Chapter 542: Phase Shift

Time returns to the present; Huiyu helps Li Cheng adjust his earpiece, while Li Cheng looks up and waves at the sky. "So you can see me?"

"Yes."

Customer service Yuan says: "At this moment, the Mobile Task Force has cleared the carriage and parked it on the tunnel's maintenance section, where the logistics team colleagues are analyzing the phone."

"I'm transferring your call now."

Even without considering the trillion-scale contract signed between Zhu Xing Zhen Tai and the Special Affairs Bureau, this incident has already impacted the real world—the Bureau cannot ignore it.

"Hey, is that Master Pi Fu?"

Su Jie's voice came through the earpiece: "Short version: the movie 'Shanghai Fortress' playing on this phone is from a pirated site; all functions—fast-forward, pause, switch audio tracks, adjust subtitles, screen mirroring—are locked. No instruments can obtain root access."

"From our perspective, the movie screen's footage remains fixed five meters in front of you two, in close-up frame. When you speak, subtitles automatically appear on-screen."

"There are subtitles too?"

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow and casually threw a bat claw into the air—it missed solid matter, proving no invisible crew was filming him with invisible cameras.

He paused, then pulled out a speaker and sang a gufeng DJ song: "I walk down the long street, listening to the actor sing of Jingcheng~ Pear blossoms fall before your window~"

This sudden act stunned Customer Service Yuan, the Mobile Task Force members clad in full memetic hazmat suits inside the carriage, and the senior officers at the Yinxin Special Affairs Bureau command center.

Su Jie exclaimed in shock: "Master Pi Fu, what are you doing?"

"Testing."

Li Cheng said calmly: "Domestic films must pass censorship to be released. If something absolutely uncensorable appears on a real-world screen, it proves this isn't a normal movie."

He was about to pull out some small props from his 3D storage.

"Whoa, don't!"

Su Jie, sweating profusely, quickly stopped Li Cheng—every Mobile Task Force mission requires audio-video recording and file archiving.

'Should've known better than to wade into this mess.'

Su Jie's expression was pure agony. He patiently explained: "Detection shows this phone's download speed is 10 Gbps, upload is 1 Gbps—exceeding normal 5G limits. It switches network providers and nodes every second, making tracking impossible."

"No wonder the mission's called 【Duizhan Qibing】."

Li Cheng rubbed his chin. "This movie is just one location in the mission. If you can't win a fight and need to flee—or chase an enemy—you can switch nodes to jump to other network devices."

The problem is: where is the enemy?

"Look up!"

Huiyu pointed skyward; the camera followed her finger to the disc-shaped alien mothership hovering above the energy barrier, which suddenly changed.

Thick black smoke gushed from its seams; the alien mechanical unit codenamed Fa Bushi was engulfed, froze instantly, and plummeted downward.

"Something's wrong."

In the subway carriage packed with professional gear, a Mobile Task Force operative muttered: "I've watched 'Shanghai Fortress' five times—there's no such scene."

At this, Li Cheng bowed his head in respect; Su Jie and others turned to stare at the operative.

A 2.9-star Douban sci-fi romance epic—normal people need to wash their eyes after one viewing, even apply for paid sick leave—

Who watches it five times straight?

Embarrassed by his colleagues' stares, the operative said: "I watched it with each of my five exes."

Sea king, huh? You never bring toilet paper to the bathroom.

Everyone turned back. The thick black smoke, slow yet swift, gradually engulfed the entire mothership. The ship, like a virus-infected vessel, extinguished its beams striking the barrier, shut off all lights, and fell motionless.

Something this abnormal must be supernatural. Li Cheng tossed the Ten-Eye earpiece to Huiyu, put on his Bluetooth earpiece, gripped his levitation engine, and floated toward the blue barrier above.

According to the movie's logic, humanity discovered Immortal Vines in space—an infinite energy source—that leapfrogged technology to invent the energy barrier.

(Don't dig into this—after all, the movie claims war regressed entertainment by a hundred years, yet civilians have unlimited beer.) Flying out through the barrier's gap, Li Cheng glanced down at the city and saw only the Shanghai urban area clearly; beyond it, everything was blurry color blocks—like an unrendered video game map. Understandable, since the movie's plot only occurs within this city.

He looked up, studying the motionless mothership. His Info-Synthesizing Glasses rapidly scanned: 【Alien Mothership】 behind it faintly appeared the characters 【Xiang Bian Mo】.

