve itself and report to the king that Earth possessed individual combat armor more advanced than their own technology.

But Taotie wanted to leave, while Wang Lei had no intention of letting it go. A fireball suddenly appeared out of thin air and blasted the Taotie that was preparing to take off from the sky down to the ground.

Naturally, Wang Lei had thrown that fireball. Back when he had exchanged for the God's Eye, he had thought that he would be able to freely control flames and become a superhero. But dreams were beautiful, while reality was harsh. There was a reason the God's Eye only cost 1,000 Energy Points.

It could indeed allow Wang Lei to control the corresponding element, but the amount he could control and the actual power he could produce depended on his own proficiency.

And what proficiency had Wang Lei possessed back then? The God's Eye's only use had been helping him better control the temperature of the stove flames.

But five years had passed, and Wang Lei's mastery of the fire element was no longer what it had been. Although he could only control the flames to around 1,000 degrees at most, still within the realm of ordinary fire, condensing them into a fireball and launching it was no weaker than taking an RPG head-on.

Although Taotie's armor had strong resistance against explosions of that level, it could not negate the impact. So it was still blasted away.

And naturally, Wang Lei followed the principle of kicking someone while they were down. He rushed forward, planted a foot on Taotie's back, and rode it along the ground like a skateboard.

Then, before it could get back up, he grabbed the armor at the back of its neck and yanked hard. The immense strength augmented by the Exoskeleton tore off a piece of armor. Without hesitation, Wang Lei gathered fire elemental energy and poured flames directly into the gap.

Clearly, Taotie's interior was far less durable than its outer armor. After Wang Lei poured flames into it, fire soon began to burst from every opening in its body.

Only when the system gave him a notification that he had received Energy Points for the kill did Wang Lei stop. Then, seeing the devastation all around him, he quickly activated invisibility and fled before the military could surround him.