Volume 11: Memetic Crisis Chapter 558: Hand-Tear
"You can run away, but what about the others? Just leave them here to die?" Ke Lan asked.
"What else? Do you have a better idea? The original purpose of building the Ark was to preserve the fire of mankind... When we fled the solar system a thousand years ago, we had already abandoned tens of billions of our compatriots. What if we abandon them again?" Pan directly retorted Ke Lan's words, "If you have a better solution, you might as well tell us directly. If it is feasible, we will consider it. By the way, let me remind you that there are still two minutes before the Seraphim escapes. And it will take at least one minute for you to put on that living armor and adapt to it. Therefore, you only have one minute left to make a decision."
"Can't we separate the entire module of West District 2 from the Ark like we did in East District 9, and then destroy it with high-powered weapons?" Ke Lan couldn't help but speed up her speech. "You also said that the power of Seraph has its limits. I don't believe that if all the weapons on the Ark fire at the same time, it can withstand it!"
"If the place where you confronted the Seraph was in the biological laboratory building of the research institute, we could indeed destroy it along with the entire West Zone 2 module." Pan paused and continued, "But the problem is that the underground ice storage is too deep."
Ke Lan was stunned for a moment. He suddenly realized that the location where he and Seraphim were now was no longer within the range of the West Zone 2 module.
The vertical secret passage connecting the fourth and fifth floors alone was more than three thousand meters deep. The fifth floor of the entire underground ice storage sank all the way into the cooling pool of the Ark's main reactor, and the Ark's main reactor could not be separated like those regional modules.
As for firing at the main reactor...it would be more efficient and simpler to just let the reactor explode.
The result is the same anyway.
"So, actually I have no choice at all ?" Ke Lan gave a somewhat helpless smile and shook his head.
"Don't be so depressed. Look at you. Your smile is too forced." Pan said. Obviously, the other party can see Ke Lan's current expression through the monitor on the power armor - the authority of the Undead Crew is much higher than that of the Crisis Management Department.
"Okay, this thing...how do we use it?" Ke Lan walked to the front of the metal barrel and reached his hand into the crack.
He touched something sealed in the metal barrel. It felt cold and smooth. He thought it was a container made of glass, but when he took it out, he found it was a crimson sphere.
It was an ochre-red color close to brown , like the color of congealed blood scab, but the surface was polished to be as smooth as pearl.
“That’s how it’s used.”
As soon as Pan finished speaking, the surface of the sphere suddenly "melted", and the whole ball instantly turned into a small snake that seemed to be condensed from plasma, and wrapped around Ke Lan's palm.
“Crack!”
A crisp sound came from Ke Lan's hand. The extremely hard composite armor was actually crushed by this "blood snake", and the broken metal pieces flew everywhere.
The blood snake transformed again and wrapped up Ke Lan's entire hand that was exposed to the air. At this moment, Ke Lan felt as if countless sharp needles pierced his skin, muscles... and even bones!
It is difficult to describe the feeling in words. He felt his body tense up uncontrollably... something like plasma was drilling into his body through his pores and flowing through the blood vessels in his palms to his limbs.
"ah--"
Ke Lan couldn't help but cry out in pain. This kind of pain was completely different from the intermittent needle-like pain in his brain... Ke Lan even suspected that what was flowing in his blood vessels was a stream of boiling red molten iron.
He was right. The transplantation process of this living armor was... indeed very painful.
Ke Lan felt as if his skin had been peeled off, his bloody muscles and bones were exposed to the extreme cold of nearly 100 degrees below zero, but he felt a constant burning pain in his body, fighting against the low temperature outside.
He would rather his nerves were frozen or burned, which would at least dull his senses. However, the sensitivity of every nerve ending seemed to be stretched to the highest level, and it tirelessly sent "extreme pain" signals to the nerve center over and over again.
"Plop!" Ke Lan suddenly knelt down, hunched over, and used his forehead to bear the weight of his upper body. He clenched his fists and hammered the ground continuously, making muffled "bang, bang" sounds.
This pain has already exceeded the limit that humans can bear. Logically, the brain's self-protection mechanism should make him faint, but this protection mechanism seems to have been shut down manually... Ke Lan's consciousness has not only not become blurred, but has become clearer.
He could clearly feel the foreign bodies running around in his body - they kept destroying tissues in various parts of his body, then quickly repaired and rebuilt them, and then destroyed them again...
They revelled wantonly, seemingly completely unaware that this body's self-awareness was on the brink of collapse and could be destroyed at any moment.
"Bear with it, the pain will only be temporary. At least you are much better than the previous volunteers, and your compatibility with the living armor is almost 100% - you know, before you, a total of 67 people died from rejection after the transplant, and the worst one even had his entire body exploded and turned into a bloody rain... Tsk tsk, that scene was spectacular."
Pan's voice rang in Ke Lan's ears, but Ke Lan had no intention of listening to what he was saying. He only felt an indescribable force surging into his limbs - every time the running "plasma" destroyed and rebuilt his body, the new part would be greatly strengthened... At this time, Ke Lan's body was like the Ship of Theseus. From head to toe, there was no place that belonged to the original body.
