Chapter 499: 499

Chapter 499: Illuminating Herb That Should Not Exist

And Meng Chao jumped down right after them.

He was slower than the burning flesh mountain and was above them. Then, he treated the huge flesh body as a stepping stone and stomped on them heavily, causing them to fall to the ground with a bang. He landed at the spot between the sixth and seventh floor, which was above Ghost Eagle Song Yu and the crocodile-human.

Song Yu and the crocodile human were still trying to register the fact that Meng Chao had crushed the stairs and went below them.

Song Yu was fearful of Meng Chao’s elusive chains. He focused his attention on guarding against Meng Chao’s attacks from below.

The crocodile-human had their limbs planted on the floor and used their hands and knees together, so it was even more difficult for them to pay attention to the area above.

Hence, when Meng Chao’s Bloody Soul stirred up an unstoppable bloody-red saber glare and arrived in front of them, their minds released a screech warning to struggle against death.

Thud!

The saber glare shot through the crocodile-human’s back as they tried to flee in haste. It cut their spine, but the attack’s momentum was not gone. It continued charging and cut into Ghost Eagle Song Yu’s left wing.

That slash contained 70% of Meng Chao’s spirit energy, and its power was increased by a Red Radiance Jade’s crystal marrow.

It was not something that the crocodile-human’s scales could endure.

The deformee coughed up blood. They did not even have the time to scream. All they could do was curl up into a ball and roll down the stairs.

Ghost Eagle Song Yu was scared out of his wits and felt really regretful.

He knew that the two deformees were skillful and fearless and had seen them take in Deification Capsules, which was why he chose to ambush Meng Chao and take revenge for what happened earlier.

He did not expect that Meng Chao would act so fiercely and smoothly kill the two deformees.

Song Yu was terrified. He flew into the air to flee once more.

But this time, without Bloody Slaughter Gao Yang and Tsunami Wan Zhuiyun protecting him, and with his wings injured, there was no way Meng Chao would let him escape in such a narrow space that could allow him to travel vertically.

“Fall!” Meng Chao shouted and fired his chain sabers.

They accurately pierced Song Yu’s injured left wing.

Then, they wrapped themselves three times around the base of the wing and locked him down.

Meng Chao’s arms swelled up to twice their size, and he yanked the chains fiercely before wrapping them around his iron-like right arm. He pulled himself to Song Yu and continuously shortened the distance between them.

Song Yu flapped his wings nonstop to fly up, but it felt like he was a man drowning in a swamp. The more he struggled, the further he sank into the hands of Death.

Sizzle!

Meng Chao not only used brute force to close the distance between them, but also activated his spirit energy magnetic field and lit up the runic symbols on the chains so that rows of light-blue electric arcs and faint purple flames would rush into Song Yu’s body through the chains.

“AAAAHHHH!”

Song Yu was scorched badly. The flesh of his burnt wounds shrank because of the electricity, and white bones were exposed.

They were in a stalemate for a moment, as if they were in some form of tug-of-war. Then, Song Yu finally broke down, and his wings fell limp.

Meng Chao roared and swung the chains violently. He threw Song Yu all around the stairwell like a hammer on a chain.

He did not know how many walls and flights of stairs he crushed and how many shattered reinforced concrete as well as broken rebars crashed into Song Yu’s body, but when two-thirds of the chains were bound around his right arm and they were close to each other, Meng Chao decided to pull back his chains and jumpe.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!

He straddled Ghost Eagle Song Yu and stabbed the man’s face with his left hand, using it like a steel fork. He nearly broke the bones like that.

His right fist was bound with dozens of chains, so it was like it was wrapped by a super heavy motorized boxing glove. It left behind hundreds of afterimages, and all of them hit Song Yu’s chest.

Then, Meng Chao sent the inhuman monster from the fifth floor right down to the first floor.

The burning flesh mountain who had fallen to the first floor was not completely dead yet. However, Song Yu and Meng Chao landed heavily on their body.

Their mitochondria and gene chains were already very unstable, and they had also taken in a lot of Deification Capsules, so this time, the deformee finally went out of control.

Flames no longer spread out just from the fat on their skin.

They also gushed out of the fat layer of their organs, but also from deep within the organs themselves.

A terrifying spontaneous combustion happened.

No matter how deformed, the burning flesh mountain was a carbon-based life form at the end of the day and could not endure the torture of flames that were thousands of degrees Celsius wreaking havoc in their blood vessels, nerves, and organs.

They let out a shrill scream and flailed their limbs madly, then instinctively grabbed for something in front of them.

They caught Ghost Eagle Song Yu in their grip.

Meng Chao had jumped away in time at the moment they crashed onto the floor and coldly watched from the side as Song Yu was entangled by the burning flesh mountain.

His feathers were soon burned to a crisp.

His hands and feet were also burnt so badly that they curled up like chicken feet.

The heat caused blisters to appear on his skin, which made him look like a toad.

Such an end was appropriate for this lost person, because he had brought the deaths of dozens of innocent citizens in the past.

Unfortunately, Ghost Eagle Song Yu was a Heaven Realm superhuman.

The burning flesh mountain struggling in their deathbed could not hope to drag him to his death.

The threat of death stimulated his last vestiges of strength.

He screamed and tore apart the burning flesh mountain’s arms, then rolled away from the fire.

But by then, all his feathers and skin were already burnt to a crisp. Now, compared to being a ghostly eagle, he was like a huge, black fly.

