At this moment, the Hermit’s words rang in Su Heting’s mind.   

Someone dismembered Titan. 

What the hell was King Shen? A biological hybrid? Su Heting had never seen such a—

“Cat!” 

King Shen let loose a bellow at being ignored by Su Heting. He was like a mountain of flesh that sprang forth and went barreling towards Su Heting. 

Literally shot forth!

His speed was the exact opposite of his physique. He was so fast it defied logic. 

Su Heting swiftly took off along the ground. He did not dodge; instead, he even went to meet him head-on.     

“That’s truly unexpected!” The emcee exclaimed. “To think Meowzai didn’t dodge him. He has to know that King Shen has a super-heavyweight virtual body!”

King Shen brought up a gust of strong wind that swept over the entire venue, sending it swaying. He had already burst forth before Su Heting, and their bodies, with a glaring disparity in size, collided dramatically before the camera! 

The wind pounced over with a “swoosh”, blowing Su Heting’s tail erect. However, it did not send him flying. The arms he used to block the blow held out against King Shen, and in an instant, cracks several meters long materialized on the ground at his feet, splashing water all over. 

—Bloody hell, he’s heavy! 

King Shen braced himself with both arms on the ground, his posture like that of a four-legged crawling animal. He craned his neck out to let out a roar of fury at Su Heting. The two coldsnakes around his belly struck out like flashes of lightning, hissing as they came diving from two sides. 

Su Heting had already sprung up. At the same time the two coldsnakes collided together, he smashed an extended leg down on them. 

“THUD—”

The gigantic snake heads smashed into the ground, shattering the floor. But then, they were clad in white armor, and the finely textured mechanical armor was extremely similar to Viper’s tail. Being far harder than Viper’s tail, they emerged unscathed from Su Heting’s blow. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The emcee exclaimed repeatedly. “Meowzai’s courage is commendable, but the coldsnakes are way too hard! So far, no player has ever been able to penetrate through the coldsnakes. Meowzai has to think of another way.”  

In a bizarre posture with his front limbs on the ground, King Shen threw out a flying kick with that thick, sturdy hind leg of his that had swelled to monstrous proportions. There was no method to his moves, and by the time Su Heting crossed his arms, he was already sent flying from the kick.   

The cat crashed right into the water waves on the ground like a fired cannonball. The water erupted with a thunderous splash, and two coldsnakes swiftly appeared and spread their jaws open to bite down on Su Heting. 

The two coldsnakes suddenly crossed past each other—the churning water surface was empty. Su Heting had unexpectedly vanished from where he had been!     

“That was fast!” The emcee commented. “Up there!” 

The gust of strong wind blew Su Heting’s hair apart, revealing his smooth forehead. With his eyes focused, he suddenly plummeted down from mid-air and landed on the back of King Shen’s head. King Shen’s face immediately sank into the ground! 

The wind abruptly swept away, and sprays of water splashed.

“Uh…” King Shen held on to the ground with his palms and pulled his face out. Shaking his head hard, he howled, “Snakes!”

The two coldsnakes glided close to the ground, their external mechanical armor changing in response. Those indestructible mechanical armored scales automatically lifted like a burst of erected scales. There was a series of clinking sounds as the scales on the snakes’ backs joined together and reorganized into two multi-barrel autocannons.    

“Holy shit!” The Hermit who was watching the fight sucked in a cold breath. 

King Shen raised his upper body, grabbed the two coldsnakes with both hands to hoist them up on his shoulders, and aimed them at Su Heting. He opened fire. The artillery shells shot out of the muzzles and followed close on Su Heting’s heels. A series of explosions ensued.

Su Heting sped along so swiftly he was almost clinging to the ground. Artillery shells rained down haphazardly behind him, blowing up the arena until it was riddled with holes all over. The eruption of realistic-looking broken floorboards and crushed bricks fell into the audience, who broke out in exclamations of alarm.    

“Cat!” King Shen flew into a rage. “Don’t run!”  

As soon as he said that, he steadied his lower body and joined both of his arms together before himself. The two coldsnakes wrapped around each other, their snake jaws opening wide in unison. The inside of the snakes’ bodies lit up, and two shining “snake missiles” instantly launched. 

The missiles smashed right behind Su Heting with such explosive might that the explosion enveloped half of the area. Su Heting was only a tiny bit slow, and the exploding blast engulfed him in an instant. He was like a runaway kite as the gale slapped him towards the edge of the arena, narrowly missing crashing across the gray building structure.

The audience erupted in cheers and applause, and the name “King Shen” reverberated among the audience seats. Meanwhile, the live barrage of comments was already choked full. The match played out an explosion effect. 

