Even severed from the colossal main body, the tiny tentacle embedded in the fan's shoulder pulsed with an autonomous, terrifying vitality. Driven by a raw, immediate hunger, it did not merely remain in place; it actively burrowed deeper, the parasitic tip consuming and dissolving the surrounding human flesh and fluid for sustenance.
The efficiency of its biological processor was horrifying. In a few desperate breaths, the diminutive limb had visibly thickened, growing to nearly a full two feet in length inside the man's body, its translucent membrane stretching as it rapidly metabolized the stolen tissue.
Zhou Yi knew he could not risk the slightest delay. Pulling it out with simple physical force was impossible; the hook-like barbs on the tip would shred nerves and blood vessels, leaving the man maimed or dead.
Furthermore, he correctly anticipated that his standard Telekinesis, which relied on projecting kinetic energy, would be instantly nullified by the creature's psychic resonance, just as the shielding field had been.
He shifted his focus to a more complex, delicate application of his abilities: Force Field Manipulation.
A miniature, immensely potent gravitational field bloomed silently between the fingers of his right gauntlet, pressed directly against the young man's wound.
This was not the brute force of kinetic energy; this was the manipulation of a fundamental constant of the universe. The tiny tentacle, being a real, tangible mass, was absolutely subject to the field's pull.
With meticulous control, Zhou Yi focused the gravity well, pulling the mass straight outward. Half of the small tentacle was forcibly extracted, along with the tattered human flesh it had torn and chewed. This piece of tissue was the only portion harmed by the field, as the main biomass still possessed its collective psychic protection.
The victim screamed, the pain of the extraction—the tearing of his own tissue—briefly overriding the initial tingling sensation of the parasite. But he was alive.
With the small tentacle tightly contained by the gravitational field, Zhou Yi used his other hand to push the hyperventilating victim back into the evacuated zone, away from the immediate danger. He had to protect the compromised man and focus solely on the primary, existential threat.
The R-variant biomass, having tasted fresh human blood, was now driven by a singular, overwhelming instinct—to feed.
All prior strategic cunning, which belonged to the consciousness of the butler Asa, was gone. This was now a collective of primitive, self-sustaining wills, and its only thought was to consume the threat and the prey.
A second, gigantic tentacle of slick, red-and-white flesh shot out, incredibly fast. Simultaneously, the vast, repulsive pool of biomass on the cabin floor surged upward like boiling mud, rising in waves of pure biological disgust and mounting menace.
Zhou Yi met the attack with the spear. The Adamantium shaft, over three meters long, slammed into the oncoming tentacle. He did not simply stab; he activated a high-speed spiral rotation in the spearhead as it struck, transforming the tip into a whirling blender.
The rotation instantly shredded the tentacle's dense tissue into a light spray of pulverized flesh and dark blood, which rained down onto the cabin floor.
Crucially, as these fragmented pieces landed, they were still alive. They did not scatter. Instead, they began to slowly, inexorably move towards the main biomass, actively seeking to reintegrate into the mother mass.
Zhou Yi threw the severed piece of tentacle directly into the muddy pool and immediately enveloped the whole creature in a repulsive force field—a field designed to push mass away, not merely contain it.
This field, designed to be less subtle than the gravitational field but still precise, struck the flesh-mud like an invisible, colossal hammer. The cabin floor shuddered under the focused impact.
The repulsive force churned the flesh, creating ripples of biological tissue. Sections of the monster were violently shattered, only to be immediately replaced by new tissue that looked subtly denser and more durable than the rest.
The tiny tentacle he had severed, now free of the gravitational field, was engulfed, digested, and assimilated by the main host. This self-digestion and repair function confirmed his terrible hypothesis: the creature was a collective intelligence, and its core function was aggregation.
When dispersed, the fragments behaved as isolated, survivalist individuals; upon contact with a larger cluster, they actively and instinctively merged back into the main body.
This aggregative, self-repairing nature meant that total annihilation was the only way to kill it. Unless every single cellular component—every single unit of collective will—was wiped out of existence simultaneously, the creature would inevitably recover.
Zhou Yi pressed his attack, refusing to retreat. He knew he had to destroy the monster before it could evolve a defense against his heat. He took the calculated, desperate risk.
A silent, brilliant white flame erupted at the tip of the adamantium spearhead. This was a sustained burn of 4,000 degrees Celsius, an ultra-high temperature designed to vaporize matter.
The moment the flame appeared, a searing wave of heat—intense enough to make the air shimmer—surged through the cabin.
Materials with low melting points instantly turned to liquid or ash. The aluminum walls of the cabin began to deform and soften slightly from the proximity to this concentrated inferno.
Zhou Yi immediately created a psychic containment field—not a kinetic shield, but a rapidly deployed thermal insulator—around the exposed section of the cabin wall and the passengers behind him. He then plunged the flaming spear deep into the biological sludge.
