Chapter 184: Crash

For safety's sake, Li Cheng still took out the 【Note of Self-Destruction】 and distributed it to everyone for another round of predictions.

The prediction results differed slightly from last time: Li Cheng still died from being surrounded and attacked by others, London Miss Catherine's head exploded, Midnight Howl was electrocuted into charred carbon, Zhao Zijing spat out her internal organs, and the Bandaged Man was torn apart by an invisible force.

All the drawings shared the same background—this grassland—but two were different.

One showed Mendoza severed at the waist, his lower half fallen onto the grass, his upper half crawling toward the highway, his eyes filled with regret and despair.

The other was Zhao Zijing's prediction drawing: she knelt in a mud pit, before her stood a withered corpse with a mission battery embedded in its chest. Her own head was pierced through by her metallic arrow.

"These drawings are all so meaningless."

The Crimson Rider frowned: "It doesn't reveal who the killer is at all—we only know the death scenes happen in the grass."

Zhao Zijing stared silently at her own prediction drawing; her metallic arrow was forged from psychokinetic affinity material, somewhat like Vectra's arrow from *Guardians of the Galaxy*—point and shoot, combining speed, agility, and destructive power, a divine weapon for crushing weaker foes.

Only another psychokinetic, far stronger than her, could possibly seize control of the arrow.

Could there be someone else hidden in the grass? And what was that withered corpse?

"Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Too many possibilities exist; without further clues, speculating further is just wild guesswork."

Li Cheng said casually—he, as the owner, knew too well the treacherous nature of the 【Note of Self-Destruction】: better to trust nothing than to trust everything.

"Our immediate priority is to locate the mission objective's position."

Li Cheng told the other companions to stay put and used a radar device to summon a blue arrow.

He himself mounted his Batwing motorcycle and rode two kilometers straight down the highway, then used the radar device again to summon another arrow.

The two arrows' angles were nearly identical—until Li Cheng rode another two kilometers, when a slight divergence appeared.

Li Cheng rode back and explained the situation to the others: "We can basically confirm that the final location where we're required to install the battery lies within this area—but it's very far, roughly seventy to eighty kilometers away."

"Who among you has flight capability? Like summoning a bird-shaped Pokémon that can fly up high and scout the horizon?"

"Just report my ID number then."

The Crimson Rider grumbled but obediently pulled out a Poké Ball and summoned a Pidgey, ordering it to fly high for reconnaissance.

Soon after, the Pidgey dove back down and chirped twice; the rider translated: "My Pidgey says this road stretches endlessly forward, with no end in sight. The grassland is vast beyond measure—all the scenery looks identical, no distinctive landmarks visible."

Midnight Howl blinked. "It just chirped twice. How did you extract all that from that?"

The rider, apparently asked this many times before, sighed: "First, trained Trainers can partially understand Pokémon speech. Second, I have my own special technique."

The rider had once consumed a premium item called 【Dr. Doolittle's Woes】, a consumable potion parodying the classic fairy tale *Doctor Dolittle*; after drinking it, he gained the ability to understand animal and Pokémon speech.

(Only animals with language capability and basic intelligence—those with too low an IQ won't work.)

But understanding speech isn't always a good thing.

His Pokémon, upon discovering he could communicate, started making demands: weekly changes in feed types, daily TV time, a massage bathtub, and so on.

Li Cheng fell silent for a moment, studying the tall roadside grass intently.

These herbaceous plants resembled elephant grass native to Africa in the real world—upright stalks, three to four meters tall, long, flat, linear leaves.

Their root arrangement showed no pattern, not resembling artificial cultivation.

He decisively pulled twenty large packages from his 3D storage, each wrapped in black plastic bags and bound with hemp rope into human-shaped forms—some even resembling children and elderly people in wheelchairs.

Li Cheng put on a raincoat and rubber gloves, poured gasoline over these human-shaped bundles, then tossed them all into the grass.

"Sssss—"

He lit a cigarette, took a drag, then casually tossed the cigarette away; flames raced along the gasoline trail, instantly erupting into towering pillars of fire.

Li Cheng turned around and saw everyone's expressions were strange; he smiled reassuringly: "Don't worry—it's just some dead bodies."

"What else did you think we were suspicious of?!"

