Chapter 302 The Return of Mengde

Chapter 302: Chapter 291: The Return of Mengde

Seeing its blood mist was ineffective, the scarlet monster fully unfurled its six bone spikes, blooming like a flower of death.

The tip of each bone spike split open, revealing a sucker-like orifice that spewed corrosive slime.

Jiayi moved with fluid grace, weaving through the rain of slime.

Every flap of her Flame wings raised a wave of fire, vaporizing the incoming slime in mid-air.

The few drops that occasionally broke through her defenses were sliced apart by a knife-hand strike.

A few holes were corroded into her combat suit, revealing the pale skin beneath, but she had no time to worry about it.

"Jiayi, watch your back!"

Zhao Xiaoyu’s warning rang out from a distance.

Jiayi whipped her head around to find that the scarlet monster had, at some point, split off a piece of its flesh to form a small clone behind her.

The mass of flesh rapidly deformed, morphing into a great maw filled with sharp teeth that lunged at her.

In the nick of time, Jiayi dodged with a backflip. Simultaneously, she clasped her hands together, compressing her flames into a ball and smashing it viciously into the clone.

BOOM!

The clone was blasted to bits, but that moment of distraction gave the main body an opening.

A thick tentacle lashed out like a whip, striking Jiayi hard across the back and sending her flying.

Puh!

Jiayi coughed up a mouthful of blood, her body smashing through several trees before she finally came to a stop.

She struggled to her feet, feeling that she had likely broken a few ribs and her internal organs had been violently shaken.

Worse, she realized the scarlet monster was emitting a strange psychic wave that was making her thoughts sluggish.

’Is this... psychic contamination?’

Jiayi shook her head, trying to stay lucid.

She saw Black Emperor and Dabao trying to come to her aid, only to be swarmed by a sudden horde of zombies.

The scarlet monster closed in slowly, its six bone spikes fully unfurled.

The gelatinous matter on its abdomen boiled even more furiously, seemingly preparing some kind of lethal strike.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Jiayi formed a series of hand seals in front of her chest, preparing to unleash her strongest attack.

A whirlwind of fire formed around her, sucking up shattered stones and broken branches from the ground and incinerating them into ash.

"Incinerate Heaven and Earth!"

With a sharp cry, Jiayi concentrated all her flames into a single beam that shot straight for the scarlet monster’s core.

The attack was devastatingly powerful. It pierced straight through the monster’s body and exploded behind it, blasting out a crater a dozen meters in diameter.

The scarlet monster shrieked in agony, its body convulsing violently. One of its three hearts had been utterly destroyed.

But just as Jiayi thought victory was at hand, the unexpected happened!

The monster’s two remaining hearts suddenly fused, merging into one enormous, malformed organ.

An unprecedented psychic shockwave radiated outward. Jiayi felt as if thousands of needles were stabbing into her brain all at once.

The sudden, excruciating pain brought her to her knees. Trickles of blood seeped from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Even more terrifying, she began to experience bizarre hallucinations—Mengde, covered in blood, collapsed in front of her.

Black Emperor, the Thunder King, and Dabao, the Green-headed Turtle, were also torn to shreds, and the entire Yulong Base was engulfed in flames...

"No... this isn’t real..."

Jiayi bit the tip of her tongue, trying to use the pain to stay lucid, but the hallucinations only grew more real, and her flames began to rage out of control.

The scarlet monster seized the opportunity. A bone spike, its tip as sharp as a spear, shot violently toward Jiayi’s heart!

"Jiayi!"

Atop the base’s ramparts, Lin Aoxue and the other women cried out in despair.

At that very moment between life and death, the necklace on Jiayi’s chest suddenly erupted with a dazzling blue light, forming a shield that barely deflected the bone spike’s trajectory.

The attack, which had been aimed at her heart, instead pierced through her abdomen. Blood instantly gushed forth.

"Aaargh!"

Jiayi cried out in pain as her consciousness began to fade.

She dimly saw the scarlet monster open its massive, blood-red maw, preparing to deliver the final blow...

VROOOOM—!

Suddenly, the roar of a familiar engine grew louder as it approached from the distance.

A black streak shot across the sky as the *Goddess*, an RV, charged onto the battlefield at an unbelievable speed.

The turret on its roof automatically took aim and fired a volley of shells, forcing the scarlet monster back.

The door flew open, and a tall, imposing figure leaped out, hovering in mid-air.

A black trench coat billowed behind him, his handsome, sharp-featured face a mask of cold fury.

"You dare touch my woman? You’re courting death!"

Mengde’s voice was not loud, yet it boomed like a thunderclap in everyone’s ears.

He made a grasping motion with his right hand, and his SSS-Level Telekinesis instantly locked the scarlet monster in place. In his left hand, he condensed a ball of black Thunder that pulsed with destructive energy.

The scarlet monster seemed to sense the mortal danger and struggled frantically, but it could not break free of the telekinetic bonds.

The gelatinous matter on its abdomen boiled furiously as it tried to split apart and flee, but Mengde wasn’t about to give it that chance.

"Vanish."

The black Thunder Ball shot from his hand, splitting in mid-air into dozens of lightning serpents that precisely struck every one of the scarlet monster’s vital spots.

The afflicted areas didn’t explode. Instead, they simply vanished, as if wiped away by an eraser.

The scarlet monster let out a piercing shriek as its body began to crumble and disintegrate.

It struggled in defiance, its six bone spikes flailing wildly, but it was powerless to stop its own annihilation.

Finally, in a blinding flash of black light, the Star Map Level monster was utterly annihilated, leaving not even a trace behind.

The entire battlefield fell silent in an instant. All the zombies froze as if someone had hit a pause button, standing rooted to the spot.

Then, like an army that had lost its commander, they began to scatter and flee in disarray.

Mengde paid no mind to these lesser creatures. In a flash, he was at the heavily injured Jiayi’s side, gently lifting her into his arms.

"I’m sorry. I’m late."

Mengde’s voice was impossibly gentle, a stark contrast to the god of slaughter he had been just moments before. He was like a different person entirely.

He gently wiped the blood from Jiayi’s face. A green light, characteristic of the Healing System, glowed in his palm as he pressed it to her wound.

Jiayi weakly opened her eyes. Seeing Mengde’s familiar face, she managed to force a faint smile.

"I knew... you’d make it back in time..."

"Don’t talk. Save your strength."

Mengde had a premonition that the base might be attacked, but seeing Jiayi so injured still made his heart ache.

He looked at the piercing wound in her abdomen as he poured a continuous stream of Healing Energy into it.

At the same time, he took a priceless Recovery Potion from his Spatial Ring and carefully helped Jiayi drink it.

As the potion went down, color immediately returned to Jiayi’s face.

Feeling the warmth of Mengde’s embrace, she suddenly felt that all the pain had been worth it.

Atop the ramparts, Lin Aoxue and the others finally snapped out of their shock and hurried down.

Black Emperor and Dabao trotted over as well, nuzzling affectionately against Mengde.

"Boss!"

Lei Qiang rushed over with the surviving team members, his face filled with the joy of having cheated death.

"You’re back just in the nick of time!"

Mengde nodded, his gaze sweeping over everyone.

"You’ve all worked hard."

"For now, tend to the wounded and clear the battlefield. Tonight..."

He looked down at Jiayi, who was gradually regaining her color in his arms, and a warm smile spread across his face.

"...we’ll have a proper celebration."

. . . . . . . . . . . .