Chapter 40: Living Iron Piece

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Living Iron Piece

"Only about twenty meters of detection range once it loses its head?"

Xiang Yi muttered to himself and flipped on the Mind Pulse Generator.

The Psychic Pulse it produced instantly hit him with that familiar crawling restlessness.

But the same Psychic Pulse that had driven back swarms of Blood Crystal Worms in the mine tunnels couldn’t do the same here — it barely slowed the walking corpse down.

That wasn’t what Xiang Yi had expected at all.

He’d used the Mind Pulse Generator on people back at the prison port, and the results had been immediate and obvious.

Against this kind of Abnormality, though, the effectiveness was shockingly poor.

Even if Abnormalities had some inherent resistance to Spiritual Energy-based effects like Psychic Pulses, this was taking it way too far.

His best guess was that the continuous-output Psychic Pulse was designed specifically for swarm-type Abnormalities like Blood Crystal Worms — small bodies, large numbers. Against a humanoid Abnormality like this, the output mode needed to change entirely.

If a continuous mode existed, there had to be a burst mode too.

A lot of thoughts fired through Xiang Yi’s mind in an instant, but his hands never slowed down for a second.

He raised the Mining Gun, lined up the sights on the headless corpse’s knee joint, and pulled the trigger.

The coil rotor screamed into motion, its high-speed whine swallowed entirely by the drumming rain.

A deep crimson beam lanced out from the barrel and struck the headless corpse’s right knee dead-on.

Just like what Xiang Yi had done to his two old cellmates, the flesh and blood crystallized into Blood Crystal — and the headless corpse, its leg suddenly rigid and useless, lost its balance and crashed to the ground.

But something strange happened right then.

The crystals spreading through the flesh weren’t the blood-red color they should have been. Instead, they had taken on a strange iron-black hue.

And a good portion of the newly formed crystals shattered into fragments before they could even spread, barely scratching the surface of the Abnormality’s skin.

When the headless corpse hauled itself back upright, it was still dragging itself toward Xiang Yi one lurching step at a time.

Fortunately, the laser was generating crystals faster than they could break apart.

Xiang Yi kept his finger on the trigger, holding the beam steady across the corpse’s arms and legs. Gradually, the dark iron-black crystals spread until they encased its limbs entirely, locking them in place.

The whole thing took nearly half a minute.

Back when he’d faced his old cellmates, a single sweep of the laser across their legs had been enough.

So this is what an Abnormality is...

Xiang Yi patched up the Mind Pulse Generator, which had started smoking again, then tucked it under one arm and tightened his grip on the Mining Gun, stepping a little closer to the headless corpse sprawled on the ground.

Its torso was still twitching and squirming, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

And then something new started happening to it.

The iron-black coloring that had been scattered across the crystals began to merge together, forming irregular plate-like structures, while the crystals themselves turned almost perfectly transparent — blazing brilliantly in the firelight nearby.

Xiang Yi carefully prodded one of the transparent crystals on the headless corpse with the tip of the Mining Gun.

The crystals instantly shattered all at once, as if he’d set off a chain reaction.

The irregular metal fragments inside clattered to the floor with a sharp, clear ring.

Something about it nagged at Xiang Yi — it felt familiar. He kept turning it over in his mind.

Then the memory clicked into place: the day he and He Dong had escaped from the mine tunnels.

That’s where he’d seen it. He’d found trace amounts of Living Iron on the corpses of Blood Crystal Worms.

The Blood Crystal Laser Beam colliding with an Abnormality’s flesh — that actually produced Living Iron?

Xiang Yi picked up one of the metal fragments and checked it against his panel. It was the real thing — genuine Living Iron Material.

This stuff could be used for unique modifications.

He got to work immediately, collecting every scrap of Living Iron Material from around the corpse.

What remained was a floor full of shattered crystals and the ruined body that the Blood Crystal had consumed.

The headless corpse’s limbs were completely destroyed — not just the flesh, but the very bones had been devoured by the crystals.