The Crimson Rider couldn't help but retort—if he weren't outmatched by Master Pi Fu, he'd seriously consider reporting this guy to the Special Affairs Bureau.

In truth, the plastic bags didn't contain corpses—they contained solid alcohol designed purely for ignition. Burning corpses emits a distinct grilled-meat odor and leaks oil, reducing combustion efficiency; they're terrible fuel.

Crackling!

The fire burned for a long while, yet only consumed a small patch.

These herbaceous plants had extremely high water content—they were hard to ignite. That meant gasoline couldn't be used to burn off large swathes of grass in one go and clear a path.

"Tch. Good thing we still have time."

Li Cheng grumbled, opened his 3D storage, and pulled out dacron cloth, helium gas tanks, aluminum alloy materials, welding tools, then donned a powered exoskeleton and began welding on the spot.

The exoskeleton's mechanical arms each held a welding torch, rapidly fusing aluminum alloy into a frame, then using shears to cut and sew the dacron cloth into a bag wider at the top and narrower at the bottom.

Finally, he attached a propane burner; in less than fifteen minutes, a crude hot-air balloon was assembled.

Even among players, who boasted talent from every walk of life, Li Cheng's dexterity and versatility were rare indeed.

The Crimson Rider marveled: "Where did you learn all this?"

"As a kid, I watched the British show *Art Attack*, imported by the Little Dragon Club, and learned from Uncle Neil."

Li Cheng said casually, adjusted the propane burner's flame rate, and absentmindedly dropped a paper origami crane onto the ground.

The motion was subtle; Midnight Howl and the others didn't notice—but Zhao Zijing, who habitually used psychokinesis for basic surveillance, did. She said nothing.

British Miss Catherine asked: "*Art Attack*? What's that?"

"Huh?" Li Cheng stopped working, indignant: "You're a native Brit and you've never seen *Art Attack*? Then your taste is abysmal—you're doomed to a failed life."

Having witnessed Li Cheng's capabilities, Catherine dared not argue; she awkwardly explained: "Maybe my parents were strict when I was young—didn't let me watch TV for long."

After this interlude, Li Cheng had adjusted the burner. He didn't immediately call everyone aboard the balloon—he kept working.

First, he launched three large hydrogen balloons, their tails tied together with hundreds of meters of string, the ends anchored to aluminum plates driven deep into the roadside mud for fixation.

This created a coordinate marker—no matter how far away, they'd still know where the road was.

Additionally, Li Cheng hung a mirror on each hydrogen balloon to reflect light.

After all preparations were complete, he gathered everyone onto the hot-air balloon; Pidgey hovered nearby, flapping its wings to provide wind (the balloon itself had no directional control—it relied on external wind) as they drifted toward the target.

Only once airborne over the grassland did the phrase "endless expanse" suddenly gain real weight—every direction looked identical.

The surroundings were deathly silent; the moon in the night sky wasn't the real moon—it was an extremely distant light source (Li Cheng had looked through his telescope; it had no lunar craters).

The atmosphere grew more and more oppressive. Li Cheng took out his laser rangefinder binoculars, gazed at the hydrogen balloon in the distance, and calculated the relative distance.

Buzz!

Suddenly, a high-frequency humming sound rang out. The metal arrow Zhao Zijing had tucked into her boot flew up on its own, trembling violently as it swiveled around and pointed at the group.

The driver tensed. "Miss Zhao?!"

"It's not me!"

Zhao Zijing's forehead bulged with veins; she was clearly exerting tremendous effort.

That metal arrow suddenly broke free of her control, shot out like lightning, first piercing a Pidgey clean through, then swiftly flying back to stab through the hot-air balloon and tear open a massive gash.

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. The instant Li Cheng lowered his binoculars, the hot-air balloon had already lost its lift and was plummeting toward the grass below, slowly at first, then faster.

Mendoza and the other ordinary people let out terrified screams. Li Cheng, who hadn't worn his rocket-pack exoskeleton in order to save weight, dropped straight down as well.

His first thought wasn't that he was under attack by a Transcendent, but—

Damn it. Meming about Kobe all day, and now I'm crashing too.

whatcanisay, Master Pi Fu, out.

(End of this chapter)