“Bug race! The people of the Federation will never see eye to eye with you!!”
“Aaaahhh, I’ll kill you all, every last one of you!!!”
“Not one of them will–”
“I you! You !!”
“Federation soldiers will live on forever in our hearts.”
“I swear to wipe out every bug and star beast, even if it takes my whole life!”
Elizabeth’s breath caught in front of the screen. Reinforcements had already arrived—just that close…
Wang Kaiyu, Ye Yingxuan, Mika, and the other students who knew Shi Zhixin felt their minds go blank. Teacher Shi—he had taken his own life, all to avoid being parasitized by the bugs…
A few more stray gunshots crackled through the livestream. Deputy Director Guo Hongfan’s eyes were bloodshot, both hands gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles went white.
Your sacrifice will not be in vain…
Shi Zhixin’s second-in-command, Ji Gang, sat slumped on the floor of the mech bay where the two of them usually worked together.
The secondary screen on his personal device showed the folder Old Shi had just sent over—inside were his unfinished mech blueprints, designs for a spiritual energy storage tank, a plan to extract bug-race spiritual energy, and his last letter…
Lian Sheng, Lucas, Tabitha—every mech engineer in the military academies who had Old Shi’s contact info on their devices received these unfinished designs.
…Teacher Shi sent these to them, he must have wanted them to continue his research.
Lucas bit down hard on the back of his own hand, tears falling freely,
“Mmm… mhn… Teacher Shi.”
Li Qin frowned as he watched the mech engineer who had toyed with his “feelings” fall, a faint relieved smile still lingering on their lips? What was there to be relieved about when you were dead?
A sharp ache and stabbing pain shot through his chest, as if tears were about to spill any second. His right hand unconsciously rose,
“???”
With a slight effort, he forced his hand back down,
“Playing dead? Trying to make me off myself like him?”
Sensing that his true body had already made its escape, Li Qin glared at the corpse on the ground. What a waste—lost a mech engineer, and they wouldn’t even leave behind a single memory for them… How stingy.
“Let’s move.”
“Yes.”
The First Military Region’s reinforcements finally arrived.
Everyone had come fully prepared before even stepping foot into the quarantine control center.
Their mech cockpits were from the latest sealed design series, based on the blueprints of several academy mech engineers like Wang Tianwei, finalized and approved by senior mech engineers from headquarters like Shi Zhixin, along with the chief engineers of several regions.
The air filtration valves still couldn’t block the bugs 100%, but as long as they moved quickly enough and had their spiritual energy armed properly, they wouldn’t be invaded so easily.
The arc blades above the center, which had been severed by the bugs, were reconnected by the engineers. During the wait, the Fifth Military Region’s reinforcements also arrived.
General Paige hadn’t even stepped inside before sensing the overwhelming spiritual energy of the Alpha bug swarm.
“The Golden Crown has already escaped from the underground shelter… Everyone, once you enter the control center, stick to the original plan. Don’t stop for anyone you meet or anything you hear.”
“Yes!”
Over a hundred mechs crept cautiously into the quarantine control center.
The new AI auto-targeting system installed on the mechs would instantly lock onto the parasitized personnel and their piloted mechs that had appeared in the livestream, so once fighting started, they wouldn’t need to hold back.
The only thing to watch out for was that even if the bug soldiers got their mechs blown to pieces, as long as the breeding bugs in their brains weren’t hit, they’d drag their mangled remains and escape first, then hop into a new body to parasitize!
To handle this, every mech was fitted with dismantling components.
The process would disable the enemy first, then remove the cockpit, then either blast the head directly or use a high-power flame thrower for disposal.
It would definitely be more dangerous, and slower… but it would massively reduce wasted effort, truly ensuring one enemy down meant one enemy down.
Li Qin had barely returned to the surface when he felt a wave of spiritual energy coming at him from many directions. He casually put up a barrier, only to be caught off guard when one thread of spiritual energy pierced straight through it!?
“Hiss—!”
An S-rank alone could hurt him with spiritual energy!? Who was that?
He was met with a barrage of artillery fire. He blocked two shells with his spiritual energy, deflected the trajectory of three electromagnetic railgun rounds, and his subordinates ahead of him took four more hits.
He moved quickly to an open area, and under the combined spiritual and fire cover of his subordinates, climbed into his mech.
“Warriors of the bug race! Anyone with a mech, get in it now—let’s break out together!”
Colonel Li Xun of the First Military Region, leading the reinforcements, and General Paige of the Fifth Military Region had the two flanks sealed off tightly on both sides.
“Not a chance!”
Only then did Li Qin realize that the thread of spiritual energy so sharp it had pierced his discomfort came from the person in the white mech ahead.
Li Xun was infantry-born, while General Paige was a commander—both seasoned veterans who, even without ever fighting side by side before, worked in flawless sync.
Wherever General Paige pointed, the First Military Region’s colonel would strike.
The bugs nearby were strong, but all they’d parasitized were ordinary soldiers; their physical skills and combat instincts were limited compared to the two of them.
Li Qin’s rank was slightly higher, but his mech proficiency was nowhere near the level of two old hands on the battlefield. The only reason the fight had dragged on this long was his extraordinary spiritual power.
By now, however, the other soldiers no longer panicked as they had at the start, and the situation in the quarantine control center was getting back under control.
Jiang Ya led a few of her subordinates across two sectors, rescuing numerous researchers along the way.
To think that Li Qin—someone they’d sat in daily morning meetings with and stayed in constant contact with on their devices—had turned out to be the bug leader this whole time? That sense of wrongness that had been lingering all along… it was real. She should have taken it seriously.
The reinforcements flown in from other regions mid-battle had also arrived.
After making contact with General Paige, they chose to loop around from the other side, hoping to trap the bugs and starve them inside the control center!
Hammered nonstop by elite troops from two military regions, Li Qin didn’t have time to spread his influence, let alone deal with their spiritual attacks from all directions.
The main body kept draining more and more of his spiritual energy… Caught off guard, his mech took two massive hits from the military’s heavy fire.
But neither side of soldiers dared act recklessly—up close, with their level of spiritual power, they were at high risk of getting infected.
“I’ll do it.”
General Paige’s gaze was resolute inside the cockpit, his spiritual energy at least capable of striking the enemy.
“If anything goes wrong, open fire on me.”
Elizabeth, in room 103, was so tense that her nails were digging into her palms.
On the livestream, a bead of cold sweat rolled down Li Qin’s temple. A moment later, he gave an easy, relaxed laugh, the vast spiritual power around him vanishing without a trace.
“No need to fight over it. I’ll do it myself. Gentlemen, see you around.”
With that, he raised a handgun, aimed at his own head with a smile, and—
“Bang!”
