Chapter 64: Sea Without Light
The severed tentacle thrashed on the ground, and the blue blood that gushed out quickly stopped. At the stump of the tentacle, a new tentacle sprouted, extending cleverly and wrapping around Kui Xin’s leg.
The tentacle tightened rapidly, and the barbed hooks on its suction cups scraped against her exoskeletal armor, producing an unbearable, grating sound. The double-headed monster’s tentacles were stronger than any xenomorphs Kui Xin had encountered; it squeezed the exoskeletal armor, which began to deform slightly, with metal components pressing against her leg.
Kui Xin stumbled as the tentacle yanked her, nearly losing her balance. She pulled out her telescopic knife and drove it into the floor to stabilize herself, while Silverface quickly wrapped his arm around her waist to prevent her from being dragged away by the monster.
Black Obsidian drew his knife and sliced down, severing the tentacle that was wrapped around Kui Xin’s leg; blue blood splattered onto the armor, and he sighed in relief. “It’s not corrosive blood.”
The double-headed monster that Tang Guan transformed into resembled nothing that should exist in the human world.
The grotesque grin on its monstrous face twisted, its eyes reflecting a semblance of human emotions—excitement and cruelty. It extended its deeply purple, pockmarked tongue and eagerly licked its lips, like a gourmet eager to taste food.
And its food was the three humans in front of it.
Unfortunately, the humans were not willing to surrender and become food.
As the tentacles surged forward again, Silverface raised a water curtain; the tentacles struck against it, causing violent ripples that hindered the double-headed monster’s attack. However, with the water curtain in place, neither bullets nor blades could exert their full force.
In the next moment, Silverface removed the property he had infused into the water, causing the water curtain to collapse. As droplets hung suspended in midair, Kui Xin skillfully swung her knife forward to follow up with an attack.
With a swish, the finely forged, razor-sharp blade cut through the water curtain, smoothly splitting a droplet of water and dividing the transparent wall in half, slicing through the tentacle that had lunged at them as well.
The monster’s blue blood mingled with the splattered water, creating a scene that flowed like a painter’s brushstrokes, fluid as a craftsman cutting delicate fabric with scissors.
Blood and water splattered onto Kui Xin’s helmet and body; Black Obsidian stepped forward, holding a power-boosted grenade with the pin removed.
With the skill of a pitcher, he tossed the bomb onto the monster’s head. The grenade exploded the moment it made contact with the creature’s body, while Silverface opened a second water curtain at just the right moment, pulling both of them away from the kitchen doorway and down, avoiding the violent shockwave.
The water curtain quaked violently as flames and the shockwave erupted from the kitchen doorway, resembling an erupting volcano. The metal walls on this side of the kitchen even bulged slightly from the pressure, and the explosion’s roar echoed down the long corridor, leaving the three of them with a slight ringing in their ears.
Kui Xin shook her head and climbed up from the floor.
The bombs the Investigation Bureau used during boarding were mini grenades, with a blast radius of only two meters, not comparable to the explosive power Black Obsidian had used.
“This bomb could create a pit several meters deep on the surface, is it still alive?” Silverface got up as well.
“Not dead; the monster’s mind is still active, but it’s weakened slightly. It… or rather, they… their thoughts are chaotic; I can’t control them,” Black Obsidian said, blue light flashing in his eyes. He quickly added with a grave expression, “That monster has two heads, two minds; simply taking one head down won’t help. If one head is lost, the other will quickly regrow. We might need to strike both heads down simultaneously.”
Kui Xin replied, “We can’t even get close, let alone strike two heads at the same time.”
As a B-class Awakened, Black Obsidian could perform shallow mind reading, sensing specific emotions from a person, but he couldn’t delve deep into their inner thoughts, nor could he easily manipulate others’ minds. Controlling the wills of ordinary people was barely possible, but controlling Awakened individuals was essentially impossible. As the level of extraordinary abilities rises, so do these capabilities, leaving him considerable room to grow.
Mental-type extraordinary users have different specializations; some excel at mind reading, while others excel at thought control. Amber and Black Obsidian, as twins, possess identical abilities, and they are not adept at mind control or reading; their strengths mainly lie in “consciousness implantation.”
That is, brainwashing.
This differs from thought control, which would turn the manipulated into living puppets; consciousness implantation more often involves planting a specific idea or keyword into a person’s mind. Over time, this seed of consciousness takes root, growing into a towering tree, causing the implanted individual to unwittingly change their thoughts, becoming a “free” puppet.
After repeated hypnosis and consciousness implantation, the seed of consciousness would embed deep within another’s mind, very covertly and challenging to remove.
Currently, the abilities of the Amber-Black Obsidian twins are relatively weak, but they have a promising future. Due to their abilities, however, they find themselves in a somewhat awkward position within the organization; Kui Haidong is slightly wary of them but also wants to nurture them properly.
Silverface glanced back, shocked to see several tentacles slumped at the kitchen entrance, slowly writhing on the ground, seemingly trying to grab the three of them.
Black Obsidian signaled to Silverface, who understood and took the grenade, pulling the pin and using water to control it as he threw it into the kitchen.
Once again, with a thunderous explosion, the slumped tentacles at the entrance were blown apart and splattered against the wall, sticking there.
Silverface hopefully asked, “Is it still alive?”
