Chapter 441

Taking a deep breath, Hui Yu grew two extra arms on either side of his shoulders, gripping the hammer's handle tightly.

Step forward, twist body, slash diagonally.

The front face of the power hammer struck the hooded figure's back before he could turn his head. In the next instant, the metal rod at the hammer's rear retracted violently, flooding his spine with crushing force that spread through muscle and bone to every part of his body.

Boom!

The hooded figure's chest exploded outward, spraying a mist of blood. Every bone in his body snapped like crisp noodles; his raised arm dropped helplessly.

Li Cheng's gaze suddenly cleared. In the blink of an eye, he unleashed a dozen punches, then activated 【Condensed Qi Internal Explosion】.

The hooded figure's mangled body detonated violently; his scattered flesh and blood disintegrated midair into ash, leaving only a tattered hooded robe drifting in the air.

Done.

Li Cheng retracted his fists, gasping for breath as Hui Yu carefully helped him up. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Li Cheng rubbed his throbbing temples; a needle-like pain lingered in his brain, so intense he wanted to rip off his skull and pour liquid nitrogen inside.

"Then eat Liuliu Mei."

Hui Yu patted his back, and while fetching an inhalant analgesic from the 3D storage, she actually pulled out a pack of Liuliu Mei.

Li Cheng's eyelid twitched. "Dude, you actually got it? That ad's been out for how many years?"

"It's from 2013, so this pack of Liuliu Mei is from 2013 too. Should still be within expiration."

Hui Yu spoke with perfect confidence—Taobao, Xianyu, Pinduoduo were all too powerful; you could buy 80-year-old WWII canned food, 100-year-old zombie tuna, even 1,600-year-old Shu Han sourdough starter. She'd collected plenty.

If you went to the Loushi black market, you could even buy salted fish dried by the Hemudu people—seven thousand years old. Compared to it, the Yellow Emperor was just a green recruit.

"I'm afraid I'll drop dead the moment I eat it."

Li Cheng rolled his eyes, stood up shakily, and exhaled a long, foul breath.

At this moment, all other players—including Red Spider and Nikola—were still alive; Ercha Shu and Changsun Yao lay unconscious on the ground, while Xueshi Paoxiao sat slumped in the Infinite Justice mech's cockpit, unconscious.

What was notable was that no blood sea appeared in the Shi Zhu Forest, and Ercha Shu truly held a diving bell item capable of isolating deep-sea pressure.

"."

Li Cheng unconsciously furrowed his brow: no blood sea, Xueshi Paoxiao slumped in the cockpit, and Ercha Shu holding the diving bell—

These three points proved that the players had collectively fallen into an illusion mere seconds after encountering the hooded figure.

The facts confirmed it: he removed the action cameras from everyone's bodies, reviewed the first-person footage, and cross-referenced them.

He found that after instantly killing the other players, the hooded figure had immediately headed straight for him—likely sensing Li Cheng possessed an epic-quality item that resisted fear illusions.

Fortunately, with his last shred of clarity, he passed the Haihai Suohun Bell to Hui Yu, enabling a last-ditch counterkill.

【You can't stand by the river forever without getting your shoes wet.】

Li Cheng wore a solemn expression. The labyrinth restricted entry to players above Lv30, while the black-clad woman H and the hooded figure F each possessed power equivalent to Lv33—and they were back-to-back boss fights with zero respite.

Even Miyazaki Hideaki couldn't design such a nauseating level. It was clear this wasn't a scripted killground mission—it had zero balance.

"Are they… still alive?" Hui Yu hesitantly pointed at the unconscious bodies of Ercha Shu and the others.

"Not optimistic."

Li Cheng stepped forward and scanned them with his Information Synthesis Goggles.

Their body temperature, heartbeat, and other vitals were normal; their brains were intact, yet they had completely lost cognitive function over self and environment, while their brainwaves remained abnormally active.

Their symptoms lay between a vegetative state and locked-in syndrome: conscious but unable to move.

In other words, even after the hooded figure died, they remained trapped in the illusion.

Li Cheng shook the Haihai Suohun Bell beside their heads; their abnormal brainwave indices dropped slightly, but they still showed no signs of waking.

"Leave it like this." He pulled several stretchers from the 3D storage, laid the other players on them, tied them together with ropes, attached a 【Floating Engine】, and hung the Haihai Suohun Bell beside the stretcher.

The bell could only enhance resistance to all illusions—it couldn't shatter them. Ercha Shu and the others would have to break free from their fear on their own.

After tending to his companions, Li Cheng turned to Hui Yu. "Tell me—how did you break free from the illusion?"

At the mention of it, Hui Yu instantly perked up, hands on hips, striking the "I'm so proud of myself" meme pose, and proudly recounted her three illusion experiences.

". That's more or less it. In the end, my own subconscious realized the truth—it told me I was smarter and stronger than I thought, then I made a grand entrance and heroically saved the hero."

Hui Yu had truly carried this time. Li Cheng chuckled helplessly, ruffled her wire-haired head, and praised: "Aaaahhhhh baby, you're a soft, sweet, fluffy, crunchy, smooth, tender, squeaky-clean little white glove, oh my gosh, a clever little cake."

"Hehe."

Hui Yu grinned goofily, then suddenly remembered something. "By the way, what did you see in the illusion?"

"I'll tell you about that later."

Li Cheng didn't want to elaborate and changed the subject. "In your fear illusion, your subconscious said, 'Everything that happened at the Red Star Orphanage was real, Cha Yu Ji is Cai Anjie.' Is that right?"

"Mm." Hui Yu nodded, then pulled out a laptop and the Whale Song offline AI video generation software from the 3D storage.

She plugged a data cable into her forehead and, using extremely detailed keywords, uploaded her conscious thoughts into the AI video software to rapidly generate visuals matching her memories.

She focused on recalling scenes from the Red Star Orphanage.

"."

After watching the fear illusion footage, Li Cheng rubbed his chin. He took Hui Yu back along the same path and found the White Horse tombstone and the black-clad woman's corpse.

The death scenes of both matched Hui Yu's second fear illusion exactly.

This indirectly confirmed the truth of the Truth Side's words in the illusion—the hooded figure's fear illusions were a joint product of the victim's brain and the Law Force's compilation.

He quietly gathered the White Horse tombstone's remains, his mind racing.

All clues were woven together; only one final puzzle piece remained to solve the mystery.

Namely: why didn't the black-clad woman and other anomalous entities simply kill the players, but instead, with deliberate intent, subtly guide them?

To an almost obsessive degree.

"Cough! Cough!"

Suddenly, Changsun Yao, lying on the floating stretcher, coughed violently, her eyes snapping open. Her body instinctively broke free from the restraints and tumbled to the ground.

She staggered upright, a sheet of paper pinched between her index and middle fingers. As she took in her surroundings, her aggressive, cloudy gaze gradually cleared.

Li Cheng nodded. "Correct. You're the best among those who came this time."

"Stop with the memes already."

Changsun Yao sighed helplessly; based on her experience, she quickly deduced that Li Cheng and Grey Rain had already killed the hooded man.

A mere Lv21 killing a Lv33 anomaly—even if the latter had dumped all their talent points into illusion arts and was no stronger than an ordinary person—was utterly shocking.

Indeed, back then, not using sugar-coated bullets to forcibly recruit this kid into the guild was like a crab touching a live wire—totally numb.

"Can you still walk?"

Li Cheng casually tossed a painkiller over. "Let's go. It's time to dissolve the secret realm. Don't keep them waiting too long."