Chapter 379: Tumor

"Only the factory defense system remains unupgraded from Level 0 to Level 1, with a total deficit of 27,165 points."

The intelligent core replied without hesitation: "Are you ready to upgrade the factory?"

"Hmm."

Li Cheng opened the holographic warehouse, displaying the bronze colossal warship inside: "I'm going to dismantle this thing."

The intelligent core said: "This ship is too large; it must first be disassembled into segments before being sent into the shredder room for processing in multiple rounds. If you had a Level 2 shredder room, it would drastically reduce the time required."

"Hand it over to you. I'm going to Lousjie."

Li Cheng left the holographic warehouse in place; the intelligent core immediately directed the cylindrical robots, commanding cutting machines, cranes, and overhead lifts to continue dismantling the ship and stacking the parts on the open ground.

While the factory buzzed with activity, Li Cheng headed to Lousjie, as usual visiting several shops specializing in buying and selling antiques, explicitly seeking artifacts related to science and technology.

The arrival of the Killing Ground was no blessing for ordinary people who just wanted to live quietly, but for historians and artifact collectors, it was paradise.

Especially those script missions set in ancient times could help unravel countless historical mysteries—such as the location of Genghis Khan's tomb, the reason for the disappearance of the Loulan Kingdom, the construction method of the Jin Zita, the history of Iceland, why Ti10 doesn't ban the mammoth, and other century-old unsolved puzzles.

If time permitted, players could exercise initiative—trading artifacts with ancient people, or even posing as tomb raiders to directly enter burial sites and automatically collect treasures.

According to rumors, the Special Affairs Bureau had already collected several sets of Yu Wang's Nine Cauldrons, the Xuanyuan Sword, the Imperial Seal, and the Lantingji Xu.

However, what drew attention was that even identical artifacts showed significant differences in detail, indirectly corroborating the forum's parallel world theory.

That is, the script worlds do not originate from the Killing Ground—they exist naturally. The Killing Ground merely deploys players into different parallel worlds.

(For example, in the X-Men universe, the Egyptian Jin Zita were built by superpowered beings; in other parallel worlds, they were constructed by Egyptian laborers using ramp transport methods.)

In total, after spending 15,000 game coins,

Li Cheng acquired the original manuscript of Einstein's "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," the original Tesla coil from Nikola Tesla, the unexploded nuclear warhead from the world's first nuclear test (the Trinity test in New Mexico), and the first artificially synthesized starch from carbon dioxide, among other artifacts.

Just as he returned laden with purchases and walked into the phone booth teleport station,

Clang!

A robust figure suddenly materialized inside the nearby red phone booth.

A middle-aged Asian male, wearing a standard camouflage combat uniform, carrying a sci-fi-looking electromagnetic rifle on his back, a Barbie doll tied to his waist, and cartoon crocodile slippers on his feet,

his face pale, eyes glazed, dazedly pushing open the phone booth's glass door and stepping onto the street of Lousjie.

Li Cheng glanced at him and paid little mind—Lousjie was full of eccentric dressers; a single glance revealed two Kobes, three Zhao Weikes, five Dong Wangs, and a heap of familiar and unfamiliar anime characters.

Wandering the street roughly revealed which new anime were currently trending.

"Huh—huh—"

The camo-clad man emitted a rasping, bellows-like breath, staggered forward a few steps, and collided with a passerby.

"Watch where you're going."

The passerby instinctively shoved him away,

but the next second, the camo-clad man's face twisted violently—he vomited a stream of pale flame.

The flame was intensely hot, instantly burning through the passerby's skin, flesh, and bone. The man screamed, frantically slapping his face to extinguish the fire, only to find his palms ignited as well, burning to charcoal.

This sudden scene caused the bustling pedestrian street to freeze; shock overwhelmed even panic.

This shouldn't be possible, couldn't be—

Lousjie forbids all forms of player-on-player harm unless both parties consent. This was nearly a foundational rule of the Killing Ground.

Li Cheng, who had been about to teleport away, halted his finger from pressing the phone booth button,

and saw the camo-clad man still staggering forward, his body rapidly sprouting swollen lumps, each oozing white flame like deflating gas tanks.

And his position? Right in front of the Zhu Xing Zhen Tai.

My brand-new store!!

Li Cheng kicked open the phone booth's glass door, activated the Instant Thunder skill, and in an instant crossed the street, shouting: "Grant me contact permission!"

All services offered by Lousjie shops—whether legitimate massage, illegitimate massage, combat training, cosmetic surgery, or bodily modification—required prior contact permission.

Striding to the scene, Li Cheng grabbed the burning passerby with his left hand, activated the Assemble Puppet effect, and at a distance, tore off the man's blazing arms and entire face, saving the poor soul's life.

With his right hand, he seized the Victory Flag Spear, thrust it through the back of the camo-clad man's collar, and laid him flat on the ground.

The Information Synthesis Glasses displayed: his name was 【Jiu Jingquan】, Level 20,

with multiple status effects: 【White Flame Tumor: Advanced】, 【Explosion Progress: 49%】, 【Tension Pneumothorax】, 【Abdominal Compartment Syndrome】, 【Confused Consciousness】.

