Chapter 159: Spine as a Blade: "Bone Soul"

Yeh Hai took the lead and charged towards the giant snake xenomorph.

The giant snake xenomorph seemed to feel provoked.

It opened its massive jaws and continuously hissed at Yeh Hai.

Just when Yeh Hai thought this behavior from the giant snake was merely an instinctive warning reaction,

another large maw thrust out from within the giant mouth.

Sharp fangs dripping with corrosive mucus lunged like lightning toward Yeh Hai at the front.

Yeh Hai was startled.

He hurriedly sidestepped.

And managed to evade the attack by a hair's breadth.

However, the genetic warriors following behind Yeh Hai were not so lucky.

Caught completely off guard, more than a dozen men behind Yeh Hai were instantly swallowed by the giant snake's second maw.

In a single exchange,

their side suffered over a dozen casualties.

"Scatter, everyone..."

Yeh Hai roared and immediately closed in.

He pushed off forcefully with both legs,

took two successive leaps like scaling an invisible ladder, and vaulted onto the giant snake's back.

Previously, the distance was too great, and the sheer size of the giant snake felt somewhat abstract.

Yet, once he actually landed on its basketball-court-sized body,

even Yeh Hai could not help but feel a bit at a loss.

For a moment, he had the sensation of having nowhere to strike.

Gathering all his strength, he delivered a fierce punch directly to the giant snake's spine.

The tactile feedback was extremely hard.

His G3 form was completely incapable of inflicting even the slightest damage on this giant snake.

"Damn it, the hardness of this thing... is simply astonishing. Its bones are almost on par with some high-durability alloys."

Feeling Yeh Hai and the other Dusha Resistance genetic warriors pounding away on its body, the giant snake xenomorph seemed to feel an itch.

It immediately executed a death roll.

With such a massive body and terrifying skeletal density,

the giant snake's weight was extraordinarily immense.

Someone immediately cried out in alarm:

"Quick, get away..."

"This thing is about to roll! !"

Everyone close to the giant snake instantly scattered like birds and beasts.

Yet, a few still failed to escape the giant snake's rolling motion.

After several rotations, when the giant snake raised its head once more,

on the ground, apart from some dark red, slushy puddles mixed with soil and ice chunks,

not a single intact corpse could be seen.

"This won't do. Whether it's me or these genetic warriors of the Dusha Resistance..."

"There is simply nothing we can do against this serpent."

"We can't even break its defense; this is completely unwinnable!"

"Just what level has this xenomorph reached?"

"It already surpasses the strongest eighth-stage mutant I've ever seen... Could it have attained the strength of the ninth stage?"

"This kind of enhancement is absurdly exaggerated..."

"Even if it's a secondary enhancement after being parasitized by a xenomorph,"

"to reach this extent... just what background did the parasitized mutant have..."

"Could it really be ARMY-3?"

"According to Teacher's deduction, ARMY-3 is the pinnacle of physical enhancement among all viral branches!"

"If the one before me is an ARMY-3 mutant, how on earth did the xenomorph get its hands on something like this?"

*(First Evolution)*

"An ARMY-3 kept inside the ART virus laboratory? That's simply absurd."

Although Yeh Hai was basically certain that the xenomorph before him had been produced by parasitizing an ARMY-3,

the ARMY-3 within the ice layer outside the secret base had been completely absorbed by him.

Yeh Hai could not fathom how the xenomorph managed to acquire this ARMY-3.

What Yeh Hai anticipated even less was that deep underground, within the xenomorph nest, drastic changes had already occurred.

The nearly one hundred thousand-strong xenomorph army had now been reduced to just twenty thousand.

Meanwhile, in the originally frozen space, ten massive serpents whose life or death was unknown were now piled up.

These creatures were none of other than the elite guard of the ARMY-3 tribe leader, the Serpent Lord.

These ARMY-3s, whose physical bodies had been enhanced to the absolute limit, had reached the peak of the eighth stage.

As long as they crossed that threshold, they would become terrifying existences undergoing their first complete evolution, much like Lilith.

They would officially step from the realm of genetic organisms into the domain of psionic organisms.

However, this step was equivalent to an elevation of the life tier.

Just like humans breaking through their limits to ascend from mortals to immortals...

Despite years of accumulation by the intelligent mutant tribes, only the leaders of each faction had reached this level.

And because the Serpent Lord could sense the life and death of its kin...

it had dispatched this elite snake guard precisely because Yeh Hai had wiped out over a dozen ARMY-3s in one fell swoop.

Perhaps because the ARMY's enhancement of the physical body was too heaven-defying,

it caused the reproductive capacity of the three major ARMY branches to decline significantly.

Consequently, the ARMY-3 tribe placed immense value on every single member of their kin.

The ARMY-3 force Yeh Hai was currently facing was led personally by the leader of the snake guards who had descended upon Ironwood Forest.

It was precisely the parasitism and death of these elite snake guards that made the Serpent Lord no longer able to ignore the threat emanating from Ironwood Forest.

The elite snake guards had not suffered any losses in over a dozen years.

Every single elite snake guard was an indispensable force for the ARMY-3 tribe.

The death of an elite snake guard was a matter of monumental importance to the ARMY-3 tribe.

For this reason, the Serpent Lord and the ARMY-3s under its command had abandoned their comfortable magma baths.

Teeming with intense slumber, they were heading toward Ironwood Forest.

However, Yeh Hai was unaware that Ironwood Forest had become fraught with peril.

Yet, the giant snake xenomorph before him was an entity he had to block.

Yeh Hai let out a slight sigh.

"I really didn't want to use this move!"

"Damn it, it hurts so much..."

"That bastard Lister, who promised to modify two hind arms for me..."

Looking at the rampaging giant snake xenomorph before him,

Yeh Hai's gaze suddenly hardened.

He raised his right-hand claw and pierced the skin just below the back of his neck.

He took a deep breath.

Then, with a forceful wrench, he snapped his spine below the neck...

and bit by bit, pulled his own backbone out from his body.

The immense agony caused Yeh Hai's face to distort hideously.

He vented angrily through clenched teeth:

"When I get back, I'm definitely pulling out that bastard Lister's spine..."

"And letting him taste this feeling."

Accompanied by Yeh Hai's curse-like battle cry,

his spine was completely pulled out of his body.

A backbone measuring about one and a half meters in length was held firmly in Yeh Hai's grip.

Although the G-virus's regenerative abilities rapidly took effect, growing a complete new spine in its place,

Yeh Hai was still drenched in sweat and collapsed onto his knees.

Subsequently, his right hind arm extracted the forearm bone of his left hind arm.

It connected with the spine,

forming a bizarre, massive blade with a one-meter hilt and a one-and-a-half-meter blade.

Then, a massive swarm of nanobots surged forth from the spine.

These nanobots adsorbed onto the backbone, secreting a peculiar substance.

This substance resembled liquid metal,

yet it was entirely transparent.

Once solidified, its hardness even far surpassed the sub-alloys of the underground experimental base.

Only the liquid metal on Zero's body and the liquid metal comprising Harvey's antimatter mecha could compare to it.

The transparent gelatinous substance began to solidify after flowing into the shape of a blade edge.

Before long, a ferocious massive saber—using human bones for the blade body and coated in transparent gel—was gripped in Yeh Hai's hand.

Beneath the seal of the transparent gelatinous substance, bright red blood vessels within the transparent gel emitted an eerie, shimmering luster as they slowly flowed.

"If this 'Bone Amber' isn't as sharp as Lister claimed..."

"The pits Lister dug these past few days will finally come in handy!"

"I just hope Lister left enough dimensions for himself."