Chapter 438

Good, good, good, you wanna play like this, huh?

Li Cheng, having lost his eyeballs, veins bulging on his face, unhesitatingly extended his left hand and roared: "Merge!"

Hui Yu stepped forward, palm clasping Li Cheng's five fingers, liquid metal transforming into a club, guiding him toward the hooded figure's location.

The next instant, Li Cheng slashed open his chest with the Two Yin-Yang Blade, shifting into his insect form, while his right hand gripped the Ape Regression Gun and jammed the muzzle directly into his bloody empty eye socket, pulling the trigger toward his brain.

Human fear is closely tied to the amygdala region of the brain; damage to the amygdala and associated areas—such as in lipoproteinosis or bilateral amygdala injury—causes patients to be unable to recognize or generate fear.

Boom!

The bullet vanished into thin air; Li Cheng's head tilted back slightly. Since he now had no vision and relied entirely on Hui Yu's guidance, he simply welded the Ape Regression Gun to his skull using 【Assembled Doll · Modified】, and clenched the levitation engine in his right palm.

Then

Supersonic elbow strike!

Blind Li Cheng surged forward at light speed, compressing the surrounding air to its limit, forming a shockwave that shattered every basalt column generated by the volcanic magma.

The Infinite Justice exoskeleton blocking his path disintegrated and vanished. The diving bell shield previously deployed by Ercha Shu cracked and faded away.

The seawater that had just flooded the underground passage was evaporated by half. The remaining waves split apart like Moses parting the sea, and only after several seconds did they crash down heavily.

Suspended in midair, Li Cheng twisted his body and panted: "Is it dead?"

"It's probably dead for sure."

In Hui Yu's vision, the hooded figure and the entire patch of basalt columns where the Infinite Justice exoskeleton stood had vanished, leaving only a deep crater like a meteor impact.

Molten magma still lingered around the crater's rim.

The supersonic elbow strike is nearly the pinnacle of physical attacks for beings at this stage; only a few countermeasures can resist it: blood reincarnation, bodily elementalization, and spatial anchoring.

Hui Yu saw clearly: at the moment Li Cheng surged forward at light speed, the hooded man did not teleport or phase out of reality. He was almost certainly reduced to particles by the supersonic elbow strike.

Li Cheng did not rush over immediately. Instead, he used the levitation engine's anti-gravity function to remain suspended in midair, waiting until the 【Ocean Soul Lock Bell】 stopped ringing entirely, then stood still for several more minutes before drifting over to inspect the scene.

At the edge of the meteor crater, Li Cheng found the silhouettes of three players.

The shockwave generated by the levitation engine's burst, after reflecting off the ground, formed a high-temperature, high-pressure shockwave—the Ma He stem—with temperatures reaching two thousand degrees Celsius.

Sun Yuyao, Red Spider, and Nikola, swept by the Ma He stem, were melted and carbonized within microseconds, "imprinted" on the ground as dust particles.

Blood Lion howled even more desperately—he had been directly behind the hooded figure and was caught in the residual blast, utterly vaporized, leaving not even a trace.

"." Li Cheng pulled the Ape Regression Gun off his forehead and activated the self-healing genes he had stolen from Daqun; grape-sized eyeballs grew in his eye sockets, rapidly swelling to normal size.

"What now?"

Hui Yu asked hesitantly; that hooded man F was far more dangerous than the Gray-Green Giant A or the Horse-Headed S.

Sun Yuyao, Ercha Shu, and the others trapped in illusion were already dead men on paper—alive or not, they'd become puppets like the Card King—so Hui Yu felt no guilt over their deaths.

She cared more about how to escape the realm, and how to determine whether this place was still an illusion.

Li Cheng crouched low, carefully tracing the three ray-like silhouettes on the ground.

The texture was warm, scorching, utterly real—even the most advanced brain-interface virtual games from the Slum couldn't achieve such fidelity.

He looked up and asked Hui Yu seriously: "Tell me something I don't know."

"Huh?" Hui Yu blinked, confused.

"Whether it's illusion or hypnosis, one thing is certain: a person cannot imagine something they've never seen or heard."

Li Cheng said gravely: "The best way to test whether you're still in an illusion is to see if you can break through your cognitive boundaries."

"Oh oh." Hui Yu nodded, then mused: "The single, divorced woman downstairs with two kids, Xiao Hua, recently became the neighborhood boss thanks to my help."

". What?" Li Cheng didn't understand.

"Xiao Hua downstairs."

