Chapter 254: Nature of the Mind

"Apologies for being late."

Eugene, with deep dark circles under his eyes, acted in a friendly manner, pushing the plastic crate forward across the void; an invisible force directly opened the box and retrieved the corpse fragments from within.

One of the heads looked exceptionally familiar—it was clearly the diseased toy Li Sheng had seen in the apartment building during the day; it seemed he had indeed unfortunately spoken true.

Just as Eugene was about to step forward and place the corpse fragments into the deep blue cooling water, he was suddenly grabbed by Naruto Uzumaki standing beside him.

Caught completely off guard, Eugene asked in astonishment, "What's wrong?"

Naruto Uzumaki did not answer but instead closed his eyes, slightly pursed his lips, and perceived something.

The next second, he raised both hands, joined his index and middle fingers together, crossed them before his chest, and released the Shadow Clone Technique.

Boom!

A shadow clone wearing the same appearance directly appeared in mid-air, palms facing each other with a void between them; surging energy spun rapidly, brewing a blue sphere that caused the surrounding air to rotate fiercely.

A perfectly standard Rasengan struck the ventilation duct, and the explosion's aftermath blasted straight through the inner steel lining and the one-meter-thick nuclear power plant containment shell, exposing the night sky outside.

Numerous steam pipes ruptured, spewing out an extremely scalding mixture of steam and water; urgent, life-threatening alarm bells rang throughout the entire nuclear island, while dazzling red and yellow lights flashed and circulated.

The nuclear power plant staff wearing protective suits were so frightened that half their souls and seven spirits flew away.

The utterly stunned Eugene watched Naruto leap up, kick off the wall several times in succession, and jump directly out of the forty-plus-meter-high hole in the containment shell; only then did he realize it was an enemy attack.

"Don't panic, reduce the reactor power, seal the pipe gaps, reinforcements will arrive immediately."

Eugene drew a twelve-inch-long, slender wooden wand, waved it through the air, and the scattered fragments of steam pipes floated up, reassembling themselves exactly as they were before.

Although the cracked fissures in the pipes still spewed high-temperature steam and water, the situation was far better than the irretrievable state it had been in just moments ago.

"Follow me, emergency shutdown! Terminate the main feedwater!"

The people at the nuclear power plant were professionals after all and immediately began running about busily.

As for Eugene himself, he waved his wand, his form rotated and collapsed, vanishing from the spot and teleporting to the open ground outside the containment shell.

Under the night sky, the alarm bells emanating from the nuclear island echoed through the clouds,

Li Sheng, covered in smoke, slowly straightened up, gripped his left elbow with his right hand, and with a click, reset the dislocated bone, then took out a Poké Ball and summoned Grey Rain.

"It's killing time."

Grey Rain, whose arms had transformed into great blades, had no sooner landed and finished his line than he saw Naruto Uzumaki standing thirty meters away in the middle of the road.

"Uh, I think putting down the butcher's knife would also be quite good."

Grey Rain stalled as if jammed, turned his head to look at Li Sheng, and said, "It's time for a strategic retreat."

"That requires him to let us run first."

Li Sheng scratched his forehead, his expression quite pained.

As the male protagonist of "Naruto," the most internationally famous of the three major shonen manga of the early twenty-first century, Naruto Uzumaki was a quite standard cheat-code character,

becoming a Genin at twelve and apprenticing under Kakashi, apprenticing under Jiraiya at fourteen, defeating Pain at sixteen, participating in the Ninja Realm Great War at the end of his sixteenth year, fighting Sasuke against Madara Uchiha to seal Kaguya, and by twenty, while other young manga protagonists hadn't even officially come online yet, he already had a wife, children, and a warm bed.

The speed of his power escalation in between and the inflation of his destructive performance were both like riding a rocket.

'Is this the retribution for using the Minato Namikaze meme?'

Li Sheng's thoughts raced; the only good news was that the life-sized figure version of Naruto standing before him did not appear very old, only about fifteen years or so, far from the complete form seen in the middle and later stages of the manga.

"Joker hid away early, Gouchen and Frankenstein fought fiercely and were captured, and the notification also mentioned that Batmos has been eliminated,"

Eugene looked Li Sheng up and down and said, "So, Your Excellency must be that Master Pi Fu who eliminated Batmos, correct?

Eliminating a level twenty-one at level sixteen is admirable."

