novelraw Chapter 332: Gravity War
Chapter 332: Gravity War
The roar of water savagely trampled deep within their eardrums.
When that wall of water defying the laws of physics, encircling them, collapsed the instant it lost gravitational support, the entire world seemed to be crushed in that moment by the weight of liquid.
Tens of thousands of tons of river water suspended mid-air, carrying immense kinetic energy, slammed down like a colossal palm from the heavens onto the surface of the Rajang River, churning up white spray and mist dozens of meters high.
Lin Jie felt his body mercilessly flung by an overwhelming, irresistible force.
He lost all sense of direction the moment he hit the water.
This was no longer a normal river.
Under the influence of the Giant Nabau Serpent's damaged but still frantically operating gravity organ, this body of water had transformed into a vortex of deadly, chaotic currents.
Concepts of up, down, left, and right blurred here. The direction of gravity was no longer constant, pointing towards the earth's core, but changed with every second as the colossal beast thrashed and roared in agony.
Lin Jie tried to paddle his arms to steady himself.
But he was horrified to discover the water's resistance and buoyancy were shifting.One moment he felt like a heavy lump of lead plummeting endlessly, the water pressure around him so immense it threatened to snap his ribs.
The next moment he felt as light as a feather, violently tossed towards the surface by an upwelling current, the air in his lungs nearly bursting from the pressure change.
This was the despair of fighting a "Mythological Creature" on its home turf.
"Gulp..."
Lin Jie choked on a mouthful of gritty, fishy river water. Gritting his teeth against the burning in his lungs, he forced his eyes open.
Visibility in the murky water was extremely low.
Through the layered curtain of silt, he vaguely saw an immense, suffocating black shadow thrashing wildly not far from him.
It was the Giant Nabau Serpent.
His previous strike, though it had accurately pierced the fleshy crest on its head and injected the unique withering, paralyzing toxin of the Silencer, was clearly not enough to be fatal for this behemoth over a hundred meters long.
The intense pain had instead fully ignited the ferocity of this ancient leviathan, shifting it from its earlier tentative probing into a frenzied killing mode.
It was searching underwater for the insect that had hurt it.
"Lin!"
Julian's fragmented shout came from a distance, the sound distorted by the gravitational field into something sharp and warped.
Lin Jie turned his head.
He saw Julian clinging to a broken piece of driftwood, bobbing on the water's surface about a dozen meters away.
The scholar's glasses were gone, but he still clutched the Discipline pistol tightly, trying to aim at the massive shadow moving swiftly underwater.
"Don't shoot! It's useless!" Lin Jie wanted to yell.
But it was too late.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Three muzzle flashes erupted on the water's surface.
They were the guaranteed-hit alchemical rounds.
According to Discipline's nature, as long as the user locked onto a target, the bullets would ignore all physical obstacles and strike the enemy's vital points with precision.
But here.
In the gravitational field created by that giant serpent.
Even the rules were warped.
Lin Jie watched, wide-eyed, as the trajectories of those three bullets underwent a horrifying distortion the moment they entered the water.
They didn't shoot straight towards the serpent. Instead, upon touching the edge of the gravitational field, they were as if sucked into an invisible spiral channel.
The straight bullet paths were violently pulled by the powerful gravity into perfect spirals!
The bullets spun and accelerated madly in the water, then lost momentum and sank powerlessly to the riverbed several meters from the serpent's body, unable to withstand the terrifying lateral pull.
"This..."
Julian watched this scene, despair written on his face.
Physics had failed.
Causality was suppressed.
"ROAR——!!!"
The giant serpent thrust its hideous head out of the water.
The red fleshy crest wounded by Lin Jie was oozing golden blood, the scales around the wound turned ashen from the toxin's erosion.
But this didn't weaken it; instead, it fueled an even more violent rage burning in its yellow vertical pupils.
It opened its maw lined with barbs.
This time, it made no sound.
It was... inhaling.
Or rather, consuming.
Centered on its maw, a vortex of darkness visible to the naked eye rapidly formed in the air.
It wasn't just a vortex of air.
Lin Jie was horrified to see even the surrounding light collapsing towards that gaping mouth.
The originally bright sunlight grew dim and twisted near the area of its mouth, as if a black hole leading to nothingness existed there.
It was an incredibly powerful gravitational collapse phenomenon!
