Chapter 14: The Ice and Fire Competition (Part 9)
“Weng… shasha… weng…” The snowflakes on the competition live broadcast screen grew more and more, and the announcer’s voice was gradually drowned out by a wave of static. Among the noisy sounds, an increasingly louder, strange buzzing mixed in.
The audience instinctively sensed something had gone wrong, holding their breath in front of their screens.
In the next moment, the light on the screen suddenly surged.
The camera zoomed in on Rong Mi.
On the screen, which was already filled with interference noise, purple light suddenly flickered around the mech’s body.
All the mental power channels of the mech were filled, turning the originally black mech into a rich shade of purple.
Without warning, the thrusters beneath Rong Mi’s mech roared, and it leapt upward.
At the same time, the faint buzzing sound from the screen suddenly intensified by hundreds, even thousands of times, becoming a thunderous roar.
The rocks of the mountain shattered, and a bright red beam of light suddenly erupted from beneath Rong Mi’s feet.
It resembled an erupting volcano.
The crimson light shot into the sky. At first, it was only as wide as an arm, but its diameter rapidly expanded.
The light beam spread outward, growing thick and massive.
The rocks and soil at the mountain peak melted into large chunks of brownish liquid under the red light, then evaporated and disappeared within the red glow.
However, the objects closest to the red light remained unharmed.
A deep purple mental power shield formed a fiery layer around the mech, burning away the red energy strands that came into contact with it.
Rong Mi’s mech leapt upward, bending down and reaching out.
The mech’s mechanical hand pressed against the top of the red light, and at the same time, the purple mental power erupted explosively.
The deep purple mental energy spread horizontally, toward the top of the red light.
The flame-like energy formed a large net, dropping straight down over the red light.
Centered on Rong Mi, a purple whirlwind spiraled in mid-air.
“Run!”
The mental whirlwind had already begun the moment the red light appeared. It surged outward, sweeping up the white starship behind them and the mechs scattered throughout the forest, pushing everyone further away.
The strange disturbance came so suddenly that the mecha pilots in the forest didn’t understand what was happening. But the moment they were lifted and pushed outward, they instinctively activated their mech thrusters. The pilots scrambled to stabilize their mechs, while subconsciously looking toward the mountaintop where the red and purple lights intertwined.
There was no mountain peak anymore.
In just a few seconds, the peak, the forest… all of it had been obliterated by the energy waves of the light.
The ground beneath the lost peak began to sink, forming a massive crater.
The pit continued to descend, as if it led to the core of the planet, to the mysterious depths of an unknowable world.
The soil swirled, and a strange light blue color began to spread from the bottom of the dark pit, freezing the earth that had been flattened. On top of the light blue crystals, red lines quickly began to grow and slither.
The mecha pilots, still floating in mid-air, instinctively increased their flight altitude, scattering and fleeing farther away.
At the center of the collapsed mountain peak, the deep purple mental power shield, wrapped in red light, burned fiercely, making a horrifying screech as it slowly dissolved the red light beam.
Rong Mi’s mech flipped backward, stopping in mid-air. The mech’s arm was raised, and mental energy flowed from his hand, forming a thin, brightly colored, narrow knife.
Beneath him, the pit buzzed with sound, and a gigantic advanced Ice Butterfly had taken flight.
Its large wings stretched toward the sky, almost filling the entire sky and blocking the pale sun. Its crimson body was even more massive than the red light beam that had just appeared, resembling a small mountain made of steel.
The body also bore horizontal stripes like those on lower-level Ice Butterflies, but these stripes were broken in the center, with the insect’s outer shell splitting open on both sides.
From within, a humanoid figure was revealed.
A person, with pale red skin, completely naked.
It appeared inside the insect body of the Ice Butterfly, protected by the outer shell. It had not yet grown hands or legs, but its abdomen still had red insect legs. However, the top of its body had fully developed into a perfect human-like head.
Rong Mi could see its finely crafted facial features clearly.
