IABI – Chapter 74 Battle with the “God”!

Chi Xin listened to the long, drawn-out roar — and her whole body went rigid.

There’s a saying: a mayfly trying to shake a great tree.

A mayfly is such an insignificant creature. Compared to it, even rabbits and monkeys are giants towering over it. But why is it that rabbits and monkeys never try to shake a tree — while the mayfly does?

Because the lower a creature stands on the chain of existence, the less capable it is of perceiving the vast distance that separates it from a higher being.

Right now, Chi Xin was like that rabbit — while all her teammates, ignorant of the crisis about to descend upon them, simply assumed another monster was coming.

But Chi Xin was different. From that roar, she caught the raw, ancient scent of power — something primitive and terrifying.

It was like an ancient god had been disturbed — awakened — and was now rising in wrath to exact vengeance on the pitiful mortals who had dared to wake it.

“Fuck, what the hell was that roar?!”

The headset crackled with the sound of someone falling, followed by Jiang Congyun’s anxious shout: “Don’t move! You want to tear your wounds open again?!”

Rong Feng, who was standing closest to Chi Xin, saw the blankness in her eyes. He called to her softly, “Chi Xin?”

That voice snapped her back. She pressed her headset immediately. “Everyone, move toward the sound of the roar! Now!”

“What’s going on?”

The others’ confused voices filled the line, but Chi Xin didn’t waste time explaining. The trembling of the ground was intensifying; she dumped every usable firearm and weapon she had into a pile on the ground.

The earth beneath them had already split into deep, dark cracks. The guns on top began to slide down the slope of the ground, but Rong Feng caught them mid-fall with a quick reach.

The look in Chi Xin’s eyes made his expression turn grave at once.

Once the team gathered, no one had ever seen Chi Xin this tense before. Without her needing to explain, they all hurriedly armed themselves to the teeth.

“No matter what comes out first — shoot it!”

With a sharp click, Chi Xin loaded a heavy machine gun, her gaze cutting across the group. “Remember — under no circumstances are you to face it head-on.”

“Chi Xin,” Yu Xiang’s voice trembled, “just tell us — what kind of thing is strong enough to cause an earthquake like that? Let us at least die knowing what killed us.”

Chi Xin’s face was tight. “I don’t know.”

The unknown was the most terrifying of all. She didn’t know what kind of monster those people had been nurturing underground — but she knew one thing: if they made even a single mistake, they would all die here.

Including her.

The overwhelming pressure pressing down on her was unlike anything she’d ever felt — as if she’d been stuffed into a water-soaked sponge, being squeezed from every direction, until even breathing became difficult.

She stood in front of everyone, shielding them, gun raised, eyes locked on the cracked ground.

And then — the shaking stopped.

Even the widening fissures froze abruptly in place.

For a moment, not even the moans of the zombies could be heard. Only the faint crackle of burning flames broke the silence. It was as if the entire world had gone still — leaving only the few of them alive.

But in that same instant, Chi Xin’s fear spiked to its peak.

A sharp, stabbing pain like a warning needle pierced her skull. Her face changed drastically, and she whipped around, shouting with all her strength—

“MOVE!”

Her warning came just as the ground beneath their feet exploded!

The world heaved and turned upside down. Chi Xin only had time to grab the nearest person — Jiang Congyun — before unleashing every ounce of strength she had and leaping aside.

The instant she jumped, countless enormous fissures, each dozens of meters wide, ripped open in the ground and raced outward. Ruins and debris crumbled and collapsed into the abyss below.

“Ah—!”

There was nowhere to run. The destructive force swallowed everything. Those without Chi Xin’s agility were caught by the crumbling ground, their screams echoing into the chaos.

Chi Xin placed Jiang Congyun on solid ground — she didn’t even have time to say a word before spinning and diving straight toward the most dangerous fissure.

Chen Xing clung to Leonid, one hand gripping the edge of the crevasse as they dangled precariously.

