TK30085 Chip

Cang Yun gritted her teeth and swallowed the taste of blood in her mouth. With the last of her strength, she swung her blade down and severed the tentacle reaching for the guide.

With a thud, the sentinel fell in front of Luo Ruzhuo and lay still.

Perhaps droplets of blood had splashed onto Luo Ruzhuo's eyelids. Their warmth made her eyes tremble.

Ah.

Luo Ruzhuo sighed inwardly and opened her eyes.

She had been observing the situation with her mental power all along. She had only wanted to hide her abilities, but that did not mean she was indifferent to danger.

Before her lay the sentinel, face down and motionless. The wound through her abdomen was serious, but her chest was still rising and falling. For a tough sentinel, the injury should not have been fatal.

The skin on the back of Cang Yun's hand was curling outward, and a layer of grayish-brown feathers was growing beneath it.

That was probably the trickiest problem.

Aberration.

An injury to a mental entity directly affected its sentinel. Injuries to a sentinel also worsened the contamination of their mental entity.

The combination of the two had caused Cang Yun's aberration to deepen noticeably.

Feathers spread from the back of her hand to her forearm, then up her arm to her neck. Something was growing out of her shoulder blades. It looked like wings, but it might have been something else. It stirred beneath her skin, pushing the fabric of her uniform into unnatural bulges.

The red numbers on the optical computer reflected on Luo Ruzhuo's face.

Aberration rate: 30%, 60%...

It was still rising.

"Cang Yun! Cang Yun, are you all right?"

Xiao Xue's voice came from a distance.

From Luo Ruzhuo's perspective, the black contamination tentacles in the corridor and Cang Yun's body happened to block Xiao Xue from view.

Presumably, Xiao Xue could not see her either. The conclusion made Luo Ruzhuo breathe a little easier.

"Hang on! Reinforcements are almost here! You..."

In her daze, Cang Yun suddenly stopped hearing Xiao Xue's voice.

Her vision was already completely dark. Cang Yun knew her hearing was failing too.

A severely aberrated sentinel would gradually lose all five senses, first sight, then hearing... and finally their entire human consciousness.

She could feel that the goshawk had stopped moving.

Withdrawn into her mental domain, it lay curled on the ground, its wings twisted at unnatural angles and its body covered in black tendrils. Black mist surrounded it. Her entire mental domain had not yet been swallowed by contamination, but it was close.

Cang Yun thought she probably did not have long either.

She gauged how much longer she could remain conscious, wondering whether to finish herself off before she completely aberrated. At least she would die while she was still human.

The thought had barely occurred to her when she felt a force enter her mental domain, utterly unlike the contamination.

Gentle yet powerful, the force swept away her negative emotions, as though a spring had poured into her parched mental domain.

The goshawk she had withdrawn into her mental domain received the same treatment.

It seemed someone... was gently soothing her mental entity and purifying the contamination that had been rising so rapidly.

Beep, beep, beep. The flashing red number on her optical computer dropped at a speed visible to the naked eye, finally turning green in the comfortable range.

It seemed to be falling much faster than the contamination had risen.

The thought left Cang Yun stunned. She desperately wanted to open her eyes and see whether all this was an illusion before her death or real.

She lifted her eyelids and struggled to raise herself. The wound in her abdomen was still there, its very real pain reminding her of everything that had just happened. She took out the medical device she carried, wrapped a simple bandage around herself, then lowered her head and stared at her hands.

Ten fingers.

She flexed her fingers. They moved freely, as though the feathers that had burst through her skin had only been a dream.

How was that possible?

Her searching gaze fell on the guide before her.

The girl's sleeping face was still serene. Her brow was smooth and her breathing steady, as though she were lost in a long dream, with no sign of waking.

Cang Yun set aside what she could not understand for now. There was no time to investigate further.

She did not linger. Dragging her battered body around, she turned to support Xiao Xue.

The battle was not over. At the other end of the corridor, Xiao Xue was suspended in midair, bound by tendrils. More than half of the snowy owl's feathers had turned black, and his optical computer was sounding frantic alarms. His aberration rate had jumped to 47%.

But he had no time to worry about himself. Only one thought filled his mind: How was Cang Yun?

Unfortunately, layers of black tentacles blocked his view, and he could see nothing.

Just then, several gunshots broke the restraints around his hands and feet.

Bang, bang, bang! Xiao Xue somersaulted through the air and landed steadily. He turned toward the source of the shots, and his heart leaped.

Cang Yun still held her gun up. When Xiao Xue looked over, she gave him a reassuring smile. Blood was still seeping from the wound through her abdomen, and more than half the bandage had turned red, but she stood straight, her gun hand steady.

"You..." Xiao Xue's voice was filled with joy.