It had a pair of crimson eyes, matching the Ice Butterfly’s body, with long and curled eyelashes.
Its skin was very pale, and its lips were bright red, with delicate hair cascading down in soft blue tones, resembling butterfly wings.
The face looked like a doll-like beauty… if not for the fact that it was even larger than Rong Mi’s mech head.
The advanced Ice Butterfly, having evolved into a humanoid form, understood human aesthetics.
It raised its eyes, its crimson pupils reflecting the black mech.
The air around the mech shifted, rippling with strange energy, dyed in the bright red of the Ice Butterfly’s toxin.
At the same time, the massive butterfly wings folded inward around Rong Mi, trapping the space around the mech. The red threads on the ice-blue wings flickered, shooting outward, wrapping around the mech’s limbs.
It opened its mouth, revealing no human tongue, only hundreds of red, barbed, poisonous tendrils that shot out like arrows, aiming to pierce the mech’s outer shell and stab Rong Mi into a sieve… to suck him dry!
Rong Mi: “No need for that!”
The long knife in his hand whistled.
The released high-intensity mental energy ignited into a vast sea of flames.
The mech’s core spun rapidly, channeling Rong Mi’s mental power to every part of the mech. The overwhelming energy consumption caused the mech’s outer shell to tremble, emitting creaking sounds. More of the mental power, too much for the mech’s mental slots to contain, leaked out, forming gusts of powerful whirlwinds.
Rong Mi calmly observed the bizarre insectoid creature before him.
He knew that this wasn’t the mech he had perfected over countless iterations.
The C-class mech he was driving now had a fragile outer shell, and it would easily shatter and disintegrate under his attacks. The mech’s core had low endurance, and its energy reserves were depleting at an alarming rate.
The mental power slots couldn’t contain enough energy, leading to a lot of unnecessary energy consumption.
Thus, the mental knife in his hand wasn’t as solid or sharp as he wanted.
But it was enough.
The Ice Butterfly’s toxic red mist condensed from the surrounding air, and the sea of mental flame burned it away.
The butterfly wings surrounding him blocked his vision, cutting off all possible escape routes for the mech, closing in on him.
The red tendrils shooting from the butterfly wings and mouth rushed from the only remaining gap, like tentacles reaching from the depths of a deadly abyss.
And Rong Mi only swung a single strike.
The purple, solidified blade slashed down from mid-air. The curved blade extended outward, forming an energy edge far larger and more terrifying than the long knife in Rong Mi’s hand, charging forward with reckless power…!
The blade’s edge cut through the daylight above and deeply embedded into the ground below, like a furious wind or a raging fire, carving a wide arc and emitting a piercing howl as it advanced.
It cleaved through the red mist, severed hundreds of tendrils, and broke through the encircling butterfly wings, heading straight toward the advanced Ice Butterfly’s crimson body.
“Whirr…”
The advanced Ice Butterfly’s wings immediately pulled back. The tips of the wings, shattered by the blade, dripped with fresh red blood, but they remained large and firmly covered the Ice Butterfly’s body.
The steel-like, crimson insect body closed, tightly enveloping the humanoid form inside.
However, its humanoid form wasn’t as fragile as a true human body. The pale human-like skin was just as tough, completely encasing the soft, vulnerable flesh that had once been beneath the twelfth and thirteenth horizontal stripes. The soft, vulnerable flesh inside the insectoid body had gradually shrunk through successive evolutions, ultimately forming a heart the size of a human fist at the center of the body.
Only if this insectoid heart was destroyed would the advanced Ice Butterfly truly die. Otherwise, it would always have enough time to grow a new body, new tendrils, and new wings.
Yet this layered, impregnable defense could not stop Rong Mi’s blade.
The young man’s mental power was released without reserve, burning with intensity, channeling all of his energy into a single strike.
The mech’s palm began to melt from the high temperature, and the shattered fragments of the outer shell floated up, crushed indiscriminately by the purple mental energy.
And the blade swung from his hand, unyielding and relentless.