On the other side, Yong Ning’s claws dug deep into the earth. With a violent swing of his arm, he threw Yu Xiang upward, then hauled himself out after him.

Chi Xin scanned the scene, tossing a rope toward Leonid and hauling him up with a powerful pull.

Leonid made it. Chen Xing climbed up soon after without much trouble.

Where was Rong Feng?

As she searched wildly, a giant scorpion crawled up from the depths. Rong Feng and Boss Lin were clutching its pincers, miraculously unhurt.

Chi Xin let out a short breath. “Everyone, still alive?”

“Barely… what the hell was that?!” Yu Xiang’s voice was weak.

She didn’t need to answer.

From the center of the massive rift, a blinding white shadow surged upward — bursting from the depths with a power that could destroy everything. Like an inverted waterfall, it shot into the sky, so fast and forceful it blurred into a phantom.

Its ascent triggered another violent tremor. A long, smooth, white tail broke through the ground far away, and the entire ancient city seemed to be flipping over.

Everyone staggered and dropped to one knee for balance — everyone except Chi Xin, who remained standing. Her hands trembled around the gun as she stared at that colossal white silhouette.

The awakened creature finally revealed itself before the fragile humans. It stretched out its long, sinuous body — flexible as a serpent — and arched its neck high.

“ROAR——”

The deafening bellow shattered the air. Everyone clutched their ears. Jiang Congyun, the weakest among them, coughed up blood, red seeping from his nose and ears.

Even Chi Xin was speechless, staring at the monstrous thing — her expression blank, hollow.

Perhaps from living underground for so long, it had no eyes or ears. Its whole body was slick and mucous-covered like an enormous earthworm, and at its head was a gaping mouth — one that occupied its entire face.

It coiled its body, slowly lowering itself — the massive head leaning down toward Chi Xin.

When it bent close, even Chi Xin’s pupils contracted sharply. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.

Inside that enormous mouth — which spanned the entire head — was a spiraling pit of countless sharp teeth, layer upon layer, winding inward like a tunnel that could slice through souls, with no end in sight.

“Ah! Ah—!!”

Leonid stood closest to Chi Xin, but unlike her, his mind couldn’t withstand the sight. The instant he saw that monstrous maw, he went berserk — opening fire wildly at it.

Ratatatatata!

The others quickly followed — a rain of bullets tearing toward the creature’s mouth.

They knew their strength was nothing compared to such an ancient being. Their gunfire was but the glow of fireflies before the full moon — as futile as mayflies shaking a great tree.

But still, they fought. Because the girl standing before them — Chi Xin — had not given up. She still stood tall, unbroken, facing the godlike beast head-on — and her courage alone gave them strength.

Chi Xin did not act rashly. When she saw the others begin their assault, all expression drained from her face, sinking into stillness. A long-lost sensation—fear so intense it bordered on paralysis—spread through her body. Yet within her eyes, only a single, pure light remained.

She was evaluating her enemy.

There was no doubt that the appearance of this creature had shaken her deeply. She had imagined countless possibilities for what the so-called “god” avoided and whispered about in the markets could be—but never had she expected it to be a mutated sandworm.

“Roar—!”

Rounds of heavy fire struck the sandworm’s body and open maw, leaving a trail of small craters across its surface. But its tough hide held; not a drop of blood seeped out.

Then someone fired a precise shot straight into its gaping mouth, shattering several of its teeth. Only then did it release a deep, thunderous roar that made the earth quake and split open with more fissures.

Yet amid the overwhelming fear and despair rushing toward them, Chi Xin’s eyes suddenly gleamed.

While everyone else fired hopelessly at the monstrous creature, their gray, smoke-filled vision was suddenly pierced by a clear, calm voice over the comms.

“Keep attacking—it’s working,” Chi Xin said. “It may be terrifying, but it’s still flesh and blood. It can be hurt. It can feel pain. It’s not invincible!”

