Chapter 396

Boom!

The next instant, Li Cheng's figure vanished on the spot; the air, compressed to its extreme, formed a visible shockwave that swept out in all directions.

Glass shattered, the road split open, vehicles flipped; the several-hundred-kilogram ceramic puppet carrying the Crimson Racer and the others was slammed straight into a wall by the blast,

And by the time they crawled out of the puppet in a daze, they saw a sight they would never forget—

Dozens of tall buildings had been torn in half at the waist; their reinforced concrete frame-shear wall structures toppled one after another like dominoes,

Millions of tons of building materials crashed down, dust churning and boiling, forming a mushroom-cloud-like pillar of smoke on the spot.

A nuke... did a nuke go off?

The Crimson Racer gulped hard, and Fu Ding Hua Long simply took out a brush and drew a Geiger counter on the spot to check for radiation in the surroundings.

Li Cheng strolled back to the ground, a bloodstained meat cleaver snatched as loot in his right hand, and the pajama man—reduced to just a head—in his left. Even so, the man was still alive, staring fixedly at the dead, black advertisement screen.

The others, including Bai Ma Mu Bei, paid no attention to the pajama man, who had lost his combat ability; they all looked at Li Cheng with strange expressions,

The latter scratched his head in bewilderment. "Why're you looking at me like that? I know I'm handsome."

"Um, well," Fu Ding Hua Long cleared his throat, "Brother Pi Fu, you're lv21 right now, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Lv21 can have this kind of destructive power?"

The Crimson Racer was about to lose it. "I don't buy it. This is way too big a hit to my worldview."

"Trade secret, you know."

Li Cheng shrugged. The light-speed elbow strike delivered by 【Hover Engine】 vastly exceeded the destructive power a player of this level should have; even facing Transcendents one tier above, he could hold his own.

At this moment, Grey Rain, who had degenerated into liquid metal, also crawled out of the building ruins; like a swimmer coming ashore, she tilted her head and slapped her ear hard, pouring out a big pile of concrete pebbles from inside.

Bai Ma Mu Bei was quite tactful; she didn't press further, and instead looked at the meat cleaver Li Cheng had captured. "This blade—"

"Mm, it's also a Killing Ground-certified prop."

【Item Name: Blade of Regret】

【Type: Weapon (Fragile)】

【Quality: Perfect】

【Attack Power: High】

【Effect: Smooth Cutting. When held, grants a "cuts through iron like mud" effect, allowing it to slice through the vast majority of solid substances.】

【Equip Requirement: Strength attribute greater than or equal to 3】

【Note: This equipment can only be used within the Bitter Pain Secret Realm; remaining uses: 2】

【Note: The two combatants are, respectively, a "Droplet" cosmic probe manufactured by a Three-Body civilization from strong-interaction-force material, with molecular thermal motion nearly completely halted, a surface temperature infinitely approaching absolute zero, capable of flying at 31.7 km/s. And, a kitchen cleaver.】

"Going dark makes you ten times stronger, going white makes you thirty percent weaker, huh."

The Crimson Racer clicked his tongue in wonder. In the pajama man's hands, the meat cleaver had seemed usable at will—cut however you pleased.

But once it fell into a player's hands, it gained the restriction of only being usable in the secret realm, and could only be used twice; one couldn't help suspecting that invisible hand of the Killing Ground had flexed its muscles again.

"It's already strong enough."

Andre shook his head. "From the note, it looks like this blade can even cut through strong-interaction-force material. Below 【Epic】 quality—even including Epic-quality armor—it can pierce through in a single strike."

"One more thing,"

Bai Ma Mu Bei narrowed her eyes slightly and said: "The note says it outright—this is the Bitter Pain Secret Realm.

This also matches our earlier guess—whether it's Gary Hoy, who crashed through the window frame and fell from the twentieth-something floor,

or the Vietnamese woman whose child was poisoned by the US military's Agent Orange,

or this pajama man,

they all suffered a certain degree of pain in life. And the greater the pain, the stronger the power of their after-death image."

Especially this pajama man, who could teleport while carrying a ten-thousand-plus-ton giant Indian statue; if a more experienced player had taken over and piloted it, the threat would have risen exponentially.

"Hello? Hello?"

The walkie-talkie carried Binary Tree's voice of confusion and astonishment. "What happened over there? You kicked up a mushroom cloud that tall—we can see it from our side at Jin Zita."

"Nothing much, it's handled. Coming to link up with you now."

Bai Ma Mu Bei set down the walkie-talkie. "Shall we go?"

"Hold on a sec,"

Li Cheng stowed the Blade of Regret, activated his Information Integration Glasses, jogged into the ruins, and rummaged through the construction debris until he found a bracelet.

The bracelet was made of plastic links, crudely crafted, with a tag hanging off the edge; the front was printed with a green ouroboros pattern, the back with the number 090.

This bracelet had been worn on the pajama man's left hand from the start,

The ouroboros pattern on the front had also appeared in that footage of the Worm Lord's Divine Scion infected—printed right on the wall of the bio-lab.

Li Cheng pocketed the bracelet and said casually to the others: "You guys head out first, I've still got something to do."

"You sure?"

Bai Ma Mu Bei raised an eyebrow. Bitter Pain Secret Realm—just hearing the name told you how dangerous it was,

Let alone her at lv29; even a lv35 high-ranking Transcendent from a major guild wouldn't dare guarantee they could fight their way through the whole place.

"I'm sure. If it really doesn't work out, I can still force-quit to save my life."

Li Cheng said lightly, "See you at Jin Zita later."

"Alright."

With things said to that point, Bai Ma Mu Bei nodded. Ozaki Sora summoned a ceramic puppet shaped like the Catbus from the animated film *My Neighbor Totoro*,

The group boarded one after another, and following the secret realm map jointly drawn and annotated by all players, they set off toward Jin Zita—a temporary camp had already been set up there, with over a hundred players gathered,

Among them were plenty of support-type ability users who could treat the injuries of Andre's and the Crimson Racer's Pokémon.

The vehicle drew farther and farther away, its taillights fading into the black snow until they could no longer be seen,

Grey Rain pulled a bent steel rebar out of the man's head and asked crisply, "What's next?"

"Wait for him to reset."

Li Cheng set the pajama man's head on the ground and waited quietly.

About fifteen minutes later, the pajama man's head vanished, and in the middle of the street, the pajama man's complete figure appeared once more.

Just like Gary, he was trapped in an endless loop of pre-death imagery.

Since the 【Blade of Regret】 had already been taken, the pajama man looked even more bewildered. Li Cheng darted forward and, before the pajama man could react, stuffed a tablet computer into his hands.

What the tablet was playing was exactly the home video of the pajama man's family that Binary Tree had downloaded through network technology.

"Heh heh, heh heh heh heh."

Seeing the footage of his family, the pajama man instantly lost his aggression. He hugged the tablet to himself and began to giggle foolishly on his own, while his legs, following bodily instinct, kept wandering on, oblivious.

"Follow him."

Li Cheng put away his weapon. "If I'm not mistaken, he can lead us to that biochemical laboratory."

(End of chapter)