owlsbooks Chapter 188 Extremely Dangerous Synthesis! Head-on confrontation with a level 60 Cataclysmic Mother
Chapter 188 Extremely Dangerous Synthesis! Head-on confrontation with a level 60 Cataclysmic Mother
Marlowe spat as he looked at the mutated soldiers who had turned into black liquid all over the ground.
"These bastards are arrogant all the time, but they're more disgusting than monsters at heart."
Jiang Ming didn't respond, instead manipulating the source essence tentacles on the chest of the Star Realm Asura to frantically sweep away the high-level materials on the ground.
The massacre just now resulted in a mountain of crystal cores and alloy plates.
[Obtained: High-Dimensional Assimilation Metal (Purple Epic) *85]
[Obtained: Abyss Mutant Crystal Core (Blue, Excellent) *1200]
[Obtained: Thor Armor Core Power Source (Purple Rare) *15]
Jiang Ming stuffed all the materials into his storage ring, then transformed the Astral Asura back into its heavy fortress form.
He tossed the [Government Region Highest Authority Key], which emitted a dark red light, in his hand.
"Let's go to the regional headquarters."
Jiang Ming opened the car door. "Since Lei Qing sold himself out, he must have left behind a lot of good stuff. Today, let's empty the Jiangnan headquarters."
Marlowe floored the accelerator, and the chariot rolled over the tyrant's shattered ice, heading straight for the massive hemispherical building deep within the fortress.
This place used to be the command center of the headquarters, but now the outer walls are covered with disgusting tumors.
The tank stopped in front of the heavy blast-proof door.
The door was made of half a meter thick depleted uranium armor, and it was stained with a lot of black, dried blood.
Jiang Ming jumped out of the car and inserted the key into the groove by the door.
drop--
[Authorization confirmed: Supreme Commander.]
[The Level 1 lockdown is being lifted...]
With a heavy mechanical grinding sound, the explosion-proof door slowly opened.
A pungent smell of formaldehyde mixed with the stench of blood wafted towards me.
Jiang Ming frowned slightly and strode inside.
Chen Qi and Ma Luo followed closely behind, guns at the ready.
The central hall was empty, but there were smashed instruments and torn military uniforms everywhere.
Clearly, there had been intense infighting within the headquarters before the mutation.
Those who refused to submit to the abyss were all eliminated by Lei Qing.
Jiang Ming wasn't interested in any of that. He walked straight to the elevator in the center of the lobby and pressed the button to go to the fifth basement level.
According to the intelligence he had previously obtained, the core strategic reserve of the Jiangnan General Region was located there.
The elevator plummeted rapidly.
Ding!
The moment the elevator doors opened, even Marlowe, who had seen it all, couldn't help but gasp.
The entire underground area has five floors, which is as big as four football fields.
Rows of heavy-duty shelves, ten meters high, were filled with all kinds of weapons and materials.
The area on the left contains mountains of special munitions, high-energy explosives, and heavy weaponry for individual soldiers.
On the right side, there are rows of high-level mutant crystal cores sealed in glass pillars, and even several well-preserved corpses of leader-level monsters!
At the deepest part of the hall, two strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles, each fifteen meters long, were prominently displayed!
The warhead was marked with a glaring nuclear radiation symbol.
"Holy crap... those old foxes in the main region, they even hid this thing?"
Marlowe stared wide-eyed.
Jiang Ming chuckled softly.
"Since Lei Qing no longer needs it, I'll keep it for him."
Jiang Ming waved his hand.
The storage ring's eerie light flickered wildly.
Rows of shelves vanished into thin air.
[Acquired: 500 tons of high explosives]
[Received: 20 armor-piercing depleted uranium rounds]
[Obtained: Lv.40 Boss-level Crystal Core *5]
[Obtained: Tactical Nuclear Warhead (Inactive) *2]
In less than ten minutes, Jiang Ming had completely emptied the underground vault, leaving not even a screw on the shelves.
"Boss, there's another door ahead."
Chen Qi pointed to the end of the hall.
It was a door made entirely of abyssal flesh and blood, with a huge, closed eyeball growing on it.
The blood vessels around the eyeball are still pulsating rhythmically.
Jiang Ming walked over, and the Living Mind Radar instantly emitted a piercing alarm.
[WARNING! Extremely high concentration of abyssal energy radiation detected!]
[Ahead area: Abyssal energy transmission channel!]
Jiang Ming drew the greatsword [Chaos Fire Thunder Prison] from his back and, without saying a word, cleaved it into the eyeball.
puff!
Black, foul-smelling blood spurted out, and the fleshy gate let out a scream as it split open from the middle.
The scene behind the door made Jiang Ming's eyes narrow.
A huge vertical pipe with a diameter of over thirty meters came into view.
The inner walls of the pipe were entirely made of writhing flesh and blood, and it was bottomless.
An extremely large and destructive energy was surging upwards from the depths of the earth through the pipes, being transported to the fortress outside.
"This is..." Chen Qi swallowed.
"pump."
Jiang Ming said coldly, "Lei Qing has turned the entire Jiangnan region into a huge energy transfer station. He's helping that monster in the Earth's core extract life force from the surface."
