"Too noisy."
Qin Feng dug at his ear, then slipped on his goggles. The six-meter-long Thunder Tyrannosaurus before him had its jaws gaping wide, and the thunder rumbling in its throat shook leaves from the surrounding trees.
"Brother Wolf, quit dragging your feet. This giant lizard's so loud it'll attract the city inspectors... I mean, people from Spirit Hall."
Grey Wolf had his butt sticking up as he hurriedly tightened screws on several metal boxes, a wrench clenched in his teeth. He cursed indistinctly, "Hurry, hurry, hurry! That's all you ever say! This is precision equipment! If these lousy coils get connected backward, we'll both end up roasted like whole lambs!"
"Roar—!"
The Thunder Tyrannosaurus clearly felt it was being ignored. It was the overlord of this area. When had it ever encountered two-legged beasts who showed it such disrespect?
Its purple-crystal-like scales bristled, and a barrel-wide ball of lightning condensed in its mouth. The air around them instantly filled with the stench of something burnt.
"We're doomed! We're doomed!" Yu Xiaogang fell on his butt in a muddy puddle, his face paler than a corpse's. He clutched the empty lunchbox in his hands. "That's Thunder Breath! A thousand-year Soul Beast's full-power attack! Run!"
Run? Where to?
The lightning ball hurtled toward Qin Feng's face with the force of utter destruction. Its blinding blue light turned the night into day, illuminating every hair on Qin Feng's face.
Qin Feng didn't move. He simply raised his wrist and glanced at his watch.
"Three, two, one."
"Go!" Grey Wolf yanked down a huge red switch.
"Zzz—vrrr!!!"
Four metal pillars that had been planted in advance suddenly shot up from underground, surrounding the three of them. A layer of pale blue light instantly spread from the metal spheres atop the pillars, like an upside-down bowl.
The lightning ball slammed into the barrier.
There was no explosion. No loud bang.
The lightning ball, powerful enough to blast rock into dust, was like a drop of water falling into a sponge—it was instantly "absorbed" by the barrier. The barrier wavered slightly, then shone even brighter.
At the same time, the indicators on the control panel behind Qin Feng began dancing wildly, shooting straight from the red zone to the maximum.
"Beep beep beep! Charging efficiency: 300%! Battery bank rapidly approaching full capacity!"
Grey Wolf saw the control panel and was so excited he threw away his wrench, waving his arms about. "Wahahaha! We're rich! This voltage! This current! It's ten thousand times stronger than my hand-cranked generator!"
Qin Feng watched the numbers climbing and stared at them with greedy eyes.
"Would you look at that? This isn't a Soul Beast—it's a nuclear power plant with legs." He patted the battery box beside him. "One blast like that could keep our lab running at full power for three months."
The Thunder Tyrannosaurus froze.
Its walnut-sized brain couldn't comprehend what had just happened. Its ultimate move—how had it simply vanished?
Unwilling to believe it, it roared again and charged forward on its thick limbs, like a heavy tank. If magical attacks didn't work, it would crush those bugs with its body!
The ground trembled.
Yu Xiaogang scrambled backward in terror, his voice breaking. "It's charging! Physical attack! Get out of the way!"
"Physical attack?" Qin Feng scoffed, pulling a remote control from his pocket. "When gravity's involved, any physical charge is just a free ticket to the afterlife."
He pressed the button lightly with his thumb.
"Click."
Just as the Thunder Tyrannosaurus reached a point ten meters away, a purple ring of light suddenly appeared on the ground beneath its feet.
"Super Gravity Mine, activate."
"Boom!"
The several-ton beast suddenly seemed to have a mountain dropped onto its back. Its forward momentum came to an abrupt halt. Its four legs buckled uncontrollably, and it crashed to its knees.
Its knees smashed two deep pits into the ground.
It struggled desperately to get up, but an invisible force pressed it firmly down. Even lifting its head became incredibly difficult.
"Ugh... roar..." The tyrannosaur let out an unwilling growl, fear filling its eyes.
Qin Feng ambled up to it, holding a strangely shaped rifle. The barrel was very thin, and a glass jar filled with clear liquid was attached to the back.
