Chapter 501: Duel (5K)

In an instant, Li Cheng crossed 150 kilometers, descending into the abyss's lower layer amid a blinding wall of fire formed by compressed air.

He deliberately controlled the distance, avoiding piercing the giant octopus directly, lest he kill Bartmos, who was inside it.

Even so, the hurricane generated by his light-speed elbow strike still blew the octopus backward.

The creature flailed its tentacles, releasing telekinesis to stabilize its massive form and halt its retreat; its round eyeballs stared in shock at Li Cheng, and within the mouthparts beneath its massive head, the green orb containing Bartmos remained unswallowed.

The Information Synthesis Glasses activated scan mode, sweeping over the target and acquiring vast amounts of data.

The octopus was indeed a chosen one from the arena in another world, ID: 【Hundred Legs】, Level Lv24, its genome sharing 95% similarity with the Pacific giant octopus of Earth—humans and chimpanzees share 98%-99% genetic similarity.

Like real-world octopuses, Hundred Legs possessed a distributed nervous system: its central brain integrated information, stored long-term memories, and made decisions, while each tentacle's subsidiary brain independently processed local sensory input and motor control.

This neural structure naturally suited the telekinesis system, manifesting now as:

Hum!

Over a hundred telekinetic forces surged toward Li Cheng from all directions—crushing, tearing, pulling, strangling.

As the forum stated, a transcendent's power was tied to level, but also deeply linked to innate race.

A Lv1 dragon, qilin, or phoenix was inherently far stronger than a Lv5 naked ape human.

Mythic species were simply superior—they gained power even while sleeping, spending their days eating and drinking, nothing else.

Hundred Legs was no different; it originated from another world, a top-tier transcendent creature in its food chain, its true power vastly exceeding that of an ordinary Lv24 player on Earth.

Under the pressure of hundreds of telekinetic forces, Li Cheng's bones groaned audibly, especially the levitation engine in his hand, which was pried away from his palm by telekinesis, physically separated from his grip.

The fact that Hundred Legs could identify, within such a short time, that Li Cheng's greatest threat—the light-speed impact—originated from the device in his hand, indirectly proved its intelligence.

Creak—creak—

Li Cheng's eyeballs emitted a sound of crushing rupture; he immediately activated 【Stony Rooting Art】 to resist the telekinesis.

Simultaneously, he thought of the 【Thermal Death Corridor】 disguised as a wristwatch—it glowed faintly, instantly forming a black hole-shaped gate that summoned the complete Frog God from the void.

This extraterrestrial beast, which had fallen from the moon to the surface in the script world, was mountain-sized, comparable to Hundred Legs.

With its dull, lifeless eyes, it immediately activated its gravity talent, causing the metallic spherical levitation engine to shatter the telekinetic barrier and fall back into Li Cheng's hands.

He retracted the levitation engine into his backpack slot and replaced it with the Iron Flag Spear, gripping it firmly.

The Frog God's gravity manipulation talent was, at its core, a vector control ability; as its vocal sac beneath the mouth slightly swelled, the Iron Flag Spear in Li Cheng's hand shot sideways, straight toward Hundred Legs.

This strike rivaled a siege spear; Hundred Legs swung four tentacles, coiling them into a cubic formation before its body.

The Iron Flag Spear struck the invisible force field wall, slowing repeatedly, finally halting just fifty meters before Hundred Legs.

Yet the green glow emitted by the orb containing Bartmos pierced the darkness, illuminating the Iron Flag Spear and revealing something hidden at its tip.

It was the Shadow Peregrine, summoned via summoning arts.

The displacement skill 【Familiar Swap】 activated instantly: Li Cheng and the Shadow Peregrine exchanged positions, breaking free from telekinetic control; his left hand seized the Iron Flag Spear again, his right fist drew back, and in the blink of an eye, he unleashed dozens of punches at the spear's tip.

Qi Condensation Internal Explosion!

The explosive force turned the spear into an arrow loosed from a bow, piercing through multiple layers of telekinetic barriers and embedding deeply into Hundred Legs' soft tissue.

Dense neurons transmitted pain signals to the central brain, causing Hundred Legs to emit a muffled, agonized shriek.

