Chapter 664: Body protection
Xiao Luo stopped and turned around to look. Ian’s body was in terrible shape and almost unrecognizable. He looked like he had been grilled alive over a bonfire, and pustules covered the skin of his entire body. He looked pale and his face was devoid of his handsome features. It was ulcerating and filled with pus.
WHIFF~
Xiao Luo detected an awful waft in the air. His nose picked up the reek of an unbearable, putrid stench, like a dead and rotting fish.
He furrowed his brows and asked, “What is going on here?”
Xiao Luo had no intention of killing Ian. He had only wanted to take away Ian’s ability to fight. As long as the Mei nation’s military provided genetic warriors, like Ian, timely treatment, he should recover quickly. But why did he suddenly deteriorate into such a state? He had been fine earlier on, but now, it looked like his entire body was rotting.
“I underwent the perfect genetic transformation, and this is the price I have to pay for the strength I gained!”
Ian laughed bitterly. He had already lost and was merely trying to prolong his life. Ian had forced himself to continue fighting Xiao Luo, even though he knew he would not live through the fight. The metabolism rate of the cells in his body had sped up by a hundred times. His cells were deteriorating rapidly, causing his entire body to disintegrate.
While he talked, the putrid-smelling blood kept dripping out of his mouth and nose.
Xiao Luo felt no need to apologize as he quietly stared at Ian, who was slowly losing his life. That man was dying a painful death, like one of those failed experiments. Xiao Luo did not feel any joy in defeating him. He only felt anger, and the image of Xie Wenchang and his dead family once again flashed through his mind. It was inhumane that the Mei nation was conducting such genetic experiments on their kind.
WHOP! WHOP! WHOP!
Both men could hear the distinctive choppy sound of a helicopter rotor coming from afar, accompanied by the rumbling of military vehicles speeding toward them.
“Do you have anything you want me to tell Huang Ruoran?” Xiao Luo asked.
Ian’s eyes lit up with happiness and excitement when he heard her name. Tears began rolling down uncontrollably. He had wanted to attend the appointment he had made with her. He had wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But he had failed even when he had fought with his life and with every skill he possessed.
“We had plans to meet at the front gate of Was.h.i.+ngton University at 7 pm tonight. I was going to bring her to the movies.”
Ian cried in despair and said, “Tell her this. Tell her I was only fooling around with her, and that I have dumped her.”
“Do you think she will believe that?” Xiao Luo said kindly.
“She won’t believe it, but I have a way to make her believe it. There is an intimate picture of my younger sister and me in my bedroom. Take it and show it to her. She will believe it. Cough, cough, cough…” Ian coughed out a few mouthfuls of blood. His lifeline was slowly dissipating away. After saying that, his lips curled up in a dreary smile, his teeth covered with blood.
Xiao Luo said nothing and looked at him with no expression on his face.
“Stop looking. Send me off. Right now. I… I’m better off dead than alive,” Ian said.
Xiao Luo fulfilled his wish. Using his internal force of energy, he struck Ian’s chest with his leg.
BAM!
An invisible ripple spread across the desert plain, ending Ian’s life at once.
“Thank… thank you…”
Ian expressed his grat.i.tude as Xiao Luo raised his leg to strike. He died the moment Xiao Luo struck him and his head lolled to one side as he laid still.
The force from Xiao Luo’s strike loosened the soil below and triggered liquefaction of the ground beneath them. An area ten meters in diameter around Ian started to collapse and sand flowed into the chasm like liquid. Xiao Luo leaped away using his Lightness Force skill and landed lightly outside the quicksand range. Ian slowly sank into the quicksand, and there he laid buried beneath the sand of the Mojave Desert.
“Reporting to headquarters. We have locked onto the target. Awaiting orders to open fire, I repeat, shall we open fire?”
At the underground base in Was.h.i.+ngton, a nervous voice called in to report.
The Defense Minister looked at President Bama to seek approval for further action. At that moment, there was a troop in the Mojave Desert with battle tanks, a combat helicopter, heavy machine guns, and an a.s.sortment of weapons. They were well-equipped with superior firepower.
“He might have defeated the gene warriors, but I am sure he got injured as well. If we do not take this opportunity to get rid of him now, then are we to wait till he recovers before we make our move?”
President Bama regained his composure and ordered, “Give him everything you got. Destroy that monster!”
The Minister of Defense nodded his head. Then, he conveyed President Bama’s message to the soldiers in the Mojave Desert. “Listen up! This is the chance for you to earn yourselves a medal. The President has given the order—finish him, no matter what it takes!”
“Yes, Sir.”
Responding to the order, a battle tank locked on to Xiao Luo, who stood hundreds of meters away and opened fire.
The sh.e.l.l left its barrel in an angry flash of flames and tore through the air toward Xiao Luo. Meanwhile, Xiao Luo was staring at the spot where the quicksand had buried Ian. With no change in facial expression, he casually slapped the sh.e.l.l away with his palm just as it was about to reach him. He swatted it aside like a fly that was buzzing around his ears.
CLANG!
A metallic sound resounded across the desert as Xiao Luo deflected the sh.e.l.l toward a dune some distance away, at least a hundred degrees off its original trajectory, and exploded with a loud bang. The ground shook as smoke rose and sand blew up into the air.
“Oh, my G.o.d! He deflected the sh.e.l.l! He deflected the sh.e.l.l!”
At the underground base in Was.h.i.+ngton, the ministers heard the panicked shrieks of the soldiers in the battle tank.
All the cabinet ministers stood still like stone statues. How would they have known that Xiao Luo could deflect the sh.e.l.l with his palm?
Cold sweat formed on President Bama’s forehead. His entire body was trembling uncontrollably.
…
Xiao Luo stood still. The wind blew his black hair back was a little when he slapped the sh.e.l.l away. In his head, the system had alerted him. He had just spent 200,000 points to exchange for the “Body Protection Without Equal” technique. This technique differed from the “Supreme Death-Proof” technique in that it used internal force energy to form a force s.h.i.+eld on the surface of his body. The greater his internal force was, the stronger the defense would be. After exchanging for the technique, his internal force energy instantly increased fivefold.
That technique could be used both offensively and defensively. At that moment, Xiao Luo had an indestructible G.o.d-like body. He could not die.
He already knew about the availability of this technique and was aware he had enough points to exchange for it, but he always felt that it came with some danger. Just like when he went into his berserk state, it wasn’t him, but the system that controlled the technique. It was hard for him not to worry about using the system again after that incident.
He had once read a book and always remembered this: “The devil slowly lured greedy people and led those people toward them so that they would sell their souls.”
The infinite power the system offered him, and the ease with which he could acquire such power, was in itself, corruptible. And Xiao Luo had fears that that system would land up being the devil. That was why he tried his best not to exchange for any abilities and tried to avoid using the system if he could.
But at this point, he could not care less anymore.
Scre*w it! Let’s get this over with, Xiao Luo thought.
“HIYAH!”
Xiao Luo roared, and a terrifying internal force exploded from within his body. A dust storm ten stories high formed and swirled around him, and he was at its center. The ground suddenly collapsed, and a tremendous amount of energy surged along the flat plains of the Mojave Desert.
As the swirling dust obscured the sun, it appeared as if an eclipse had occurred!