Chapter 164: An Extra Chapter for Alliance Leader Little Stone (6/10)

“Huh?”

“Oh, the mutant snake corpses?”

The commanding officer, jolted back to his senses by Bai Yuxi’s call, glanced at the thick snake bodies floating in the blood-red lake. Though he was accustomed to life and death, he still felt a wave of nausea.

“There are too many corpses! Once they pile up, they’ll not only make it harder for us to distinguish our targets,” Bai Yuxi explained, “they’ll also provide the mutant snakes with launching platforms. We’d better clear them away!”

At first, he had thought fighting swimming mutant snakes on the surface of the water would put them at a serious disadvantage.

But once the battle began, Su Xiaoke—who had never participated in combat before—suddenly stepped forward.

Using her newly acquired mental-transmission ability, she unified the Seventh Squad’s combat power and even linked it with her mental detection, completely preventing the mutant snakes from launching sudden attacks from beneath the water.

As a result, the mutant snakes lost the advantage of surprise, whether they attacked from below or from the surface.

Moreover, trapped in the water with nowhere to brace themselves, they could not unleash their lightning-fast launching attacks.

However, as more and more thick snake corpses floated across the lake, they piled up layer upon layer into a dense mass.

The mutant snakes could not only use the corpses as cover, stealthily approaching the combat platform from beneath the water; many of them even climbed onto the “corpse bed” and launched long-range attacks.

Jason and Chicken Leg could still block them, but the force of the impacts accelerated their exhaustion. That was extremely disadvantageous in a battle of attrition.

“Hold on for a few more minutes!”

“The particle disruptor’s energy is almost depleted!”

The commanding officer glanced at the ten gateways in the energy wall. Like the rollers in a noodle factory, they continuously “spat out” thick mutant snakes.

He checked the time on his wrist and said, “Once the gateways close, the maintenance crews will come over to clear away the snake corpses while we service the equipment and replace the energy crystals.”

“Oh, good.”

Since the military already had a plan for dealing with them, Bai Yuxi had no further objections. He continued standing with his arms folded, keeping watch over his companions.

Although he appeared not to be participating in the battle, he had kept both Supermagnetic Perception and Electromagnetic Perception active the entire time, preventing any wounded mutant snakes that had entered a state of false death from suddenly attacking anyone who came near.

Bai Yuxi had heard that snakes possessed astonishing vitality. Even after their heads were cut off, they could still bite people.

The headless snake corpses thrashing in the pool before the combat platform, churning the blood-red water into flying splashes and making it impossible to tell the living snakes from the dead ones, were proof enough.

Although everyone in the Seventh Squad had heard the saying, “Strike a snake seven inches from the head,” they were all city-bred youngsters. How were they supposed to know exactly where a snake’s “seven inches” lay?

Besides, could the “seven inches” of a snake barely over a meter long possibly be in the same place as the “seven inches” of a snake more than twenty meters long?

Since nobody had any idea what part of the body “seven inches” referred to, they all aimed for the snakes’ heads.

Whether the bodies kept moving after their heads were chopped off no longer mattered. At least they could not bite anyone.

Even if a dying snake corpse whipped someone with its tail, it would cause no more than a little pain—far better than being bitten and poisoned.

After the energy crystal in the particle disruptor flickered several times and went dark, the first gateway in the energy wall closed. The remaining gateways shut one after another, even slicing one unlucky snake in half as it passed through.

“That was great!”

Once every gateway had closed and the group had exterminated all the mutant snakes still capable of moving, Chicken Leg shook the black-and-thick weapon in his hand, flinging off the snake blood and bits of flesh clinging to it. He asked in confusion, “Why did they shut the barrier gates?”

“Yeah!”

“I hadn’t had enough yet!”

“Without Little Bai’s One-Hundred-Percent Lossless Conversion Field, leveling up is so slow!”

“We’ve been hacking away this whole time, and our super-energy particles have barely increased. Who knows how long it’ll take to level up at this rate?”

“But Susu’s Precise Positioning is incredible. With her locking onto the targets for me, my Little Xia Needles never miss!”

Xia Youyou pouted unhappily, then immediately brightened with excitement. “I can hit wherever I aim! If I shoot for the nose, I won’t poke the eyes! Wahahaha—ow!”

Lofi rapped the younger girl on the back of the head, then glared at Xia Youyou for speaking without restraint. She cast a meaningful glance toward the surrounding special-service soldiers.

Secrets were difficult to conceal in an open battle like this.

Still, Su Xiaoke’s newly manifested mental ability remained highly discreet.

A trump card like that should be hidden for as long as possible. Who would be foolish enough to blurt it out themselves?

Fortunately, the special-service soldiers were ordinary people. Without experiencing it firsthand, they could not tell what was really going on.

The younger girl could only clutch the back of her head and complain miserably, “You hit my head again! I’m going to become stupid, you know!”

“Do you really need to become anything?”

Maya’s command of the Yan language had improved considerably. She had even learned how to mock people with metaphors.

“What did you say?”

Xia Youyou sprang up like a cat with its fur standing on end and shrieked furiously, “You fertilizer-fed papaya!”

“That’s still better than you, you deflated balloon!”

Maya pulled a face at Xia Youyou. She even mischievously placed both hands against her chest and jiggled them while making a series of clapping noises with her mouth.

“Ah! I’m going to kill you!”

Xia Youyou charged at her with claws and teeth bared. “I’m going to beat you into a camel!”

The members of the Seventh Squad were already accustomed to the two girls bickering and scrapping all day long.

If the pair ever went a whole day without fighting, they were probably suffering from their monthly cycle and too weak from cramps to move their legs.

But the commanding officer had never witnessed anything like this.

From the first two exchanges, he could just barely guess what they meant. The final line left him completely bewildered. With a blank expression, he asked Bai Yuxi, “Why would she be beaten into a camel?”

“…”

Bai Yuxi had not expected the officer to ask. His expression turning peculiar, he said quietly, “Because a camel’s hump is on its back.”

“A camel’s hump is on its back. What does that have to do with being beaten into a camel… Wait! Have I been in the army so long that I’ve become completely disconnected from society?”

The commanding officer still did not understand at first. But after glancing at Maya, he suddenly caught on and cried out in horror, “Are girls these days really this savage?”

“Sir, you’re not married yet, are you?”

“You’ve truly devoted your entire life to the country!”

“Girls who haven’t even left school yet are still considered innocent. The ones out in society are beyond saving… They’re an assault on the eyes!”

Bai Yuxi patted the commanding officer sympathetically and consoled him. “Why don’t you find someone in the army? Isn’t there a saying: ‘Serve three years and the state assigns you a wife; serve ten years and the army gives you one’?”

To be continued.