Hui Yu said as if it were obvious: the residents of this neighborhood where Li Cheng now lived were mostly elderly folks—wealthy, idle, kind-hearted—who cooperated with animal rescue groups to capture and neuter all the stray cats in the area.

Since Hui Yu acquired the levitation engine and no longer worried about damaging the elevator, she often wandered downstairs wearing Li Cheng's appearance.

Gradually, she got to know the stray cats and gave them all names.

"Xiao Hua escaped from the neighboring neighborhood—just neutered, single, divorced, with two kids, and got beaten up by local cats."

I couldn't stand it, so I mixed protein powder, taurine, arginine, deep-sea fish oil, L-carnitine, and multivitamins into her cat food.

Now her arm and shoulder muscles have exploded—she's undefeated in the neighborhood, and next she'll sweep the entire street to become the underground cat king."

??? Are you feeding a cat or raising a tiger?

Be careful you don't get reported by the old folks in the neighborhood.

Li Cheng's expression twisted—he'd been too busy screwing bolts to notice any of this.

Well, at least this proves Hui Yu isn't part of my illusion.

As for now

"Wait!"

Just as Li Cheng was about to move, Hui Yu raised her hand eagerly: "Tell me something I absolutely don't know too?"

Li Cheng froze. "Huh?"

Hui Yu said matter-of-factly: "We've confirmed I'm not part of your illusion—but we can't confirm whether you're part of mine. We've got to be careful, right?"

"Fine." Li Cheng's eyebrow twitched. "What do you want to know?"

Li Cheng had never hidden from Hui Yu that one private, self-contained toy factory capable of producing vast wealth—he had nothing to conceal from her anyway.

Even when he bathed, she'd barge into the tub under the excuse: "Responding to the national call to conserve water—two people washing saves water."

Hui Yu rubbed her hands, her expression slightly odd: "What's your NAS password?"

NAS, meaning dedicated data storage server, after installing the massive disk array manufactured by Whale Song, Li Cheng's private NAS reached a terrifying capacity of 5PB—equal to 5120TB.

The arrival of the Killing Field triggered explosive technological advancement: image and video clarity far surpassed previous standards, alongside fully immersive virtual games far beyond the "Hyperdream" in Cyberpunk 2077—each consuming more and more storage.

"You care about this, huh?"

Li Cheng rolled his eyes, annoyed: "The password is 88688."

"Ok." This information was unknown to Hui Yu, indirectly proving that Li Cheng was not her hallucination.

After the nonsense, the two returned the way they came, searching for the white horse's tombstone and the black-clad woman's corpse.

Both sides perished together: the former, affected by reality-warping forces, half his body turned to petals; the latter, torn apart by a powerful close-combat skill, scattered across the ground.

Dead players no longer held uniqueness and could be stored in backpack slots. Li Cheng collected the white horse's tombstone corpse, then turned and descended the corridor.

The Horse-Headed S, Fat Mountain L, Gray-Green Giant A, Black-Clad Woman H, Hooded Figure F, plus the suit-wearing infant E whose destination was unknown—all anomalous entities were resolved. Li Cheng and Hui Yu reached the lowest level of the inverted pyramid without obstruction.

The place held nothing but a gigantic, square cardboard box, quietly resting on the floor.

The Information Synthesis Glasses could not scan the box's details. Li Cheng did not rush forward; instead, he opened his 3D storage, retrieved a mechanical arm, a remote-controlled toy car, and a camera, assembling a simple bomb-disposal robot.

He controlled the robot via remote, advancing slowly to inspect the box.

The box was old and damaged, bearing no labels or tape on top, yet it refused to open. When shaken, it emitted clinking metallic sounds, suggesting the presence of chains inside.

"That's it?"

Hui Yu blinked in confusion. "So many died, so many sacrifices made—and the final boss reward is just a cardboard box?"

"What's the difference between this and those shonen manga where the protagonists endure countless trials to find the One Piece, only to discover a note inside saying, 'The real treasure is the friendship you share with your comrades'?"

"Any manga artist who draws this will absolutely get knives mailed to them."

"It's not an ordinary cardboard box."

Li Cheng narrowed his eyes, aimed at the box, and fired a Monkey Regression Gun.

The bullet struck the box—no change. Subsequent attacks with Dragon Breath and Death Curse Torrent left the box utterly unharmed, proving its uniqueness.

After much thought, Li Cheng cautiously stepped forward and used his will to place the box into his backpack slot.

It worked?

The Battlefield System's priority was unquestionable: once stored in the backpack slot, even a sword capable of destroying the world or a chaotic artifact capable of corrupting all things could not leak power outward, let alone escape.