"Don't move, big guy."
Qin Feng pressed the muzzle against a scale growing backward beneath the tyrannosaur's neck. It was the dragon's reverse scale, where the nerve center was densest.
"One injection, and you'll be having a very long dream."
"Pfft."
The specially made needle pierced the gap between the scales. A high-concentration nerve blocker was injected instantly.
The Thunder Tyrannosaurus's pupils contracted sharply, then quickly dilated. Its massive body convulsed twice before going completely limp, though it still huffed through its nostrils.
"Done."
Qin Feng put away the rifle and turned to Yu Xiaogang, who was staring dumbfounded.
Yu Xiaogang shakily stood up and pulled out a dagger, his hand trembling. "Quick... kill it while you can! This is a Thousand-Year Soul Ring! Its nature may be a little violent, but it's still top quality..."
"Kill it?"
Qin Feng looked at him as if he were an idiot, snatched the dagger from his hand, and tossed it to the ground.
"Grandmaster, can you think of anything besides killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?"
"This is a living high-energy battery! If I kill it, where am I supposed to find such a stable power source?" Qin Feng pointed at the tyrannosaur on the ground. "I'm taking it back and keeping it in the lab basement."
"Keep... keep it?" Yu Xiaogang felt like his brain was about to boil. "This is a thousand-year Soul Beast! If it wakes up, it'll tear the whole academy apart!"
"It won't wake up."
Qin Feng pulled a bundle of thick tubes and wires out of his backpack, along with a surgical drill that was already buzzing.
"I'm going to do a little surgery."
"I'll implant a Control Chip in its cerebral cortex, sever its motor nerves, and leave only the autonomic nervous system that keeps it alive and lets it discharge electricity."
"Then I'll insert these tubes into its lightning sacs and draw the electrical energy straight out."
As he spoke, Qin Feng expertly marked where to cut on the tyrannosaur's head. Grey Wolf came over too, handing him a hemostat. The two worked together seamlessly.
"Brother Wolf, the battery capacity isn't enough. This thing has too high an energy density."
"Damn it! I told you we should've brought that big storage tank!" Grey Wolf complained, pulling a huge metal funnel out of his shabby lab coat. "Can't be helped. We'll have to do an expansion procedure first and channel the excess energy into its bones for storage."
"Zzzzz—"
The sound of a drill boring into bone rang especially harshly through the silent forest.
Blood sprayed.
Qin Feng expressionlessly inserted metal probes into the tyrannosaur's body, then connected complex wiring to its nerves. The sight of machinery forcibly fused with flesh had a bizarre cyberpunk feel.
This wasn't hunting a Soul Beast.
This was assembling a machine.
In the bushes some distance away.
A pair of pink eyes stared fixedly at the scene.
Xiao Wu covered her mouth, her body trembling uncontrollably. She'd seen Soul Masters hunt Soul Beasts. It was for survival, for strength. It was the law of nature.
But this scene before her...
A living Soul Beast, transformed into a mindless machine?
The boy hummed as he shoved cold metal into the body of one of her kind. His indifference, his matter-of-fact attitude, were a hundred times more terrifying than the most vicious predator.
"Ugh—"
Yu Xiaogang finally couldn't take it anymore. He braced himself against a tree and threw up. He'd spent his whole life studying theory and prided himself on his broad knowledge, but this sight of life being treated as parts to be casually taken apart completely shattered his composure.
"That should do it."
Qin Feng wiped the blood from his hands. Looking at the Thunder Tyrannosaurus, now covered in tubes and steadily producing electricity, he nodded with satisfaction.
"Brother Wolf, pack it up. Call 'Scrap King No. 2' over and have it haul this thing back."
Just then.
A fragrant breeze suddenly swept over them.
It wasn't the smell of decay in the forest, but a rich, slightly cloying fragrance.
"My, my..."
A voice that sent a tingling shiver through him suddenly rang in Qin Feng's ear.
"Little brother, seeing you treat such a cute Soul Beast this way breaks my heart."
Before you continue