Naruto Uzumaki was undoubtedly Toy City's official enforcer; by listing names in front of him, Eugene indirectly verified the depth of his cooperation with Toy City. "I am quite curious, how did you convince Toy City to trust you so quickly?"

Li Sheng said calmly, "Even if your level nineteen is weak and full of water, it is impossible to borrow such strong influence."

The balancing effect of the Death Match mission was limited to a certain scope;

even if Eugene leveled up to Lv19, possessed not a single piece of high-level equipment or item, and had never learned any good skills, the system would absolutely not publicly give him such an obvious cheat.

"I cannot imagine, after Joker planned a terrorist attack, what method you could possibly use to persuade the Toy City municipal hall higher-ups, who are in a fit of rage, to trust you, a criminal suspect.

Mind control? Unlikely; I have seen the list of important officials on the municipal hall's official website, many of whom are characters immune to mind control, such as Megatron, Captain Dragonfly, Hokaze Junko, and Yuyuko Saigyouji.

Confessing everything and revealing all the inside details?

Even more impossible; no serious administrative system would immediately trust an outsider claiming to be friendly.

Moreover, Hokaze Junko (from "A Certain Magical Index"), who serves as a prosecutor in the court, is herself a powerful ability user possessing Mental Out, capable of reading minds, brainwashing, and erasing memories.

If you fell into her hands, it would be strange if she didn't drain your memories dry."

Li Sheng talked eloquently, seemingly completely unconcerned by the sound of fire truck sirens ringing in the distance, "When you eliminate all impossibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

You have entered this toy world before, haven't you? Including your defection from the Zhong Lou Guild and this Death Match, all of it was a result you premeditated."

Eugene's expression tightened; through his Information Integration Glasses, the slight involuntary twitching of the muscles at the corner of his mouth was clearly visible. "Why do you say that?"

"The Zhong Lou is a quite old-school mage guild; its members generally habitually use staffs as tall as a person, or hold magic books and crystal balls. Yet what you use is a... wand from "Harry Potter"."

Li Sheng's gaze fell upon the rather exquisite wooden wand in Eugene's hand; the Information Integration Glasses clearly displayed apple wood as the wand wood and dragon heartstring as the wand core.

"Considering that the mayor of this Toy City is Dumbledore, also from "Harry Potter," all of this appears quite suspicious.

Is there a possibility that when your level was still very low, you entered this toy world, obtained a wand, the status of a legal citizen of Toy City, and sufficient intelligence?"

Li Sheng said with narrowed eyes, there being one sentence he had not yet finished.

He even suspected that Eugene was the player among all of them who had obtained the Toy Sun Changyao the earliest.

At that time, Eugene, still a low-level newbie, obtained the key and knew from its description that it could open a hidden space;

on one hand, he could not voluntarily hand it over—the key cannot be transferred and can only drop upon death. To ensure obtaining the key, the Zhong Lou higher-ups would without hesitation kill him.

On the other hand, the Zhong Lou was filled with experts; if Eugene stayed in the guild every day, those great mages specializing in fate and astrology would sooner or later discover the causal fluctuations triggered by the key's aggregation attributes, thereby locking onto him.

For the sake of his own life, Eugene decisively stole the guild's secret treasure and fled.

It was precisely because of the Toy Sun Changyao he held that more keys were introduced into the killing grounds, ultimately unlocking this mission.

Eugene remained silent, but Naruto, who still possessed the mindset of a youth beside him, clearly could not hide his feelings; the surprised expression on his face proved Li Sheng's conjecture.

"Heh, I don't really buy that Gouchen and Frankenstein were both captured. No matter how you slice it, they're the strongest fighters in this deathmatch — they shouldn't have been taken down that easily."

Li Cheng said to Naruto with a smile: "I'm not in the same camp as them, or that Joker. I can even help Toy City catch those few."

"Whatever Eugene promised you, I can offer the same terms.

I can negotiate too, and I can love Toy City too.

Let's make Toy City great again."

With that, Li Cheng tore off the nightclothes on his body, revealing a homemade Toy City-themed shirt hidden underneath, printed with a picture and text:

"Grandpa Dumbledore Uses a Pebble to Knock Down a Toy Monster"

Under the dumbfounded stares of Eugene and Naruto, Li Cheng said righteously: "Actually, I've been a Toy City person all along."