It intended to devour not just flesh and blood, but all the surrounding space and matter!
"Ah!"
A cry of alarm came from the side.
It was Nadia.
This water-savvy Dayak guide was in grave peril.
She was closest to the serpent's head, and that terrifying suction had locked onto her.
She paddled desperately to escape, but her body slid uncontrollably towards that dark vortex.
Driftwood, rubble, even the river water itself around her surged madly towards that abyssal maw.
"Grab the rope!"
Lin Jie roared.
He kicked off underwater. The Phase Slip property of the Black Mercury trench coat temporarily freed him from some of the water's restraint.
He shot forward like a black marlin, grabbing the belt securing Nadia's Parang around her waist the instant before she was sucked into the maw.
But the suction was too great.
Far greater than Lin Jie had anticipated.
He felt as if he wasn't holding a person, but a train at full speed.
The terrifying pulling force transmitted to his arm; his shoulder joint made a cracking sound.
Even his trench coat groaned under the gravitational pull, its surface sheen becoming highly unstable.
"Let go! You'll die too!" Nadia screamed in despair.
She watched the maw above, growing ever closer, capable of swallowing even light, the stench of decay already washing over her.
"Shut up!"
Lin Jie gritted his teeth, his feet hooking tightly around a thick sunken log underwater.
He couldn't let go.
The old him might have weighed the pros and cons and chosen to abandon her, but now he was the leader of this team.
And Nadia wasn't just a guide; she was key to their survival in this rainforest.
"Evelyn!"
Lin Jie roared with all his might towards the figure still hovering at the periphery.
"Now! Interrupt it!"
Evelyn was currently clinging to a piece of driftwood, trembling in the current.
She saw the apocalyptic scene before her.
She saw that heaven-and-earth-devouring beast, saw Lin Jie and Nadia struggling on the brink of death.
Fear gripped her heart tightly.
But Lin Jie's roar awakened her instincts as a technical expert.
She knew conventional weapons were useless.
She knew physical attacks would be deflected by the gravitational field.
Only one force.
A force humanity had just mastered in this era, representing the pinnacle of science and civilization, might penetrate this layer of primordial chaos.
That was electricity.
Although electromagnetic fields and gravitational fields were different forces, there existed a subtle interaction between them.
And water was the best conductor.
"Hang on... just a bit!"
Evelyn shouted, her voice choked with tears.
She abruptly raised her right hand.
All the indicator lights on that menacing-looking Tesla Coil Glove lit up at once, turning a dangerous red.
She didn't choose a pinpoint shot.
She directly twisted the overload dial on her wrist, releasing all the remaining charge stored in the Leyden Jar in one go!
It was a double-edged sword.
In this environment where everyone was soaked in water, releasing high-voltage electricity of this magnitude was equivalent to an indiscriminate area-of-effect attack.
But she had no choice.
"Zzzz—BOOM!!!"
Accompanied by a piercing shriek of electricity, a thick, python-like bolt of blue-white lightning erupted from her fingertips, viciously stabbing into the turbid river water!
In that instant.
The entire river was illuminated.
Millions of volts of high-voltage current spread through the water medium at the speed of light, reaching every corner of the battlefield.
"Ugh!"
Lin Jie felt all his muscles clench tight, an indescribable agony and paralysis instantly sweeping through his entire body.
His heart pounded wildly, his vision flickering black.
Nadia, whom he was holding, let out a scream, her body convulsing violently in the water, even froth bubbling from her nose and mouth.
But the effect was dramatic.
The Giant Nabau Serpent at the center of the current bore the brunt of the damage.
Though its scales possessed extremely high physical defense, though its gravitational field could warp bullets.
It could not stop the flow of electrons.
The intense current pierced its epidermis, directly affecting its massive nervous system.
The serpent, in the midst of its devouring action, stiffened.
Its enormous maw spasmed uncontrollably. The forming gravitational black hole collapsed as its energy supply was interrupted.
"BOOM!"
The half-swallowed air and water violently rebounded, forming a massive shockwave.
This shockwave violently shoved Lin Jie and Nadia, who were closest, away.
Though both were left with churning blood and qi from the impact, it also freed them from that certain-death devouring range.
"Cough... cough..."
Lin Jie surfaced, gasping for air.
His body was still paralyzed, his limbs unresponsive.
But he knew the opportunity was fleeting.