Over a hundred decentralized subsidiary brains seized partial authority of the central brain, adopting the combat-logic-optimal response strategy.

【Skill Name: Demon King's Melody · Contact Restriction Order】

【Type: Spiritual Energy】

【Effect: Denial of Existence. Summon musical notes from the void, strike them in a specific sequence to activate. Select and designate a target; thereafter, the user suffers no effective damage from that target. Conversely, the user also cannot inflict any damage upon that target. Maximum duration: 90 seconds.】

【Cost: 300 Spiritual Energy, 150 Sanity】

【Cooldown: 1 hour】

【Requirement: 1000 hours of music game playtime】

【Note: "I'm just here to play Taiko!" said the county magistrate, yanking the vines off the gong at the courthouse entrance.】

This 【Contact Restriction Order】 was one of the skills in the 【Demon King's Melody】 series; its effect literally denied existence, completely nullifying all damage from a target for ninety seconds.

In other words, even if a nuclear bomb fell before his eyes, as long as the prerequisites were fulfilled before detonation, he could still be immune to the blast damage (excluding residual heat and radiation).

Around Hundred Legs, thousands of musical notes of various colors appeared—some circular, some square, moving upward, downward, drifting, or flickering.

For a human with only ten fingers, completing such a complex melody required repeated practice and at least two to three minutes.

But for Hundred Legs, with its hundreds of muscular, highly flexible, brain-equipped tentacles—

Tap-tap-tap-tap—

In the blink of an eye, Hundred Legs shattered all thousands of musical notes; invisible force spread outward, isolating it from Li Cheng.

The Iron Flag Spear detached from its body and fell into the abyss, only to be retrieved by the Frog God's ability and flown back into Li Cheng's hand.

'Such a high-priority skill.'

Li Cheng's pupils contracted slightly; arena equipment skills always had an implicit 'priority' setting.

When two effects contradicted each other—say, forced wakefulness versus forced sleep—the higher-quality, higher-mystery effect prevailed, largely overriding or completely nullifying the lower-priority effect.

But this wasn't absolute; some low-quality effects inexplicably coexisted with high-quality contradictory effects.

Like feeling both agony and pleasure simultaneously, cursing the game company while pre-ordering a new Steam title.

The Iron Flag Spear carried a counterattack effect that should have blasted Hundred Legs away, yet it was overridden by an unknown skill.

Hundred Legs fixed Li Cheng with a deep stare, then unleashed a torrent of telekinesis, grabbing the Frog God's limbs and pulling them in opposite directions.

The Frog God's physical strength was limited, and its vector control was nowhere near as precise as Hundred Legs'; its skin tore open, revealing pale bones, and with wounds too severe, Li Cheng immediately recalled it remotely into the 【Thermal Death Corridor】.

After eliminating the Frog God, Hundred Legs entered a phasing state; its hundred-odd tentacles spun rapidly, activating a skill that emitted rainbow-like trails, using the phasing state to ignore air resistance and hurtle downward into the abyss without looking back.

'Think you can escape?'

Li Cheng snorted, pulling a missile from his 3D storage.

Not a heavy ICBM, but an 11-meter-long, 0.8-meter-diameter ballistic missile.

Its design resembled the real-world Yemeni Houthi armed forces' 'Palestine-2' hypersonic missile, using a two-stage solid-fuel engine configuration,

The stainless steel missile casing was covered in obvious weld marks, even tiny doodles of animals drawn by Gray Rain—clearly not a professional military missile.

Indeed, this missile was assembled by Li Cheng himself, using civilian equipment purchased from the Slums and his Tinkerer abilities, screw by screw—functional enough was all that mattered.

Li Cheng slightly bowed, lifted a stainless steel plate with his right hand, touched the flight control chip with his fingertips, and activated the Assembled Puppet·Modified.

Neural interface with the flight control chip succeeded; under willpower, the engine roared to life, spewing a 3000°C orange-red plasma jet from the rear nozzle, instantly breaking the sound barrier and accelerating to Ma He 3.

The violently compressed air formed a milky-white shock cloud behind the exhaust; the wall-like compressed air slammed into Li Cheng's body, his high-molecular composite fabric clothing flapping violently, on the verge of tearing.

