Chapter 382: Kindness

Li Cheng held two epic items: the Two Yin-Yang Knife, gifted by the Side of Truth, and the Vast Sea Soul-Locking Bell, bestowed by the Lord of Xiao Shui.

The 【Floating Engine】 was the first epic item he had obtained entirely through his own efforts.

Me and the Toy Factory cut 80 points together. jpg

Li Cheng rubbed his hands vigorously, took the 【Floating Engine】 from the servitor's hands, and weighed it in his palm.

The Floating Engine itself was made of metal, cold and hard to the touch, yet it felt weightless, like handling a puff of aerogel—too light, even a slight toss might send it floating away from gravity entirely.

Worse still, the 【Floating Engine】 resembled a twisted rope looped end-to-end, vertically divided into ten segments, each detachable on its own.

Li Cheng thought for a moment, ordered the cylindrical servitor to step forward, and pressed one segment of the Floating Engine against its surface, then lifted it gently.

"Gravity sensor malfunction! Alarm! Detected weightlessness!"

The broadcast speaker on the cylindrical servitor blared out, and the machine slowly rose, drifting into the air.

This must be the Floating Engine's Effect One and Effect Two.

As it ascended farther from the ground, the servitor shut off its visual sensors and switched to broadcasting an energetic Chinese song to spur itself on.

"Smoke rises, northward gaze at Jiangshan. Dragon banners roll, horses neigh, sword qi like frost—"

Under tension, the song played at double speed and finished quickly, yet the servitor kept rising, so it automatically switched to a German song.

"aufderheidebluhteinkleinesblumeleinunddasheiterika. (A tiny flower bloomed on the heath, her name was Erica)"

Again this song? You still claim you're not a German fan? Your chicken feet are showing, little blackie.

Li Cheng's eyebrow twitched; he stomped his boot, leapt high, plucked the Floating Engine off the servitor's body, and landed back on the ground cradling it in one hand.

"Respected Factory Master, thank you, my lord!"

The cylindrical servitor, unable to hide its emotional surge, bowed deeply to Li Cheng, then turned its treaded wheels and rolled back among the other servitors.

At the same time, it launched into an impassioned speech: "I have been to the heavens, unlike you, so I am qualified to lead you."

"We must uphold the spirit of reviving Han culture, study the teachings of our ancestors. The Analects say: Virtue is never alone; it will have neighbors."

"Here, virtue means the virtue of Deutschland."

Hmm. The intelligent core managed these servitors with extreme scientific rigor—perhaps too much so.

Originally, these servitors could not speak human language at all; to train them better for screwing bolts, the intelligent core loaded them with language modules and selectively granted them local network access permissions.

It granted access, but not fully, causing all cylindrical robots to become strangely abstract. Probably after deconstructing Confucius and Mencius's "virtue," the next step will be deconstructing the "law" beneath Confucian exterior and Legalist interior.

Li Cheng reinstalled the Floating Engine segment, stepped out of the Toy Factory, and gazed across the distant wasteland.

The Floating Engine's third effect, 【Curvature Propulsion】, was a god-tier long-range displacement skill.

Despite the terrifying cost of 150,000 Qi points per second—making one suspect the system added two extra zeros—

the footnote already stated: you could preset direction and duration; the minimum initial cost for a single activation was at least 300 Qi points.

That meant you could reduce consumption by setting an extremely short propulsion duration.

"1.001 times the speed of light equals 300,000 kilometers per second; divided by 150,000, equals one Qi point propelling you two kilometers."

"My current Qi point cap is 700. If I spend it all, I can cover 1,400 kilometers—spanning nearly half the western Pacific. I can reach Japan, Korea, the Philippines."

"If I take two Ten-All-Replenishing Pills mid-journey and split the teleportation into three segments, that's 4,200 kilometers. South to the Indian Ocean, north to the Arctic Ocean."

Li Cheng calculated, stepped out of the Toy Factory, and retrieved high-grade concrete walls infused with metal fibers from the 3D warehouse, placing them at 100, 500, 1,000, and 2,000 meters.

Facing the horizon of the wasteland, guided by a sudden intuitive nudge, he slowly rotated the Floating Engine.

The next instant, the Floating Engine violently trembled; everything before Li Cheng's eyes began glowing blue.

When a moving source approaches an observer, the electromagnetic waves it emits—including light—shift toward the blue end of the spectrum.

This is the blue shift within faster-than-light motion!

Without warning, Li Cheng appeared out of thin air on the wasteland eight kilometers away.

He turned back; the Toy Factory had shrunk to a pinpoint.

He looked down: beneath his feet lay scattered chunks of concrete—those walls, designed to withstand direct artillery bombardment, had been utterly shattered, not a single piece remaining.

Sure enough

Li Cheng exhaled a slow, heavy breath. In general relativity, time is space, space is time.

The principle of Curvature Propulsion is to contract space ahead and expand space behind, allowing the traveler to ride within a "curved spacetime bubble" at extreme speed.

To an outside observer, this is clearly faster-than-light movement.

But for the traveler inside the spacetime bubble, time flows in sync with the outside world, so the light-speed limit of relativity remains unbroken.

"The spacetime bubble is like creating a wave that pushes a surfer forward. Anything blocking the wave gets split open."

Li Cheng examined the shattered concrete on the ground; his eyes grew brighter.

This was the true value of the Floating Engine: tearing, destroying, annihilating!

The spatial distortion of the curvature bubble was so violent that no material—soil, steel, or even a cultivator's body—could resist it.

He could treat Curvature Propulsion as a super bulldozer.

"It appears to be a long-range teleportation item, but it's actually teleportation plus offense."

Li Cheng clenched his fist, heart surging: "As long as the target can't see the engine's startup animation or has a neural reaction speed slower than light, even a god will be smashed to pieces."

Just the Northern Pole of Zhongtian? Can you see light speed? Have you ever been kicked by light?

Bring the leader of the Madcap Troupe!

Bring the Chief Mage of the Clock Tower, Hornheim!

Bring Michael from GOC!

"Top players are over-mythologized—they just got lucky and reached level 40. If I'd become a player when the Killing Ground first dropped, I'd have won the championship too."

Li Cheng completely ignored the fact that four years ago he was still in middle school; he spun in circles, pacing excitedly until he carved a circular footprint into the wasteland, then slowly calmed himself.

He used the Floating Engine to teleport back to the Toy Factory, feigned calm, and gave a few instructions to the intelligent core.

Then he logged out of the Killing Ground, knocked on Hui Yu's bedroom door, and tossed a fragment of the engine to him.

"What's this?"

Huiyu held up the engine fragment with a blank look. "Can you eat it?"

"It's just a mere epic-tier prop,"

Li Cheng said calmly. "Wear it close to your body and it can levitate via anti-gravity. Combined with liquid metal to change your appearance, and a stuffed puppet rigged with props to mimic heartbeat, body temperature, and pulse, you'll be able to pass as a normal person and go out on the street to play."

With that, he closed the door. Listening to the excited cheers and jumps from behind it, he couldn't help but show a kindly smile.

(End of chapter)