Storing a box with unknown function was no issue.

Boom—

The moment the box vanished, the surrounding walls and floor groaned and twisted. Massive boulders rained down.

It resembled the classic Indiana Jones trope: the moment the treasure is taken, the ancient tomb collapses immediately.

"We should go."

Li Cheng took Hui Yu with him, exited the Battlefield entity, and returned to his living room in the real world. He then opened the player panel and logged back into the Battlefield.

This exit and re-entry changed his login location. Li Cheng found a nearby payphone and rushed to the Slum Street, locating the headquarters building of the Demon Scientists Alliance.

"Mr. Pi Fu?"

The demon girl named Zhenzi, whom he had met before, was on the first floor of the Demon Scientists Alliance. Seeing Li Cheng's disheveled and uneasy state, she was taken aback. "What happened to you?"

"Is Master Zhenli present?"

Li Cheng ignored the astonished glances from the Demon Scientists Alliance members and asked directly: "I need to speak with him."

"The chairman is upstairs. Allow me to notify him."

Zhenzi, her backward-bending goat hooves clicking, hurried to the front desk, picked up a vintage rotary phone, dialed a number, whispered for a moment, then nodded to Li Cheng. "Please follow me."

Li Cheng and Hui Yu followed the demon girl into the elevator, ascending to the 666th floor.

Black floor tiles, white wallpaper—like a modern office building. Nothing suggested this was the office of the chairman of the Demon Scientists Alliance, the entity capable of silencing children's night terrors.

"Come in."

Master Zhenli's voice came from behind the door. He wore the same yellow robe, his face hidden in shadow, standing relaxed before his desk.

On the desk sat a large square chessboard. On it, a miniature old man with white hair and patched clothes stood before an ancient house, holding a hoe.

Alone, facing a large, clearly corrupt demolition team.

Judging by the surrounding architecture, the era appeared to be about ten years ago.

The lonely old man swung his hoe, desperate to save his house, but was shoved aside by a tattooed brute from the demolition team. His yellow dog, trying to protect him, was crushed mercilessly by an excavator.

"Good. Very good."

Master Zhenli chuckled, tapping the chessboard with his finger.

【Name: The Demigod's Board Game】

【Type: Magical Artifact】

【Quality: Epic】

【Effect: Summoning Ping. After the user inputs massive spiritual energy, the board scans and searches the multiverse. If any individual, in despair, prays to any deity, the board responds. The board's holder may negotiate terms with the petitioner, forming a contract to receive souls, money, sacrifices, or other rewards, granting knowledge or power in return.】

【Cost: 1000 spiritual energy per use, additional 500 spiritual energy per hour.】

【Cooldown: 24 hours.】

【Requirement: None.】

【Note: Transferring energy across crystal walls incurs massive losses, ranging from 50% to 99.9%. Correspondingly, the petitioner's offerings to the board's holder will also suffer losses, depending on the distance between the two crystal walls.】

【Note: No matter what deity, I'll give everything—please help General Yue regain his honor? Wait, what's a Red Alert base vehicle?】

Uh.

The item's description was packed with absurdities, but Li Cheng unconsciously exhaled—he had never seen this thing before.

On the board, the old man knelt and wept. Instantly, the excavator busy demolishing the house lurched and was violently overturned.

Everyone—the white-haired old man, the tattooed demolition team, even the villagers watching—stared in stunned silence as the dead yellow dog floated in midair.

Its wounds healed rapidly, its body swelled violently, growing to seven meters tall. It devoured the demolition team one by one like snacks.

"Hmm… maybe I went a bit too far."

Master Zhenli scratched his palm. The yellow dog grew to the height of a five-story building, leaped effortlessly onto a mountain road, raced along it into the county, overturned countless vehicles, and dragged the hidden boss behind the demolition team out of an office building.

In front of the TV crew's cameras, he crunched him alive—crunch, crunch.

Still unsatisfied, the dog's orders seemed to be eliminating every person on the protection chain behind the demolition team. It leapt onto the highway, smashed through blocking vehicles, and charged straight toward the big city.

"Ahem."

The Side of Truth closed the chessboard with a hint of awkwardness, looked up at Li Cheng, and said with a trace of amusement in his voice, "Long time no see. What can I do for you?"

"It's like this — I just took part in a secret realm exploration event."

Li Cheng gave a brief and to-the-point account of what had happened in the secret realm, focusing on describing the hooded figure F's Infinite Fear ability, then took out the captured cardboard box. "I'd like you to confirm whether I'm still in the illusion, and help me take a look at this thing."