Though paralyzed by the electrocution, a creature of that size possessed incredibly tenacious vitality.
It would recover soon, and become even more ferocious.
If they didn't take this chance to completely destroy that gravity-controlling core, they would all die here.
He looked at the giant beast writhing in agony on the water's surface.
That red fleshy crest still flickered with a faint glow.
It had to be destroyed.
He had to get close.
But... how?
On this river surface with chaotic gravity and turbulent currents, with his body paralyzed, he couldn't possibly move at high speed.
He needed a fulcrum.
A stable, leverage-providing fulcrum that wouldn't be easily warped by the gravitational field.
Lin Jie's gaze swept the surroundings.
Nothing but shattered bamboo and churning spray.
No.
There was one more thing.
His gaze fell on the waterproof backpack Evelyn had been tightly carrying on her back.
It was the supplies she had specially prepared before departure for preserving biological samples and creating a cold source in the tropical environment.
"Evelyn!"
Lin Jie roared through the earpiece, mustering all his strength.
"Those liquid nitrogen containers! Throw them all out!"
Evelyn was floating on the water's surface about a dozen meters away. Her glove was smoking from overload, and she looked utterly exhausted.
Hearing Lin Jie's command, she froze.
"What?"
"I said liquid nitrogen!" Lin Jie pointed at the water surface below the serpent's head. "Throw them over there! Make me a fulcrum! Even a patch of ice will do!"
Evelyn understood instantly.
Though she didn't know exactly what Lin Jie planned, out of absolute trust in him, she didn't hesitate.
She fumbled to open her backpack, pulling out three metal canisters.
They were specially made high-pressure liquid nitrogen grenades for this expedition.
She pulled the pins.
Summoning the last of her strength, she hurled the three canisters towards the serpent's location.
"There!"
The metal canisters traced an arc through the air.
This time, without the serpent's active interference, though gravity was still somewhat chaotic, they roughly landed in the intended spot.
Right below the serpent's hideous head.
Right on that churning, turbulent water surface.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
Three muffled thumps.
The liquid nitrogen canisters shattered the moment they hit the water's surface.
Ultra-low-temperature liquid at minus 196 degrees Celsius was released.
The boiling river water met an extreme cold blockade in that instant.
"Crack, crack, crack—"
The sound of freezing rang out.
Large plumes of white cold mist billowed up.
On that murky water surface, a massive, solid, and hard sheet of floating ice, roughly five meters in diameter, was born out of thin air at a speed defying tropical rainforest logic!
It was like a white reef, floating steadily beneath the serpent's lower jaw.
This was the fulcrum Lin Jie needed.
It was also his springboard for a counterattack.
"Perfect."
Lin Jie took a deep breath, forcibly squeezing out the last shreds of spiritual nature and mental energy from within, injecting them into the Black Mercury trench coat.
The dimmed sheen on the trench coat's surface brightened.
Friction eliminated.
Phase Slip activated.
He pushed off forcefully against a remnant log, his body breaking through the water's surface and leaping directly onto that sheet of floating ice.
The sensation underfoot was hard and icy cold.
This was exactly what he needed.
The giant serpent was also recovering from the electrocution paralysis. Sensing the transmitted chill, it looked down.
It saw that tiny human standing on that impossible sheet of ice.
That person held only a gray-white short blade in his hand.
The serpent's body tensed again, the fleshy crest on its head glowing brightly red, preparing to unleash a second gravitational crush.
But it wouldn't get the chance.
Because Lin Jie, standing on the ice, had already assumed a sprinting stance.
This time.
No resistance.
No hesitation.
"Mental Staircase... full power!"
In Lin Jie's mental world, time seemed to freeze.
He calculated the wind speed, gravitational deviation, and the angles between the serpent's scale gaps.
"CRACK!"
The ice beneath his feet shattered.
Using this immense reaction force, Lin Jie transformed into a black afterimage, shooting skyward!
He wasn't flying.
He was utilizing the Black Mercury's property of slipping through air resistance to perform a... high-speed lunge.
Target.
The glowing red Crown.
"Just... die!"
Lin Jie's furious roar was drowned out by the sound of shattering.
He adjusted his posture mid-air, gripping the Silencer in a reverse grip with both hands.
Blade tip downward.
Carrying all his kinetic energy, all his rage, all his desperate will to survive.
He stabbed down with all his might.