Chapter 974 - 42: Thick-Skinned and Tough

Hearing Candle Dragon say this, Sun Hang couldn't help squinting his eyes. At the same time, the world in his eyes suddenly changed dramatically—most of the things in his vision turned into shades of gray, black, and white. Only on the infected were various colorful light spots distributed, some strong, some weak, some large, some small, and when a certain amount of light spots gathered together, they would transform into a liquid-like form, flowing within the infected.

But when the glowing liquid flowed past the rings worn on the arms of the infected, the multicolored flowing light would be transformed into gray-white, only gradually returning to its original color after staying away from the rings for a while.

This was Sun Hang's special vision used to peep at memes. The colorful light spots and liquid he saw were the memetic entities inside the infected, and those rings were the "Nephthys" devices. Under this vision, the operating principle of Nephthys could be clearly seen—it would erase the eye-catching colors of meme entities under the special vision. If the distance was pulled a little further, Sun Hang could only see fuzzy, chaotic images and couldn't see those colorful memes at all.

On the sin-bearer emerging from the Desert Sea, Sun Hang couldn't even see the sparse light spots. He could only vaguely see, deep within its body, an organ emitting faint fluorescence, similar to a heart, and outside this organ, there were numerous "proliferative tissues" layered and wrapped around, further "covering" the already faint fluorescence.

In some sense, these "proliferative tissues" actually had functions similar to Nephthys.

Sun Hang turned off the special vision, but his gaze still lingered on the sin-bearer—the other did not launch an attack on Sun Hang and the others, who were hundreds of meters away, after emerging from the Desert Sea. Instead, it lay in place, staring at them intently with its dozen or so eyeballs.

If those organs were eyes.

It was hard to find a part that could be called a "head" on this sin-bearer. On the front of its bloated body were several tumors protruding from the surface, each embedded with several eyeball-like things. These spherical organs were deathly white, about the size of ping-pong balls, with black dots resembling pupils in the center. They could rotate nimbly like eyeballs but lacked the focusing effect a normal human eye should have.

Even staring directly into these suspected pupils, Sun Hang didn't feel like he was making eye contact.

The sin-bearer didn't charge forward, and neither did Sun Hang and his companions make a move. Both sides fell into an eerie standoff, with only a hunter, pierced by a bone spike and lifted into the air, still issuing dying screams.

"Its memetic entities are basically concentrated at the 'heart' location, and they have special tissue similar to shielding devices wrapping them, making it almost impossible for them to leak out," Sun Hang told Candle Dragon, "This also explains why the Desert Sea's inhabitants consume the sin-bearer's flesh and blood as food, yet do not get infected or trigger their latent memes to become active."

"Survival of the fittest." Candle Dragon sighed, then turned to look at Nuer, "The reason your priests need to wear holy rings to avoid being discovered by Sinking Sand Giant Worms is that they are not of your kind. They are relics from a previous civilization, while you are the evolutionists adapting to this new world."

Nuer was stunned. With the level of education he had received, he clearly couldn't fully understand the meaning behind Candle Dragon's words.

"So what? Are we just going to stay in this standoff with this grotesque eyeball thing?" Mr. Wang impatiently rubbed his fists, "Why don't I go, even without using Meme Ability, just relying on physical strength, I should be able to beat it to death."

"No need." Sun Hang reassembled his high-caliber sniper rifle, while Candle Dragon took out two heavy, brick-like magazines from his backpack, tossing one to Sun Hang and loading the other onto his own weapon.

"Fifteen-millimeter caliber 'Can Opener' APHE rounds," Candle Dragon said, "Depleted uranium penetrator with high-explosive filler; in the past, one shot of this could take out a light tank on the battlefield."

"Sounds intense." Sun Hang chambered the bullet, holding up the 27-kilogram sniper rifle in a standing position.

Sun Hang's feet were like the roots of a centennial tree, extending countless mycelium that anchored his body firmly onto the Desert Sea. The heavy alloy stock dug deep into his shoulder pit, and the crosshair in the scope completely locked onto the "heart" of the sin-bearer not far away.

Candle Dragon's physical strength wasn't as monstrous as Sun Hang's; he needed equipment assistance to use this weapon—the stock and handguard were directly connected to the mechanical arms of the exoskeleton. At the same time, multiple joints of the exoskeleton were locked in place, leaving only parts for buffering and absorbing recoil. Candle Dragon took a deep breath and hooked his finger around the trigger.

There was no need for a countdown, like three, two, one. Once they were ready, they directly pulled the triggers.

Thunderous gunshots resounded one after another immediately.

Candle Dragon used the semi-automatic shooting mode, firing approximately every 0.8 seconds, while Sun Hang used the full-automatic shooting mode, swiftly emptying the magazine of fifteen rounds.

This sniper rifle indeed had a full-automatic shooting function, but it was designed for power armor or small mechas capable of handling individual soldier weaponry. If a soldier without power armor were to shoot full-automatically, even with the aid of an exoskeleton, it would completely break apart under the terrifying recoil.

In this squad, only Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi could use pure physical strength to control this sniper rifle in full-automatic shooting mode.

The sin-bearer was instantly covered with blood blossoms, and flashes from explosive blasts ignited one after another... However, when the flames subsided, the attack effect displayed was a bit disappointing.

For a weapon of this caliber, even without explosive filling in the bullets, hitting a human body would instantly blast it into pieces. But when it hit this sin-bearer's body, it merely opened a few bowl-sized bloody holes on its surface, with the depth of the holes being less than the width of a palm.

"Assessing the target's physical defense capability, evaluation level is... B+." The main brain's voice rang in Sun Hang's ears after a round of shooting ended.

It's worth noting that Wang Xiyi, without dragonization, had a physical strength of only A- (S+ after dragonization), so a B+ rating was already considered extremely high.

However, this rating was, in fact, not particularly significant. Even with an S+ physical strength, for human civilization, it's merely the issue of a single missile... Issues that can be solved with conventional weaponry aren't really problems.

"Looks like we need to intensify our firepower a bit," Sun Hang said.

"There's a small missile launcher at the Sand Boat Outpost. Although the launcher was damaged in the attack, it should still be usable after some repairs," Candle Dragon said, "The missiles carried by the advance squad are locked in the launch compartments and should not have been tampered with."