Volume 1, Chapter 43: Advanced Skill, Extreme Thunder Annihilation

"This... you explain it." Zhang Wei's gaze made Zhang Tao feel a tremendous amount of pressure.

He decided to shift this pressure onto his lackey.

The lackey who was called out had no choice but to bite the bullet and step forward.

"Boss, it's like this. We followed your instructions to bury that woman, but an accident happened while we were burying her."

"What accident?" Zhang Wei's tone softened slightly; he wasn't one to give these lackeys too hard a time.

Seeing that Zhang Wei's tone wasn't as harsh, the lackey felt less nervous. He gathered his thoughts and began, "I don't know the exact details either. We only assigned one of our brothers to do the job, but we waited for a long time and he never came back. At first, we thought he was just slacking off, but..."

The lackey paused for a moment, then spoke with a hint of fear: "But when we went to look for him, we found out he was already dead."

"His mecha's chest plate was pierced right through. We have no idea how it happened."

Zhang Wei listened intently. Based on the lackey's description, he couldn't figure out what kind of situation this was.

"And something else happened," the lackey added.

"What else?"

"That steel snake. Its remains are gone too."

"Did other mechanical creatures show up?" Zhang Wei asked, puzzled.

Mecha had no use for metal remains; only mechanical creatures treated metal remains as food.

Devouring metal remains allowed mechanical creatures to grow stronger.

"No, it wasn't other mechanical creatures. All the other metal remains were still there, and we've gathered them together. Only the steel snake's remains were missing."

After pondering for a moment, Zhang Wei said, "Alright, got it. Back to work, clean up the source crystals around here."

"Yes, Boss."

The group of lackeys began moving in an orderly fashion.

Seeing that Zhang Wei didn't seem angry, Zhang Tao cautiously crept closer to him, visually estimating Zhang Wei's current height. "Boss, has your mecha evolved again?"

"Mm!" Zhang Wei murmured softly, still deep in thought about Han Xiao.

Could Han Xu have taken Han Xiao's body away?

As for the corpse of the steel snake, Zhang Wei didn't care much about it. It was just some metal scraps; whether it was eaten or stolen didn't matter.

Hearing this, Zhang Tao asked excitedly, "Boss, what benefits did you get from the second evolution?"

"I advise you not to ask," Lin Qianying chimed in before Zhang Wei could speak.

If you ask, won't you just end up deeply depressed?

Although Lin Qianying thought Zhang Tao was quite thick-skinned, even a thick skin probably couldn't handle that kind of blow.

"Why?" Zhang Tao looked at Lin Qianying, confused.

"Come on, I'll tell you." Lin Qianying pulled Zhang Tao aside, sensing that Zhang Wei was lost in thought.

Therefore, it was better for her to be the one to tell Zhang Tao about the second evolution.

Besides, Lin Qianying also needed to contact her superior to report the events of today.

Zhang Wei didn't stop the two of them; he truly was still preoccupied with his thoughts.

After a few minutes, Zhang Wei gave up on trying to figure it out. Just by listening to others recount the process, he couldn't guess anything.

Only by going back and inspecting the mecha of that fallen brother could he find some clues.

Afterward, Zhang Wei took out the source crystals once more. Aside from the epic-grade source crystals, he still had many high-grade source crystals and one that was infinitely close to epic grade.

Zhang Wei began activating the high-grade source crystals one by one, and the drop rate for equipment reached roughly one-third.

These high-grade source crystals were all obtained from heterotypes, and their quality was beyond doubt.

However, not a single piece of equipment caught Zhang Wei's eye. He merely swapped out his defense armor for an excellence-grade one.

The defense armor Zhang Wei had been wearing had suffered a drop in durability during the previous battles.

Now that he had an identical brand-new armor, he naturally had to switch to it.

"Whether we hit the jackpot or not depends on you. Open."

Zhang Wei unlocked the final source crystal, the one infinitely close to epic grade.

"Ding, acquired high-grade skill, Extreme Thunder Heaven-Shattering."

Extreme Thunder Heaven-Shattering: A close-combat skill. The weapon condenses spherical energy, and upon hitting a single target after activation, it instantly triggers high-intensity particles, striking the area within a ten-meter radius of the target.

"An AOE skill!"

After reading the skill description, Zhang Wei grew a little excited, instantly casting the matter of Han Xiao to the back of his mind.

Although Death Laser could also be considered an area-of-effect skill, its AOE capability fell far short of Extreme Thunder Heaven-Shattering.

One was a straight-line attack, while the other was a ten-meter radius area attack. How could they even be compared?

"Learn."

"Ding, learned Extreme Thunder Heaven-Shattering successfully, combat power +20."

"It even increased combat power? Not bad."

Zhang Wei was very satisfied. Just getting this skill made this haul a massive success.

"Boss, has your combat power surpassed a thousand?" At this moment, Zhang Tao's astonished scream rang out.

This roar was not weak; it not only caught Zhang Wei's attention, but all the surrounding lackeys heard it too.

"What is it?" Zhang Wei retorted. He was getting close to eleven hundred, okay?

"Boss..." Zhang Tao was practically on the verge of tears.

Why was this gap getting wider and wider?

There wasn't even the slightest sign of catching up!

