Chapter 165 - 147: Wing Race
Chapter 165: Chapter 147: Wing Race
Not long after Li Qian had started running east all by himself, a sudden, earth-shattering explosion erupted behind him.
"So that’s your trump card, huh?" Li Qian heard the terrifying sound of the explosion and even felt the gust from the shockwave wash over his back.
He muttered to himself, then silently picked up his pace.
He had already pushed the Mechanical Armor to its top speed.
Li Qian could see a red exclamation mark flash on the flexible display inside the armor.
It was a sign that the Energy was nearly depleted.
He paid it no mind, however, and took a great leap into the air.
In an instant, he was a hundred meters up in the air.
A Cyan-Scaled Flood Dragon soared through the air, positioning itself perfectly beneath his feet.
It was Qizai.
With Qizai around, Li Qian wasn’t worried about the Mechanical Armor’s Energy consumption.
Qizai’s flying speed, when using the Dragon Soaring Skill, wasn’t much slower than the Mechanical Armor’s—it might even have been faster.
After leaping onto Qizai’s back, with a single thought from Li Qian, the Mechanical Armor reverted to Active Metal, instantly condensing into a medal-shaped charm that appeared on his arm.
This was the Federation’s relatively Advanced Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor, and it certainly had its merits.
It didn’t provide much of a boost for a Pet Beast, but for a comparatively fragile Beast Master, this kind of Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor offered a considerable advantage.
Li Qian mused, ’Once I get to Zhonghai City, I have to buy myself a more Advanced Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor, one with stronger defenses.’
’That should significantly improve my own survivability on the battlefield.’
As he pondered, the explosion faded, and the turbulent winds it had stirred up subsided.
Li Qian continued to command Qizai, soaring east at incredible speed.
He wasn’t flying very high, mainly to avoid attracting the enemy’s attention.
Just as Li Qian’s mind drifted to the events behind him, speculating on the beautiful woman’s likely fate... an object suddenly plummeted from the sky.
The object was hurtling down toward the top of his skull at extreme speed.
Fortunately, Li Qian was standing on Qizai’s back. The flood dragon was not only fast but also exceptionally agile and nimble.
The moment he sensed the object hurtling toward them, he commanded Qizai without hesitation, narrowly avoiding the falling object by a hair’s breadth.
BANG!
The object, which appeared to be humanoid, slammed hard into the ground up ahead, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Damn it, what the hell was that?"
Having dodged the humanoid object falling from the sky, Li Qian couldn’t help but curse.
He had Qizai quickly approach the point of impact, where a small crater had been blasted into the earth.
Inside the crater, Li Qian saw a person lying face down.
They were in a sorry state.
The strangest thing was that this person had a pair of wings growing from their back!
A pair of pure white, feathered wings!
Looking at the humanoid creature in the crater, its condition unknown, a question mark appeared over Li Qian’s head. ’What kind of Pet Beast is this? A bird person? An Angel?’
Ever since he’d arrived in this world, Li Qian had never slacked off on his studies. While he couldn’t claim to have read every book in existence, he had certainly read far more than the average high school student, especially books on nurturing Pet Beasts.
As a result, his knowledge was far beyond that of an ordinary high school student.
He knew that among the classifications of Pet Beasts, there was a major category known as humanoids, their defining characteristic being a human-like appearance.
Some even possessed intelligence on par with humans, able to recognize human writing and understand human speech.
The most typical examples were merfolk, sharkfolk, dragonfolk, and birdfolk.
That was why, upon seeing the strange humanoid creature in the crater, Li Qian’s first thought was of a Bird Human Pet Beast.
As he drew a bit closer, Li Qian noticed something unusual.
It was an Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor!
There was actually an Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor covering this bird person!
Seeing this, Li Qian was utterly baffled!
He, too, had an Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor, and it was identical to the one on the bird person in the crater.
BZZZT...
Perhaps because the damage was too severe, the Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor quickly retracted, revealing the person within.
It was a woman with waist-length hair.
The woman had an excellent figure; seen from behind, her rear was quite shapely.
But at this moment, sprawled in the crater like a starfish, she looked utterly wretched.
Li Qian swore he hadn’t meant to look, but—perhaps due to the fall from a great height, or from an exceptionally brutal battle—after the Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor retracted, the woman’s clothes were revealed to be torn.
And, of all places, the tear was right over that shapely posterior.
Li Qian could swear on the Qizai beneath his feet that he really hadn’t intended to look, but that flash of white was just too eye-catching.
It was hard not to notice!
Li Qian immediately reined in his thoughts, forcing himself not to let his mind wander, and jumped straight down from Qizai’s back.
He went to the edge of the crater, reached down, and lifted the woman up.
Although she had landed face-first and her face was covered in dust, it seemed the Active Metal Mecha Battle Armor had protected her, as she didn’t appear to have any major facial injuries.
However, a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth.
Li Qian studied the dust-streaked woman. The more he looked, the more he felt something was off.
"Wait, her face... it looks familiar!"
After muttering this to himself, his heart suddenly lurched.
He wiped the dust from the woman’s face with his hand.
The mouth, the nose, the chin... this winged woman was clearly the beautiful woman from the Flying Ship, the one who had been sitting just ahead and to the side of him!
Once he recognized the winged woman’s identity, her sudden fall from the sky made sense to Li Qian.
She must have used some incredibly powerful trump card or last resort, severely wounding her enemy but getting caught in the backlash herself.
At this thought, a look of relief appeared on Li Qian’s face.
’Thank goodness I was decisive enough to get out of there.’
’If I’d chosen to stay and fight the enemy with her, she wouldn’t be the only one turned into a falling object right now.’
At the same time, a trace of confusion flickered across his face.
This woman was, for all intents and purposes, a typical human. Even now with her wings, she didn’t seem like a humanoid Pet Beast.
Suddenly, a word popped into his head!
Wing Race!
The instant that word appeared, a wave of understanding washed over him.
At this very moment, he finally understood completely why the Cultists of the Black Divine Teachings had gone to such lengths to attack this woman.
It turned out she was a member of the Wing Race!