Chapter 557: Crafted Skin

Meng Chao noticed that while cackling the Vortex was starting to sweat a lot.

Its sweat was slightly yellow in color. It was murky and sticky, and it gushed out of thousands of pores at the same time. That amount of sweat surpassed the limit that a normal person would sweat after a fierce fight.

Of course, the Vortex was never a normal human. Instead, it was a biochemical weapon that had been modified using the most advanced genes.

He—It was like a melting wax statue.

The facial features that were originally incredibly similar to Meng Chao’s became unclear. They turned into semi-transparent liquid wax that slowly dripped down.

As the liquid wax on the surface fell away, the person who was impaled to the wall by Meng Chao’s Bloody Soul became someone else entirely.

It was a young man with a pale and ugly face.

He also looked a little arrogant and wild, but his features were completely distorted due to pain.

His eyes were wide open, and the blood vessels surrounding his pupils had snapped. They were devoured by the pupils that were continuously becoming larger. In the end, his pupils and eyeballs became forever frozen.

And as more liquid wax gushed out, dripped, and fell off the body, his size shrank by 10%.

His bones and muscles twitched, and his height and shoulder width shrank by different degrees. His pectoral muscles, which originally looked like an armor, now looked really thin and shriveled.

At that moment, he no longer looked like Meng Chao.

But if that wasn’t enough, Meng Chao also saw a huge tattoo on the body’s neck that went down to the chest.

It was two intersecting black bones pierced by a sharp blade—Black Bone’s tattoo.

It was even drawn arrogantly with fluorescent paint, which was why the tattoo shone with a really bewitching, neon light in the darkness. It looked like bones burning like will-o’-the-wisp. There was just no way anyone could mistake it.

And there was no need for anyone to have such a conceited-looking tattoo, unless he was someone important in Black Bone.

Meng Chao felt as if his scalp had been infested by an ant’s nest. He felt a crawling sensation like never before.

Once the order in Dragon City stabilized and the violent acts among humans slowly decreased, the gangs sought to change their jobs and used more legal and safer ways to get excess benefits.

The nine strongest gangs in Dragon City from the early days had changed a long time ago and set up the Survival Committee in the name of the nine great mega corporations to rule over Dragon City.

Gangs in the lair like Golden Tooth, Poison Scorpion, and Wild Wolves might not be as strong as the mega corporations and held in check by others, so they often did dirty and illegal work, but they also wanted to wash their hands clean and move from being traditional gangs to being mega corporations that had food and beverage, entertainment, trading, pharmaceutical, biochemical modification, and weapons creations companies under them.

Even the Underground Emperor was not someone brutal who murdered people at a whim.

Golden Tooth and Poison Scorpion were both large gangs in the lair, and when they treated important guests from the outside, they abided by the rules of etiquette even more than many of the industries outside. The reason was simple: the gambling sites, wild game restaurants, monster coliseums, and the oldest profession among humans could not be maintained with the tiny bit of spending power in the lair.

If they did not have thousands of citizens to support their business, no matter how powerful the gangs were, they would still starve to death.

However, Black Bone was the abnormality among the gangs.

While most gangs were aiming to change their jobs and become industrialized, corporalized, legalized, and blend into society, Black Bone remained stubborn and wanted to obey the law of the jungle and the rule of the strong, which had existed during the dark era when all order collapsed.

Black Bone was the one gang that did not mind using brute force in Golden Tooth Lair.

It was also the most domineering and unyielding gang.

It was so unyielding that even the manager of Golden Tooth Lair Saber Jin Wanhao found them troublesome.

Black Bone had also gathered fearless fighters, so their strength was second only to Golden Tooth.

Its gang leader’s nickname was Phantom Bear, and he was one of the elite of the old generation who had not died yet after fighting for decades in the zombie crisis and the Monster War.

Aside from Saber Jin Wanhao, he did not listen to anyone else in the lair.

And the lair was a chaotic and complicated place. Even if Golden Tooth worked together with Poison Scorpion and the other gangs to suppress Black Bone at full force, all sides would end up heavily injured.

Black Bone also received support from one of the nine great mega corporations—Universe Corporation.

Universe Corporation’s rival was Sky Pillar Corporation, which was the earliest corporation to mine ores to refine and create weapons. They were also the strongest in this field.

Universe Corporation was the challenger who popped up later. Because of it, it had to use more extreme and invasive strategies to challenge Sky Pillar Corporation.

Black Bone was Universe Corporation’s foot soldier in the lair, and it did not depend on luck to become a domineering force.

Earlier, the Vortex had mentioned that the person Meng Chao killed was Phantom Bear Xiong Wei’s favorite son.

It was only at that moment that Meng Chao finally understood what was going on!

He also heard slurping sounds right then.

Then, he saw something unbelievable.

More sticky liquid wax flowed out of the heir of Black Bone. Its speed was getting faster.