Ignoring Zhang Tao, Zhang Wei took out the pile of equipment he had just acquired and said, "You guys look amongst yourselves and divide these up."

Most of this equipment was of fine grade, with only three or four pieces of excellence grade.

Zhang Wei had no use for these items. Although his cargo hold had plenty of space, storing so much equipment was still a waste of room.

Instead of letting them sit there, it was better to hand them over to Zhang Tao.

The lackeys all operated Zhang Tao's mecha; even if these items were given to the lackeys to use, there was no fear of them running away.

As for Zhang Tao, he could try running and see what happened.

Zhang Tao didn't overthink it; seeing Zhang Wei pull out a pile of equipment, his face immediately blossomed with joy.

While Zhang Tao was picking and choosing among the pile of gear, Zhang Wei turned to Lin Qianying and said, "There's stuff you can use too. Pick a few pieces."

Although Lin Qianying hadn't contributed much during today's battle, Zhang Wei clearly saw that she had wanted to help him. He certainly wouldn't be stingy toward her.

"Okay." Lin Qianying didn't beat around the bush, nor did she bring up the matter of source crystals.

In Lin Qianying's view, since they were all comrades now, bringing up source crystals would make them seem like strangers.

Once the sorting and picking were done, Zhang Tao had thoroughly upgraded from a bird-gun to a cannon. Although his weapon hadn't changed, his other equipment—armor, cargo hold, thrusters—was fully outfitted.

Zhang Tao's combat power was now approaching 200, while Lin Qianying's combat power had already exceeded 200.

After all, Lin Qianying's weapon was superior to Zhang Tao's.

The other lackeys had also basically received equipment, and everyone was beaming with satisfaction.

Even though the combined combat power of all the lackeys' mecha didn't surpass Zhang Wei's individual combat power, at least with the boost, they wouldn't feel so helpless when facing ordinary mechanical creatures.

"How is the cleanup going?" After the equipment distribution was finished, Zhang Wei asked.

"Almost done, Boss. What should we do with these metal remains? There are too many of them. Are we just going to leave them here?" Zhang Tao had a commercial mind and always felt it was a great pity to throw away so much metal.

The main thing was that there were simply too many metal remains this time; they were everywhere.

Hearing Zhang Tao's words, Zhang Wei fell into deep thought.

He truly hadn't considered this issue beforehand.

After all, in his past life, he hadn't possessed the ability to wipe out so many mechanical creatures all at once.

"How about this: gather all the metal remains and pile them up."

"What's the use of that?"

Zhang Tao asked, and Lin Qianying also looked toward Zhang Wei.

"Mechanical creatures can devour metal remains to increase their combat power. These metal remains are good things to them."

"And then?" Zhang Tao didn't quite grasp Zhang Wei's train of thought.

Lin Qianying, however, caught on. Before Zhang Wei could answer, she spoke first: "Are you planning to fish by baiting the hook?"

Zhang Wei nodded at Lin Qianying. It was always easy talking to a smart person.

"Ah, I get it now. I'll have them do it right away." Zhang Tao slapped his own forehead.

This was like leaving a massive pile of fatty meat out in the open; the mechanical creatures definitely wouldn't be able to resist coming to feed.

As long as they showed up, they would simply become part of that pile of metal remains.

When that time came, they wouldn't need to painstakingly roam around searching for mechanical creatures everywhere; those fellows would jump out on their own.

Instantly, Zhang Tao full of vigor began directing the lackeys to clear away the metal remains.

Cleaning up the metal remains wasn't too strenuous, especially since all the mecha were at least medium-sized—excluding Lin Qianying's.

Asking these lackeys to fight mechanical creatures head-on might be difficult, but having them clear metal debris was a piece of cake.

In less than half an hour, the metal remains were piled into a massive metal mound standing ten meters high and of unknown diameter.

Looking at this gigantic metal pile, Zhang Tao felt a great sense of accomplishment.

Before Zhang Tao could finish marveling, however, Zhang Wei called out to him, "Let's go, time to head back."

"Huh? We're not watching over this place?" Zhang Tao had wanted to sit by the stump and wait for the hare; he hadn't expected Zhang Wei to tell him to go home.

"Nothing's going to come out today. Let's go back and take a look first."

Zhang Wei wasn't tricking Zhang Tao.

With so many mechanical rats just slaughtered, which mechanical creature would dare run over here to investigate at a time like this?

If you want to eat, you need to have your life to eat it.

According to Zhang Wei's estimation, no mechanical creatures would likely appear even after today passed.

Only after the fear in those mechanical rats' hearts dissipated would they dare show their faces.

As for other mechanical creatures, their numbers were too scarce, and stray cats and dogs didn't fall into Zhang Wei's consideration.

"Oh, alright then, let's head back first. But we should still leave a few people here to keep watch, just in case something comes by?"

"Fine, handle it however you see fit." Zhang Wei nodded at Zhang Tao.

Shortly after, Zhang Tao enthusiastically went to arrange the manpower in three shifts so that no one could slack off.

Once Zhang Tao finished the arrangements, their group quickly headed back toward the villa area.

Zhang Wei wanted to see what exactly was going on with Han Xiao.

Was Han Xiao really taken away by Han Xu?

If Han Xu knew that Zhang Wei suspected him, he would surely cry injustice.