Chapter 528

"Ssshh—Hhh—"

Lei Yesi gasped sharply, pushed himself up with both hands, and sat upright, his trembling eyes scanning left and right.

The ground where he lay was still the mountainous terrain torn apart by high-temperature plasma flows.

The melted lava had long since solidified into black rock; from its degree of hardening, dozens of hours had passed since he fell unconscious.

Others who slowly regained consciousness included Mian Yue, the Fungus King, Claudia, and more—everyone's first action upon waking was to check their lungs; Wanli Fengdao lifted his head, voice hoarse: "Where's Master Pi Fu?"

"I'm right here."

A voice came from behind the slope—Li Cheng held the four-dimensional box, and beside him stood the astronaut, restored to mobility, walking on his own two legs.

Among the human players, Lei Yesi had slipped into unconsciousness early, like falling asleep during a math class, completely unaware of what followed.

But Claudia and Wanli Fengdao had twitching eyelids, secretly suspecting something—the mission required installing the annihilation device at a designated location,

and without traversing the Dreamland, the unconscious astronaut would almost certainly be unable to "install" it.

Only by personally experiencing and completing the Dreamland, awakening the individual consciousness of astronaut Will, could the next step be unlocked.

"Say one line each: 'Sister Yu is awesome.'"

Huiyu stood tall and stepped forward, sincerely remarking: "In the end, it still came down to me. I gave it everything—time to cross my arms."

Earlier, when Huiyu had been eating seafood with coconuts on the beach, she hadn't stopped listening to the radio signals.

Though no signal came through, she heard a faint ding-ding sound, and finally followed the hammering noise, drilling through the metal dome—now reduced to mere centimeters thick—and broke through the barrier between the two worlds.

"Fine, I'll praise you."

Li Cheng sighed, turned his head slightly, and said to Wanli Fengdao and the others: "Prepare for battle."

Battle? With whom?

The colorful mist around them rapidly faded, and the body of the Alpha Python emerged from within the haze. It shook its head, shaking off the illusions' influence, its mountain-sized serpent head looming down over the players.

Zero-frame initiation—Alpha immediately opened its maw, the accumulated high-temperature plasma glowing as blindingly hot as a solar panel.

Step.

At the critical moment, the astronaut stepped forward, raised his palm, and pointed remotely at the Alpha Python.

The fusion engine's power plummeted; the plasma collapsed and disintegrated, leaking from the gaps in the serpent's mouth. Dense sparks erupted across the serpent's body, with massive structural fragments snapping and falling away.

This was not a powerful distortion—the players present felt no force or psychic energy, only some ethereal command.

Astronaut Will and Alpha were two sides of the same essence, both remnants left behind thousands of years ago by the Lv40 transcendent, Yutian Di.

And when Will passed through the Dreamland, recovered his memories and consciousness, he naturally became an entity of equal rank to Alpha, able to directly dismantle it through their latent connection.

Whoosh—

Metal structures collapsed like a landslide, the serpent's head reduced to only 70% of its original mass, one eyeball popping from its socket. The once-kilometer-long body shattered extensively, unable to support its own weight, crashing down with a thunderous roar,

Dust billowed—the Bai Ma Mu Bei's pupils contracted sharply, then kicked sideways, striking the bewildered griffin squarely in the face, sending it flying hundreds of meters, while using the recoil to launch himself backward.

Almost the instant both had left their positions, a brilliant white light erupted from the smoke, cleaving the hillside in two, carving a gaping trench.

Most of Alpha's body had already disintegrated, leaving only the head and the metallic skeleton of its neck. The fusion engine within the skeleton flickered dimly but refused to extinguish.

"."

Astronaut Will collapsed, utterly drained. Li Cheng grabbed him, threw him onto the copilot seat of the Edge Fighter, then leapt aboard with Huiyu and glanced at his Casio watch.

Wanli Fengdao's mission, 【Armed Escort】, required safeguarding the four-dimensional box for 48 hours. Now, only five minutes remained.

"Stop it,"

Li Cheng moved like lightning, rapidly programming the flight path on the fighter's control panel, shouting without looking back: "Give me five minutes!"

"Five minutes is too short! How about I hold off Alpha while I sing you a whole song, 'King of Love Songs'?!"

Wanli Fengdao shouted back in protest, but his hands moved without delay, slashing out a Ten Thousand Swords Return to Origin with his Sword of Dragon-Slaying.

Even though Alpha Python had reduced itself to just a head, it was still overwhelmingly authoritative to the players—merely the residual heat from its fusion engine incinerated Lei Yesi's tattooed army and Mian Yue's arrows.

"Leave it to me."

The Bai Ma Mu Bei's voice was as still as an ancient well—this was no longer the Dreamland; death here meant true death. She slammed the stone coffin into the ground, smashed off the lid with a palm strike, and locked eyes with the corpse of her future Lv35 self, decayed and skeletal, inside.