“This is an all-new coldsnake!” The emcee spoke fast in excitement. “The roar of the autocannons is still ringing in my ears! King Shen came so close to ending the battle! But Meowzai is too fast! Really too fast! My eyes can’t catch up with him at all; I’ll need to play the camera in slow-motion later!” 

Gunpowder smoke billowed in front of the camera. The arena, ravaged by artillery fire, was a complete wreck. 

Grasping the horizontal bar protruding from the upside-down building, Su Heting hung suspended in mid-air. He dexterously swung out half a circle and landed on the horizontal bar, then squatted down to size up King Shen on the ground. 

“Where are you?” King Shen held up his massive coldsnake autocannons and surveyed the arena. His belly slid down as he walked, hanging down near his thighs, like a heap of cream on the verge of melting.

Su Heting noticed that no matter how the two coldsnakes changed forms, their tails were always firmly entwined in the grooves of King Shen’s flesh; they would not break away from King Shen to act alone. 

“Where are you?!” King Shen was in a towering rage. He spread his legs apart and pressed down before abruptly leaping up. That over ten meters tall body slammed into the structure above, and he landed back on the ground following right after. With him as the center of gravity, the arena jolted up countless pieces of debris, making a deafening, horrific noise, as though there was a landslide. 

The emcee had no choice but to cover an ear with one hand. “This power is no less inferior to an artillery shell bombing….” 

Venting his fury, King Shen dominated the arena with his weight. The entire arena quaked along with his take-offs. The jolts even sent the nine-headed bird¹ overhead sliding downward. 

“… I wonder how Meowzai is going to respond. This is King Shen in berserk mode…”   

Su Heting’s tail was swaying. He whistled at King Shen. 

King Shen landed on the ground, and the two coldsnakes instantly separated and transformed back into their original slithering appearance. His cloudy eyes turned and locked on to Su Heting’s position. 

“Can you display something else?” Su Heting grasped the bar at his feet with both hands and leaned slightly down, his expression curious. “Your legs or hands or something.”   

King Shen responded by jumping up and taking off in the blink of an eye. That gargantuan body gave off an extremely intimidating air of oppressiveness when it leaped. In just one breath, he had already slammed his head into the spot where Su Heting had been earlier. 

The building collapsed noisily, and huge rocks fell one after another.   

Seizing his opportunity, King Shen flung out the two coldsnakes. They spiraled around the upside-down building, suspending King Shen’s body in mid-air.

Su Heting rose and landed amid the building that had exploded apart. King Shen’s fists followed after him in hot pursuit. The fists, several times larger than Su Heting, smashed the upside-down building to smithereens. Occasionally, he would stretch his fingers out to reach for Su Heting’s shadow. 

“Running here… running there!” King Shen forced apart the building structures and stretched out his neck to chomp down right below Su Heting’s feet. His expression was savage and hideous. “You’re so annoying!” 

Su Heting spun in the air and landed lightly on the wall of the building like a dragonfly skimming the surface of the water. Making use of his momentum, he kicked out with his legs and suddenly flashed into sight, using his fists to answer King Shen.

Pummeled in the face, King Shen abruptly turned his head and banged hard against the building wall with a “thud”. The wall promptly fell apart. King Shen opened his mouth and coughed up blood. The inside of his mouth cavity was injured, and there was a tooth teetering right on the verge of falling off. 

A coldsnake poked its head out from the building and lunged at Su Heting without warning. With nowhere to find purchase in the air, he nearly got bitten down by the coldsnake. He reached out his arm to wrap it around the head of the snake, which immediately shook its head and slammed sideways into the building structure. 

The structure broke apart at once, and in the gale that ensued, Su Heting was brought up high in the air as the surrounding fragments of debris showered down on him right in the face.  

Amid the high speed, the coldsnake flailed hard. Its scales were slippery, and Su Heting, who was flung quite a distance away, slid right before its mouth.  

“My tooth…” King Shen grew increasingly enraged. 

The mechanical armor of coldsnake’s head reorganized with a click. Both of its eyes sank down and protruded in the middle, turning into a muzzle in a flash. 

There was a flare of light, and the snake missile thundered among the buildings. 

“Oh, my!” It was hard to tell if the emcee was happy or disappointed. “Almost got him again!” 

King Shen pounced on the explosion site with brute force, snapping his jaws haphazardly among the building. He kicked out with his legs, attempting to climb his way up. 

Su Heting’s tail was almost set ablaze. With nimble movements, he wrapped his arms around one of the heads of the nine-headed bird that had been craning down. He traded glances with those scarlet eyes for a second, then rolled over and stepped onto the nine-headed bird.