“No…” Black Obsidian slowly approached the kitchen entrance, looking grimly at the large hole in the kitchen floor. “It’s gone.”
The kitchen floor was steel, and now there was a hole nearly two meters in diameter; the monster had jumped inside.
“Red, stay alert; there’s a very tricky monster on the ship,” Kui Xin said.
Red responded, “Received. Eden has reported on your situation; our mission doesn’t look optimistic. Let’s retreat to the deck; we’ve dismantled the mainboard of the ship’s AI. Also, the fire point is actually in the hangar, but the fire safety system had been deliberately turned off. We just turned it back on and stopped the flames.”
“Understood,” Kui Xin replied.
Before leaving, she looked at the hole in the kitchen floor. “Black Obsidian, scan that hole… Just throw the scanner in.”
The scanner couldn’t hover like a micro-drone, but in such a dangerous situation, none of them wanted to approach the hole, so they had to abandon one scanner.
Black Obsidian threw out a spherical scanner, which plunged straight into the hole beneath the kitchen. The brief few seconds of footage it scanned transmitted back, sending chills down their spines.
Below the kitchen was a water reservoir.
With today’s advanced technology, ships can directly extract seawater for filtering and purification as drinkable water, but such seawater treatment systems need a dedicated reservoir, and the Kraken’s reservoir was located beneath the kitchen.
In the massive reservoir were not only water but also heaps of eggs stuck to the walls.
Rows of eggs looked like the warts on a toad’s body, ugly and slimy, and in the darkness, they even emitted a faint glow.
Kui Xin suddenly recalled the nightmare scene she had witnessed during her last reincarnation on the Kraken’s deck, where the helicopter’s searchlight scanned the surface of the sea, revealing countless pairs of xenomorph eyes, glimmering like ghostly fires in a graveyard.
There was also a hole in the steel plate of the reservoir, clearly where the double-headed monster had escaped, and it was now lurking somewhere within the freighter.
Silverface frowned. “How many xenomorphs could be hiding here? The number of xenomorphs has already surpassed that of living people.”
“We haven’t found many corpses; according to intel, there were at least forty crew members on board,” Black Obsidian said.
Kui Xin pointed quietly to the cold storage door in the kitchen, which was now hanging precariously from the explosion. “Did you notice the bloodstains on the floor? They lead in that direction. I suspect some corpses must have been frozen, just like humans keep leftover food in the freezer to keep it fresh.”
The Kraken felt to Kui Xin like a ghost ship sailing toward hell, laden with the souls of the dead, with demons eager to feast, knives and forks at the ready, waiting to indulge.
“Red wants us to retreat to the deck; let’s go,” Black Obsidian said, lowering his gaze.
“What’s with that Tang Guan?” Silverface asked as he brought up the rear.
“He obviously still retains a degree of self-awareness. I suspect that the unknown monster doesn’t drain the host’s life like the parasitic hydra or Red Spine Hunter; instead, it fights for control of the body and consumes their spirit… So Tang Guan oscillates between consciousness and unconsciousness; he’s fighting against the monster. If he breaks, he’ll be devoured,” Kui Xin made a logical deduction, “It seems like Tang Guan and that monster are in a symbiotic state.”
“I think so too,” Black Obsidian replied. “The incident on the ship is related to the Secret Cult; this speculation should be quite close to the truth.”
After a brief exchange, they fell silent, remaining vigilant as they retreated as quickly as possible.
Kui Xin took a moment to summon the system; a light screen flickered.
“[Mission Progress]: 99%.”
Only one percent remained.
If the mastermind isn’t Tang Guan, and if Tang Guan is also one of the controlled, then where is the real mastermind hiding? Tang Guan’s suffering didn’t seem feigned; the tragedy aboard the Kraken shouldn’t be his intention.
Just as they were on high alert and retreating, Kui Xin suddenly felt a buzzing in her head.
“Thump, thump… Thump, thump…”
The familiar sound of a heartbeat echoed.
At that moment, Kui Xin heard an object sliding through the pipes, the pulse at her temples quickening as dangerous premonitions arose in her heart.
Suddenly, a hissing sound erupted from the ventilation duct above them, and the light tubes in the corridor flickered and went dark. In an instant, the double-headed monster’s twisted body squeezed through the ventilation shaft.
Somehow it had slipped into the duct after escaping from below the kitchen.
The double-headed monster glided through the vents with its octopus-like appendages, searching for the positions of Kui Xin and the others. It then dropped down, seizing the strongest fighter, Silverface, by the neck, before using its weight to crash down, pinning Kui Xin and Black Obsidian to the ground, the tentacles layering over their mouths and noses, strangling their bodies.
But Kui Xin gripped her telescopic knife tightly; at the moment the monster’s body bore down on her, she stabbed the blade upwards vertically, plunging the one-meter-long knife deep into its body.
Kui Xin’s cervical and rib bones crackled under the strain, her eyes turning red from oxygen deprivation and blood congestion. The exoskeletal armor slightly alleviated the strangling force while providing her body with overwhelming reinforcement.
The parts whirred, and the mechanical components worked beyond capacity.
Kui Xin’s arm veins bulged; driven by her survival instinct, she unleashed her potential, exceeding the limits of her body. Her wrist and arm powered through simultaneously, her muscles tearing apart like a bowstring pulled to its limit.
She broke free from the tentacles and swung her knife fiercely, splitting the monster’s body in half!