A light called hope burst forth from her. Pressing one hand to her earpiece, she slowly drew the Tang blade that now felt like an extension of her own arm.

The cold blade shimmered with the mingled hues of blood and fire, granting the weapon its truest meaning.

Forged by ancient craftsmen through a thousand strikes of refined steel, the blade was made to cleave through armor and sever the heads of all enemies.

Rong Feng’s voice came through the comm: “Chi Xin, Jiang Congyun can’t hold on.”

“Get her somewhere safe. Those with firepower, advance—but don’t force it.”

Chi Xin’s body flashed; she leapt aside just as the sandworm’s massive tail swept across in pain. The earth overturned in its wake, exposing yellow sand that rose tens of meters high, forming a towering curtain of dust.

Behind that curtain, Chi Xin’s eyes were clear as she landed lightly.

A sharp intake of breath came through the comms.

Chen Xing’s hoarse voice followed: “Then the healer’s out of commission.”

“Sister Chi, look out!”

Two voices cried out at once. Chi Xin looked up to see the giant tail rise again, sweeping toward her relentlessly. The shadow of it loomed over her like the sky collapsing—intent on crushing this defiant, shouting little insect beneath it.

Chi Xin narrowed her eyes, the sharp gleam within locking onto the descending tail. She did not dodge. Instead, she straightened her body like a drawn sword, ready to strike.

As the tail slammed down, she let out a deep, focused breath. Her wrist twisted, the tendons standing taut beneath her skin as she tightened her grip on the hilt.

“What ‘god’? It’s nothing more than a pet worm raised by humans,” she murmured, her voice carrying crisply through the high-quality comms into everyone’s ears.

Then they saw it—Chi Xin, standing perfectly still, as calm as a statue—her blade rising and cutting down.

The massive tail struck the blade dead-on. The creature, contemptuous of human strength, expected its casual sweep to fling her away like dust.

Instead, agony exploded up its tail.

Using the point where she stood as her axis, and the creature’s own whipping motion as momentum, Chi Xin drove her sword deep into the base of its tail. When it pulled back, she followed through—and the massive tail split cleanly into two halves.

Scalding, crimson blood poured down, drenching her from head to toe. She wiped her cheek casually, her expression unchanging—steady, composed.

“End it quickly,” she said. “Then we won’t need a healer.”

Those she protected stood frozen, rifles half-raised, stunned beyond words.

They stared at her—

And in their hearts, a faint, indescribable thought rose.

In that instant, victory or defeat no longer mattered. Life and death ceased to be their only concern. They were fighting not for survival—but for the blood-soaked girl standing before them.

She had become the sword itself—cleaving through darkness so they could glimpse a sliver of light.

She was fighting—so they could not falter.

The sandworm shrieked and recoiled, curling its mutilated tail. Its gaping, tooth-studded maw turned viciously toward Chi Xin, snapping down!

She dodged aside in a blur, and when the creature lunged to pursue, a storm of gunfire intercepted it. Every bullet struck true against its head. Even if the others couldn’t match Rong Feng’s accuracy, the sheer density of the shots shattered several more of its jagged teeth.

Chi Xin quickly noticed—the mouth seemed to be its weak point. Bullets to its body barely mattered, but whenever they hit its mouth, it went berserk.

The beast thrashed violently, shaking its monstrous, tooth-lined head. But Chi Xin’s movements were ghostlike; no matter how fast or vicious its strikes, it couldn’t bite through her skull.

The enraged sandworm clamped down on the remains of a half-collapsed building. A spine-tingling crunch echoed as it chewed twice—and swallowed it whole.

Then, as if realizing Chi Xin’s cunning, it abruptly turned away—its feral gaze locking straight on the squad behind her.

Their gunfire faltered for just a heartbeat.

Only now did the team truly understand what Chi Xin had been facing alone moments ago.

That faceless, eyeless, serpentine horror—only a gaping, hellish maw, like the entrance to the abyss itself.

