Volume 8: A Trip to the Sick Village Chapter 369: Heretics Considered Heretics by Heretics
Meanwhile, at the other end of the residential area.
Facing the powerful mutant, Ke Lan did not fall into despair as most onlookers had expected... It wasn't even a tough fight. This second battle was so easy that even Ke Lan himself found it unbelievable.
Although this mutant is very powerful, he is just a miner at the bottom of society. His understanding of fighting is limited to the level of street fighting, and he has never received any systematic fighting training.
This advantage of his could be used to suppress people who have never learned fighting, but it is completely useless against trained fighters.
No matter how strong you are, if you don't know how to use it properly, it's just brute force. After getting the dagger, the mutant rushed towards Ke Lan. His attack was completely without any skills or rules, and his movements were full of flaws. The microgravity environment also reduced the impact of the power gap to a very small range.
Ke Lan didn't even need to use the power of time stop to easily defeat the opponent.
Ke Lan did not kill him, but only severed the tendons in the mutant's limbs and wrists. With the mutant's recovery speed, this injury would be healed in a few days.
But the servant of God's followers had no intention of sparing his life - when Ke Lan knocked the dagger out of the mutant's hand and kicked him away, the followers rushed forward and nailed the mutant to the ground with sharp steel forks. The spurting blood instantly dyed the cloaks of the followers red.
"The loser will be a sacrifice to the great god." The servant said in an unchanging tone, "Second round, you passed."
Ke Lan gently rubbed the rough surface of the dagger with the tip of his thumb... He knew that the other party must have doubted his identity - although he had tried his best to conceal those professional fighting skills in the previous battle, some things were still exposed in the end.
Anyone who knows a little about fighting can see that Ke Lan's fighting moves are very precise and efficient. This is the essence condensed through countless generations of hard work, and it is not something that laymen can master by relying on the so-called "illustrations" of a few moves on the Internet.
To reach Ke Lan's level, one needs at least two years of training, and it has to be one of those top-notch training classes with extremely expensive registration fees. Miners like them probably haven't even heard of the names of these training classes... These things belong to two completely different worlds from their lives.
Even if some miners have this hobby, they can't afford a course that costs half a month's salary for one class... People like miners, who are at the bottom of the Ark society, must first solve the problem of their own food and clothing before they are qualified to think about other things.
"But this guy doesn't seem to be in a hurry to expose me..." Ke Lan stared at the servant of God who was more than ten meters away, and the servant of God raised his head and glanced at the miners kneeling in the gaps between the scaffolding - obviously, he was selecting opponents for Ke Lan's final battle.
"It's a pity that this guy is wearing a helmet and we can't see his expression and eyes at all, otherwise we would be able to collect some information." Ke Lan sighed inwardly.
The servant of God paused, and he slowly raised his arm and pointed at someone: "You, come here."
This time, the servant of God chose a "newcomer" who arrived at the sick village with Ke Lan, but what made Ke Lan speechless was that he happened to choose one of the two "missionaries"!
The one chosen was the "missionary" who had the "badge" tattooed on his neck. He was a tall, thin middle-aged man. Both of his arms were wrapped in thick bandages from the wrists to below the elbows, and the bandages were oozing with dark red blood, as if telling others that the flesh under the bandages had been severely rotten - but Ke Lan could see at a glance that these bloodstains were completely stained later: the outermost bandage was stained most thoroughly with dirty blood, and the layers below were cleaner than the previous ones.
The bloodstains clearly seeped from the outside in. If there was really something wrong with his arms, the bandage stains should be completely the opposite.
At least that's how Ke Lan wrapped the bandage around her palm...
This "missionary" is also a disguised patient like Ke Lan... but compared to those real patients, he has something more deadly in his body.
Seeds of erosion.
The mutant's body had not been dragged away yet. Ke Lan knew that the people chosen in this sacrificial ceremony had only two choices: victory or death. Regardless of whether he killed the missionary or not, the seeds of corrosion in his body would eventually be released.
Ke Lan did not carry any weapons made of stone cones from underwater caves. The only thing that could kill the Seed of Erosion was the sword in Asano Akira's hand, which was disguised as a guide stick. But if Asano Akira took action, their identities would be completely exposed.