Just then, a teeth-grinding scraping sound came from deep inside the pipe.
Several spider-like monsters with human heads quickly climbed up the pipe wall.
[Abyss Forager (Lv.50 Elite)]
As soon as these monsters showed themselves, Jiang Ming didn't even swing his sword; he simply raised his left hand.
"Shadow Leap".
Jiang Ming instantly appeared in mid-air, his right leg carrying a terrifying 127 points of strength, and slammed down hard on the head of the monster at the front.
boom!
The monster's head exploded like a watermelon, and its body plummeted straight into the abyss.
boom!
The monster's head exploded like a watermelon, and its body plummeted straight into the abyss.
Before the remaining few could react, Chen Qi blasted them into mincemeat with a burst of machine gun fire.
"Ming-ge, this pipe leads straight to the Earth's core, what do we do? Blow it up?"
Chen Qi asked.
Jiang Ming stared at the bottomless pipe, where the red dot on the live radar screen was growing at an alarming rate.
That catastrophic mother entity is not only not dead, but is accelerating its reorganization because it has absorbed the flesh and blood of the main fortress!
If we wait for it to fully recover, not only Dongjiang City, but the entire Jiangnan region will be wiped out.
"Breaking the pipes won't do any good."
Jiang Ming turned and walked back, "We have to uproot it completely."
"Marlowe, get back in the car."
Jiang Ming strode back to the elevator.
Back on the ground, Jiang Ming immediately opened the system synthesis panel.
He dragged in the two tactical nuclear warheads he had just looted from the vault.
Then, he took out the golden legendary material that had just been obtained—[Abyss Tyrant's Flesh and Blood Engine].
Nuclear weapons alone are not enough; the defensive capabilities of the Cataclysmic Mother Matrix are beyond imagination, so we need to add some more.
Jiang Ming then threw in ten more Lv.40 leader crystal cores and [High-Dimensional Assimilation Metal].
Main material: Tactical nuclear warhead *2
[Supporting Materials: Abyss Tyrant's Flesh Engine (Gold Legendary)] + [Boss Core *10] + [High-Dimensional Assimilation Metal *20]
[System Notification: This synthesis is extremely dangerous! There is an 80% failure rate! Failure will trigger a nuclear explosion, destroying all matter within a 50-kilometer radius!]
[Confirm synthesis?]
"confirm."
Jiang Ming didn't even blink.
"Miracle, open it for me."
The blinding light instantly illuminated the entire ruins of the main area.
The violent energy collided wildly in the crafting panel, and tiny cracks began to appear in the surrounding space.
Even from a distance, Ma Luo and Chen Qi could feel the suffocating pressure, so much so that they didn't dare to breathe.
A full thirty seconds passed.
The intense light suddenly stopped.
[A miracle has been triggered!]
Synthesis successful!
[Obtained: Meteorite Antimatter Annihilation Nuclear Mine (Gold Legendary Consumable)]
A multifaceted metal sphere, only the size of a basketball and with an eerie, dark black color, floated silently in front of Jiang Ming.
The surface of the metal sphere was seamless, yet inside it seemed as if a nebula was flowing, emanating a terrifying aura that sent shivers down one's spine.
【Starfall Antimatter Annihilation Nuclear Mine】
[Special Effect 1: Matter Annihilation (Upon detonation, an antimatter collapse force field with a radius of five kilometers is generated, forcibly erasing all matter within the field.)]
[Special Effect 2: Abyss Interruption (The explosion instantly severs all energy connections between the target and the abyss dimension, preventing them from respawning.)]
[WARNING: Ensure you are at least 5 kilometers away from the blast center when detonating, otherwise you will be eliminated!]
"nice one."
Jiang Ming stuffed the nuclear bomb into his storage ring.
With this thing, no matter what kind of catastrophic mother system you are, it will just scatter your ashes to the winds.
"Get on the bus!"
Jiang Ming rolled over and crawled into the heavily armored fortress. "Chen Qi, warm up the main gun. Marlowe, push the engine power to maximum."
"Boss, where are we going?"
Marlow asked as he pulled the lever.
Jiang Ming pointed to the ground.
"Go to hell, to be the one who dies."
The heavily armored fortress let out a wild roar, and the fifteen-meter-long tank suddenly turned around and crashed directly into the huge hemispherical building in the center of the fortress.
boom!
The tank smashed through the building's exterior walls and rushed into the central hall.
"Mech mode, activate!"
Jiang Ming pressed the red button.
The chariot disintegrated instantly in mid-air, and the thirty-meter-tall Astral Asura crashed to the ground, smashing through the fragile floor slab and falling directly into the fifth underground level.
Jiang Ming, controlling the mecha, ignored the surrounding ruins of shelves and headed straight for the flesh-and-blood pipe with a diameter of thirty meters.
"Hold on tight, this elevator might be going a little fast."
The four main thrusters on the back of the Astral Asura simultaneously spewed out blinding blue flames.
The 30-meter-tall steel giant plunged headfirst into the vertical abyss of flesh and blood!
call--!
