Bouncing Blade

This was an unexpected encounter.

There was no Nekomata, no knuckle-duster, and even the boss-killing weapon, the Beast Hunter, had been left on the tank.

The only weapon in Gao Gong's hands was a medium-sized blade of excellent quality.

However, he had figured out one thing: how the other side had found them.

Pheromone tracking.

The enemy must have marked some people's pheromones during the previous battle.

Then the new Reaper family had come after them.

Gao Gong took a deep breath and once again sank into the mental state of the Dark Night Warrior.

At the same time, he lightly pinched his collar.

That was the button for the Open Virtual Projection.

"How can you carry a blade on a rainy night without rain?"

The next moment, the surrounding scenery erupted into countless mosaics. Every time a mosaic passed, the scene around them underwent subtle changes.

It seemed real yet false, and false yet real, like watching an incredibly immersive 3D movie.

The difference was that they were playing the movie's protagonists.

Gloomy rain descended from the sky, layer upon layer of rain curtains falling between the man and the beast.

The Reaper Queen instinctively shook her body, trying to fling off the rain. Yet what confused her was that there was no sensation of rain?

The intelligence of a C-rank Radiant Beast was already no lower than that of an adult human.

But there were indeed plenty of middle-aged and elderly people who could not operate a smartphone.

It was not that their intelligence was insufficient, but that it conflicted with their behavioral patterns.

Gao Gong held the red blade as the miniature electric motors within his knees roared.

The Reaper Queen instantly went berserk. Her figure was like a tracking missile, and almost in the blink of an eye, she dove before Gao Gong.

"Thunder!"

The sky suddenly thundered. Lightning illuminated heaven and earth as bright as day, and pure-white electricity descended from the heavens, striking the Reaper Queen.

Although her instincts told her that the lightning rushing toward her was fake, she still instinctively turned, exposing the underside of her blade wings.

Gao Gong struck after the flash of lightning. The blade-light of the Red Unicorn and the falling white bolt formed an X perfectly.

[You dealt 35 damage to the Reaper Queen]

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 5% (1 stack)]

A ghastly bloody gash appeared across her abdomen.

One of the blade wings on the Queen's back suddenly shot out, extending nearly halfway, then slashed down at an angle with vicious force, like an ancient general wielding a Green Dragon Crescent Blade.

"Fire!"

Within the rain, Gao Gong seemed like an oil tank set ablaze. Orange-yellow flames burst from his body.

Steel Slash instinctively faltered.

The Reaper Queen fell into the stiffness period caused by a failed skill.

As if yanked violently, Gao Gong slid forward in a low sweep, holding his blade upright. It passed between the enemy's legs—where the female beast's reproductive organs were located, making it an absolute weak point.

[You dealt 46 damage to the Reaper Queen]

[You landed a critical hit on the enemy, damage x2]

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 10% (2 stacks)]

As the blade-light withdrew, Gao Gong flicked his wrist. The monomolecular wire claw embedded ahead snapped back. Amid the furious roar of rain, Gao Gong sprang up like a carp leaping over a gate, twisting his waist and abdomen with force. His upper body rotated nearly 180% in midair, and the blade-light followed the momentum, slashing diagonally across the back of the enemy's neck.

There was no armor there either.

[You dealt 54 damage to the Reaper Queen]

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 15% (3 stacks)]

The Reaper Queen let out a shrill, anguished scream.

Gao Gong had no intention of greedily pursuing another slash. He flung out his right hand and, relying on the claw's pulling force to violate the laws of physics, shifted three meters sideways.

Almost at the same time, a fierce wind struck from behind. All six blade wings on the Reaper Queen's back shot out. Her body spun violently in midair, forming a blade storm with a three-meter radius. Nothing remained intact wherever it passed. Countless iron-skinned trees thick enough for several people to wrap their arms around were severed at the waist, their cross-sections smooth as mirrors.

The storm's aftershocks shredded leaves and branches across dozens of meters, leaving blade marks everywhere.

Six-Round Slaughter Lv4: The six blades of the Reaper Queen's blade wings form a blade storm, dealing 300*6 damage within 3*3 meters and 10*6 splash damage within 10*10 meters.

If Gao Gong had been greedy for another slash just now, he would already have been dead.

"Let's get some BGM."

The next moment, amid the "violent storm," a cyberpunk-style song Gao Gong had heard in his previous life began to play.

Amid the wind and rain, the blades moved like shadows as two figures, one large and one small, crossed and fought in midair.

With the monomolecular wire claw's help, Gao Gong was like a nimble flea, striking and retreating at once, appearing and vanishing with every slash. Under Rainy Night with a Blade, his body could often perform movements that defied the laws of physics.

After being transformed by the Special Effects Generator, Gao Gong sometimes became a snake swimming through the trees. At other times, he split into three or four figures. The blade-light shifted unpredictably as well. With every slash, it either stretched to over a dozen meters or exploded into electronic mist.

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 20% (4 stacks)]

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 25% (5 stacks)]

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 30% (6 stacks)]

...

The Reaper Queen let out an irritated shriek. The other side was like a fly that simply could not be killed—despite being something she could crush with a single blow.