The next second, countless four-armed robots surged out, each covered in vast black tattoos.

"Tattoos? Then these robots won't pass the civil service exam."

Huiyu shook her head. These Fa Bushi robots, whose combat performance in the movie was worse than Earth's fourth-gen fighters, couldn't possibly harm Li Cheng.

As expected, Li Cheng merely snapped his fingers and summoned hundreds of Imperial Guard tanks, which fired a synchronized barrage—high-explosive rounds wiped out the four-armed robots. He asked casually: "My screen says the alien mothership is being parasitized by something called 【Xiang Bian Mo】. Do you know what that is?"

In the subway carriage, Su Jie and others exchanged glances; even the senior officers in Yinxin's command hall looked baffled. "What? Xiang Bian Mo? Never heard of it."

"Checked. No high-level player on Earth bears that name."

Major guilds maintain dossiers on every known high-level transcendent on Earth: life history, friends and family, personality traits, political stance—even using AI programs or human teams to analyze mission footage frame-by-frame, guessing and reconstructing every item and skill's effects.

No information on 【Xiang Bian Mo】 exists in Earth's known high-level players' power systems.

"Fine. I'll handle it myself."

Li Cheng floated another few hundred meters up, stretched his arms, deliberately delaying.

After the sonic and visual spectacle of the tank barrage, the movie's NPCs finally noticed Li Cheng. Dozens of fighter jets approached him; civilians on the ground, pretending to flee, pointed upward and chattered.

"Whoa, look! There's a person!"

"Really? He's flying in the air!"

The crowd's tone was so absurd, even Huiyu—who usually shrugged off everything—couldn't keep a straight face. Worse, their lip movements didn't match their words—the movie's post-production was a disaster, with mismatched lip-sync and voiceovers.

Once he'd drawn enough attention, Li Cheng grounded his Qi, quietly activated the 【Gao Guang】 skill scroll, and roared at the mothership: "Have you ever been kicked at light speed?"

Gao Guang—higher perceived prestige yields greater enhancement.

After the roar, Li Cheng's hair stirred without wind, his clothes flared wildly. He slowly raised his right leg, aimed at the mothership's central axis, assumed a kicking stance—and vanished from his spot.

Whirr!

The colossal vortex overshadowing the entire city split cleanly in two, like Moses parting the sea, revealing a long, narrow gap.

At the vortex's center, the alien mothership was pierced straight through; its interior erupted in cascading fires and explosions.

The mothership's durability was far weaker than the Alpha Giant Python. With its physical structure severely damaged, it visibly began to collapse and disintegrate—yet…

From nowhere, rolling black mist instantly extinguished all flames, then surged onward, engulfing the entire vessel.

The mothership's exterior, like those Predator robots, surfaced with tattoos. It continued hovering in the air.

"Mm?"

Li Cheng retracted his kicking stance; that kick just now had not only kicked open a seam in the mothership, but seemed to have shattered the boundary of the movie.

In the high sky, a hundred-meter rift appeared, madly sucking in the surrounding air, creating a level-eight gale.

A mere gale was not enough to affect Li Cheng; he slightly altered the direction of gravity and moved away from the rift.

That mothership grew increasingly strange. Instead of attacking Li Cheng, it released more Predator robots whose forms had been altered, and, like a banyan tree, dropped down columns of black smoke-like gas, extending along the gap in the energy barrier toward the ground.

Just as everyone was wavering between shock and doubt, a steady voice came through the phone. "Hello, is this Mr. Pi Fu? This is Bai Ze."

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow. This Bai Ze reported directly to the Special Affairs Bureau headquarters, representing the will of the higher-ups.

Since he was not in the Yin City Special Affairs Bureau system, it was obvious that the Yin City side had reported the situation to headquarters, drawing the attention of the central bureau, who then had the customer service agent Xiao Yuan transfer the call.

"The situation is urgent, so I'll keep it brief. This 【Phase-Change Demon】 is a high-level non-human player from another world, Lv33. Its specific abilities include form-shifting, assimilative corrosion, and memetic contamination.

Now we need you to spare no effort in killing it. You cannot exit the battle, otherwise, it will very likely take advantage of that five-minute period of unrestricted free activity after the mission ends to hack into every networked device on Earth and complete its preparations for invading Earth."