Chapter 507: Coexistence

"How is he here too?"

The headless reindeer blinked open its neck-stump eyes and casually explained, "This one is named Tunggu. According to your human terms, he's also a native of the Killing Ground. He's my friend. Long time no see—I'll go chat with him."

Saying this, the headless reindeer rose from his seat; Claudia and Li Cheng stood up simultaneously and said together, "I'm coming too."

Claudia thought of taking a look at the engineer's cabin—after all, with the Eternal Life Field as backup, she might even seize control of the train and kick off a power-fantasy plot.

She'd already named her novel: "Reborn on the Veil of Heaven Continent: Am I the Protagonist of a Power Fantasy?"

Li Cheng, naturally, was drawn by the two words "Divine Corruption."

The headless reindeer shook his head. "You two shouldn't follow. Tunggu's a decent guy, but he's got a bit of racial knight syndrome—he equally discriminates against all humans."

"No problem, I'm a bit discriminatory too," Li Cheng waved dismissively. "I'm a Crazy Thursday V-me Knight."

Wan Li Fengdao rolled his eyes and retorted, "Isn't it V-me-50? How'd it become V-me-70? Taking kickbacks, are you?"

In the end, under the headless reindeer's insistence, the players did not follow.

With nothing else to do, Huiyu decisively pulled out a neck pillow, eye mask, and noise-canceling earplugs, and fell asleep without a care—before sleeping, he even plugged himself into a power bank to charge.

Bai Ma Mu Bei took a shockingly heavy alloy barbell from his inventory slot and began exercising in silence.

Wan Li Fengdao quietly sipped goji and ginseng tea; Claudia and Lei Yesi closed their eyes and meditated to restore their Qi.

Seeing everyone occupied, Li Cheng thought for a moment, then pulled from his inventory a generator, an electromagnetic stove, cooking oil, green chilies, a cutting board, a knife, and a spatula.

He sliced the green chilies. Wan Li Fengdao turned his head at the noise, glanced once, and said nothing—high- and mid-level players were generally cautious; every mission required canned food and bottled water, and those with spare inventory space often brought packed meals.

Cooking on-site was a bit odd, but not unheard of.

"Holy shit, what are you doing?"

Wan Li Fengdao's startled cry drew the attention of Bai Ma Mu Bei and others. They saw Li Cheng activate his Assembled Puppet ability, and with a soft "pop," effortlessly plucked off his left finger like pulling a radish, then broke it into small pieces without a drop of blood, setting them aside in a bowl.

"I just got a bit hungry walking," Li Cheng said casually. "Do you want braised chicken feet or stir-fried pork with chilies?"

His tone was light. As he was about to heat the oil, the severed finger pieces, driven by invisible force, floated up and reassembled themselves like building blocks.

"Huh?"

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow and activated the Assembled Puppet ability again, pulverizing his finger into powder, sealing it inside a glass test tube with a stopper, and tossing it to a distant seat.

This time, the flesh powder took longer to reform within the test tube, then shattered the glass and flew back to the stump on Li Cheng's palm.

Lei Yesi reacted instantly. "You're testing the Eternal Life Field mechanism?"

Li Cheng nodded, running multiple rounds of tests—including soaking the severed finger in hot oil—where the eight-tenths-cooked finger still restored perfectly.

He severed his finger again and used the Assembled Puppet ability to implant a pen into the palm stump—the finger flew back and fused with the pen.

He tried to store the severed finger in his inventory slot—the attempt failed; the part anchored by the Eternal Life Field could not be retrieved.

"I understand enough."

Li Cheng rubbed his fingers, thoughtful. "It's not regeneration—it's more like restoration."

"Regeneration and restoration."

Claudia chewed on the two words, frowning. "They may look similar in outcome, but the mechanisms are entirely different. The former grows new tissue from the wound; the latter freezes the injury and reverses the damage to restore the original part."

From a prestige standpoint, restoration is clearly more advanced—it's akin to entropy reduction, bordering on law manipulation."

Lei Yesi's eyes flickered; suddenly, he understood. He prided himself on his abilities, rising from a penniless street vendor in Mexico to third-in-command of a mid-sized guild, managing hundreds of billions in funds.

