Chapter 547: Breath

Claudia, Mianyue, and Wanli Fengdao all lay flat against the wall, their lungs utterly empty.

Li Cheng reached out and closed their eyelids, took a deep breath, and stood upright.

He swapped in Wanli Fengdao’s bottled lung, held a four-dimensional box in his left hand, an ice pick in his right, and strapped two high-pressure gas cylinders to his waist—each gauge showed less than 50% gas remaining.

It was time to move.

Li Cheng took a deep breath and stepped into the tunnel.

The surrounding air was thick and stagnant, pressure visibly elevated, his brain stabbing and numbing as if plunged into ice water.

This numbness stemmed directly from the laws of Dreamland, unrelated to actual atmospheric pressure; even if he donned a pressure suit, nothing could alter or reverse it.

He advanced slowly along the tunnel wall, the digits on his Casio F91W wristwatch ticking faster by the second.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The striking sound ahead grew clearer; Li Cheng gasped heavily, shifting his gait from lifting his feet to dragging them along the ground—slowed thinking delayed motor commands from the brain.

Lifting the foot left it suspended in air for too long; dragging it saved energy.

His limbs grew heavier, his vision doubled; he decisively removed his left lung and replaced it with a fresh gas cylinder.

Found it.

The astronaut faced away from Li Cheng, gripping an ice pick, striking the metal dome with steady, rhythmic force.

The ice pick’s blade glowed faintly—not with radioactive luminescence, but with the bright shimmer of high-frequency vibration cutting.

Metal shards rained down; the astronaut sensed movement behind him, glanced over his shoulder at Li Cheng, then turned back and resumed swinging. A calm voice issued from his suit’s speaker: “Only you left?”

His suit was more advanced, maintaining pressure better; to Li Cheng’s ears, the words sounded sped up by double.

“Only me.”

Li Cheng nodded, already prepared—he did not open his mouth, but mimicked Will’s motion, rotating the ice pick’s handle to the designated setting, activating high-frequency cutting mode, and began striking the wall.

Simultaneously, he used a stitched puppet connected to an embedded AI broadcast speaker to speak his scripted lines at the same double speed:

“The path to the gold mine leads only to you and me. Ten years from now, your son drives a Bentley to high school; your father-in-law greets you with a smile every time. At forty degrees Celsius, your villa stays as cool as twenty. You drink Flying Moutai with breakfast. Nubile mistresses beg you nightly to marry them. All this—because you stayed, didn’t run, and bought the bottom.”

The road to the gold mine now leads only to you and me. Ten years later, your son drives a Bentley to high school, your father-in-law greets you with a smile every time, your villa stays cool at 40 degrees Celsius, you drink Feitian Maotai with breakfast, and young models and mistresses beg you nightly to marry them—all because you stayed with me and bought at the bottom.

If the astronaut were from Earth, he’d surely retort: “Bro, are you talking about crypto or CS skins?”

The astronaut didn’t understand. He kept silently chiseling.

Li Cheng pressed the speaker button again: “So—is your current personality Will, or the Lv40 transcendent from tens of thousands of years ago?”

“That’s like asking if an eight-year-old and an eighty-year-old are the same person.”

The astronaut fell silent a moment, then spoke coldly: “I am both Will and the Lv40 transcendent you speak of. In your language, my ID is 【Defender of the Heavens】.”

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow, chiseling as he replied casually: “So you’re a Transformer, huh?”

“What’s a ‘transformer’? Never heard of it.”

The astronaut said coldly: “The town beneath this dome was my homeland, buried in the farthest corner of the Killing Ground.

I was the smartest engineer of my race, the first to realize our world was dying.

Heat death was inevitable; the only path to survival was to carve through the dome before the end.”

He swung the ice pick, shearing off a large slab of metal: “In my final moments, I invented high-frequency vibration cutting, using the ice pick to chip at the dome, excavating tunnels.