The opponent in the third match is much more difficult to deal with than the mutant who just had brute force.
The missionary seemed a little surprised, but the surprise only stayed on his face for less than a second before it completely disappeared. He jumped down from the scaffolding and picked up the dagger that Ke Lan had knocked away.
"If I kill this man, do I have to win two more rounds to survive?" He looked at the servant of God and asked in a deep voice.
"Anyone who wants to become a warrior of the great god must win three games." The servant of God said. His tone was stiff, and a not-so-long sentence was divided into five short sentences by unnatural pauses. This made Ke Lan's previous doubts deepen.
The "missionary" did not say much, but rushed directly towards Ke Lan - strengthened by the Seed of Corrosion, his strength and speed were no weaker than that of the mutant just now, and he seemed to have no intention of concealing it at all, and he burst out with all his strength from the beginning - there was originally a distance of nearly ten meters between the two, but in the blink of an eye, this distance was directly reduced to zero.
The missionary held the dagger in both hands, leaned forward greatly, and exerted force on the muscles in his arms, shoulders and back at the same time, thrusting the sharp blade directly into Ke Lan's heart - he did not make any tentative attacks at all, and adopted this life-threatening style of fighting from the very beginning!
The thrust was so swift that Ke Lan had no way of blocking it with the piece of broken iron in his hand. He could only dodge or counterattack.
"Time Stop" was turned on, and everything around instantly turned into a black and white frozen picture, and the missionary's figure was fixed in mid-air. The tip of the sharp dagger was less than 30 centimeters away from Ke Lan's chest.
"This assassination posture uses the forearm as a lever, and the wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints work together to advance. The advantage is that the attack is swift and accurate, but the disadvantage is that it cannot be changed. No matter which direction he wants to move the tip of the knife, one or two of the six joints of the arms will always interfere with it, unless he uses the power of the waist, but this will easily make the whole person lose balance."
Ke Lan analyzed the missionary's offensive routine in a very short time, and then came to the conclusion that this guy, like the mutant, had obviously not received any formal training in hand-to-hand combat.
However, for this missionary, whether or not he had received formal training might not be important. With his strength and speed, even if he didn't know any moves, he was still a very high threat - if Ke Lan didn't have time stop, facing this stab, the situation would have been very dangerous.
"If it were me, I would probably choose to charge forward sideways, hold the dagger in my right hand, and use the explosive power of my waist rotation to stab diagonally upwards. This would not only expand the attack range and facilitate changes in tactics, but would also allow me to constantly adjust my position, which would help me avoid the opponent's counterattack to the greatest extent... No, I'm on the passive defensive side now, why am I thinking about these things?"
Ke Lan glanced at the tip of the knife that was so close to him. It would be difficult to dodge the knife with conventional dodging movements, unless Ke Lan could perform a martial arts move called "Iron Bridge", with his feet firmly nailed to the ground and his entire upper body leaning back sharply, so that the opponent's stab would fall into empty space.
Then, whether he chooses to attack the opponent's chest, ribs or flank, Ke Lan will regain the initiative and create a huge advantage.
But the problem is... he doesn't know how to "bridge the iron plank".
This stuff belongs to the category of traditional Chinese martial arts, but what he learned was mainly modern fighting techniques derived from military fighting skills. This kind of fighting technique emphasizes practicality. "Unique skills" like the Iron Bridge, which are more gorgeous than practical and require long-term hard training of waist and back strength and flexibility, are impossible to be included in it.
If Ke Lan were to force herself to do the "Iron Bridge" now, there would be a high probability that she would hear a crisp "crack" sound coming from her spine, or her feet would simply leave the ground...
Wait? Both feet off the ground?!
Ke Lan was stunned. This was a microgravity environment, and there were not as many restrictions as on the ground. The biggest difficulty of the "Iron Bridge" was the stability of the lower body and the bending of the waist and back, but in a microgravity environment, these two points could be ignored!
He just needs to "lie down"!
So, at the moment after the time stop ended, Ke Lan fell straight backwards, and his feet lifted off the ground and kicked heavily on the missionary's abdomen.