The liquid wax originally gathered in a pool at his feet due to gravity, but once more of it blended together, the murky and sticky yellow wax gained a crystalline, semi-transparent quality. It extended its tentacles to the area around it like a mollusca that was alive!

Meng Chao had never met such a strange life form before.

He swung his chain saber and stabbed this creature.

But the creature was like glue. Its body split up before gathering together once more in front of the chain saber. It was not affected in the slightest.

Meng Chao swung his chain saber a second time.

This time, he activated the spirit energy magnetic fields for the flames and electrical arcs.

The burning flames and crackling electrical arcs surged into the creature, but not only did they not destroy the functions of its cells, they seemed to have charged it up, for it began to move even faster than before.

It released a squeaking noise as if it was mocking Meng Chao’s vain efforts.

Then, it charged into the darkness of the maze like flowing water.

Based on its formless, shadowless and unfathomable body, it could go through any ventilation pipe, drain, door opening, or crack that was wider than 0.1mm. There was almost nowhere it couldn’t get in or flee to.

‘This is the Vortex’s true self!’

Meng Chao came to a swift realization.

He had clearly joined the hunting squad on a whim yesterday night and his body’s current shape had been unknown to everyone right then. Because of this, he was confused about how the enemy was able to create such a believable disguise in just a few hours.

But he knew now. The Vortex’s real form was clearly some sort of mollusca that had received advanced biochemical modifications. It could turn itself into whatever living creature it desired.

Of course, since it had no bones, it had limited mass, so it was impossible for it to create a human out of the blue.

That was why it could only attach itself to another human and turn itself into a believable human skin, or rather, it turned itself into “crafted skin” that possessed high intelligence and was incredibly terrifying.

This was its most sinister aspect.

It first devoured the favorite son of Black Bone’s gang leader and controlled his body to fight against Meng Chao so that it could lure Meng Chao into killing it.

And just as it wanted, Meng Chao’s Bloody Soul stabbed the heir’s chest and completely burned his heart!

When Meng Chao saw that the Vortex was about to flee into the darkness, he tossed his chain saber a third time.

This time, he did not throw it at the Vortex. Instead, he threw it at a corpse nearby.

They were on the battlefield between the pursuers and the ambushers.

There were many corpses strewn around Rattlesnake Xiang Wei’s corpse.

The pursuers had been caught off guard and ambushed. Many of them did not have the time to fire all of their ammunition.

Meng Chao’s chain saber moved like a snake and wrapped itself around a heavy Sam Brown Bell that was stuffed full of hand grenades.

He curled up his little finger, and the Sam Brown Belt soared above the Vortex’s head.

Flames and electrical arcs clashed against each other again, igniting all the fuzes of the hand grenades.

BOOOOMMM!

Dozens of fireballs and thousands of shrapnel pieces spinning at high speed went toward the Vortex.

Even if this Supernatural Entity was modified with top biochemical modification technology, it had to obey the most basic laws of biology.

It might be able to change its form and be as unpredictable as it wanted like other viscous liquids, but it had to pay the price of its offense and defense being diminished.

Based on what Meng Chao remembered, the Vortex was not famous for its fighting strength and was not a monster which had a direct hand in damaging Dragon City.

Instead, it was the most mysterious assassin that hid in the shadows.

In this life, it had yet to evolve into its final form, so Meng Chao was certain that it could not possibly be impenetrable to physical attacks.

Just as he expected, a piercing cry came from beneath the dozens of overlapping fireballs.

The mocking smile the Vortex had when everything was in its control and when it was certain that it was victorious finally turned into anger and a pathetic screech.

A strong stench of something burnt rose in the air.

It was as if someone had poured heated oil on a toad.

But of course, since the Vortex was a Supernatural Entity, even if its real body was a mollusca, it could not be destroyed with just dozens of hand grenades.

When Meng Chao wrapped his chain saber around his right arm and rushed over, he saw a charred and miserable looking thing crawling into a pipe above a hidden door of a maintenance room.

To ensure that the imitator died, Meng Chao had engaged in a war of attrition against him at the cost of having both people heavily wounded. Because of it, he did not have the power to blast the entire maintenance pipe and catch the Vortex’s tail.

Besides, the Vortex had other subordinates. The monster puppets made up of wanted criminals and former Reaper Squad members had definitely set up fatal traps in the dark.

Meng Chao thought about this for a while before he gave up on the useless chase. He knelt down on the ground to search through the explosion site carefully, and he found some black traces. They came from burned protein.

When the creature did not attach itself to a human body, its offensive and defensive abilities were indeed not strong. It could be damaged by physical attacks, which was something that made Meng Chao release a sigh of relief.

He turned around to search for the Vortex’s weapon.

He soon found that a Red Radiance Jade of a pretty good quality was embedded in the red saber. After it was refined through unique methods, it looked no different from a Red Radiance Jade crystal marrow at first glance.

Unfortunately, since it had been overloaded with spirit energy and the saber had snapped in two, the crystal had shattered and become powder.