Chapter 543

Bai Ze's tone was serious and sincere, not joking.

The dense, noisy human voices in the background of the headset also confirmed this.

"Alright."

No matter how much doubt remained, they had to win first—Li Cheng stared at the alien mothership continuously spewing black smoke and said into the headset: "How do we fight this thing? Any suggestions?"

"According to existing intelligence, the 【Phase-Shifting Demon】 can freely alter its own composition and form of existence—solid, liquid, plasma, even electric current, data, and memetic concepts."

Bai Ze spoke rapidly, "Thus, it possesses extreme resistance to nearly all forms of physical and energy attacks.

To inflict effective damage, you must use ultra-high-spec attacks to first destroy its form, seizing the brief interval during its transformation.

Or employ high-mystery-level conceptual strikes."

Mentioning conceptual strikes naturally brings to mind the Farmhand, undefeated since his debut, revolver in left hand, whip in right—even divine abominations get whipped raw.

But the Farmhand only attacks souls, causing no actual physical damage.

Li Cheng's mind raced—by now, the black column had pierced the energy barrier and touched the skyscrapers along the Huangpu River.

Central Tower, Shanghai World Financial Center, Jin Mao Tower, Oriental Pearl Tower.

Wherever the black smoke reached, building exteriors shattered into flying glass; NPCs who accidentally inhaled even trace amounts of smoke staggered and collapsed, convulsing for ten seconds on the spot.

When they rose again, their eyeballs were crisscrossed with black veins, tendons bulging around their eye sockets, lunging at nearby uninfected humans at sprinter speed, tackling them down and spewing black smoke mouth-to-mouth.

The scene resembled a zombie apocalypse, but far stranger.

The infected and assimilated NPCs retained partial intelligence, coordinating to corner untransformed NPCs, forcibly prying open jaws to inject black smoke.

"What the hell are you all doing?! Gurgling gurgling gurgling."

Li Cheng's eyelid twitched again—just this ability to corrupt and transform was far beyond what any ordinary Lv33 human player on Earth could achieve; he immediately asked: "Which player's main universe does this 【Phase-Shifting Demon】 come from?"

"Unknown. Earth's players have never encountered it before."

On the other end of the line, Bai Ze said: "Master Pi Fu, you encountered the interdimensional players led by Mian Yue during your previous Tremor mission, right?

That world, like Earth, is a main universe with over two hundred thousand transcendentals, and their 'version' is slightly higher than Earth's—they've had more contact with otherworldly players.

Information on the 【Phase-Shifting Demon】 came from intelligence provided by that world's Order faction—they once repelled an invasion by the 【Phase-Shifting Demon】."

In other words, the Special Affairs Bureau only had secondhand intelligence.

Li Cheng clenched his lips, thought flickered—and all the Imperial Guard tanks hovering above the energy barrier simultaneously rotated their spiked turrets, firing high-explosive shells at the mothership.

Boom!

Multiple sections of the mothership's hull exploded; hundreds or thousands of tons of its outer shell collapsed like a landslide.

But the black gas seemed endless, swiftly filling the gaps, clinging to the hull and core components to prevent the mothership from breaking apart.

". Does this thing even have a physical body?"

Li Cheng closed the distance, aimed at the smoke, and pulled the trigger of the Ape Regression Gun.

The regression bullet struck the highly corruptive black smoke, instantly converting a volume equivalent to an entire warehouse into toxic fumes.

Yet, compared to the mothership's total mass, it was negligible.

He kept pulling the trigger—the regression affected only this "small cluster" of gas: from toxic fumes, it regressed into sulfur dioxide and coal smoke.

Then from coal smoke, into traditional cigarette secondhand smoke, then into e-cigarette secondhand smoke.

In the real world, the camera lens on every smartphone screen continuously switched between wide, medium, and close shots—everyone watched clearly,

One of the Neptune Task Force operatives whispered: "If I remember right, that gun's effect is regression, right? If it can regress traditional cigarette smoke into e-cigarette smoke, doesn't that prove the regression gun favors traditional cigarettes as the orthodox side?"

Colleagues in the vehicle turned silently toward him; the Neptune operative himself realized—he wasn't on a normal duty shift,

The bosses back at headquarters were still watching the live stream.

"Not at all."

This topic touched directly on Hui Yu's specialty; she explained seriously: "Look closely—it's traditional cigarette secondhand smoke regressing into e-cigarette secondhand smoke. This proves that, within the regression gun's framework, e-cigarette secondhand smoke is less harmful. Thus, it's actually a reformist supporter of e-cigarettes."

