Hong Haocheng didn’t know how long he had been falling.
The earth below, seemingly so close, kept slipping away, leaving his mind dazed and drowsy. When he finally came to his senses again, his body was pressed in a strange posture near the door in the middle of the cabin.
Buzz buzz buzz—!
He noticed that the plane had grown fleshy membranes!
“This… I’m not dead from the fall yet!”
Hong Haocheng hurriedly looked out the grayish cabin window. Below was an unfamiliar land, and its distant parts were filled with a gray mist!
In Hong Haocheng’s mind, some memories inherited from Xu Fei had become very hazy.
—Once, on Xu Fei’s planet, someone returned from a nonexistent world, many years after their disappearance.
—That person brought back a single fruit.
—The fruit presented to the king endowed him with excessive power, allowing him to enslave all life on that land for over a thousand years.
—Thus, the people began to rebel.
The memories left only a profound and distant sensation…
—Over the nearly three centuries that followed, people sought through various means to gain abilities that could counter the king’s eerie power. Rebels came from all corners, including the king’s own consorts and offspring scattered across the continent. The king even seemed to revel in this game of suppression. It was not until a mercenary group, inspired by ancient myths from certain ethnic minorities, uncovered a possible countermeasure in a perilous ancient relic far from civilization, that the king was startled to realize… his power was not the only one.
—The thousand-year-old king ordered the encirclement and extermination of that group and their tribe. But the troops he dispatched mutinied and turned their weapons against him. In a haste, the king personally mounted his horse and charged out of the city, attacking both the mercenary group and the frenzied waves of rebels surging along the way. Half of the continent sank beneath the ensuing destruction.
—Yet in the final moment, that mighty mercenary, clinging to his last breath, struggled to return and shoved the scroll he had found into the hands of the only surviving secretary in his group.
Hong Haocheng took a deep breath of the turbid air thick with the stench of blood, which immediately triggered a fit of violent coughing.
“My wife… she’s an alien. Hah, cough, cough, cough…”
The clerical officer is none other than Concubine Xu!
{Pluck…}
Suddenly, a strange sound resonated within Hong Haocheng’s mind.
He was startled, his eyes darting left and right, but there was no one around. Looking up, he saw the flesh-and-blood veins spreading like a huge spiderweb of fine iron mesh across the ceiling of the cabin.
“Who’s there?”
{…Ah ah…Flying…}
An intense craving for food invaded Hong Haocheng’s mind.
This feeling was utterly bizarre—almost as if it were… another version of himself?
Another, hungry version of himself?
Tearing himself free from the mesh that enveloped him, Hong Haocheng glanced at his hand. It already looked more like an adult’s hand, the skin’s surface much harder. Without time for closer inspection, he stumbled with halting steps toward Concubine Xu’s suitcase hanging nearby.
Unfortunately, aside from some clothes, there was nothing particularly miraculous inside. It didn’t seem like the travel bag of someone as godlike as her, just the belongings of an ordinary girl.
Rumble!
The plane shuddered yet again.
{…Ah, ugh…Eat…Again…}
“What do you mean?” Hong Haocheng frowned. “What do you want to eat?”
{…Eat…Flying…}
“Could I fly if you ate something off me?” Hong Haocheng turned to look out the other window. The previously exploded wing had actually grown fleshy membranes and skeletal structures—still somewhat shabby, but definitely regenerated from the recent growth!
“I’ve gone mad!” Hong Haocheng casually grabbed a red flight jacket and put it on.
Although the sound from the plane was hard to understand, through the telepathic transmission, Hong Haocheng could roughly sense what it was cautiously asking for.
{Eat…}
“If I die from a crash right after crossing over, then Sister Xu’s plans would probably fall through.”
Seeing the bizarre, dilapidated city just ahead, along with figures moving about among the ruins, Hong Haocheng nervously pressed his hand against the plane’s wall.
{Eat……!}
Watching the ground approach below, Hong Haocheng’s mind briefly wandered.
A wave of information appeared in his mind…
[Life Investment.]
His eyes lit up, and instantly his hair became coarse and dry, his facial skin rapidly turning firm, as if he had suddenly become an imposing, heroic young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven.
……
Inside the city filled with high-rise buildings resembling unfinished constructions.
Today, mid-month, many capable teams were guiding newcomers entering the area. Suddenly, a plane spiraled downward from high altitude, trailing flames and smoke as it plunged toward the ground.
“Holy crap!”
Several people waiting near a building were shocked pale.
“There’s actually a plane arriving this month?”
All across the city, countless newcomers and veterans alike looked up at the private jet carving a black trail through the sky.
“What a shame—that plane is definitely going to crash.”
I’ve heard that some cities have had passenger planes before, but none have ever landed successfully.
“Judging by the model, could the person inside be some big shot from the business world?”
“Or maybe a celebrity. But I’ve never seen a celebrity with a private jet like this… Wait—it’s turning and heading straight for us! Run!”
The onlookers watching the out-of-control plane crash scattered in panic.
……
On the other side of the city, Cheng Yunze and his team, just emerging from the subway station with looks of disappointment, heard the roar coming from the sky.
