Terrorist Attack

Pew, pew, pew... A series of muffled, fart-like pops abruptly erupted from the pouring black rain. In an instant, streaks of fiery light linked head to tail in an endless succession, defying gravity as they breached the curtain of rain and soared into the sky. Then, amidst the torrential black downpour, they plummeted straight back down! Just like that, they effortlessly crossed the labyrinth woven from countless traps and illusory mists. They slammed directly into the freshly renovated observation post! A violent firework burst—then another, and yet another, followed by another. Terrifying shockwaves rippled outward, shaking the earth and sending fissures spiderwebbing across the massive workshop amid the tremors. Dust drifted down, sprinkling over the utterly dumbfounded face before the water mirror. Helmut remained frozen, eyes bulging as he leaned forward in disbelief. What the hell? What just happened? What the fuck are you doing?! Are you even an artisan? Pulling out a rocket launcher—a disgraceful phlogiston weapon like that?! It was like a peerless young swordsman meeting a rival atop the Forbidden City. You stood at the pinnacle of the world, drawing your blade to demonstrate what it meant to strike like an immortal from beyond the heavens, only to find your opponent piloting an airship straight at your face... No martial honor, relying on cheap tricks and sneak attacks—fine, forget that, but show at least a shred of dignity as an artisan, dammit! Even though every artisan developed a certain reliance on firearms during their apprenticeship, apart from a small minority who minored in engineering or related fields, the vast majority wouldn't pursue that path. Not only out of disdain for such mass-produced assembly-line items, but also because conventional weapons driven by phlogiston explosions offered abysmal cost-effectiveness. They required zero technical sophistication while being laughably easy to defend against and counter. Ordinary Celestial Chosen of the Desolate Ruins, even without activating blessings, could take small-caliber rounds and grenades straight to the face once they reached the Metamorphosis stage, let alone a heavily fortified workshop. A mere phlogiston explosion... If you've got the guts, blow up the entire observation post along with the workshop! Otherwise, don't embarrass yourself. Phlogiston weapons of this yield were good for making noise and nothing else. Helmut sneered, a lingering disappointment in the so-called number one's true caliber creeping into his mind. It was like putting on a grand, elaborate performance before a boss door as if facing a mortal threat, only to push open the gate and find a low-HP slime. Winking at a blind man. And so, he coldly watched blast after blast of blazing light rain down, kicking up blast waves and spreading flames. Collapses echoed continuously, fissures even appearing across the workshop at the core. He merely waved a hand indifferently. In an instant, the workshop walls seemed to come alive, knitting the cracks shut on their own as collapsed masonry and debris were drawn back into place by the pull of gravity. Aside from vast patches of scorched soil, it was utterly unhar—un... In that instant, the disdain on his face froze. Then, uncontrollably, it began to twitch! "...You fucker named Ji!" Within the projection of the water mirror before him, as the billowing flames dissipated, what followed was streak after streak of eerie color—crimson tinged with pitch-black—along with a relentless stream of alarms blaring from the workshop's perimeter... Corruption alerts! As rockets rained down and blast waves and flames surged violently, eerie grayish-black marks actually began creeping across the scorched earth, spreading rapidly. Like living things, they seeped and spread into every crack and crevice—no, they were living things! With the rockets' detonations, their cluster-bomb-like internal payloads scattered in all directions, slamming into the ground and bursting apart. In those thumb-sized alloy canisters, some were packed with thick, foul black blood, others with visceral fragments of aberrations, and still others with a vast sea of spores invisible to the naked eye! Every single one came from the mushroom cultivation base Ji Jue had meticulously constructed—nourished with aberration blood, supplemented with heavily contaminated corrupted spiritus, adapted and bred through generation after generation, finally culminating in a brand-new strain. Drifting on the scorching gales, they took root wherever they landed, absorbing the rich spiritus surrounding the workshop and parasitizing the foul blood and visceral fragments of the aberrations, growing and proliferating at a speed visible to the naked eye. Within mere moments, countless bizarre, multicolored mushrooms shot up from the soil like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, multiplying madly. And mycelial threads barely discernible to the naked eye drifted in on the wind, infiltrating every corner—even slipping into the workshop itself. Even if they couldn't cause immediate destruction or corrosion, Helmut could distinctly sense that under the tangling invasion of the mycelium, the workshop's outer spiritus circuits were gradually growing sluggish and chaotic! Shit! There's shit everywhere! The moment he realized it, Helmut nearly held his head and shrieked, his scalp prickling with horror. How could someone not even set foot past the door, hurling flaming bags of shit over the wall, and terrified they wouldn't explode loud enough or flashy