The flesh-and-blood creature emitted a piercing, deafening shriek—a cacophony of countless psychic alarms ringing out simultaneously from the millions of tiny collective wills. The monster instinctively retreated from the searing, invasive heat, its lack of fixed form making its movement awkward and sluggish.
The intense, burning agony was palpable. The creature's screams were a horrific, writhing noise—like someone drawing a rusty file across exposed nerves—but even in this state of duress, its subconscious psychic protection held.
The heat was not instantly vaporizing it; it was merely penetrating the psychic defense and inflicting tremendous, agonizing pain.
Pain, to this primitive collective, demanded only two responses: attack or flee. The R-variant chose both.
Nearly a dozen thick tentacles shot out, faster than sound, targeting the creature that had inflicted this torment. Each strike was accompanied by a vicious, tearing hiss that carried an almost physically piercing lethality.
Zhou Yi was already moving. He swung the spear with impossible speed, the flaming tip scattering like a shower of stacked pear blossoms—a dense, rapid array of sword thrusts. His attack speed matched the monster's, the spear whistling as it tore through the sonic barrier.
The spearhead instantly pierced the base of every tentacle, the super-heated, rotating adamantium carving the flesh into sterile shreds. The blade continued its arc, slicing harmlessly but painfully across the main mass of flesh. The damage was superficial, but the resulting pain was excruciating.
Failure was not a concept the monster's collective will could comprehend. The pain only fueled its savagery. It thrashed violently, hundreds of new, thinner tentacles erupting from the main mass, thrashing aimlessly, filling the cabin with a horrifying, sticky lattice of living tissue.
Zhou Yi continued his parry, the white flame dancing and transforming into dazzling streamers of fire that seared every piece of tissue they touched. He was inflicting maximum damage, but the vitality was too stubborn.
The rate of damage, even at 4,000 degrees, could not keep pace with the organism's hyper-efficient self-repair and aggregation. All he was accomplishing was inflicting pain, driving the creature into a blind, desperate frenzy.
It was in this chaotic frenzy that the inevitable happened.
One of the thrashing, aimlessly swinging tentacles, powered by the collective's terrified psychic amplification, did not strike the Knight.
It smashed, with catastrophic force, against the pressurized cabin wall behind Zhou Yi's thermal field. The collective's psychic amplification, which had nullified Zhou Yi's kinetic shield, easily sheared through the aluminum fuselage.
WHOOSH.
A violent, icy torrent of air instantly blasted into the compartment, accompanied by a sickening pop as the structure yielded. The entire aircraft gave a visible shudder.
Zhou Yi instantly intensified his psychic dampening field to prevent the breach from catastrophically widening, but the damage was done.
This accidental breach was an unexpected blessing for the R-variant. The cool airflow brought immediate, agonizing relief from the 4,000-degree inferno. More importantly, the blast of air revealed a space far larger than the tiny cabin.
The monster's collective will immediately seized on the escape route. Enduring the pain was no longer the only choice.
A dozen of the thickest remaining tentacles shot out, clinging fiercely to the edges of the jagged tear in the hull. They continued to shred the remaining mental energy of Zhou Yi's thermal field, simultaneously tearing the breach wider. Then, using their impossible strength, they began to pull their mother mass towards the opening.
The seemingly immobile main body suddenly demonstrated extraordinary agility. Using the tentacles as a rapidly retracting anchor, the massive, viscous sludge began to pour itself toward the exit, its huge, heavy form rapidly widening the structural failure of the aircraft.
Zhou Yi felt a spike of pure, white panic. He could not stop the creature's massive escape. Its sheer size and density meant that using a force field of sufficient power to contain or crush it now would inevitably lead to implosion—sucking the entire cabin, along with the passengers, through the growing hole like a vacuum cleaner drawing liquid into a bottle.
Stopping the monster by physical force was equally suicidal; the resulting tug-of-war would tear the fuselage apart.
Zhou Yi looked at the screaming, terrified passengers and then at the rapidly retreating, foul mass of flesh squeezing itself through the breach, its body contorting to fit the impossible space.
The fight inside the plane was over. The creature had won the positional advantage. Zhou Yi had to accept the tactical failure, allow the monster to leave, and change the battlefield.
A new idea, reckless and desperate, formed in his mind.
"Medusa," he commanded internally, his voice clipped and precise. "Prepare trajectory. I am exiting the aircraft. The new battlefield is the atmosphere."
He increased the intensity of his thermal insulation field one last time, ensuring the passengers would not instantly freeze or suffer catastrophic decompression as the monster tore the hull open.
Then, with a burst of forward momentum, Zhou Yi shot after the massive, oozing mass, his adamantium spear held high, prepared to follow the R-variant into the screaming, sub-zero hell of the Atlantic night.
The fight had just become a Mach 25, high-altitude chase, a duel fought on the edge of the stratosphere. He was going to use the vacuum itself as his final weapon.