She and her own rotting corpse simultaneously extended their palms, fingers interlocked, merging as one. Her aura surged violently, explosively, impossibly!

She stomped the ground with one foot, cratering it twenty meters deep, then leapt high into the air—her right arm, rotted to exposed bone—delivered an uppercut straight to Alpha's jaw, forcibly interrupting the beam of heat aimed at the Edge Fighter.

Claudia unleashed a river of blood, Lei Yesi summoned his War God avatar again, and all the transcendent players unleashed their full arsenal, pinning Alpha firmly in place.

The Edge Fighter, carrying Li Cheng and astronaut Will, sped toward the crystal forest they had come through.

Huiyu, using her nanite body, clung to the wing, feeling the howling wind, then liquefied herself, slithering through the cockpit window seam, reshaping her head to ask curiously: "Where are we going?"

"Zeroing is complete. Time to reboot."

Li Cheng glanced at astronaut Will sitting in the back seat, his mind swirling with a thousand thoughts.

Will—or rather, Yutian Di—was at minimum a top-tier transcendent from tens of thousands of years ago, the oldest of the old.

He had the right to gather Mi Ka Le, Truth's Side, Han Shuishi, and point at their noses asking, "How many years have you been players?"

From him, Li Cheng would inevitably obtain direct, top-secret clues tied to the Killing Ground.

As if sensing Li Cheng's thoughts, Will trembled slightly and pulled a cable from beneath his seat.

Li Cheng instantly understood, yanked a hard drive from the fighter's computer, connected it to the cable using a makeshift puppet interface, and linked it to Will's astronaut helmet.

"The Killing Ground, literally boundless, connects to countless worlds capable of selecting Chosen Ones—the Prime Universe."

Will whispered, barely audible: "Each Prime Universe's Chosen Ones are given a level cap by the Killing Ground—Lv20, Lv30, Lv40, and so on.

If the most elite Chosen Ones fail to transcend the Beyond in time and lead their people past the level cap, their entire world will be dragged into the Killing Ground. The Chosen Ones themselves will also, fall into, divine monstrosities."

What?!

The instrument panel showed less than two kilometers to the amethyst forest. Li Cheng steered the fighter into the path he had carved earlier with his light-speed elbow strike.

His mind was flooded with shock, his pupils trembling: "Divine monstrosities are… players?"

He had imagined a thousand possibilities—but never this answer. Before he could ask further, a blinding beam pierced through the rock layers, shearing off one entire wing of the fighter.

Alpha ultimately broke free from Bai Ma Mu Bei and others, drifting swiftly to catch up.

The edge fighter, without its wings, glided downward toward the crystal ground; Li Cheng decisively retracted the fighter and tossed the astronaut to Hui Yu, who hovered in midair via floating engines: "Take him to the location specified by the guidance radar." With that, he violently opened the 3D warehouse and hurled it forward.

A line of heavy war vehicles, studded with rivets and rugged in design, crashed down, rising on six leg-like limbs; their long, thick barrels rotated in unison under fire-control systems, all aimed at the rock strata.

At the instant Alpha's colossal serpent smashed through the crystal rock, every war vehicle bearing the codename "Imperial Guard" fired simultaneously—kinetic projectiles and electromagnetic shells rained onto the serpent's head.

Boom!

The crystal forest, unchanged for tens of thousands of years, now saw countless hanging crystal pillars snap and fall due to resonant shockwaves from the artillery.

As the flames cleared, the serpent's damaged head opened its single remaining eye and unleashed a high-temperature beam, instantly annihilating an entire row of war vehicles.

Flames shot skyward; the remaining Imperial Guard vehicles moved their leg-limbs in orderly fashion, retreating in all directions, their fire-control systems rotating barrels for a second, then third volley.

Alpha, which Bai Ma Mu Bei and others had been unable to stop even with all their strength, could not possibly be halted by the Imperial Guard vehicles now.

With a casual blast of light, it sliced through vast clusters of crystal above like a hot knife through butter, sending tens of thousands of tons of crystal crashing down to crush the remaining vehicles.

But the dozen or so seconds gained were enough.

At the rear of the vehicle formation, the 3D warehouse's door stood wide open; in the corner sat a gantry crane, beneath which hung a partially mechanized Daqun.

Crystal arrays filled its incomplete brain; multi-band detectors were implanted into hollow eye sockets; optoelectronic cable bundles repaired damaged nerves; rotary cannon replaced broken chelae.

After the London battle, Daqun suffered severe damage and has yet to be fully repaired. Beneath the gantry crane sat an Alec swimming pool, continuously collecting blood and hydraulic oil dripping from Daqun's body, then pumping it back in through pressurized pipes.