enough, strapping a couple of double-bang firecrackers onto them?! Yet even after a full salvo, the intruder wasn't satisfied. Rummaging through a crate behind him, he pulled out another set of rockets and fired again. Three salvos later, the observation post was a total disaster area. Amidst the spreading scars of corruption, kaleidoscopic mushrooms grew and multiplied frantically. Even the outermost defensive barrier was beginning to show faint traces of black, flickering under the relentless tangle and intrusion of the mycelium, struggling to hold. It was like a biological weapon and an EMP had had a few too many drinks at a bar, made a little mistake, and spawned a monstrous lovechild after a night of passion. In this inhuman carpet-bombing, the workshop's entire perimeter had been washed three or four times over with massive amounts of aberration flesh and corrupted filth—marinated right to the bone! If the duel hadn't sealed off outside interference, every single aberration on Luye Island probably would have swarmed over, drawn by the stench. Before the emergency purification sequences and cleaning modules could even get running, they were thoroughly overwhelmed. Still unsatisfied, Assault Niuma reached back again, only to grasp empty air—the ammunition reserves were completely spent. Helmut was already drenched in cold sweat. His trembling hand wiped his forehead—thank God. Seizing the opportunity, he readjusted the exterior temperature, sparing no expense to plunge the perimeter into sub-zero frost, forcibly freezing the spread of the mycelium. Inside the inner workshop, blurry figures materialized within shifting mists, frantically cleaning up the mycelium that had wormed through the fissures. The worm-like threads crept across the stonework, appearing completely rooted. When flames swept over them, they withered instantly, but the sections embedded within the stone only dug in deeper. Scraped off with tools, they let out shrill screeches like living creatures, writhing continuously and even attempting to turn around and erode Helmut's shadow servants. Unfortunately for them, those figures were mere puppets imprinted from spiritus over fixed templates, entirely devoid of flesh and blood, leaving nothing to parasitize. In all his twenty-six years of life, Helmut had never been this enraged. He felt as disgraced as if he had watched his bathroom toilet turn into a geyser. His pale complexion had turned crimson, his eyes bloodshot, veins pulsing in fury. "Ji Jue, you motherfucker, you deserve to die! Die!" "You naturally vile, shit-flinging brat! I'll personally tear you—no, I need to put on gloves first. Workshop defenses and purifications, max them all out!" "Outer traps, defenses, illusions—activate, activate, activate, ACTIVATE!" "Today I'm going to make you die horribly, terribly, unimaginably agonizingly! Aaaaargh!" As the workshop spun up to full capacity, malice surged like a tidal wave across several square kilometers. Within that writhing, living fog, countless sinister silhouettes shifted into view, ready to devour any who approached. Yet in the reflection of the water mirror, Helmut saw the bizarre suit of armor toss aside the spent launcher. Then, with heavy strides, it stepped back. One pace. Another. Finally, facing the workshop, it actually raised both hands—as if surrendering... "?!" In that instant, the incandescent Helmut froze once again. Bewildered and suspicious, he leaned closer to examine the view. Then he saw it—in the magnified image, the two raised mechanical hands deftly flipped around, shifting their grip, before raising two middle fingers, painted a deliberate, blood-red hue, straight at him. "What the fuck are you staring at, little bro?" Blaring from loudspeakers cranked to maximum volume, the deafening greeting froze Helmut in his tracks. His flushed face twitched violently as a visible lividness swept across his skin. Then, amidst his furious roars and howls, scorching plumes of flame erupted from the back of that colossal suit of armor. Roaring with the thunder of its engines, it launched into the sky! —BOOM! Amid the violent aerodynamic thrust, the ponderous armor took to the air like a bird, vaulting into the sky! Liquid mercury flowed and spread, forming a pair of massive wings to stabilize its frame. Correcting its course, it wobbled upward into the firmament, breaching the black rain, ascending higher and higher, rocketing into the clouds. Towering high in the sky, looking down upon all below. Just like that, evaporating and fracturing, the mercury wings morphed rapidly—the heavy chassis took aim from afar at the workshop whose defenses had been thoroughly probed by the three bombardments. Immediately after, the massive engines reversed direction—reverse thrusters engaged! Exhausting every last reserve of spiritus in the auxiliary tanks, it accelerated to its absolute limit in an instant, turning into the brightest star blazing across the heavens. From the colossal container on the armor's back, tons of liquid mercury surged forth, enveloping the chassis in layer upon layer. Violent friction against the atmosphere ignited a searing crimson glow. Like a fiery red star wrapped in roaring flames. In the observation of the water mirror, its silhouette enlarged rapidly—larger, larger, and larger still—until every minute detail was visible with crystal clarity... "...Holy f—" In that instant, Helmut swallowed hard, his throat bone-dry. As if finally understanding what was coming, he couldn't hold back the curse. —Assault Niuma, descending from the heavens!