Though no third party was recording with a motion camera, Li Cheng had no intention of running naked—he wasn't some pervert who enjoyed strutting around in fetish wear.

He immediately activated the Semi-Insect Form, covering his entire body with biomaterial armor, then knelt on one knee atop the missile casing, gripping the missile with both hands—one forward, one back.

The biomaterial shell grew and solidified in a specific shape, like tail fins of an aircraft, naturally integrated—not significantly increasing air resistance or blowing him off, but stabilizing the flight trajectory.

Ma He 3, Ma He 3.5, Ma He 4.

The missile accelerated step by step, gradually closing the distance to the hundred-legged octopus.

One Ma He is 340 m/s; Ma He 4 is 1300 meters per second. In barely eighty seconds, Li Cheng and the hundred-legged octopus had plunged over a hundred kilometers, faintly seeing lights below.

At the abyss's bottom lay a dense, thriving primeval forest, teeming with bioluminescent ferns, trees, and shrubs—reminiscent of Pandora from the movie *Avatar*. A four-legged, horned herbivore, bent over eating ferns, finally heard the rumbling above and lifted its head slowly, its flat yellow pupils gazing upward.

Two points of light, trailing long afterburners, dove down, illuminating a forest that had never seen sunlight in countless years.

Flocks of birds took flight in panic; herbivores and rodents scattered in all directions; only phototactic insects instinctively spread their wings and flew toward the brilliant light source.

Li Cheng calmly assessed the distance to the hundred-legged octopus; its phasing state and its immunity to attacks were growing increasingly strained, unsustainable.

Once the phasing state ended, its massive body would generate substantial air resistance, making evasive maneuvers impossible.

The moment had come!

As the hundred-legged octopus regained physical form, Li Cheng willed it—tungsten alloy dual-cone warhead and fuel chamber separated; the warhead's contour violently fricated with hypersonic airflow, glowing blue-purple with ionized luminescence.

Like skipping a stone, it maneuvered lightly in midair, each course change triggering conical shockwaves.

Such terrifying penetration speed left no time to stack layered psychic barriers—the time was insufficient. Thus, the hundred-legged octopus could only weave two layers.

Shaped like a cone, the first layer compressed air into 35 MPa high-pressure gas; the second, thinner, spiked instantaneously to 200 MPa.

The tungsten alloy dual-cone warhead struck the side of the conical compressed-air barrier, like a skateboarder suddenly sliding onto ice—the flight path jerked sharply off course.

The second layer of compressed air further amplified the warhead's deflection angle, causing it to veer on its own, glancing past the hundred-legged octopus's massive body, wrapped in ionized luminescence, and slamming into the primeval forest floor.

Boom—

A 30-meter-diameter ultra-high-temperature plasma sphere surged upward; nearby trees and shrubs burned to charcoal; soil and rock were baked, approaching vitrification.

'Fast reaction.'

Li Cheng silently praised—he had, in the blink of an eye, synthesized data on air composition density, warhead material, aerodynamic shape, and flight speed, using psychokinesis to form a high-pressure gas barrier.

Like a ping-pong player applying backspin, he used the dual-cone warhead's own properties to deflect it at minimal cost.

This calculation speed rivaled supercomputers in the real world. No wonder he was an alien player who survived the Killing Field deathmatch.

But if a physical warhead can be deflected—what about Lightning Thunder?

Still standing atop the fuel chamber, Li Cheng took a deep breath; above his head, a blue dragon's phantom appeared, its massive mouth brewing a spherical plasma of lightning.

Heavenly Thunder descends!

Hundreds of lightning forks split and struck the octopus's hundred tentacles; its biological mechanisms forced it to involuntarily recoil its limbs, mouth opening, spitting out the thing it had been holding—Ba Tamos.

Ba Tamos himself remained unconscious; his personality backup, however, was drenched in sweat, screaming: "Master Pi Fu, save me!"

This hacker's brain was still 80% carbon-based; though the remaining 20% remained in the real world, stored in the Whale Song Guild's vault—he could be revived by connecting to an electronic brain and downloading his old memories after death.