Stripped of any structural support, the corpse was technically still "alive," but incapable of posing any threat.

That said, the female doctor’s corpse — the one that had gone downstairs earlier — seemed to have heard the crash of the headless corpse hitting the floor and the shattering of the crystals. It had come back up to the second floor.

It spotted Xiang Yi from across the stairwell and came sprinting toward him.

Thirty seconds later.

Another corpse was on the ground.

Xiang Yi’s hands stayed busy collecting Living Iron fragments, but deep down, he couldn’t bring himself to feel good about any of it.

His efficiency against these Abnormalities was terrible. Thirty full seconds of continuous laser fire just to take one of them down.

He’d also tried the Mind Pulse Generator on the female doctor’s corpse. Same result.

It wasn’t that the headless corpse had been a special case because it lacked a head — continuous-output Psychic Pulses simply couldn’t suppress this type of Abnormality effectively.

One or two, he could manage. Any more than that and he’d be completely overwhelmed.

His Mining Gun had been modified to be devastatingly effective against human targets, but against Abnormalities, it was almost like they had a natural counter to it.

An unmodified Mining Gun’s orange-red laser should have been able to sear straight through an Abnormality’s limbs quickly — sever the arms and legs and they’d be effectively neutralized.

But unique modifications couldn’t be undone. The lens of his Mining Gun was now made entirely of Blood Crystal, and there was no way to change what the laser did.

Who could have seen this coming?

The Mining Gun in his hands felt less like a weapon and more like a production tool — a machine for generating Blood Crystals and Living Iron.

Well, to be fair, Mining Guns were always tools to begin with...

Xiang Yi shook his head and put the weapon-versus-tool debate out of his mind. As long as it could deal with Abnormalities, that was enough.

He had a more pressing problem to deal with right now.

The display panel on the side of the Mining Gun — the one showing remaining energy and current output — had just thrown up a warning: the Mining Gun needed to be recharged.

The Mining Gun ran on a civilian tritium fusion cell, which needed tritium fuel to operate. In prison, they never refueled a Mining Gun until it was completely drained.

So this one hadn’t been recharged since Xiang Yi had used it to kill Long Ge, Kun Ge, and the others. It was finally sitting at roughly 15% charge.

Tritium fuel wasn’t exactly rare in this day and age, but the way things stood, Xiang Yi had no way to get his hands on any.

He was going to have to be careful with what he had left.

After finishing off the female doctor’s corpse, Xiang Yi did a quick sweep of his surroundings.

No sign of any other Abnormalities nearby. They’d all gone chasing after the survivors upstairs.

He was the only one left moving in the camp.

His gaze drifted to the campfire in the middle of the camp, where a pot of meat broth was still bubbling away over the flames.

Hungry and frozen to the bone as he was, he desperately wanted a taste.

But the dark gray dust still drifting through the air made him hold back.

Nobody knew whether breathing that stuff in would cause serious problems down the line.

Xiang Yi pressed his lips together — they’d gone nearly white — and his body trembled involuntarily.

He wasn’t going to starve to death, but his body genuinely couldn’t take much more of this.

Hours of exposure to the cold had his muscles seizing up. He needed warmth and calories.

Come to think of it.

The group’s leader had clearly recognized these Abnormalities, which meant he’d definitely noticed the dark gray dust in the air too.

But he hadn’t bothered to cover his nose and mouth — so breathing the stuff probably wasn’t going to cause any immediate harm, right...?

Xiang Yi finally talked himself into it. He stripped off his hazard suit, grabbed some firewood from a nearby tent, and tossed it into the fire.

He also found a portable space heater in the tent where the wood was stored, but the battery was dead. No wonder the group hadn’t been using it.

A few mouthfuls of broth washed down with some compressed ration biscuits, and the warmth spread outward from his stomach in an instant.

The heat from the campfire did the rest — quickly burning off the moisture soaked into his clothes and driving out the bone-deep chill that had been setting in for hours.