Three weeks later, at the Gallbladder forward barracks.
"All main hoist locks are released! Smithing crew below, get the hell past the safety line!"
Bi Ren Liang Mou stood at the control console with two enormous dark circles under his eyes, roaring in a hoarse, grating voice.
Click, click—BOOM!
Several load-bearing steel cables, each meters thick, snapped free. White steam billowed out with a deep hiss of released pressure. When the mist cleared, it revealed a biochemical monster nearly sixty meters long, sprawled like a mountain!
Eight massive biochemical legs stood in rows along its sides, thick as pillars holding up the sky. Heavy bone plates overlapped and locked together like a warship's armor. At the front of its immense body hung two combat forelimbs more than ten meters long, like anchors dredged from the deep. Their cold blades had yet to touch the ground, but they already cast two chilling shadows across the floor.
What truly made everyone hold their breath, though, was its broad back, as vast as the deck of a landbound aircraft carrier!
Beneath that broad, level bone deck sat two neat rows of six enormous, translucent biochemical cultivation chambers. Several helmeted craftsmen hung from the deck's edge like spiders, tightening the last shock-absorber bolts. From a distance, it looked as though an entire industrial Workshop had sprung up on the beast's back!
"Old Liang, step back."
Hannibal drew a deep breath. Veins bulged along his bare right arm as he slammed his palm onto the active flesh membrane at the heart of the control console.
Hiss!
Nerve tendrils beneath his palm shot into the control center like lightning. Hannibal's eyes flared crimson. In an instant, he felt the crushing weight borne by eight planted feet, the strain running through tens of thousands of tons of