The industrial repair arms surrounding the gantry crane now screwed massive bolts into openings on the mechanical Daqun's body, stopping the bleeding, then slapped 50-cent band-aids on top of each bolt as if offering comfort.

And Li Cheng stood at the warehouse exit.

"Initiation complete."

The mechanical Daqun's electronic eyes flared red; all its cables snapped autonomously; smokestack-like vents on its back erupted with murky black smoke and blazing fire, propelling it like an arrow loosed from a bow, flying out of the warehouse.

Simultaneously, its chest armor plate snapped open, revealing the cockpit.

Li Cheng, standing at the warehouse entrance, leapt upward and landed precisely inside the cockpit, connecting the dense, vein-like cables hanging within to the back of his neck and arms.

Alpha's attention remained mostly fixed on the astronaut Wil, glancing only briefly at Li Cheng before casually firing a blazing beam.

The mechanical Daqun flickered, using the Summoning Technique: Spirit Swap to alter its flight path, dodging the beam, closing in before the serpent's head, and swinging its lone remaining chela in a condensed qi explosion punch.

Alpha's size was immense; even its remaining serpent head loomed over the mechanical Daqun like a tree over Master Pi Fu.

All physical attack methods proved ineffective; even the Summoning Technique: Farmer was no different—it possessed no soul whatsoever.

Fortunately, what Li Cheng needed was merely contact.

Thump! Thump!

The mechanical Daqun's chelae pierced into Alpha's body; the armor at the chelae tips sprang open, releasing all rounds from the hidden 【Ape-Man Regression Gun】.

Alpha's mystery level was too high; though every regression bullet struck, it only reduced the fusion engine's power and abruptly slowed its flight speed.

That was enough.

The 【Thermal Death Corridor】 activated; the Frog God, revived after more than twenty-four hours, stood upright, palms pressed together, and surrounding crystal shards floated upward.

Gravity reversed.

Within the designated area, gravity inverted—Alpha's massive serpent head, uncontrollable, plummeted upward, shattering countless crystals until it struck the platform.

At that moment, the countdown on Casio's watch ended; the four-dimensional box unfolded layer by layer, releasing two beams of light that became two autopsy beds, resting upon the platform.

The astronaut Wil had long known his mission; he lay on the right autopsy bed. Alpha struggled fiercely, but as the Frog God, far below, relaxed its frog-paws, gravity returned to normal—Alpha crashed onto the left autopsy bed.

A light as brilliant as a star's birth illuminated the entire hundreds-of-kilometers-long crystal rock layer in an instant; all sound vanished.

The mechanical Daqun's visual receivers were all burned out; the intense visual burn signal traveled along the cables into Li Cheng's brain, making his head throb.

He staggered to his feet and pushed open the cockpit door.

There stood Hui Yu, arms crossed, unmoving on the platform. The astronaut and Wil on the autopsy beds had vanished.

In their place, the platform itself had changed.

The ground turned liquid, seeping into the crystal forest, transforming the crystals into other matter.

Rocks and mountains materialized out of nowhere; artificial buildings rose from the earth, and within them appeared countless mechanical life-form children, sleeping in stasis.

This Genesis-like spectacle left Hui Yu stunned: "What the hell?"

"He's replicating his homeland."

Li Cheng realized: the Lv40 transcendent 【Devastator】's life essence was so profound that even after dying tens of thousands of years ago, he could still warp reality and reshape the environment.

"Wait—this isn't replication."

Li Cheng immediately rejected the guess: the mechanical life-form children bore no resemblance to the residents of Dreamland, and their brains didn't operate via air pressure differentials.

The "souls" of Wil's people were, fundamentally, the continuous computational state of golden leaf-like structures in their brains. Once computation ceased, the "soul" vanished instantly.

Thus, merely replicating a homeland—recreating Wil, his sister, his friend Robinson—was meaningless. They'd be mere fakes.

He chose complete reboot: his own civilization.

Click-click-click-click—

One by one, the mechanical life-form children opened their eyes; basic intelligence had been uploaded, and upon awakening, they spoke immediately, gazing bewildered at each other: "Where are we?"

"Who are you? Who am I?"

The mechanical children soon noticed Li Cheng and Hui Yu, whose appearances differed starkly from theirs, and approached cautiously: "Are you the gods who created us?"

Hui Yu raised an eyebrow: "You call anyone 'god'? That's classic Android thinking."

Li Cheng raised a hand to cut off Hui Yu's nonsense: "I'm not your god. At best, I'm his friend."

The mechanical children whispered among themselves; their personalities were pristine, blank slates. They asked timidly: "What should we do now?"

What to do?

If other players stood here, facing an entire city and countless easily manipulable general-purpose AIs, they might have turned them into slaves, followers, or servants.

But Li Cheng thought for a moment, then waved his hand: "Right now, cherish every breath, cherish every second of free thought, develop your civilization, and live well. That's enough."