Chapter 428: Exam Paper

The towering gray-green giant hovered midair, clutching a stolen two-headed greatsword, its head slightly lowered, hollow eye sockets with slightly melted edges locking onto the red spider crouched on an IKEA sofa three kilometers away.

As the pre-aim lock continued, the ornate engravings around the 【Miraculous Grace】 sniper rifle autonomously disassembled and extended, unfolding like butterfly wings in four directions.

Sensing the intense threat from that direction, the gray-green giant thrust its head forward, firing two furious beams of red-hot energy from its eye sockets.

The red spider did not move—partly because movement was forbidden during lock-on, and partly because he trusted his temporary teammates.

Shhh—

The white horse tombstone, its arms crushed and spurting blood, kicked the stone coffin away.

The Infinite Justice exosuit precisely caught the stone coffin, gripping it in one hand like a Snickers bar, holding it before itself to block the furious laser.

The cockpit had just been punctured; in a normal Gundam anime, the pilot would already be dead.

Fortunately, within the Thunder War Mechanism Guild, there was a high-level skill called 【Human-Machine Life Link】, which temporarily bound the pilot's life to the exosuit, sharing and weakening injuries together.

This was also a common tactic among players whose power stemmed from external sources—such as charm streams, exosuit streams, and summoning streams.

Otherwise, when fighting other cultivation streams, if an opponent pulled out a rare item 【Laxi, Please Poop】 skill scroll, tore it open on the spot, and caused summoning-stream players to die from diarrhea from afar, it would be downright ridiculous.

(Lakshmi is the Sanskrit name for the Hindu goddess of fortune and abundance; the 【Laxi, Please Poop】 skill scroll is a local specialty of India's Special Affairs Bureau, allegedly made from Ganges River water.)

After activating the 【Human-Machine Life Link】 skill, the through-and-through wound on Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao's chest became a lung puncture; the exosuit sparked with electricity and leaked hydraulic fluid, yet still stood firm.

Zzzzzt!

The laser burned the front of the coffin red-hot, melting several of the iron chains wrapped around it. The coffin lid trembled violently, as if whatever was sealed inside was desperately struggling to break free.

"Found the guy who shot his brother with a laser pointer—@BigBigGiant."

Li Cheng praised him aloud, then tossed several floating engines onto the pile of building rubble amid the silent grumbling of other players.

Each floating engine could be split into ten parts, each capable of rendering an object weightless and levitating.

One cubic meter of reinforced concrete weighs about 2.2 tons; hundreds of tons of broken construction debris now floated in midair. Li Cheng clapped his palms together and unleashed 【Ride the Tide, Whip the Wind, Stir the Clouds】, summoning a violent hurricane.

The gale swept the hundreds of tons of lightweight reinforced concrete, hurling them all at the gray-green giant, who was slammed backward and buried beneath the rubble.

Seizing the moment, Li Cheng dashed forward, recalled all floating engines, opened his right palm, and launched a gravity energy sphere at the giant's chest.

Gravity deflected—the reinforced concrete instantly clamped tightly around the giant's body, squeezing inward.

Opportunity knocks but once—the white horse tombstone quickly lifted its head, swallowed a medium-sized life potion, and regrew both arms.

Changsun Yao activated the skill 【Divine Paper: Ten Thousand Scrolls, Ten Thousand Tons】, releasing countless exam papers and textbooks.

Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Mock Tests; One Book of Annotations; Must-Practice College Entrance Questions; Golden Exam Papers; Compilation of College Entrance Exam Questions.

The hardest part to believe was that all the paper seemed to have been bulk-purchased by Changsun Yao from a scrap yard, each sheet marked with students' handwritten notes, even doodles scribbled idly during class.

"Write an essay on the theme of Specialization, Transmission, and Transformation, connecting it to social life: The e-sports team TES won the first stage with focus, became a legend, and was spun like a top on the world stage."