The missionary was kicked by Ke Lan and flew towards the top wall of the space station. In mid-air, with no leverage, he could only paddle his limbs in vain, watching the distance between himself and Ke Lan being widened in an instant.
The missionary failed to touch the top wall at the highest point. After flying more than ten meters, he was stopped by dense electric wires like a spider web. Everyone only heard a crackling sound, and several silver snake-like electric lights flashed in the darkness. Then, a stinking smell of burnt flesh wafted over.
"I really got an electric shock..." Ke Lan raised his head and took a look at the wires above his head that were so tangled that they were enough to drive someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder crazy. He took two steps to the side - if he accidentally bumped into the broken and fallen wires, it would be too unfair.
But to be honest, it can probably be considered a miracle that this circuit, which looks like a ball of yarn played with by a cat, does not burn out due to a short circuit.
The missionary fell heavily to the ground, his exposed skin covered with charred marks of electric shock.
Unlike the 220-volt civilian standard voltage on the Ark, the power supply lines on the space station are all 450-volt industrial voltage, which is much more dangerous, more than ten times the safe voltage for the human body.
If someone were to come into direct contact with this kind of voltage, the average person's heart would stop beating within a few seconds... However, the person who was electrocuted this time was not an ordinary person.
Strictly speaking, he can't even be called a human being... He's just a container, a container for the dangerous biological weapons of the Alpha civilization.
Sure enough, the missionary struggled to get up from the ground. He looked at Ke Lan with extreme resentment, then stabbed the dagger into his chest with force!
Although he did not die immediately, the strong electric current still destroyed his body tissues. He could clearly feel that his organs were rapidly failing, and the corrosive seeds that were parasitic in his body began to become restless.
He can no longer control this thing. It won't be long before the parasitic seed enters a period of rapid transformation and breaks out of the "shell". Instead of letting it do that, it would be better to take the initiative to release it... and kill everyone here!
The missionary growled, and used both hands to twist the handle of the dagger vigorously, crushing the still beating heart. The next second, countless tiny, pink, new tentacles, even covered with mucus, pierced his skin and "grew" out of his body!
"Pah."
His eyeball was pushed out of the socket and ejected, drawing a bloody arc in the air. Instead, two tough tentacles as thick as a fist came out of the eye socket.
"It's troublesome... We can't avoid this situation..." Ke Lan began to retreat. He was hesitating whether to let Asano Akira take action - if left alone, this Seed of Erosion might really kill everyone here.
Killing them all would be fine, the key is that their bodies will also be corroded. This thing is like the zombie virus in Resident Evil. It won't take long for it to spread to the entire space station. By then, Ke Lan and the others will have to face tens of thousands of seeds of corrosion.
"Is there any other solution? If I have to reveal my identity, how will I deal with it later?"
Just as Ke Lan was racking his brains for countermeasures, the servant of God in power armor suddenly moved!
He ran towards the missionary who was in a period of rapid change. The heavy armor on his body collided with each other, making the unique clanging sound of metal. Ke Lan noticed that the engine of the power armor was completely silent. This was a scrapped power armor, a heavy armor that was dragged up by the flesh inside!
"Swish——" The sound of flesh being torn was like tearing cloth. The servant of God's right hand instantly pierced through the missionary's chest, and in his hand, he was holding the "core" that was shaped like a glass ball.
"Heretics from the surface... this is not a place for you to interfere."
The servant of God spoke slowly, and his five fingers closed at the same time, and the "core" shattered!
Those madly dancing tentacles stopped moving almost at the same time as the "core" was shattered, and then quickly withered and rotted, turning into pus all over the ground.
"This is impossible!" Ke Lan stared at the servant's hand in astonishment. The hand was still wearing the gauntlet that came with the power armor. The surface of the gauntlet was covered with bloody red rust. Pus and blood seeped into the seams of the armor and then drifted down the edge.
The hard "core" shattered just like that, just like a glass ball was crushed.
Without the stone cones from the seabed caves, and without the active cells of the flesh-eating worms, how on earth did he kill the seeds of erosion? !