The wind howled past the mecha's ears.
The speed of the fall was extremely fast, and the writhing fleshy tube walls on both sides became blurry afterimages in the field of vision.
On the living mind radar, countless red dots are emerging from all around the tube wall.
【Abyss Guard (Lv.55 Elite)】
【Mutated Flesh Puppet (Lv.52)】
Hundreds upon hundreds of abyssal monsters sensed the intruder and, like madmen, burst forth from the fleshy growths in the tube walls, attempting to stop the Astral Asura's descent.
"Machine gun bombardment."
Jiang Ming's tone was icy.
Astral Asura raised his left secondary arm, and the [Magic Energy - Thunderstorm Ripper Machine Gun] spewed flames.
The purple-blue armor-piercing projectiles created an impenetrable metal storm inside the narrow pipe.
Thunderstorms leaped wildly through the monster horde, and severed limbs mixed with black blood rained down like drops of snow.
No monster could get within ten meters of the mech.
Depth: 500 meters.
Depth: 1,000 meters.
Depth: 1,800 meters.
As they continued to descend, the concentration of abyssal energy inside the pipe reached a terrifying level.
The kinetic shield on the surface of the Astral Asura was being corroded and hissed as its durability began to drop rapidly.
"Ming-ge! We're almost at the bottom!"
Chen Qi shouted.
Jiang Ming stared intently at the holographic screen. The red dot on the radar had grown so large that it almost filled the entire screen.
"Reverse firing of the thrusters to decelerate!"
boom!
Four streaks of blue flame shot forward suddenly.
The massive body of the Astral Asura abruptly stopped in mid-air.
The next second, the mech burst out of the narrow pipe and plunged into a vast underground space.
This is the fleshy cavity of the abyss, two thousand meters underground.
Jiang Ming maneuvered the mecha to a smooth landing.
Looking up, the sight before them made everyone hold their breath.
This underground space is more than ten times larger than before, and everywhere there are blood vessels as thick as bridge piers.
In the very center of the flesh cavity, a gigantic "heart" floats.
No, that can no longer be called a heart.
It was a deformed mountain of flesh forcibly kneaded together from countless human corpses, steel debris, and abyssal tentacles!
The mountain of flesh was over 500 meters in diameter, and its surface was covered with countless golden compound eyes, each one radiating cold malice.
【Abyssal Cataclysm Mother - Atatos (Lv.62 - Cataclysm-level)】
[Status: In the process of recovery (89% progress)]
[Characteristics: Abyssal Assimilation, Infinite Proliferation, Spiritual Annihilation.]
Seemingly sensing Jiang Ming's arrival, thousands of golden compound eyes on the surface of the flesh mountain turned simultaneously, staring intently at the Star Realm Asura.
A tangible mental shock surged toward the mech like a tsunami!
"Buzz—!"
Inside the cockpit, alarms blared incessantly.
Ma Luo and Chen Qi instantly turned pale, blood flowed from their seven orifices, and they collapsed to the ground in agony, clutching their heads.
A sharp pain shot through Jiang Ming's mind, as if countless steel needles were stabbing him simultaneously.
However, his high spirit attribute of over 100 points, combined with the passive skill of [Iron Will], allowed him to withstand this wave of spiritual annihilation.
"Wake up!"
Jiang Ming roared and activated the [Astral Soul - Fire Seed Matrix].
The energy core on the mech's chest erupted with a blinding light, and the power of the same origin of the sparks instantly spread, forcibly dispelling the mental pollution in the cockpit.
Ma Luo and Chen Qi, panting heavily, struggled back to their seats.
"Boss... this thing is too weird..." Marlowe wiped the blood off his face.
"It's not fully awake yet; it's a sitting duck right now."
Jiang Ming pushed the control lever hard with both hands.
The Astral Asura unleashed all four arms simultaneously. The [Absolute Zero High-Frequency Ship-Slaying Blade] on its right main arm popped out instantly, while its left main arm raised a heavy tower shield.
"Chen Qi, gravity cannon, clear away the tentacles around it!"
"clear!"
[Abyss Annihilation Gravity Cannon] fired with a deafening roar.
Two black gravity collapse bombs slammed into the front of the mountain of flesh, instantly creating a tenfold gravity field.
Those thick tentacles that tried to block the mech were crushed into a pulp by gravity.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, the Star Realm Asura charged forward like a dark golden lightning bolt, heading straight for the flesh mountain's main body!
Just as the mech was less than 100 meters away from the mountain of flesh, a gaping maw suddenly opened up on the surface of the mountain of flesh.
A dark red beam of destructive light, over ten meters in diameter, hurtled towards us with overwhelming force!
"Absolute block!"
Jiang Ming roared, and the tower shield on the left arm of the mecha slammed into the ground, taking the brunt of the destructive beam of light.
boom--!
The blinding light engulfed everything, and the terrifying shockwave tore the surrounding flesh and blood walls to shreds.
The Astral Asura was pushed backward dozens of meters by this enormous force, and the surface of the tower shield even showed signs of melting.
But Jiang Ming persevered.