But compared to Master Pi Fu—the man who single-handedly raided London—he still fell short.

While Lei Yesi was still basking in the relief of barely surviving, Master Pi Fu had already, under the guise of feigned madness, quietly probing the train's field mechanism.

If something truly went wrong, these fragmented scraps of information might just save his life—or yield something far more valuable. The devil hides in the details; this caution and diligence might be the very gap between those destined to reach the summit and the merely average.

"Sssss—"

As Lei Yesi pondered, he suddenly heard the hiss of escaping steam.

Li Cheng had stopped cutting fingers; instead, he pulled out pig's trotters and soybeans, and shoved them into a pressure cooker, boiling them fiercely.

The pressure cooker was made of titanium alloy—unusually sturdy, so even the restoration effect of the Eternal Life Field could not crack its body.

Lei Yesi exclaimed, "WTF, bro, you're actually cooking?"

"What else?" Li Cheng smirked. "From earlier tests, the more severely living tissue is damaged in the Eternal Life Field, the longer the restoration takes.

I'll stew the trotters to mush, eat them immediately, then block my eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and navel. I want to see how it restores after turning into shit."

This claim was too absurd. Claudia slapped her forehead, exasperated. "Why does talking about shit and piss make you suddenly energized? Aren't you worried the restored trotters will burst your intestines?"

"A transcendent's internal organs are strong enough that pig's trotters won't burst them."

Wan Li Fengdao's gaze turned grim. He muttered under his breath, "I'm more worried the restored trotters might get reused by him."

————

The sensor door slid open. The headless reindeer, clad in a windbreaker, stepped into the ninth car of the Eternal Holiday-themed train and waved. "Hey, Tunggu."

The skeletal knight, who had been polishing his armor, turned. His metal plate armor was nearly a palm's thickness, black and silver interwoven, complete with shoulder, armpit, arm, and leg guards, all studded with metallic spines. The front chest bore a protruding rib structure.

His weapon was a two-handed greatsword sheathed on his back; his mount, a shifting, rag-draped cloud of smoke.

"Reindeer… long time." Tunggu's voice was gravelly and rough; red light flickered in his hollow eye sockets. "You carry the scent of Divine Corruption."

"I know. It's from a little brother of mine."

The headless reindeer shrugged. "But he's a Worm Lord-infected Divine Corruption host—not the kind you're hunting."

Just as the headless reindeer enjoyed fishing, the skeletal knight, another high-intelligence native of the Killing Ground, hunted specific types of Divine Corruption.

"Divine Corruption is like humans," Tunggu said coldly. "The dead ones are the good ones."

"You're still too extreme."

The headless reindeer shook his head. "The main universe Earth currently connected to this Killing Ground zone has humans as the dominant species.

Just as arthropods dominated the Cambrian, insects and fish the Silurian and Devonian, dinosaurs the Jurassic—whether you like it or not, we must coexist with them for a very, very long time.

Rather than hate them, why not enjoy their civilization's fruits? Like this."

The headless reindeer waved a smartphone; GOC had piled it with countless technologies to win his favor.

Not only could it absorb light to charge itself, but every app inside was a cracked version—no ads, unlimited data, with a built-in black-card payment system.

Once the headless reindeer opened some livestream platform and casually gifted a fishing streamer a hundred super rockets and cosmic spaceships, scaring the streamer into thinking he'd stumbled onto a money-laundering scam. The streamer hurriedly knelt and begged him not to file a minor refund.

However, hearing these words, Tungsten Bone opened his lower jaw and let out a silent, cold laugh. "Coexist for long? Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?"

The headless reindeer was taken aback. He only ever went to explore places with fish-type creatures, so his understanding of the Killing Grounds really did fall short of this friend's.

"In the next car, there's a Chosen One from outside Earth, from the main universe."

Tungsten Bone casually pointed at the eighth car where the Mushroom King and the others were, and said in a low, eerie voice: "I've been to the border of the Killing Grounds. I saw with my own eyes the rift forming. The various zones of the Killing Grounds are linking up.

For humanity as a species, as a civilization, the newbie protection period is almost over."