Chapter 394: The Divine General

On the player forums, there's always been talk of an "impossible triangle" when it comes to movement skills.

That is, a single movement skill cannot simultaneously possess all three elements: long range, short cooldown, and low cost—at most it can only achieve two of the three.

Yet the pajama man before them had completely shattered this iron rule, blinking at high frequency mid-air with no wind-up. With every flash, another blade wound would appear on the bodies of those present.

Fu Ding Hua Long, trembling, downed a health potion, urgently healing the wound that had pierced his heart, then gritted his teeth in fury, flipped to the last few pages of his scroll, and tore out a Yaksha Divine General from the paper.

Yaksha, also translated as Yaksha, has wings on its back, a body entirely crimson, wears armor, a mouse crown on its head, wields a sharp axe, and stands one zhang tall.

The moment this Buddhist dharma-protecting deity landed, Fu Ding Hua Long sliced open his palm with a blade, splashing fresh blood onto the divine general, causing its already three-meter-plus frame to swell to over five meters.

The divine general stood majestic and imposing, moving later but arriving first, seizing the pajama man's legs with one hand and gripping them tight, preventing his escape.

"Nice!"

Fu Ding Hua Long clenched his bleeding fist tightly. This 【Vajraka】 was one of the twelve Yaksha Divine Generals from the Medicine Master Sutra; the mouse crown on its head corresponds to the zodiac's Rat,

and its hands possess the ability to sever spatial teleportation.

【Vajraka】's face was fierce and vicious. Its left hand gripped the pajama man's left leg, while its right hand struck down rapidly, intending to crush him into a pulp.

At the critical moment, the pajama man did not hesitate, swinging his sharp blade and hacking off his own legs.

The instant he broke free, he blinked behind 【Vajraka】's neck, held his cleaver horizontally, and then—disappeared.

The human eye processes continuous images at a speed of 24 frames per second; if an object passes through in less than 1/24th of a second, it will "vanish from sight."

Within one second, the legless pajama man performed several hundred teleports,

holding his cleaver horizontally and circling it around 【Vajraka】's neck.

One second later, the Yaksha head of the divine general fell to the ground, dissolving into ink marks and vanishing.

"Ice Crystal Falling Star Fist!"

Bai Ma Mu Bei made a decisive call, slamming a fist into the ground, and dense hail immediately rained down from high above.

The hail was shaped like iron nails, heavy as iron ingots, and for a moment the clatter of impacts echoed through the streets,

yet that pajama man did not continue the pursuit. Instead, he blinked to a spot fifty meters away, lay on the ground without his legs, and continued to gaze dazedly at the crowd, as if waiting for the hailstorm to end.

Crimson Rider urgently recalled all his Pokémon into special Poké Balls, freezing the injuries on their bodies, while hugging his arms tight to reduce the damage from the ceaselessly falling hail.

"Cough, cough—"

Andre, whose upper body had nearly been split open, struggled with both hands to pull a roll of gauze from his inventory.

The gauze moved on its own—one end splitting into threads to suture Andre's internal and external wounds, while the other end wrapped several loops around his body to bandage the injuries.

As a close-combat transcendent, this bit of hail couldn't hurt him. He called out in a deep voice to Bai Ma Mu Bei: "You're using hail as a defensive perimeter?"

"That's right."

Bai Ma Mu Bei nodded and shouted over the noisy environment: "That pajama man keeps using blinks to evade our counterattacks, which proves his body's defense isn't strong. If during teleportation he overlaps with solid matter, it'll hurt him too.

The hail is dense enough to fill the entire space, so he can't get through while it's still falling."

But we can't get out either.

Ozaki Aozora said nothing, summoning over a dozen ceramic puppets carrying long spears and short cannons, and poured fire toward the pajama man.

The barrage of bullets swept past, and the pajama man dodged them all, landing steadily on a rooftop.

If not for the missing legs, he really would have had the air of a master.

"Fifty seconds."

Bai Ma Mu Bei suddenly said. Everyone understood she was referring to the duration of 【Ice Crystal Falling Star Fist】, and their minds raced, thinking of ways to break free.

"Wait,"

Fu Ding Hua Long suddenly thought of something, rapidly typing on his phone to search, and said urgently: "Prosopometamorphopsia (abbreviated as PMO) is extremely rare; over the past century only about 75 cases of PMO have been documented in the literature.

Since Gary Hoy and that Vietnamese woman both came from the real world, then this pajama man should also have existed in the real world."

He picked up his phone, took a photo of the pajama man's face standing on the rooftop, and sent the picture to that Binary Tree of Whale Song: "This is Fu Ding Hua Long from the Special Affairs Bureau. Help me search for the pajama man in the photo—keyword: PMO prosopometamorphopsia!"

Bai Ma Mu Bei raised an eyebrow, thought for a moment, and immediately understood Fu Ding Hua Long's intention.

If 【Binary Tree】 over there could use the globally networked case database to find the pajama man's real identity, they might be able to use his case report to understand his symptoms when the condition acts up—

different PMO patients see different things; some see human faces as dragon faces, some see other people's noses and mouths shrink, some see other people's eyes stretch out.

If they understood the pajama man's symptoms, perhaps they could use Li Cheng's body-modification ability to reverse-modify the facial organs, making them appear "normal" in the pajama man's eyes,

thereby making him stop attacking.

All of this was thought up by Fu Ding Hua Long in just a few short seconds—truly worthy of an elite operative of the Special Affairs Bureau.

However—

"I didn't find anything in the global case database."

Binary Tree's calm voice came through the walkie-talkie. "Additionally, I expanded the search to mental illness and face blindness, and likewise found no valid targets."

Fu Ding Hua Long took a deep breath. PMO patients are often misdiagnosed with mental illness, and some PMO cases mysteriously improve on their own, causing patients not to seek medical treatment, further reducing the number of documented cases.

"Thirty seconds left."

Bai Ma Mu Bei reminded again.

Grey Rain smacked her lips and said to Li Cheng: "How about you crouch down?"

"Huh? Why would I crouch down?"

"I can wrap around you."

Grey Rain said matter-of-factly: "The cleaver in the pajama man's hand is only twenty centimeters long. You crouch down, I wrap around you, and we form a big iron ball over twenty centimeters thick. We just roll our way through—then he can't chop you, right?"

You really shouldn't say that—no, you really should.

This plan actually had some feasibility.

Li Cheng scratched his head. "Forget it, rolling all the way out would be too undignified."

He picked up the walkie-talkie and said to Binary Tree: "Same pajama man photo—search the global criminal records database with the keyword: killed wife and children at night then committed suicide."

Seeing the puzzled looks from the others, Li Cheng explained rapidly: "Judging from the pajama man's attire, blood on the blade proves he killed someone, and the self-inflicted wound on his neck proves he killed first then killed himself.

At the same time, he was wearing pajamas, so there was only one possibility: one night he suddenly had an episode, saw his family in the house as monsters, and in terror took a knife and killed them,

and after the PMO improved on its own, he realized he had killed his family, and in agony chose to end his own life.

Since it was his first episode, neither the PMO nor the schizophrenic case database could find him, so he could only be looked up in the criminal database."

(End of this chapter)