Moreover, she could clearly feel that the other's threat was increasing.

Her gaze swept around wildly, finally finding the irritating figure. She flung out her claw, which extended into more than a dozen segments. Each segment stirred a mass of electromagnetic light, spanning more than ten meters before seizing the figure hidden behind a tree.

A magnetic storm erupted between the claw's shadows.

Yet the strange sensation made her realize something was wrong. A small speaker exploded directly in the center of her palm.

The Manual Neural Disruptor, nicknamed the ultimate monster-pulling tool.

The next moment, Gao Gong appeared behind her. His blade-light struck the previous wound almost without hesitation.

[You dealt 76 damage to the Reaper Queen]

[Your attack inflicted the Rending effect]

[Your attack reduced the enemy's movement speed]

Gao Gong was like a master chef who never met force with force. Instead, he followed the grain and separated the flesh from the bones like Butcher Ding dissecting an ox.

He softly hummed a little tune over the psychedelic electronic music.

"Who is the living feed in the desert feeding machine?"

"Who is using their own bone marrow to lubricate the machine's joints?"

Gao Gong entered a strange state. The battle seemed to fall into a rhythm that belonged to him. No matter what move the enemy made, no matter how deadly the skill or how wide its range, he could always evade the danger in advance.

The rain grew heavier. The Special Effects Generator was turned up to its maximum, and the effects gradually began to distort. Raindrops became streams of snowmelt descending from the sky, falling on the tree trunks, into the branches and leaves, and onto the people.

Within the realistic, interactive concrete forest, the simulated bodies of predator and prey carried out their respective tasks.

"Who else is using their own flesh and blood to feed the machine?"

"Beautiful nerve fibers separated from the skull."

"Data is furious, electronics are hungry!"

The Reaper Queen suddenly opened her mouth. A violent mental shockwave swept in all directions, wiping away all the electronic illusions.

Gao Gong stood not far from her.

The Reaper Queen drove power through her legs. The next moment, a small crater exploded in the ground, accompanied by a sonic boom.

A long trail of white vapor streamed from the rear of her blade limb.

The sharp edge of the blade limb stopped three centimeters before the hilt of the Red Unicorn, having sunk three inches into it.

Gao Gong raised his blade at precisely the right moment, as if she was not chopping at him but at the blade itself.

[You comprehended the melee skill: Rebounding Blade Parry]

Rebounding Blade Parry Lv1: A melee weapon-blocking technique. When an enemy's attack is blocked by your weapon, there is a 17% chance of inflicting Stiffness and a 9% chance of dealing recoil damage.

For a heavyweight fighter like the Reaper Queen, however, neither probability was likely to occur.

She had finally caught the little bug. How could she let him off easily? She pressed her blade limb against him and pushed forward.

Gao Gong's ankles sank into the ground. The engines in his knees roared in succession, while the Red Unicorn creaked and groaned.

Yet the pressure on the Reaper Queen was also growing greater and greater. Her strength was nearly three times Gao Gong's, but in a place invisible to the naked eye, a thin monomolecular wire was hooked around a boulder behind her, and the fine line was growing tighter.

Taking advantage of the moment when the enemy's strength began to wane, Gao Gong suddenly exerted force with both arms. Using the Rebounding Blade Parry technique, he sent the opponent's blade limb flying upward. At the same time, the tip of his blade struck the ground, stained with blood.

[You inflicted Bleeding on the enemy, increasing attack power by 60% (12 stacks max)]

The effect was fully stacked!

The same slash now had weapon damage +25% Dark Night Warrior bonus +60% Frenzied Drinking.

A basic attack would definitely deal over a hundred damage.

That also meant Gao Gong's damage was no longer limited to trimming toenails.

While Gao Gong's condition improved, the Cable Tribe's situation was not looking good.

Previously, Little Woman had restrained three juvenile Reapers, which had kept the situation from deteriorating further.

However, Little Woman's mind control was only at the elementary level. Mechanical Possession had lasted less than five minutes and was already about to fail.

While under control, the juvenile Reapers would occasionally turn their heads and look at Little Woman with drooling eyes.

"Old geezer, do something! If you don't help us, I'll throw you out!"

Watching one tribe member after another being carried away, Huang Yuanli was frantic with worry. Professor Han could only smile bitterly.

After failing to merge with the brain in the tank, ninety percent of his Mental Manipulation had become useless. He could not control a Reaper, let alone a metal sparrow.

"Try sensing that thing," Professor Han offered a solution that was barely a solution.

"What thing?" Huang Yuanli's expression froze. "Didn't that thing run away?"

"You can't sense it, but it can sense you. After all, you are... a vessel."

"Fuck your mother, you're getting more useless with age!"

Gritting her teeth, Huang Yuanli could only desperately recall what it had felt like to be made into a brain can.

It seemed to last a very long time, yet also not very long at all. Just as Huang Yuanli was so desperate that she wanted to give up, her vision suddenly changed.

Her body seemed to have become extraordinarily large.

So large that even some massive mechanical biobeasts had turned into little beans.

A large tribe numbering in the thousands was migrating.

She seemed to have become a super-giant!