I succeeded. The instant the tunnel broke through, air surged violently—the high-pressure gas trapped beneath the dome rushed outward.

All machinery driven by pressure differentials restarted. The leaves inside the townsfolk’s brains resumed spinning at high speed.

All machines driven by pressure differentials restarted. The blades inside the townspeople’s brains resumed their high-speed rotation.

Brains already reset could not return to normal computation; even with renewed airflow, only zombies awakened.”

The topic was too heavy—even Li Cheng didn’t crack a joke like “Are robot zombies sweet or savory zongzi?”

He asked seriously: “Then what?”

The astronaut said calmly: “As the sole survivor of my kind, I sealed the metal dome, wandered endlessly, became a Chosen One, learned of the Killing Ground, and realized my people were likely mechanical races designed, then abandoned and stored by the Killing Ground.”

Li Cheng couldn’t help asking: “Does the Killing Ground actively create races?”

“Where do you think those security guards come from?”

The astronaut glanced at him: “I grew stronger, gradually abandoned my original body, became a giant mechanical lifeform powered by nuclear fusion—became what you call Lv40—until my end.”

Li Cheng’s heart stirred. The enemies he’d faced all had bizarre survival methods.

There was Gouchen, who stitched people together; Joker’s Relic Crystal soul-transfer technique; countless iterations of cloning.

Even Li Cheng himself—if he wanted to cheat death—could upload his consciousness to a server backup using stitched puppets and the Glove of Compassionate Soul, then import it into a cloned body when needed.

It was hard to imagine an Lv40 transcendent had no ultimate survival trick.

He was about to ask, when the astronaut suddenly stopped chiseling, leaned against the wall, and slowly sat down.

“After I died, perhaps my will was too strong—I split into two parts: one became a mechanical serpent, the other became the original Will.

The former followed instinct: hunting, feeding.

The latter returned again and again to the Dreamland, reliving childhood memories, trying to rewrite the ending.”

The astronaut’s speech slowed further; he too was nearing gas depletion, using his still-functional right hand to laboriously swing the ice pick.

“Rewrite?” Li Cheng kept chiseling, stunned: “What do you mean?”

“A Chosen One once told me the Dreamland is a component of the hidden 【Wish Room】.”

The sentence remained unfinished; the astronaut’s head drooped, silence fell.

“Leave it to me.”

Li Cheng removed his last high-pressure gas cylinder from his waist, replaced his empty right lung, picked up Will’s ice pick, and swung both in unison, striking hard.

Metal shards flew; only Li Cheng’s heavy breathing remained.

Fifty centimeters. One meter. Two meters.

Shards and slag piled higher beneath his feet; breathing grew as labored as a torn bellows.

Four meters. Six meters.

His mind spiraled uncontrollably, as if he’d eaten undercooked mushrooms—strange, surreal visions flooded his vision.

The New Three Kingdoms was voted the greatest TV series of the 21st century; Optimus Prime was arrested for prostitution after hailing a ride via app; the principal sprinkled nails on the track to preserve the dignity of classmates who couldn’t afford spiked shoes.

These were not hallucinations from exhaustion—they were caused by unstable pressure disrupting the orderly spin of the brain’s leaves.

The ice pick struck hard; his limbs lost all strength. Li Cheng’s head leaned forward, pressing against the seemingly endless metal wall, his body slowly sliding down.

Clang. Clang. Clang—

Sudden, rapid chiseling echoed from behind the dome; a brilliant light pierced the darkness, blinding Li Cheng’s retinas.

Through blurred vision, Grey Rain’s liquid metal slipped through the narrow fissure, entered the tunnel, and gently lifted him up.

Pressure equilibrium shattered; a furious wind surged from the castle into the tunnel, swept past Li Cheng’s body, and rushed into the sandy world beyond the fissure, where average pressure was lower.

Both gas cylinders on his lungs read zero—but Li Cheng no longer needed to breathe. He opened his arms, letting the gale rush through his trachea, flooding into his brain.