King Shen only had Su Heting in his eyes. He held on to the nine-headed bird with both hands and used that particular coldsnake that had changed form to open direct fire. The snake missile detonated on the back of the nine-headed bird, which instantly let loose a blood-curdling scream. Nine steel heads flailed around, its shadow imprinted on the ground looking like a nest of snakes in a frenzy. 

“Warning to players.” The electronic voice of the nine-headed bird was jarring. “Move away from the surveillance setup! Three, two, one!” 

Su Heting leaped down from high above. 

The countdown behind him came to an end, and the nine heads of the nine-headed bird instantaneously exploded. One of King Shen’s coldsnakes was blown up, and like a gust of violent gale, the blast blew him off. 

“Cat!” King Shen shouted in pain. Both his hands and face had been burned. He rolled a circle upon landing on the ground and bulldozed like a tank over the spot where Su Heting had landed. He opened those eyes of his, his roar changing in timbre. “I’m going to kill you!” 

It was the first time the coliseum had its surveillance setup blown up. The emcee did not shout for a time-out. The live barrage of comments surged forth in torrents, like waves made up of words that swept across the entire venue and flooded past Su Heting’s calves. The clamor of voices in the entire arena was identically uniform. Human faces concealed away under the intersecting and motley of lights twisted into screaming faces. 

[Kill him!]

The barrage of live comment baying for blood was so bloody red it was glaring. They circled around Su Heting, like the murmurings of nightmares. The boiling blood in his body seemed to be urging him on. He heard his increasingly accelerating heartbeats, although the thrill of killing was the first to assault his brain. 

King Shen’s eyes were abnormally bloodshot. He also seemed to be in a state of feverish excitement as he panted heavily, “Kill you, kill you, kill you…”   

His lips opened and closed, and the remaining coldsnake at his waist hissed and raised its head. Its eyes, like King Shen’s, stared fixedly at Su Heting.

Su Heting clenched his right fist, which made a soft “click” sound, but this sound did not draw anyone’s attention, for King Shen had slightly arched his back.   

Jiali thought her eyes were playing tricks on her and moved closer to the screen. “What the heck?”   

A brand new brown snake poked its head out of King Shen’s back. It bore a striking resemblance to Viper’s tail, except that it was even more complete. It burrowed out of the flesh, its head taking on a triangular shape. Under the disgusting and horrifying sound of sticky material tearing, it coiled around King Shen’s body. 

Su Heting’s brows creased into a frown. He took two steps back in utter repulsion. “That’s rather gross…” 

Before he could finish his words, King Shen disappeared. 

The sound of those legs running had already come pressing right towards him. Without even thinking about it, Su Heting moved to dodge. King Shen stomped a leg right beside him, crushing the floor that had yet to be repaired. 

Su Heting made to jump, but King Shen blocked him with his body, his bulging belly almost crushing right into Su Heting’s face. 

“Tonight, I’ll send you…” King Shen kicked a leg out, “to meet your maker!” 

This leg was well-toned and muscular, and it rippled with power; it was completely poles apart with the upper half of King Shen’s body. Virtual magnification was a kind of advantage here, and this one kick actually came assaulting with the momentum of destructive force. 

The two snake heads outflanked him from the back, moving extremely swiftly, especially that brown snake head which still had venomous fangs in its wide-open jaws. The debris on the ground went flying under the pincer attack from both sides as the snake bodies gouged out long ditches in its wake, looking as if they were going to trap Su Heting and leave him with no room for escape. 

Dust pounded like waves all around, almost engulfing Su Heting’s figure. 

“Meowzai can’t extricate himself from this,” the emcee said regretfully, “I fear this match…” 

An inexplicable wind started swirling, sweeping away the dust. 

On seeing the wind, the Hermit suddenly slapped his thigh. He was so worked up with excitement that he stammered.

“Eh! Here it c-c-c-c-comes!” 

Su Heting’s modified eye lit up slightly, and his pupil indistinctly underwent a transformation. Like a two-dimensional animation, a tiny “X” emerged in it. A spray of sparks burst between the fingers of his right hand, and with him as the center, a circular wave of fire suddenly materialized. 

When the snake head crashed into Su Heting, he had already vanished. Before King Shen could retract the leg that had just landed on the ground, all that remained before his eyes was the trail of flames left behind in the wake of the blaze. 

The cat’s finger gun was aimed squarely in the middle of King Shen’s forehead.

“Bang.” 

BOOM—!

With a blazing trail following in its wake, the firebolt instantly penetrated the center of King Shen’s eyebrows. A moment later, King Shen toppled over to the ground with a thunderous crash. 

The match was over. 

1. 鬼车鸟 Also known as a nine-headed bird (九头鸟), is a legendary bird whose unnatural appearance further led to it being associated with disasters, so much that it was given the alternate name of Gui Che (鬼车, ghostly vehicle).