Chapter 192: Six Styles

There was no time to mourn the fiery monkey; the red racer's face was gripped by five fingers, and in that instant he instinctively replayed his entire life in his mind.

'Damn it, seeing a life flash before your eyes in a manga means you're definitely dead! Wait, why am I still making jokes at a time like this? Must be infected by Master Pi Fu.'

The thought flashed through the racer's mind, but to his surprise, Cliff failed to clamp his hand shut and crush the skull like an egg—instead, he froze stiff in place.

Creak—creak—

A continuous sound of bones grinding echoed across Cliff's entire body.

An invisible force—precisely, Zhao Zijing's telekinesis—clamped down on Cliff's joints, locking him in place.

Forcing a high-level close-combat transcendent into submission placed an enormous burden on Zhao Zijing; her face flushed crimson, veins bulged on her forehead, and she gritted out a low command, 'Move!'

Grey Rain kicked off the ground and surged behind Cliff, his arms transforming into a massive axe, carrying the inertia of eight hundred kilograms as he swung it down toward the back of the skull.

Cliff was driven mad, but his combat instincts had not faded.

He sensed the wind rushing from behind, ceased struggling, and activated Six Styles: Iron Body, preparing to endure the blow head-on.

Unexpectedly, Grey Rain changed tactics at the last instant; as the axe neared Cliff's skull, it liquefied again into a mercury-like sphere, engulfing Cliff's head.

'Hehehe, you really think I haven't watched One Piece?'

Grey Rain grinned wickedly as part of the liquid mercury writhed, attempting to seep into Cliff's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears to detonate internally.

Another portion of mercury spread up Cliff's arms, forming ropes that hooked his fingertips and yanked backward with force, forcibly breaking his grip on the red racer.

Six Styles: Iron Body was effective—impervious to blades and bullets, capable of withstanding heavy blows—but its flaw was obvious: you couldn't move while using it.

If the enemy maintained pressure, you'd fall into a deadly loop: 【use Iron Body to survive—can't move—keep getting hit】.

Seizing the moment as Grey Rain and Zhao Zijing held Cliff in place, Li Cheng drew the Avenger cannon from the void, set it on the ground, and pulled the trigger.

Driven by electric motors, a dense chain of bullets rained down on Cliff like a waterfall.

Armor-piercing incendiary rounds slammed into Cliff's Iron Body flesh, carving dense pits and generating countless ricochets.

As a bulletproof liquid-metal robot, Grey Rain didn't care about collateral damage from ricochets; she even hummed to herself, 'We love the Bulletproof Boy Scouts~'

The red racer, sprawled on the ground, had no time to complain—he scrambled backward on hands and feet, fleeing the ricochet zone, and snatched the mission battery along the way.

The roar of the rotating cannon echoed through the grass; Cliff was pinned back step by step by the hail of bullets, retreating toward the energy leak zone of the pipe.

Seizing this opportunity, Zhao Zijing slightly reduced her telekinetic output to urgently restore her strength.

She understood Master Pi Fu's intent: dump Cliff into the energy radiation zone and let the temporal chaos erode him into old age until he died.

With that in mind, Zhao Zijing thrust her palm forward, controlling nine metal spears to converge into one, then slammed them hard into Cliff's chest.

Boom!

The visual effect was extreme—Cliff, encased in Iron Body, was blasted backward—but Zhao Zijing's expression changed instantly.

She felt no solid impact feedback; he had been thrown back voluntarily!

In midair, Cliff kicked his legs in rapid succession, launching crescent-shaped shockwaves toward the right Y-shaped pipe leaking temporal chaos.

This technique was called Six Styles: Lan Kick—generating shockwaves through kicks.

The valve on the right pipe lay deep within the temporal chaos—utterly unreachable.

But the pipe's edge had not been fully engulfed by the temporal chaos and remained physically touchable.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The Lan Kick shockwaves struck the pipe's edge in rapid succession; the already unstable right pipe shook violently.

After an extremely brief delay, the right pipe erupted again with golden energy flow—the aging effect spread across the entire area.

The first to be struck was Midnight Howl, lying on the ground.

His cervical vertebrae had been snapped by Cliff earlier; thanks to his werewolf regeneration, he had just healed and was rising from the ground when the golden chaos swept over him.

His once glossy black fur rapidly turned gray, then faded to salt-and-pepper white.

His wolf fangs fell out one by one; his muscular frame shrank rapidly, his legs unable to support his weight, and he collapsed again.

