Split Open
Their movements were slow—a common flaw of large-bodied species, humans included.
And her “Instant Shift” happened to be the perfect counter to that weakness.
Once everything was planned out in her head, Tu Ran moved.
She approached them quickly, closing the straight-line distance to about five meters.
By now, the Irritable One and the Resentful One had already locked into a brawl, rolling around on the ground. There was no way they could notice a caterpillar-sized creature rapidly closing in on them.
Tu Ran seized the opportunity. She bent her knees, leaped, and landed right in the middle of their bodies.
The Kangzhu's body was composed of two adult male upper torsos fused to the lower half of a horse.
When they wrestled, they had to twist their upper bodies around just to get their arms within reach of each other.
So in effect, they were facing each other.
And when Tu Ran abruptly landed between them, it was impossible not to draw attention.
The Resentful One and the Irritable One both stared with eyes wide as saucers.
In their view, Tu Ran was nothing but a caterpillar with a face vaguely resembling their own.
The Irritable One reacted fastest. The hand that had been about to grab at the Resentful One abruptly changed direction and swatted toward Tu Ran.
From her angle, that palm might as well have been a mountain, blotting out the sky and blocking out the sun.
She didn't have much time. Tu Ran quickly bent down and pressed her palm against the equine body connecting them.
“Landslide!”
As her voice fell, cracks began to spread outward from the center of her palm. The body beneath her feet started to tremble violently, accompanied by the Kangzhu's agonized screams.
The Irritable One's arm spasmed in pain.
Both mouths shouted and howled at once, the sound twice as piercing.
The cracks kept spreading. Their skin, as if scorched by a blazing sun or dried out like earth starved of water for years, split into ever-wider fissures. Patches of epidermis began to slough off.
As they struggled, the skin peeled away even faster, exposing the blood-red muscle bundles beneath, seeping with oozing blood.
Because their coordination was so poor, they couldn't manage to stand up. They writhed in agony on the spot, pulverizing the already-fallen trees around them into splinters.
Fatty, carried ten li away by Tu Ran, stared in this direction, pacing in restless circles.
It couldn't see what was happening inside. All it knew was that its boss was taking on a Kangzhu as big as a mountain.
The violent crashing sounds and the Kangzhu's ear-splitting roars reached its position clearly.
It knew Tu Ran had already enraged the Kangzhu.
Its heart was about to leap into its throat.
It silently prayed that its boss would come back alive.
Elsewhere.
Tu Ran struggled to steady herself.
Her palm never left the Kangzhu's body.
Given the Kangzhu's enormous size, it would take a while for Tu Ran's cracks to cover its entire form.
She could clearly feel her strength draining at an alarming rate.
“Adamantine Body” was working, trying its best to make up for the energy her body was losing.
The Kangzhu's outermost layer of skin had already split apart entirely, most of it peeling off during their desperate thrashing.
But it wasn't over yet.
Tu Ran pressed her palm against their bloody muscle layer.
The “Landslide” ability could only peel away one layer at a time.
She had to strip this inner layer too.
Only then could she kill them for good.
As she silently chanted the incantation, the muscle layer began to break apart under her palm as well.
The Kangzhu thrashed even more violently.
They twisted their bodies desperately, roaring with their mouths wide open, like fish thrown onto the shore—agonized and hopeless.
They flailed their arms wildly, trying to swat the bug off their backs.
But the bug was too fast. Every time they were about to strike, it shifted to a new position and resumed casting “Landslide” there.
Their flesh was disintegrating rapidly, like an avalanche—chunks of meat collapsing and sliding off, mixing with blood, spreading across the ground.
If only they had kept their cool and coordinated better, they wouldn't have been reduced to being outmatched by a single bug.
Tu Ran's breath came in ragged gasps. She had consumed far too much energy. Her stomach was growling, and her vision was starting to blur. She probably couldn't hold on much longer.
The cracks hadn't yet covered the entirety of the Kangzhu's body, but judging by the extent of the damage, their death was already a foregone conclusion. There was no need to waste more energy.
Activating “Instant Shift,” Tu Ran moved to a tree branch twenty meters away.
From this angle, she could clearly watch the Kangzhu melting away.
Flesh sloughed off, exposing the stark white bones beneath. Especially on the equine body where the two torsos connected, rows of ribs were clearly visible.
All sorts of grotesque internal organs spilled out through the gaps between the ribs, spreading across the ground. The stench of blood shot straight to the skies.
Tu Ran ignored the foul smell. She pulled a glucose injection from her pack, downed it in one gulp to quell the hunger in her stomach and recover some of her strength.
After drinking, she sat cross-legged on the tree trunk to rest, casting her gaze upon the Kangzhu writhing on the ground in agony.
Their movements were no longer as violent as before, especially the Resentful One, who was now the most severely injured.
The abdomen of its male body had already collapsed, bones exposed. Through the ribs, Tu Ran could see its beating heart.
But the beating was growing slower and slower, weaker and weaker.
Finally, the Resentful One's groans came to an abrupt halt.
Its heart stopped.
Its body drooped limply.
Almost at the same moment, the Irritable One felt the death of its cohabitant.
It let out a bitter, desperate cry to the sky, its hateful glare fixed on Tu Ran.
This tiny bug!
She was the one who had caused all this!
It dragged itself toward Tu Ran's direction with every ounce of strength it had left.
It dragged the cohabitant's mangled corpse behind it.
Viscous clumps of tissue mixed with blood left a horrifying trail in its wake.
It wanted to land one final blow on Tu Ran.
It desperately wanted to crush this bug—the root cause of all its misery.
From the tree branch, Tu Ran looked down coldly at the scene.
The Kangzhu was no longer the lofty alien beast it had once been.
It crawled pathetically on the ground, not even reaching the height of where she stood.
Calmly, Tu Ran produced a demolition grenade and lobbed it onto the creature's already ruined body.
“Boom!”
With a single explosion, the Irritable One's body was blown to shreds.
Its heart flew out of its chest and landed right on the branch Tu Ran was standing on.
It pulsed rhythmically.
Three seconds later, the pulsing stopped, as if it had taken those three seconds to accept that it had lost its anchor.
Tu Ran climbed down from the tree trunk. When she was still two meters above the ground, she glanced around, intending to find a clean spot to land. But as her gaze swept the area, every visible patch of ground was covered in flesh and blood.
She had no choice but to pick a random spot and leap down from two meters.
Unfortunately, she overestimated her strength. Her stamina hadn't fully recovered, and when she landed, her legs buckled, and she plopped straight down onto the bloody ground.
Tu Ran: ...
Ugh!