1873 Mutant
“Over there!”
Someone with sharp eyes noticed a faint flickering light and a rustling sound coming from the depths of an especially twisted crevice.
Everyone looked closer and found that something seemed to be crawling and wriggling in the crevice. It was only about two or three fingers wide.
The corner of a person’s clothes was exposed under the light, and they discovered that it was the missing member!
But how was this possible?
The writhing man before them had been compressed into an extremely flat and thin creature.
Superhumans could control their bodies by compressing or expanding themselves at will.
However, there was a limit to such control.
The width of two or three fingers was not enough to accommodate the parts that could not be compressed, such as the skull and the pelvis.
On top of becoming flat and thin, the rescuer’s body was also being stretched to an unbelievable degree.
His head had been squeezed to the point where his facial features were completely deformed, while his feet were still covered in boots. The distance between his head and feet was at least ten to twenty meters.
At first glance, he looked like a strange python.
However, even pythons had spines, so they could not pa.s.s through places that were narrower than their spines.
In contrast, the member of the rescue team was like a combination of an arthropod and mollusk. He resembled a huge, slimy worm that could change its form at will.
“Zhao Liwei!
“What are you doing?” his friend shouted. “Hurry back!”
The search-and-rescue team member named Zhao Liwei turned a deaf ear to him. His chest had been compressed to the maximum, and he was making gasping noises.
It was as if his flesh was being twisted and his bones were being reconstructed. He groaned in extreme pain.
It also sounded like he was moaning in extreme pleasure, as though his soul was being cleansed and sublimated in the brilliance of the ancient civilization.
It was obvious that shouting alone would not wake him.
His friend tried to crawl into the gap since there was enough room to grab his left foot that was hanging at the back.
However, the inner wall of the crevice was embedded with sharp rocks.
The gravel gave off a colorful and particularly intense l.u.s.ter under the search lights. They did not look like ordinary rocks but more like alloys that had been tempered for thousands of years.
Logically speaking, superhumans possessed flesh that was as hard as steel. It was impossible for mere gravel to tear through their defenses.
However, he had only gotten in halfway when the gravel cut his skin open and blood flowed out.
Meanwhile, Zhao Liwei was boring deeper and deeper into the crevice. His deformed body secreted a large amount of gray mucus, which helped him move forward. At the same time, his friend’s hands kept slipping off as he tried to grab his ankles.
Just as Zhao Liwei was about to disappear from everyone’s sight, Meng Chao attacked.
Swoosh!
His two chain blades, one on the left and the other on the right, were entwined with spiraling flames of spirit energy. As if they had lives of their own, they moved forward in the gaps and soon wrapped around Zhao Liwei’s left leg.
“Get over here!”
Meng Chao wrapped the chain blades around his arms as well, and layers of power that resembled ripples poured into the cracks.
However, he immediately sensed Zhao Liwei’s tenacious and almost crazy resistance.
“This guy is incredibly strong!”
Meng Chao did not expect a mere Heaven Realm superhuman to be able to compete with him in terms of absolute power. He was a Deity Realm warrior after all
The chain blades were clearly wrapped around Zhao Liwei’s left leg, but Meng Chao felt as if they were wrapped around a giant pillar that supported the sky. No matter how hard he tried, he could not move the man’s leg at all.
He dared not use explosive force as it might break Zhao Liwei’s left leg.
The two of them were in a stalemate for a few seconds, and Zhao Liwei continued to move forward in the crevice.
Even so, Meng Chao held his left foot firmly in place.
The joints between his thighs, hip bone, abdominal cavity, chest cavity, cervical vertebrae, and head were all growing increasingly long.
It seemed that his bones had completely fused with his flesh and blood. They had turned into a fleshy pile with no fixed shape.
However, his consciousness still existed in an extremely strange and crazy form.
“This is not good!”
Meng Chao felt like he was about to lose his grip.
It was not that he could not hold on, but Zhao Liwei’s left foot was getting thinner and thinner.
The joints, bones, tendons, and muscles that seemed to be components of his left foot melted into paste and escaped the control of the chain blades. The only thing he left behind was a layer of wrinkled skin that was as thin as a cicada’s wing.
At this moment, many people, including Meng Chao, saw Zhao Liwei turn around to look at them from the end of the tunnel. He even seemed to be smiling.
It was an inhuman smile, though.
His head had already been squeezed to a length of more than a meter by the gap that was less than a finger wide.
Crash!
Meng Chao’s chain blades bounced back together with Zhao Liwei’s left foot—if it could still be called a left foot.
Zhao Liwei was swallowed by the darkness, and he completely disappeared from the gap and everyone’s sight.
“D*mn it…”
Meng Chao frowned and examined Zhao Liwei’s foot that he had dragged back with the chain blades.
Through the subtle changes in his strength, he was sure that he had not torn off this left foot.
...
Zhao Liwei had given up on it, like a gecko breaking its tail.
Moreover, the broken part of his left foot was as smooth as a mirror. There was not a single drop of blood flowing out or a single broken bone.
It did not seem like a body part but an independent life form that was born intact.
It was even trembling and expanding under the influence of the rescue team’s vitality magnetic field. One could say that it was a beating but oddly-shaped heart.
Meng Chao pondered for a moment. With Wu Haibo’s approval, he used the Skull Crushers to gently cut open the left foot.
With his Deity Realm power, even the thick, giant ax blades could carry out precise operations like a scalpel.
However, even after he peeled off the skin of Zhao Liwei’s left foot, he still could not find a drop of blood or even a dried blood vessel.
Beneath the human skin was a gray substance that was a mixture of rubber, wood fibers, and minerals.
Even when he cut the foot open from the middle, there was not a single bone to be found.
It seemed that the Ancient Ruins’ Summon had not only invaded Zhao Liwei’s mind.
The power that was beyond human understanding had also changed the structure of his body and even the nature of his cells in an instant. It turned Zhao Liwei from a carbon-based creature into an extremely weird existence.
...
Perhaps he realized that his situation was already beyond saving.
The gray substance that made up the left foot made a sizzling sound similar to the opening of a soda bottle, and it produced a large amount of powdery foam.
In the end, it turned completely into bubbles and disappeared.