Ultimately, under the scouring of temporal chaos, he turned to bone.

Witnessing this firsthand, Grey Rain had zero desire to test whether her liquid-metal robot body could withstand the passage of time—by her elementary school knowledge, metal rusted if left too long.

She immediately retracted her mercury, transforming her entire body into a ring-shaped tire and rolling swiftly toward Li Cheng.

Violent temporal chaos surged in all directions.

Li Cheng, Zhao Zijing, and the others were forced to dive for cover behind the tall grass.

The last thing they saw was Cliff standing at the grass's edge, calmly standing within the chaos.

His face aged from youth to middle age, his stature grew taller, and purple-black energy currents began winding around his body.

That was also a special ability from One Piece—Armament Haki.

It enhanced both defense and offense, marking the threshold to becoming a true powerhouse.

This isn't fair!

Li Cheng wanted to scream at the arena: when we're hit by temporal chaos, we rot to ash—but when Cliff is hit, he gets stronger? What kind of broken balance is this?

If this were a video game, the designer would be dragged out and shot for an hour.

'Hmph.'

The middle-aged Cliff wore a sickly smile, didn't pursue them, and retreated into the tall grass, vanishing from sight.

【We can't find him, but the madman now seems fused with this grassland—appearing and disappearing at will, every ambush lands.】

The recording from Bismuth of the Mercury Alloy Guild surfaced in Li Cheng's mind.

The reinforced Cliff intended to hunt them down one by one.

————

Run. Run as far away as possible. Get far from here.

Mendoza, scion of a Philippine aristocratic family, was sprinting through the tall grass.

He had also seen Cliff's body wrapped in Armament Haki.

Just now, Master Pi Fu, Midnight Howl, Crimson Rider, Zhao Zijing, plus a Grey Rain—five Transcendents ganged up on Cliff, only for the latter to counter-kill one of them.

They couldn't beat him in the first place, and now there's even less chance of winning. Better to save their own skins.

Thinking of this, Mendoza pulled the radar direction-finder from his chest, pressed the button to form a blue arrow, and sprinted in the direction opposite the arrow—toward the highway.

If those Transcendents had some trump-card move and could counter-kill Cliff, that would be best; after completing the mission, he could also share in the glory and leave the mission to return to the real world.

If they failed to counter-kill Cliff, there still remained a final sliver of hope—"escape alone to the highway and break free from the time-storm's shackles."

"I can't die. I still have a family business to inherit. I still want to be a man above men."

Mendoza kept repeating this line in his mind, using it to prop up his exhausted body as he sprinted on, "I can't die, I want to be a man above men."

Shaa shaa—

From behind, a faint rustling came from the tall grass, as if something was in pursuit.

Mendoza didn't dare look back at all. Gritting his teeth, he took out the super-ability syringe the Transcendent had given him earlier and jabbed it into the vein in his neck.

A cold sensation seeped through his whole body. The next second, Mendoza was stunned to find his heavy footsteps had suddenly become light and swift.

He ran faster and faster, more and more easily, plowing through the lush tall grass like a locomotive.

A genetic-mutation syringe produced by Gen-Sys Biotech Company—its effect was to temporarily grant one random super-ability, lasting five minutes.

It seemed his luck had exploded; what he'd drawn was a speedster ability like Marvel's The Flash or The Boys' A-Train.

As if boundless energy was surging through his body, Mendoza felt as though he were floating among the immortals, savoring the thrill of sprinting at top speed.

Closer, that highway was closer.

A hundred meters, fifty meters, thirty meters—through gaps in the grass, he could even see the asphalt road surface.

His will to survive overwhelmed everything. He never noticed a Gale Leg slash wave flying in from the slanted side, cutting across his running path.

Crack.

Mendoza was sliced clean in half at the waist. His lower body crashed to the ground; his upper body pitched forward, only ten meters from the highway.

He saw it—on the asphalt highway, the familiar figure of Master Pi Fu, holding the radar map device in his hand, swung onto a motorcycle and rode off from north to south.

Memory surfaced in his mind. Mendoza recalled that when everyone had just gotten off the train, Master Pi Fu, in order to use triangulation to calculate the mission location, had deliberately ridden north along the highway for two kilometers before returning to the original spot.

Mendoza wanted to shout loudly, to call Master Pi Fu for help, or to have Master Pi Fu warn the others not to enter the grass. But the bisected him had no strength at all. He stretched a hand out toward the asphalt highway, his eyes filled with regret and despair.

(End of this chapter)