"On that day, Ma Jiaqi came. On that day, Yan Haoxiang came. On that day, Ding Chengxin came."

"I understand, Teacher. But what about those without talent? Has their life been wasted from the start?"

All the papers grew instantly upon contact with wind, self-replicating, piling up like mountains atop the rubble, adding even greater weight.

Still not enough—Master Nicolas of the Zhong Lou thrust his staff into the ground, instantly drawing a magic array beneath the paper mountain, flooding it with vast quantities of green slime that glued the papers in place.

One second, two seconds—no movement.

Gray Rain finally pried himself out of the building, yanked the steel rebar from his skull, and asked, "Done?"

"No." The binary tree's voice, through his VR goggles, was solemn—on his screen, every part of the gray-green giant's body was deformed under crushing weight, yet its two eye sockets were slowly expanding until they merged into one.

Woooooom!!!!

From the giant's eye sockets—now a single horizontal groove—emerged a flat laser that obliterated the rubble and paper mountain above its head.

A wider laser meant only a slight turn of the head could inflict damage over a much broader area.

After ten seconds, the entire "hill" shattered and collapsed; the gray-green giant burst from the ruins and continued firing lasers at the red spider three kilometers away.

"Planting? Cross me first!"

Inside the cockpit, Blood Xue Shi Paoxiao coughed up a clot of blood lodged in his throat, his eyes bloodshot, left hand shoving the control stick forward with all his strength, right hand flicking rapidly across dozens of buttons.

Metal rods shot from the exosuit's feet, piercing the concrete ground to anchor its stance.

Simultaneously, the shoulder armor on both sides flipped open, revealing three rows of four-barrel missile launchers, firing grenades.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The grenades exploded above the gray-green giant—but even the three thousand tons of TNT-equivalent origami cranes Changsun Yao had released earlier had failed to kill him; these twenty-four grenades stood no chance.

Thus, these grenades did not contain gunpowder alone, but gunpowder mixed with fine metal particles—smoke bombs.

Renowned military expert and Director Zhang of the Strategic Deception Bureau once joked that smog could block lasers; in a certain sense, he wasn't wrong.

The metal particles dispersed by the smoke bombs each possessed unique microstructures capable of maximizing heat absorption, covering an area two hundred meters wide.

On a macroscopic level, the gray-green giant's laser was drastically weakened—by the time it reached 150 meters, it was no stronger than a standard industrial laser engraver.

But the metal particles would deplete quickly, buying only limited time.

The white horse tombstone retrieved the stone coffin, planted it into the ground as a buff totem, then charged forward.

Between masters, there was unspoken tacit understanding—the binary tree activated cyber-mystic arts, creating a green data-stream springboard in midair, allowing the white horse tombstone to bounce and close the distance to the giant.

Nicolas also cast a spell, conjuring dozens of phantom copies of the white horse tombstone, attacking the giant from all directions.

Snap!

The white horse tombstone seized the giant's bony spines, dodged the sweeping palm with agility, circled behind the giant, wrapped both arms around its neck, and pulled backward with all his might.

Just before the metal particles in the smoke bombs were fully consumed, he wrenched the giant's neck sideways, causing the laser to misfire again.

This was likely the final chance—Gray Rain and Li Cheng grabbed the giant's arms from either side, activated the floating engines in reverse, and yanked it back to the ground.

Gray Rain's left side melted, embedding himself into the building rubble to increase his own weight.

Li Cheng activated the 【Stony Roots】 technique, hardening his body to prevent the giant from breaking free.

The binary tree's cyber-mystic arts, Nicolas's clock tower spells, Changsun Yao's divine paper—all players unleashed their full arsenal to buy the red spider as much time as possible.

And the latter did not disappoint anyone's expectations.

Aim locked. Done.

*Huff*

The Red Spider sprawled across the IKEA sofa, slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, and firmly squeezed the trigger of the ornate long rifle.

(End of chapter)