Chapter Ninety-Six: The Six-Legged Horse

Collecting the carapace and arthropod limbs dropped by the Martian mantis—since Guan Yu’s avatar didn’t have a phone, Yan Luo returned to the convenience store to hand the materials to his main body for storage. Then, he went back up to the high ground.

Zhao Yulong and Huang Jiang once again exchanged helpless glances as they watched the red-faced young rider search through the crystal’s light screen.

After clearing a wave of wild monsters and killing Martian mantises and Martian moths, Yan Luo amassed a large amount of nutrients. This time, he was looking for suitable equipment when a sudden inspiration struck him: In MOBA games, you can’t buy six pairs of shoes, but this isn’t a game—it’s the contaminated zone!

Moreover, what he was buying weren’t shoes.

They were accelerators!

Speed is crucial on the battlefield. Just earlier, if he hadn’t rushed to the bottom lane in time, could he have slain that Martian mole tangled in chains? If he hadn’t hurried to the mid lane, Chen Beixue might have been killed.

One accelerator cost 250 nutrient points.

Yan Luo had accumulated over 1,200 nutrient points. He chose to exchange for an accelerator. The crystal core consumed the nutrients and quickly synthesized the item.

Once again, he installed the device on Cream Chocolate—the horse—more precisely, on its rear. Now two accelerators were mounted on either side of the horse’s backside. Whenever it ran, a continuous stream of air blasted out from the accelerators, boosting its speed!

Riding Cream Chocolate, Yan Luo spurred the horse into a gallop, activating the accelerators.

From the horse’s rear, jets of air blasted forth like the propulsive force of a hovercraft, accompanied by “puff-puff” sounds.

Under the strong air currents’ thrust, the horse’s speed accelerated uncontrollably.

Its legs moved faster than before!

“As expected, two accelerators work together, and I can definitely buy more,” Yan Luo thought.

He promptly spent all his nutrients to purchase four more, bringing the total to six accelerators mounted around Cream Chocolate’s rear, forming a ring that completely covered the horse’s buttocks. To be vivid, it looked as if a ring of routers was strapped around its backside.

Zhao Yulong, sitting behind the crystal console, couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth, while Huang Jiang, lying in a petri dish, was sweating profusely.

The two watched with difficulty as Yan Luo, astride this tall brown steed, activated the line of accelerators on its rear. Suddenly, powerful air currents and a continuous chorus of “puff-puff” noises erupted, and the horse surged forward like a runaway wild dog...

“Boss! Boss!”

Though one was level 2 and the other level 3, both couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration. The horse’s four legs seemed to blur with speed—the combined thrust of six accelerators was terrifying in its raw power.

Yan Luo Guan Yu, sitting atop the horse, didn’t perform any fancy moves. He simply held his Green Dragon Crescent Blade horizontally. Passing a large tree, with the horse charging forward, a single swing cleaved the tree in half at the waist.

“Triple speed!”

Yan Luo silently calculated in his mind that the horse’s current pace was at least three times faster than its normal run. If so, the power behind his blade slashes during the charge should also be increased threefold—perhaps even more.

“But it looks like Cream Chocolate is struggling a bit...”

He glanced down at the horse beneath him.

The horse: “...”

Not that it could speak, but even if it could, it wouldn’t have time—the full force of its gallop was all it could muster. It wasn’t that it wanted to run; with six accelerators blasting air from behind, it simply had no choice but to move at this pace.

Riding the horse at triple speed, Yan Luo charged into the wild zone. Residents watching from the apartment buildings were dumbfounded—this horse was running faster than those heavy motorcycles, reaching breathtaking speeds in the neighborhood.

If it hit someone at this speed...

However, to be honest, no helmet was equipped for the horse. Cream Chocolate’s head wasn’t armored, so if it crashed into something, it would suffer massive injuries itself. Yan Luo relied on the horse’s speed to quickly support all three lanes and amplify the killing power of his slashes during charges.

Thanks to the heroic mask of this general’s spirit, the avatar possessed at least master-level riding skills. Otherwise, if it were the main body riding, it would have surely crashed into the residential buildings in the wild zone, ending in a fatal tumble.

As Yan Luo stormed into the wild zone on horseback, he discovered that the wild monsters were appearing again.

This made no sense!

The continuous spawning of minions was due to Huang Jiang lying in the petri dish, acting as living material for endless cloning. Those Martian creatures had gene backups stored in the crystal core, using bioelectric signals to transmit consciousness—essentially their souls and memories. When a body died, the soul awakened in the backup body.

But the neutral wild creatures of Mercury had no backups and couldn’t clone themselves. Why, then, were they appearing one after another?

Yan Luo rode past at high speed, slashing through the bodies of Mercury wild boars and Mercury hawks multiple times with his Green Dragon Crescent Blade. While collecting nutrients, he pondered this profound mystery and quickly discovered the answer.

Nests!

This overlapping contaminated zone’s spacetime was a sub-world existing based on the real world. To use an analogy, the current real-world region was like a cake’s base, while the alien creatures of the sub-world—Martians, the crystal core, defense towers, and the organic flesh membrane on the ground—were like the frosting spread atop the base.

As for the neutral creatures of Mercury, they were like strawberries and cherries decorating the frosting.

Within this sub-world’s spacetime, Mercury creatures—hawks, hunting dogs, wild boars, wolves, even Mercury lizards and apes—were not solitary but had entire nests. Whenever a wild monster died, the corresponding creature from its nest in the sub-world’s spacetime would cross the temporal boundary and appear in the contaminated zone.

Simply put, they were “respawning.”

This was good news for Yan Luo. He quickly cleared all the wild monsters in his controlled territory, harvested a bounty of nutrients along with buffs from the red lizard’s blood and blue ape’s brain, and then returned to the crystal core.

He wasn’t there to buy more accelerators—the horse’s rear was already crowded, and Cream Chocolate was clearly struggling to run.

He was here to strengthen the steed.

A warm-hearted gesture from master to pet.

The crystal core, besides exchanging items and equipment, could perform biochemical modifications, growing new limbs on the body—though these modifications would vanish once the contaminated zone disappeared unless an accident occurred. Upon discovering the biochemical modification option, Yan Luo decided to reinforce the horse.

“Modification: Biochemical organ... Target: horse’s legs... Plan: add two extra legs in addition to the original four... Nutrient cost: 800 points... Modification start...”

“Modification complete...”

Now Cream Chocolate had become a six-legged horse...