And the next second, that abyss came crashing toward them.

Seeing this, Chi Xin immediately leapt forward, flipping through the air to intercept—but the sandworm shifted its mountainous body, blocking her path entirely.

She halted for an instant—and from the other side came the screams of her comrades.

The sandworm’s bite was unerring, aimed directly at the gravely injured Rong Feng.

A giant scorpion, summoned for protection, was bitten clean in half; its twitching tail was flung aside.

Yu Xiang tried to shield Rong Feng but was struck by a flick of the monster’s head, sent flying over ten meters away.

Through the storm of bullets, the sandworm forced its way forward, jaws gaping wide. Rong Feng could already feel the foul, fishy gust of its breath—and hear the wailing echoes of hell itself.

But his reaction was incredibly fast. The gun in his hands was an old companion that had been with him for many years—he knew it better than he knew himself. Even though his body could barely move, he somehow raised the gun at an unbelievable speed and aimed straight at the hellish abyss opening before him. His eyes burned with madness, filled with the reckless determination of someone who had staked everything.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Because Chi Xin was so outstanding, Rong Feng’s own talent was often unconsciously overshadowed. But at that moment, everyone suddenly remembered—he too was the legendary sharpshooter whose name once shook the apocalypse, the famed Boss Rong!

He fired five shots in quick succession. Each bullet followed the exact trajectory of the previous one, pounding the same spot again and again.

In just an instant, all five bullets struck true—one of the sandworm’s sharp fangs shattered, and along the same wound, he blasted a gaping hole into its head!

“ROAR—!”

The sandworm let out a sky-shaking howl. In those few seconds of delay, a muffled explosion erupted. The creature’s raised upper body convulsed violently, emitting a shrill, agonized screech.

From the burst of bloody flesh at its rear, Chi Xin emerged.

She had been blocked earlier and, upon hearing Yu Xiang’s scream, her heart clenched with anxiety. Staring at the slimy creature in front of her, she didn’t think twice—she swung her blade in a horizontal arc, slicing through the sandworm’s dense muscle like a butcher cutting through pork, carving a deep gash.

Then, with one hand, she pulled out three grenades and, without hesitation, shoved them all into the fissure.

As the grenades began to beep in warning, she leapt forward, vaulting over to the other side of the sandworm’s body.

Perhaps it was too eager to devour Rong Feng, or perhaps it couldn’t comprehend the destructive power of those small, cold objects stuffed into its body—but it ignored them.

It paid for its ignorance dearly. A huge portion of its massive body was blown apart, flesh and blood flying everywhere. Twisting and collapsing onto the ground, its broken tail and bleeding head thrashed wildly, smashing everything standing and crushing everything beneath it into dust.

The “god” that was wounded now exuded an even more ferocious and terrifying presence than before.

Amid the constant upheaval of sand and the sandworm’s rising body, Chi Xin dashed through, leaping over a deep ravine as she rapidly analyzed her next move.

The thing was too big—its strength far beyond what humans could withstand. Under its powerful assault, ordinary people had no chance to even escape, much less fight back.

Her comrades had done their best, but they were still only flesh and blood. In the face of such godlike devastation, it was already a miracle that they were still alive.

Chi Xin stabbed her blade into the sandworm’s body again, using its movement to propel herself upward. Pressing a hand to her earpiece, she asked, “Jing Xiubai, are you still alive?”

As before, there was no response.

Her expression didn’t change. Chi Xin’s gaze locked onto the writhing monster, forcing herself to stay calm.

There had to be a way. There had to be a way to kill it.

It wasn’t truly a god—just a disgusting, oversized worm!

As she stood on the edge between life and death, her heart, which had been pounding furiously, suddenly calmed. A trace of emptiness flashed in her eyes; the tight line of her lips loosened, becoming steady and composed.

In that instant, a full analysis of the sandworm’s body structure appeared in her mind.