They looked up and saw the plane trailing black smoke as it plummeted.
A muscular man stepped forward and said, “What a shame, Captain. It’s rare to see an aircraft.”
“Yeah, but there’s almost no chance of survival.”
“The time is too short; not even a Demonic Nightmare can be born from it.”
“It’s going to explode.”
The roar finally reached their ears. But just as the plane was about to hit the ground, it suddenly pulled up and soared back into the sky in a sweeping arc.
The fleeing crowd below all felt a jolt in their hearts.
“What! That guy—it’s already turned into a Demonic Nightmare!”
“Oh my god! The plane has become a Demonic Nightmare? And it can fly!”
Across the city, those who understood the model ability erupted in astonished chatter.
A Demonic Nightmare aircraft capable of flight: the implications were all too obvious.
For instance, the much-talked-about superstar train from the Lost Frequency Zone is a top-tier mobile Demonic Nightmare. Though the aircraft before them doesn’t seem to be psi-powered at this point, its flight capability makes it quite practical nonetheless.
If subdued, this would be a sub-top-tier associated Demonic Nightmare, second only to the superstar special train.
“So fast—the people in there actually discovered the secret of breeding Demonic Nightmares this quickly!” Everyone was astonished.
Cheng Yunze, standing at the subway entrance, exclaimed with a mix of shock and delight: “Quick, notify everyone to head over there. Our top priority for these two days is to find that Demonic Nightmare aircraft! We’ll deal with A-level staggered zones, subway stations, and the like later.”
But as his words faded, a small black shadow shot up from the ground!
An explosion echoed from the sky!
The Demonic Nightmare aircraft, which had just turned, began crashing to the ground.
“What’s going on?”
“Brother Chen, that Demonic Nightmare was attacked by someone,” cried a woman with black-rimmed glasses.
Cheng Yunze flared up in anger. “Who did that? Are they an idiot?!”
“I saw it—it should be that guy who came last month and can build artillery launchers.”
A burly man beside Cheng Yunze, his face red with fury, said:
“Damn that bastard! Does he think blowing up a plane will make our Four-Phase Team think highly of him and invite him to join?!”
“Are you talking about Ruan Jiancheng, the one who blew up the building last time?” Cheng Yunze seethed. “Hurry, get in the car. We’re going over there.”
Several of them pounded over toward the Demonic Nightmare car parked by the roadside, but a broken line appeared out of thin air faster than they could move.
{I am Ruan Jiancheng. Please invest in me. This is a demon! Ah!}
“Damn it, you motherfucker, invest in your mother!”
“Of all places to fire, why did you blow up this Demonic Nightmare aircraft? Are you insane? Do you have any idea how precious a flying model device is!”
“Don’t do anything reckless. Hold on, people inside the plane!”
The moment they linked to the model, they hurled a string of curses at the initiator.
But the next second, they froze.
Amid the blazing sea of fire around the crashed aircraft from the violent explosion, a figure, burnt by flames with a ferocious expression on its face, was striding step by step through the scorching inferno and walking out of the plane.
In one hand, he grasped a red bone-like steel pipe; with the other, he lifted a man by the throat, holding him up.
{Why… did you attack me.}
The hoarse voice rang out, and as it reached their ears, a chill seeped down their backs.
The skin of the person emerging from the flames was melting like wax from the heat, yet he could still stand and crush the writhing, burned enemy in his grip!
Seeing this scene, Cheng Yunze’s face grew solemn.
Next to him, a woman in an elegant long dress let out a soft exclamation.
{Ah yi… Ah yi.}
The not yet fully formed wreckage of the aircraft, a Demonic Nightmare, crashed to the ground—part of it had turned into bone and flesh, while the other part remained man-made machinery, though flames were already sporadically bursting from the mechanical section.
Ruan Jiancheng, thrown back by the explosion, scrambled to his feet and aimed a homemade cannon at the man a few meters away, a sinister grin creeping across his face:
{Someone invested in me, haha! Bring it on! I’ve got Shixu again now, so go to hell already!}
Bang! A shell shot toward that man.
The man in the flames abruptly turned his head, swiftly hurling the person in his hand at the shell.
Boom!
The thrown person was blown to pieces. At the same time, the man in the flames had already started moving, sprinting in an arc toward Ruan Jiancheng, who was operating the homemade cannon.
{Yiii… Ba-ba…}
The plane let out a weak, agonized sound.
Upon hearing this sound from the plane, the running Hong Haocheng instantly sobered up a bit. He sharply veered to the side, grabbed someone on the ground who was struggling to crawl away, and lifted them up.
Behind the cannon, the man seized the moment to set up a modified gas canister, gritting his teeth:
{Monster! Put Zhang Er down! My range is farther than you can imagine. If you don’t, I’ll make you die along with your Demonic Nightmare devil!}
A dozen meters away, Hong Haocheng ignored him entirely, turning around and throwing the person in his hand directly into the plane’s wide-open cockpit.
{Damn it!}
Boom!
The small iron canister was swiftly launched out of the cannon barrel by the makeshift mortar.
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