"I'm fine," Cang Yun said tersely. "We can talk about the details later. Let's deal with what's in front of us first."

The goshawk appeared on her shoulder again. The mental entity, which had been on the verge of death moments ago, now shook out its iron-gray feathers. It took wing, circled near the top of the corridor, and let out a clear cry.

It actually looked much better than before.

Though Xiao Xue did not know what had happened in those few short minutes, he understood that this was not the time to get to the bottom of it.

For now, the best news was that Cang Yun could still fight.

"Damn it! Now that this thing has split apart, the contamination core is even harder to find." Xiao Xue dodged a tendril and flipped over to land beside Cang Yun. "Its position keeps changing! We can't concentrate our attacks on one spot like before."

"That's not all." Cang Yun dodged another tendril and stared at the scan data on her optical computer, her brow tightly furrowed. "The contamination concentration around us is higher than before."

The contamination reading on the screen kept climbing. After breaking past its previous S-rank peak, it was still rising!

It was showing signs of reaching the double-S range!

After the black contamination transformed into countless tendrils, new contaminants began forming between them. Humanoid monsters pieced together from countless twisted faces came pouring in from all directions. These contaminants were much faster and more capable of regeneration than before. One wave followed another, like an endless black tide.

Even Luo Ruzhuo, observing in secret with her mental power, could not help breaking out in goosebumps.

These contaminants were every bit as bad as the zombie hordes in her previous life, if not worse.

Monsters like these were undoubtedly harder to deal with than the ones before.

"Do these things ever end..." Xiao Xue was breathing heavily, his chest heaving.

His stamina was nearly exhausted.

Cang Yun did not answer. Her gaze fell on a spot at the end of the corridor, where the most contaminants were forming.

Cang Yun keenly sensed that there might be something unusual there and said decisively, "Xiao Xue! Take the snowy owl and investigate over there. I'll cover you."

Xiao Xue gritted his teeth and pulled the last bottle of purification potion from his coat. Once he had recovered somewhat, he immediately set off.

Two-thirds of the snowy owl's wings had already been stained black. Xiao Xue grabbed the owl with one hand and rose into the air with his mental entity. Looking at its corroded tail feathers, he was heartbroken beyond words.

He had no advantage in the air to begin with. The snowy owl was injured and far less agile than the contaminants, making it extremely difficult to dodge the tentacles.

But every tendril was pushed aside by a gust of wind the moment it was about to touch Xiao Xue.

Cang Yun's gunshots followed, one after another, accurate and fierce. Xiao Xue passed through layer upon layer of contaminants and actually reached the deepest part without mishap.

There was another cocoon here!

It was intact, untouched by the blade of the sentinel who had passed through. Something bulged inside it, and its surface opened and closed as though breathing.

"No wonder they were regenerating so fast!" Xiao Xue cursed under his breath. "Damn it! There really is another mother body supplying them."

He shared his view with Cang Yun through his optical computer, then drew his lightsaber and slashed down without mercy.

The layers of the flesh cocoon were cut open one by one, revealing what was inside, to everyone's surprise.

It was neither a sentinel nor a guide, but a small black box.

Xiao Xue stepped forward and picked it up. There was no other writing on it, only a single code: TK30085.

Before Xiao Xue could take a closer look, contaminants swept toward him from every direction like a storm.

Countless tendrils split off from the main body. Instead of attacking in different directions, they all surged toward Xiao Xue.

Xiao Xue's breath caught. He grabbed the snowy owl's talons, and it dragged him upward, but it was still too slow—the tendrils closed in from all sides, drawing closer and closer, nearly brushing his ankles.

"Faster!" Xiao Xue's voice changed pitch.

Cang Yun's gun rang out at the other end of the corridor. Bullets flew past the soles of his feet and shattered the tendrils at the front.

The instant Xiao Xue took the black box and its code was exposed.

Luo Ruzhuo opened the Star Network and entered the code she had firmly committed to memory, then searched for it.

There was a great deal of information, and she did not have that much time.

Luo Ruzhuo precisely filtered out the irrelevant information and found a clue about the item numbered TK30085 in a garbage planet disposal report.

It was a brain-computer chip that Ankang Pharmaceuticals had heavily promoted in recent years, claiming it could strengthen mental domains and purify contamination. But Federation law protected sentinels and guides and prohibited artificial interference with mental domains, so the project had been halted.

A chip disposed of in violation of regulations had now reappeared aboard the starship escorting her on a mission, just where a contamination domain had appeared, becoming the contaminants' most powerful energy source.

Luo Ruzhuo snorted coldly.

She had thought that, for the sake of the Firmament Squad, the Feier Family would hesitate to act. She had not expected... them to lose patience so quickly.