Chapter 124: Special Bullet, Special Person

Chapter 124: Chapter 124: Special Bullet, Special Person

Shi Tie flexed its left arm slightly — three fleshy tendrils had been driven into it and were slowly writhing around — then settled back into its quiet stance at Xiang Yi’s side.

That aura of brutal, coiled power was oddly reassuring.

Xiang Yi brought Shi Tie out of the research institute and up to the surface to run some basic tests. Doing it inside the containment room was a bad idea — the last thing he needed was to wreck the place.

Ning Ye followed them up, equipment in hand, logging the changes in Shi Tie’s Spiritual Fluctuation intensity and the abilities it had developed.

The .50 BMG caliber was already a bit on the small side for what the Flesh Machine Gun had become.

Even so, the moment the ammo belt was fed in, the Flesh Machine Gun started squirming on its own, quickly reshaping its bore to accommodate the .50 rounds.

Flames belched from the biological barrel as the keratin fins that served as heat dissipators fanned open — like a beast rearing up to meet its enemy.

The raw stopping power when firing standard ammunition, though, showed no real improvement. That made sense — what a round delivers downrange depends on its caliber and the powder charge inside it.

Once the .50 belt ran dry, the firing paused for a brief moment.

Then the barrel and muzzle of the Flesh Machine Gun began to writhe, swelling back to their original, far wider bore.

The muscles of Shi Tie’s left arm tensed, and the Flesh Machine Gun roared back to life.

There were no rounds loaded — yet something pale and white was being fired from the muzzle.

Xiang Yi immediately pushed Spiritual Power into his mind, accelerating his thoughts. Everything in his field of vision ground down to a crawl.

The white projectiles the Flesh Machine Gun was firing were nothing more than bone spikes — the same ones Xiang Yi had seen the Flesh Beast use before. These Bone Spike Bullets were shaped more like actual bullets, though, rather than just launching half an arm bone wholesale.

Those Bone Spike Bullets punched clean through the wall they’d set up as a target, then kept going, tearing through several more buildings beyond it.

The dense volley shredded the load-bearing structures of the abandoned district buildings outright. Several of them were already crumbling, swallowed by rising clouds of dust and debris.

Even the 30mm steel plate Xiang Yi had fabricated using Spiritual Energy was punched through without any trouble.

A 40mm plate fared no better — it couldn’t stop those deceptively plain-looking bone spikes either.

The 50mm plate barely held against half a round — mainly because Shi Tie’s hand twitched at the wrong moment, clipping the edge of the plate and sending the spike ricocheting off.

60mm was roughly the limit for consistent penetration. 70mm could still be punched through with enough rounds.

To reliably stop them, you’d need at least 80mm of armor plating.

That was pushing into tank armor territory.

Xiang Yi was starting to think "Flesh Machine Gun" wasn’t the right name anymore. This thing was a Flesh Cannon.

The firepower was deeply satisfying. The ammunition cost, on the other hand...

A few seconds of casual firing and basic testing had put several hundred Bone Spike Bullets downrange.

Shi Tie, the Corpse Ghost, looked noticeably drained compared to before. It seemed the Bone Spike Bullets weren’t exempt from conservation of energy — generating them burned through Shi Tie’s own reserves.

It needed to eat.

Xiang Yi reached into his pack, pulled out a slab of pork, and tossed it over.

Watching Shi Tie tear into it with relish, he found himself turning over the question of how to get it faster, more efficient nutrition. Fresh meat and blood was fine, but the conversion rate left something to be desired.

The image of pulling chunks of meat out of a bag and shoving them into his pet’s mouth mid-fight was, frankly, ridiculous.

"What are you thinking about?" Ning Ye had noticed the look on his face.

"Right now it’s eating fresh pork I bought from the market. For a colony this young, that kind of produce isn’t cheap."

"So I started wondering — when an Abnormality consumes flesh and blood, what exactly is it taking in? Is it the nutritional content of the meat itself, or some specific compound found within it? Has anyone ever looked into that?"

"Not that I can recall... no."

Ning Ye shook her head, then elaborated: "Mostly because there’s never been a reason to."