However, the "Ship of Theseus" had replaced all the wooden boards originally used to form the hull with armor plates made of Nino alloy...
In just a few dozen seconds, his body had been destroyed and regenerated dozens of times...that "living armor" had completely merged with him.
"It actually worked?" Pan muttered softly, "It seems they didn't lie to me... It really wasn't luck that got you this far."
Ke Lan's body stopped twitching. He slowly got up from the ground, raised his hands, and clenched his fists twice in a daze.
From the outside, his body seemed to have not changed at all compared to before, but he knew better than anyone what changes had taken place in his body in these few tens of seconds.
"Is this considered... a successful transplant?" Ke Lan asked in a low voice, "Besides this power, what other effects will it have on me?"
"No one knows," Pan replied, "because you are the first one who succeeded. Besides you, only one other person has tried the transplant and survived... Of course, he didn't live long."
"And you know this person." Pan added.
"I know? Who?"
"The previous 'Pope' Chiron. One of the mistakes he made was coveting the power of this 'living armor' and fusing himself with the living armor without informing the crew or other members... But unfortunately, he failed and ended up like that. He could only spend the last moments of his life in the cold space station."
"Chiron? How could he?" Ke Lan opened his eyes slightly, his words full of shock.
"Perhaps you think that Chiron's death was caused by the puppets that invaded the 'Sick Village', but in fact, when he was expelled from the 'Undead Crew', his life had already entered the countdown. The erosion of the puppets only accelerated the process of death." Pan said emotionlessly, "In my opinion, he is a complete idiot... However, the candidate recommended by this idiot is quite interesting."
The "candidate" Pan mentioned was naturally Ke Lan.
"Then will I become... like Chiron?" Ke Lan couldn't help but ask.
"It shouldn't be." Pan said, "Chiron had a serious mutual rejection reaction in the first step of fusing with the living armor... He thought he was different from those volunteers who died tragically, but in fact, his compatibility with the living armor was even lower than those volunteers."
"Then what?"
"Then? This idiot knew he was in trouble, so he could only send us a distress signal. We spent a lot of effort to peel the living armor from his body, but his body had already suffered irreversible trauma." Pan said, and suddenly sighed for the first time, "I also know that he was too anxious. We spent too much time waiting... Maybe he was tired of waiting, so he made such a decision."
"Wait? What are you waiting for?"
"I know you will curse in your heart when I say this, 'Why are all the members of the Immortal Crew a Riddler?' But I still have to tell you that there are some things that are not suitable for you to know now. You are a chess piece, a very important chess piece, and perhaps the one that can decide the outcome of the whole game, but before that, you only need to follow the squares on the chessboard and move forward step by step."
"The ones moving forward step by step on the chessboard are the pawns," said Ke Lan.
"But when a pawn reaches the end of the board, it can be 'promoted' to any chess piece except the 'king'. (For details, please search for chess rules on Baidu)"
"... Let's not talk about this for now. Since you have separated this living armor from Chiron's body, can you separate it from me later?"
"No. Chiron was not fused with the living armor. Separating it from his body was like taking out a stone he had eaten... and you, you did not eat a piece of indigestible stone... This armor has become a part of your body."
At this moment, Ke Lan suddenly felt a strong wind coming towards him. Before he could dodge, he was slammed into the wall behind him, and his whole body was embedded in the alloy wall.
The communication between him and Pan was abruptly interrupted.
Ke Lan raised his head with some effort, and saw that the pillar of light covering the "Seraphim" had completely disappeared, and the opponent's six wings were now burning with extremely bright flames. Hundreds of eyes, including those on the four faces, were staring at Ke Lan intently. Ke Lan could even see his own predicament from the opponent's pupils.
"Judgment." Four mouths spoke at the same time, and six wings flapped violently - Ke Lan finally saw the move that had just knocked him away: those were six wing-shaped phantoms separated from the wings. Like the original bodies, these phantoms were also burning with blazing flames, which looked quite magnificent and spectacular.
Six phantoms slammed directly into the human-shaped groove that Ke Lan had smashed on the wall, and the sound of the air exploding echoed throughout the underground ice storage.
But when the flames dissipated, a ochre-red figure walked out from the wall step by step.
"You...haven't you ever heard of...the principle of 'smoke but no harm'?" The ochre-red figure...that is, Ke Lan, said slowly.
The power armor on his body had been completely shattered, but a large amount of thick "plasma" seeped out from his pores, forming a layer of "armor" similar to a blood scab on the surface of his skin.
This piece of "armor" is covered with raised edges and thorns. Large pieces of "plate armor" cover the vital parts of the chest and back, and countless tiny "blood scales" wrap the joints, abdomen and other parts that need to bend... and at the end of Ke Lan's hands, a pair of claws that are thirty to forty centimeters long extend outward along the ten fingers. For some reason, this pair of claws, which are completely condensed from blood plasma, also have a layer of metallic luster.
"Your wings are so ugly, so... I decided to tear them off for you."