Soft body. Thick skin. Its most vulnerable part—the mouth—was protected by rows of sharp fangs, shielding it from harm.

Then where… where was its weak point?

Her eyes swept rapidly across the sandworm’s entire form. Then—she found it!

Her gaze locked onto the creature’s massive, constantly swaying head.

It might look like a single, continuous body with no distinction between head and torso, but from a biological standpoint—it did have a neck.

At the junction where the head met the body, there was a slightly thinner section that was almost impossible to notice at a glance.

That was its “sand sac.” Break it—and the sandworm would die.

Chi Xin’s eyes gleamed sharply. Gripping her blade, she began climbing toward the creature’s head.

But the sandworm seemed to remember the one who had caused it such agony. The moment Chi Xin touched it, it went berserk, thrashing violently. Its surface was slick and wet, and even though she dug her blade in to gain leverage, carving pits into its flesh, its uncontrollable movement made it impossible for her to climb up.

What now?

Her mind raced through countless strategies. Just as she was trapped in that stalemate, a familiar voice finally came through her headset.

“Chi Xin, don’t panic.”

Chi Xin froze for a second, disbelief flashing across her face. “Jing Xiubai? You’re alive!”

“Barely,” Jing Xiubai’s voice sounded weary. “Just now, a horde of mutated sandworms and zombies broke into the control room. Not as big as the one you’re facing, thankfully.”

Chi Xin’s heart clenched. Her gaze fell on the sandworm. “How many of these things did they create?”

“Probably only this one was truly successful,” Jing Xiubai said quickly. “Hold on. I’m almost through the firewall on the containment shield. Once it’s activated, we can trap it inside—no matter how powerful it is, it won’t escape!”

Chi Xin’s eyes lit up. She ducked to the side, narrowly dodging the sandworm’s crushing strike, still keeping her focus on its head. “Any zombies escape?”

“The ant queen’s army has arrived—they’re wiping out all the remaining zombies,” Jing Xiubai said. Seeing Chi Xin’s determined look through the surveillance feed, his voice grew tense. “Chi Xin, just hold out until I activate the barrier. Don’t take unnecessary risks!”

“I think… I can kill it,” Chi Xin said quietly.

“I know, I know you can,” Jing Xiubai’s voice trembled slightly. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “But we’ve already lost too many people. You’re wounded too—if you throw your life away now, how will you continue the plan after this?”

Chi Xin’s breathing quickened. “How strong is this barrier? Can you guarantee it’ll keep that thing sealed forever—never able to harm humans again?”

“I can,” Jing Xiubai said firmly. “The barrier was designed specifically to contain this sandworm—it’s tailor-made. Once it’s inside, it’ll be trapped there for eternity.”

Chi Xin exhaled deeply, glancing at her battered teammates. Her chest tightened painfully, and her attacks slowed.

“That’s your promise, Jing Xiubai,” she said. “I’ll keep it busy—you activate the shield.”

Jing Xiubai let out an audible sigh of relief. The sound of machinery came through the earpiece as he opened all channels: “Everyone, stop engaging head-on. Find a route and retreat!”

The others looked up, searching for Chi Xin. Seeing her nod in confirmation, they began supporting each other and struggling to move across the ravaged battlefield.

Then—mutation struck again.

Just as Chi Xin was about to leap out of the sandworm’s coiling range to observe it from outside, the creature seemed to sense that its tormentors were fleeing.

It suddenly reared up, then lunged with lightning speed straight toward the densest cluster of teammates!

“Watch out—!” Chi Xin’s voice cracked.

But she was too far.

She could only watch helplessly as the sandworm’s gaping maw lunged toward Rong Feng, as if to avenge the earlier shot that had wounded it.

Between Chi Xin and Rong Feng, it chose him as its target of vengeance.

Rong Feng’s pupils constricted. Just when he thought there was no escape from death—Boss Lin, who had been supporting him, suddenly threw himself over Rong Feng’s body.