"Who bothers studying what an Abnormality eats? If it’s dangerous, one look tells you what it’s after. If it’s not dangerous, most of them aren’t interested in people anyway, so you just sort something else out."

"The only situation where it really matters is with Living Iron Extraction Devices — those require keeping Abnormalities alive for extended periods."

"Most labs with Living Iron Extraction Devices just bulk-raise large, manageable Abnormalities for that. Like the Shuffling Monsters you saw in that underground lab beneath the hospital — whoever set that place up, those things definitely needed to be fed meat."

"And they just get bulk-fed animal flesh. Nobody’s going to go out of their way to research the dietary science behind it."

"You’re the only one who’d even have a reason to, since you’re keeping a Corpse Ghost."

"Still, it’s a legitimate research direction," Xiang Yi said, a little wistfully. "Want to give it a shot?"

Ning Ye thought about it for a moment. "I can look into it, but it’s not high priority compared to everything else. Even if we figure something out, the best-case outcome is improving the efficiency of feeding carnivorous Abnormalities. And if it turns out to be complicated, the cost might end up higher than just buying meat."

"As long as you’re willing to try. Worst case, I’ll just have Shi Tie carry a portable freezer around."

Ning Ye gave a small nod. "Do you want to keep testing?"

"Yes."

The internal structure of the Flesh Machine Gun after assimilation with Shi Tie was something unique. A handful of standard Bone Spike Bullets was definitely not the full picture of what it could do.

The instant Xiang Yi issued the next command to Shi Tie, the white rounds firing from the Flesh Cannon suddenly shifted to gray.

This time, when the gray rounds struck the wall of the building, they detonated on impact. The explosion scattered countless thin, needle-like bone fragments, turning everything within a ten-meter radius into a pincushion.

These were brittle Bone Spike Bullets — designed to shatter on contact. Against unarmored targets, the fragmentation effect would be devastating.

Then the gray rounds shifted again, this time to black.

The muzzle velocity was far lower than either of the previous types, and on impact these rounds disintegrated even more completely than the gray ones — they didn’t just fragment; they turned to dust.

Ning Ye couldn’t make out the details with ordinary human eyes, but Xiang Yi could see it perfectly even at this distance.

That black dust looked exactly like what he’d seen on that rainy night.

His gaze sharpened. He moved quickly toward the building the rounds had struck.

He crouched and dragged his fingers through the black residue on the ground. Then he was certain.

Dead Spirit Dust.

Even Xiang Yi was caught off-guard by this — but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.

The Flesh Cannon had fully merged with a Corpse Ghost, an Abnormality born from Dead Spirit Dust and Black Stone Fragments. Of course it would carry something like this.

And the bodies that could be raised by Dead Spirit Dust originating from Shi Tie...

Xiang Yi wasn’t sure it would work the way he was imagining, but this was something shaped by his own Spiritual Energy, so...

He reined in the surge of excitement.

Gaining the ability to control new Abnormalities would be a good thing — but Dead Spirit Dust, whether it appeared naturally or was deployed deliberately, required a massive number of corpses.

As someone of Anka Star, he had no desire to see the kind of mass casualties on Anka Star that would produce that much Dead Spirit Dust.

Of course, if someone like Lu Qi and his crew came looking for trouble again, that was a different story entirely.

Xiang Yi picked up one of the spent Bone Spike Bullets from the ground and held it in his palm for a closer look. The razor-sharp spike sliced into his skin without any resistance.

Blood welled from the cut, but within a few breaths, Blood Crystal seeped out from the wound, spreading to cover it. His recovery speed was far beyond what it used to be.

But it didn’t stop there. The Blood Crystal interacted with the trace residue the bone spike had left in the wound — a reaction Xiang Yi recognized immediately.

The Blood Crystal over the cut turned black, then crumbled, leaving behind a faint scattering of Living Iron Powder, barely visible to the naked eye.

"..."

Xiang Yi stared at the Living Iron Powder for a long moment. Then he composed himself, as though nothing had happened, and walked back to Ning Ye’s side.

He’d known this moment might come from the day he’d taken control of the Black Stone.

As long as he was still himself, nothing would change.