Oh, so that's how it is—Jing A, stick one up your ass.

The situation is critical—can you take this seriously?

At this moment, the streets were filled with infected and assimilated pedestrian NPCs, surging en masse toward Hui Yu.

Rare chance to beat up little brats—Hui Yu perked up, strength like a mountain, spirit overwhelming the world, swinging her Skull-Shattering Power Hammer in a wide arc.

Each swing sent a dozen zombies flying.

But the black smoke and zombies were endless, while the players' stamina and spiritual energy drained every second.

The Phase-Shifting Demon did not primarily target Li Cheng or Hui Yu—it poured all its strength into corrupting everything in the movie world, turning this place into its own domain.

As its corruption spread, even supporting characters in the film were not spared; the already crumbling energy barrier collapsed faster.

Shhh—

Li Cheng descended to the ground, having recalled all Imperial Guard tanks; Hui Yu swept away a wave of zombies with one hammer blow and asked quickly: "What now? Use that item?"

Their minds were in sync—the item referred to was naturally Li Cheng's most mysterious offensive artifact: the 【Eight Trigram Alchemical Cannon】.

If they dared to insert a perfect—or even higher-quality—artifact into it, forging it into a shell…

Even the original form of the Frog God might not withstand it.

"Not yet."

Li Cheng shook his head—the 【Phase-Shifting Demon】's form of existence was even stranger than the Formless Wombing Divine Abomination he'd faced before; the Eight Trigram Cannon might not kill it with one shot.

If so,

He dove into the riverbed nearby, slammed his 【Compassionate Soul-Infusing Melody】 gloves down hard onto the colossal cannon submerged in the water.

Creak creak creak—

According to the film's promotional material, this cannon was humanity's self-developed offensive doomsday weapon, symbolizing Chinese characteristics and technological independence, with special emphasis on artificial intelligence integration.

Never mind whether it was advanced or not—it was big enough. Under the power of Compassionate Soul-Infusing, the riverbed cannon rose on its own, slowly emerging from the water, rotating its barrel.

High above, the mothership seemed to sense what Li Cheng intended—it accelerated violently, slamming into the energy barrier, its underside beginning to charge a high-energy beam.

A vast swarm of Predator robots and Corrupted NPCs also threw themselves forward as if gone mad.

At the critical moment, Li Cheng lightly tapped an NFC card against the surface of the Heat Death Corridor, summoning the Frog God.

The Frog God, whose bulk rivaled that of a roll-on/roll-off ship, brought both palms slamming down onto the river surface; tens of thousands of tons of river water surged upward, hovering in defiance of gravity above the cannon and forming a spire-like structure reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower.

The mothership's high-energy beam struck the wall of water; most of its heat dissipated as the river water evaporated, while the remaining portion of the beam was deflected by the current, its energy spent through repeated refraction and scattering.

As for the robots and Corrupted NPCs diving in from above, they didn't even qualify as fodder before the Frog God — crushed flat by gravity exceeding seven times normal and embedded straight into the concrete road surface.

And this, in turn, bought the cannon at the bottom of the river enough time.

Zzzt!

The cannon's barrel blasted out a pillar of white light that pierced the sky; the few remaining glass curtain walls of the high-rises on both banks of the river reflected its dazzling glare.

The beam was not aimed at the mothership — that would have been pointless, merely destroying the temporary host the Phase-Change Demon was currently controlling.

What Li Cheng was aiming at was the spatial rift he had accidentally elbowed open earlier with his light-speed elbow strike.

BOOM!!

The spatial rift was violently torn wider; the original Category-8 gale abruptly escalated into a superstorm on the scale of Mars or Jupiter, accompanied by spatial distortion.

High-rises collapsed, bricks and stones floated, the river reversed its flow — every piece of matter in the city, including the mothership and including Li Cheng's Ash Rain, was siphoned into the spatial rift.

Inside a subway car, an Aquarius operative blurted urgently, "I'm detecting a surge in phone upload traffic! Can't intercept the data packets."

"Then trace where the packets are going! Hurry!"

Su Jie gave a sudden start, manipulated his instruments, and saw that massive cluster of data packets — dozens of gigabytes — hopping every 0.1 seconds, bouncing left and right between the backbone networks of domestic carriers like Telecom and Unicom, weaving repeatedly through various nodes before finally coming to rest.

At the Special Affairs Bureau command center in Yin City, a senior official beside Director Xing Hechou asked tensely, "Where did the packets stop?!"

Su Jie read off the IP address and scratched his head. "Sichuan Province, Panzhihua, some internet café."