What the hell was a White Flame Tumor?

Li Cheng's mind raced—he jammed the Victory Flag Spear into the pedestrian street, activated his Buff Field to slow the explosion timer,

then moved like lightning, excising the swellings growing on Jiu Jingquan's body.

Each excised lump slowed the explosion timer slightly, yet it still crept upward at 0.5% per second.

At that moment, another petite figure dashed toward them.

A blonde girl in a doctor's uniform, her body crisscrossed with grotesque surgical sutures, wielding four arms: a scalpel, an electric thoracic saw, an orthopedic clamp, and a power drill.

Li Cheng silently raised an eyebrow—he'd seen this girl, named 【Fu Lan】, the first time he entered Lousjie; she ran a pet modification hospital at the street's end, which, loosely speaking, made her a medical professional too.

No time for small talk—Li Cheng snapped: "Hold his limbs, avoid the fire. Hand me the scalpel."

Fu Lan silently held Jiu Jingquan's limbs in place; Li Cheng took the scalpel and sliced open his chest and abdomen.

Inside Jiu Jingquan's body loomed a tumor the size of a bowling ball, its surface covered in artichoke-like chitinous plates.

Li Cheng and Fu Lan exchanged a glance, then carefully peeled back the plates, exposing the tumor's core.

Around the tumor grew a dense network of interwoven capillaries, each connected to the body's main vessels, pumping white flame outward—like a precisely engineered time bomb.

Creak… creak…

Perhaps sensing the change in environment, the tumor writhed and slowly rotated once inside Jiu Jingquan's body. On its rear side grew countless eyeballs; the moment they met air, their lids snapped open,

the pitch-black pupils spinning rapidly, scanning the surroundings.

Explosion Progress: 59%, 72%, 91%

Li Cheng instantly concluded this was a biological bomb—he ripped off Jiu Jingquan's head and activated the Demon Dragon Breath skill, retreating as he roared white dragon frost into the chest cavity of the headless torso.

Including Fulan and the other onlookers, everyone immediately sensed something was wrong and scattered at top speed.

The next second, the tumor swelled violently, tearing open the skin of the headless body, and finally burst apart.

An incomparably fierce white-hot light pierced through their eyelids and struck the retinas directly; for a dazed instant, everyone seemed to be staring straight at the sun, inches away.

But the flames and shockwave that one would expect to accompany the light never came.

The passersby frantically rubbed their stinging eyes; Fulan put a pair of sunglasses on herself; Li Cheng, calm as ever, pulled out a surveillance camera and mounted it on his forehead in place of his eyes.

There, standing in the middle of the road, was Side of Truth, wearing that signature yellow robe.

His face hidden beneath a hood, arms spread wide, he held the violent energy released by the tumor's explosion entirely within a spherical space. One could even clearly see a small mushroom cloud roiling and boiling inside it.

After a dozen or so seconds, the spherical space was slowly compressed to the size of a ping-pong ball,

Side of Truth gave a casual wave of his hand and annihilated the spherical space completely, then lowered his head and silently gazed at the black human-shaped scorch mark burned into the pavement of Backstreet Street by the thermal radiation—the remnant of Sakai Izumi's body.

Wooooo—woooooo—

The air-raid sirens on the streets and alleys belatedly began to wail.

The security forces under the Backstreet Street Residents' Committee hurried over, swiftly cordoning off the scene and evacuating people.

Arriving along with the security forces were the bigwigs of the major guilds. At a glance, every one of them was a high-tier transcendent of lv35 or above.

"What happened here? Isn't any form of player-on-player harm banned on Backstreet Street?"

"No idea. Could he have been body-snatched by a god-spawn or something outside, then came to Backstreet Street to explode?"

"Impossible. We tested this long ago—even unregistered creatures without a player identity can't harm players within the Backstreet Street zone."

Li Cheng had no desire to wade into this mess, so he handed Sakai Izumi's head straight over to a chengguan in a Special Affairs Bureau uniform—

Thanks to the assembled ragdoll contraption, Sakai Izumi's head was hooked up to plastic tubing and a water pump, temporarily providing blood circulation so the head could keep living on its own for a while.

Just as he was about to turn and leave, Side of Truth called out to him: "Hold on. Our Residents' Committee is holding an impromptu meeting—would you like to attend?"

"Hm?"

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't seem quite right—I'm not a member of the Residents' Committee."

It's called a Residents' Committee, but in essence it's just the most powerful sliver of top-tier transcedents in the entire Kill Field, able to control over 90% of affairs in both the Kill Field and the real world.

Leaders of small and mid-sized guilds would sharpen their heads trying to join, only to be turned down every time by the Committee with the line, "This organization currently has no expansion plans."

It gave off a strong sense of déjà vu—like India applying seven times to join the UN Security Council as a permanent member and being vetoed in turn by each of the P5.

"No matter. I'm the vice-chairman. And you're the first person to discover Sakai Izumi."

Side of Truth said, "The bomb inside Sakai Izumi's body was planted by a player from another world. You should find this interesting."

(End of chapter)