But the new "Ba Tamos" would not be the same as the original.

Li Cheng activated 【Thermal Death Corridor】 again, summoning the Six-Armed Snake Demon.

The demon possessed innate teleportation; it flashed before the hundred-legged octopus, seized the green light sphere containing Ba Tamos, then flashed back to Li Cheng's side. With the hostage no longer held, large-scale lethal methods could now be deployed.

"Are you... his companion?" At last, a vague, toneless, directionless voice echoed through the air—the sound of psychokinesis directly vibrating the air.

Li Cheng gripped the levitation engine in one hand and said gravely: "I am the Director of the Office of the Working Group for the UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage Nomination of the Ancient Guqie Kingdom Historical and Cultural Site in Qiewei County, BYGLMG Autonomous Region of Xinjiang."

"Now, surrender the human chosen one you have captured—there is still room for negotiation."

In the script mission, the Killing Field's translation system was utterly omnipotent—even dead languages like Akabo from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal (the last speaker of Akabo died in 2010) were perfectly translated.

And for alien-world chosen ones—should, might, perhaps it also work?

"."

The hundred-legged octopus remained silent, its tentacles swaying unconsciously. One tentacle drew from thin air a... Yu-Gi-Oh! card with a black hole pattern on its back.

【Item Name: Zok's Game of Nelofer】

【Type: Toy】

【Quality: Epic】

【Effect: Dark Duel. Select a target; pull both opponent and self into a disembodied Dark Duel game. Rules are transparent and fair. Duration: 2 to 30 minutes. Winner permanently acquires a trophy from the loser.】

【Cost: 50% of total Spirit Power, maximum Sanity】

【Cooldown: 15 days】

【Condition: User's Level ≥ Target's Level】

【Note: Trophy type depends on specific game rules—typically lifespan, Spirit Power, attributes, or item/skill.】

【Note: During Dark Duel, neither party is affected by external interference. Those who maliciously delay or break rules suffer severe punishment. Target may pay cost to end Dark Duel early.】

【Note: "I summon the Sealed Dark Magician, Shang Yang! With the right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot of the Sealed One!"】

Invisible force spread; surrounding light dimmed. Between Li Cheng and the hundred-legged octopus, a massive wooden table padded with velvet material appeared out of nowhere; each side now faced a stack of cards, adorned with ornate patterns and complex text.

"Hm?"

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow; without using his Info-Synthesizing Glasses, system descriptions of the cards automatically floated above the table.

It was a card battle game similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! —both decks public, rules transparent and fair.

In other words, the hundred-legged octopus had no intention of using the Dark Duel to directly cripple Li Cheng. Its goal was to stall as long as possible.

"You want to buy time for your other teammates to arrive?"

Li Cheng said nothing in reply, calmly picking up the card. "Interesting. But I have teammates too."

————

At the same moment, the upper layers of the Abyss.

The Black Pearl's flight control system was severely damaged and needed to be returned to the glass bottle for automatic repair.

Thus, all three players were crammed into the two-seat fighter transformed from the edge vehicle.

The engines belched afterburner flames, propelling the fighter into a dive at 1.8 Ma He.

Claudia had transformed into a small bat, hanging beneath the rear cockpit hatch. As the fighter jolted left and right, forward and back, her bat face even showed a greenish pallor.

"Don't throw up—don't you dare throw up!"

Bai Ma Mubei, seated in the back, shouted nervously. She knew the Monutong Alliance's transformation ability: the form changed, but the life essence remained the same. If Claudia vomited, the volume would still be human-sized.

"I'll try—ugh!"

Claudia squealed, covering her mouth with her wing membranes. "Tell her to slow down!"

"Young Lady Huiyu, please slow down!"

Lei Yesi, lying curled in the narrow space behind the rear seat due to limited room, shouted, "If it's really unmanageable, can't we switch to autopilot?"

"Don't worry—I just downloaded a flight tutorial online. The uploader's supposedly the best pilot in the former Middle East. Too bad he died in a Boeing-767 heavy cruise missile strike. Anyway, it's fine."

Huiyu smiled confidently, pushed the control stick forward, and accelerated again.