Meng Chao stomped on the man’s sunken chest.

His spirit energy wreaked havoc in his limbs and organs, like a rampaging beast.

It also crushed his bones and continuously stabbed the flesh around them, causing him such pain that he screamed for his parents and peed his pants.

Once Meng Chao was sure that Ghost Eagle Song Yu had already lost his ability to resist and fight back, he was not in a hurry to kill him.

No matter what, this person was an infamous, wanted criminal with a bounty on his head. He was also in charge of monitoring the Deification Capsule pharmacy, and during the final moments, he was even in charge of bringing thousands of Deification Capsules on the run.

This just showed how much the Supernatural Entity, Vortex, trusted him.

Perhaps Meng Chao would be able to get some information about the Vortex from him.

With this thought in mind, Meng Chao first checked the situation of the other hunters through the neural tactical data link.

Up to this moment, everything was going smoothly.

The squad of thirty-three Heaven Realm superhumans was an unstoppable force.

The enemy had indeed sent a lot of guards lying in ambush around the Deification Capsule pharmacy. But most of the guards were just robbers and deformees who took Deification Capsules.

They could create some trouble for the Heaven Realm superhumans, but that was all.

There were not many infamous lost people like Bloody Slaughter Gao Yang and Ghost Eagle Song Yu.

Besides, they were not as easily tempted by the Vortex as the normal robbers and deformees.

They only joined forces with the enemy for the sake of profit.

And in the face of danger, all of them had their own plans. None of them were really loyal and willing to become cannon fodder.

Hence, Man-eating Shark Zhou Chong led the veteran hunters into the building from all directions. They had already cleared around five floors and dozens of corridors and were getting close to the Deification Capsule pharmacy.

Multi-armed Bear Hong Li was injured slightly because he was in charge of luring the enemies out to the best of his abilities, which meant that he had to shout like some lunatic and rush to the forefront. It led to him being struck by more than ten rocket launchers.

The other superhumans were fine.

All they were suffering from was using up their spirit energy a little faster because they had to activate their vitality magnetic fields above their normal capacity.

But before they came, they had already considered this situation.

They carried the super gene medicine, Raging Dragon Blood, which could instantly replenish the spirit energy they wasted and increase their endurance by more than 150%.

They were only able to see Bloody Slaughter Gao Yang and Tsunami Wan Zhuiyun’s shadows at the start; these two infamous people would disappear without a trace the moment they were engaged in combat with anyone.

When they looked at the situation through the biochemical rats’ monitors, they learned that the pharmacists working in the Deification Capsule pharmacy had dispersed the moment the fighting started. They fled deep underground through a secret tunnel.

But that was fine. Even if they ran, they could not take the equipment nor the raw materials.

After this lair, even if the Supernatural Entity Vortex could use its second pharmacy immediately, the scale and production rate would decrease by a large margin, and it would not be able to cause a huge stir.

‘The situation seems to be going much smoother than what I imagined. Is it because the hunting squad which entered the lair in this life is much stronger in terms of fighting strength?’

Meng Chao sighed in relief.

But at that moment, a faint fragrance of grass suddenly crept into his nostrils.

It was a barely noticeable scent and mixed into the smell of smoke, dust, blood, and burning flesh.

If Meng Chao did not have a deep understanding toward all sorts of monsters and etherealized plants and was not a veteran harvester whose senses were incredibly sharp, he would not have been able to detect it.

Even most harvesters would usually instinctively ignore it, treating it as some kind of normal grass.

Many heavily injured robbers were strewn all over the corridor of the first floor.

There was thick medicinal paste spread all over their bloody bandages. It was normal that it had a smell of herbs.

But Meng Chao could identify it. This smell belonged to an etherealized plant known as Illuminating Herb.

And Illuminating Herbs did not have any healing properties.

In truth, not only did it have no healing properties, it had no uses whatsoever.

Illuminating Herbs usually grew in the depths of jungles.

It was the mutated form of the tropical pitcher plant, and it survived by capturing small flies and other insects.

To attract insects, it used the phototaxis property of insects to release a luminescent liquid that created a green light.

Aside from the luminescent quality, it was just a normal plant. It did not have any value when eaten or as medicine, and it did not have even the slightest bit of spirit energy, so it could not be used for cultivation.

‘So, why is the useless Illuminating Herb’s scent coming from within Leprosy Village? It only grows in jungles, and few people move it to the city. Aside from being luminescent, it doesn’t have any uses.’

Meng Chao was very certain that he did not smell any Illuminating Herbs when he first entered the place.

Then, where did this smell come from within these short five minutes since he entered the place?

He wrinkled his nose. He used his spirit energy to stimulate the cells in his nasal mucosa, which put them in a state of great excitement, and carefully identified the minute scents.

In the end, he traced the source of the scent to a pool of green, viscous liquid at a corner.

‘Is this… the medicinal liquid from a Deification Capsule?’

When Ghost Eagle Song Yu and the other two criminals fled, each of them carried a bag full of Deification Capsules.

Earlier, when Meng Chao sent Song Yu down to the ground, his backpack had fallen away.

Even though the Deification Capsules in the backpack were protected properly by metal tubes, Meng Chao had hit them with his monstrous strength, so some of them became deformed and twisted. The lid was gone, and the Deification Capsules inside spilled out. After they shattered, the liquid spilled out all over the floor.

The scent of the Illuminating Herb came from it.