Chapter 559: Observation

Michael stood with relaxed posture, one hand on his hip, the other resting on the hilt of the sword at his side.

He was not tall, barely over one meter sixty; clear sunlight, unobstructed by any atmospheric clouds, streamed from the terminator line, glinting off his silver-white armor and casting a long, narrow shadow.

On the surface of the satellite debris, the phase-shifting demon, shrunk to the size of a basketball, still retained most of its intelligence and knew clearly that this very person had destroyed its meticulously planned scheme.

Instantly, it sprang upward, its body swelling dozens of times in volume, attempting to detonate.

Michael did not draw his sword, did not retreat—he simply gripped the hilt, stood at a distance, and gently nodded forward.

One-fifth of the phase-shifting demon's body was instantly erased; its massive form froze in space, on the verge of explosion but suspended in stasis.

"Holy shit."

Li Cheng, floating in orbit, clicked his tongue, did a quick calculation: Earth's geostationary orbit was 35,000 kilometers above the surface, Earth's diameter was 12,000 kilometers; just now, the phase-shifting demon had banished over two thousand artificial satellites; even without accounting for the longer orbital paths of nearby orbits, Michael had effectively flown 295,000 kilometers within a few breaths, detonating each satellite one by one.

Sun Wukong, the legendary first demon of all generations, could only leap one hundred and eight thousand li in a single somersault—still more impressive than Teacher Liu.

No wonder everyone says each level after Lv30 is a wall; the gap between Wanli Fengdao at Lv33 and Michael at Lv40 was like the difference between Three Kingdoms: New Era and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, between room-temperature, sugar-free, gasless cola and iced red tea, between Village Head Wang Er's toilet-paper literature "My Lower Half" and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Not comparing was fine; once compared, it was utterly unbearable.

"Achoo———"

In the corner of the Special Affairs Bureau command hall, Wanli Fengdao, sipping goji and ginseng tea, suddenly sneezed and immediately rubbed his nose hard.

In space, Michael tapped the hilt again; an invisible force tore the phase-shifting demon in half.

"Wait!"

Li Cheng waved his remaining intact right hand, fearing Michael far away couldn't see, and specifically pulled a large LCD screen from his 3D storage, typing "Spare Him!" on it.

Michael saw the screen and slightly loosened his grip on the hilt.

Li Cheng's spiritual energy had not fully recovered—he couldn't use the light-speed elbow strike. He summoned a marginal fighter jet, ordered it to accelerate continuously, and slowly caught up to the satellite debris.

Thud.

He landed on the debris surface; his legs and left arm, recently forged into cannonballs, now had their basic contours regrown and could support his weight.

"You're Master Pi Fu?"

Michael's voice echoed around him, a cold tone carrying a faint hint of surprise: "The Side of Truth mentioned you to me."

"Really?"

Li Cheng, in his insect form, rubbed his skull; his palm scraped against the spines on his head, sparking a dense flurry of sparks.

"Oh, actually, I'm nowhere near as brilliant, clever, prophetic, or strategically gifted as Side Brother says."

???

You were just being polite, and now you're bragging?

If Michael had a more lively personality, he'd definitely have made a sarcastic remark.

This man, the strongest Lv40 on Earth who founded GOC, paused, then said calmly: "Do you intend to kill the phase-shifting demon yourself? It has no regenerative ability—killing it personally should raise your score."

"Got it, but I want to try something first."

Li Cheng stepped closer to the phase-shifting demon, held aloft and restrained by Michael, pressed his gloved hands against the demon's shriveled, sunken body, and activated the skill 【Visual Memory】.

Effect: Extracts the target's most recent and vivid memory, replaying it as a video.

"The phase-shifting demon has no self-awareness; it cannot generate emotions like fear, regret, or euphoria. Theoretically, the only memories it retains are those implanted by its creator..."

Li Cheng muttered, held his breath, ignored the demon's violent struggles, and meticulously searched its mind.

Found it.

Li Cheng yanked his hands free; above the demon's head, a video projection appeared.

It showed a highly advanced industrial facility, with silver self-leveling floors cast from polymer materials.

The ceiling and walls were lined with intricate metal pipes and biomatter cables.

From the phase-shifting demon's perspective, it appeared to be in a large, elevated cell.

Through a circular window, three slowly rotating satellites hung on the horizon; outside lay an endless red desert, dotted with supermassive reactors, distillation towers, and cooling towers rising at least a thousand meters above the plain.

The fully automated facility operated without pause, yet what flowed from the discharge ports was not molten iron or chemical feedstock—but thick, black, smoky sludge.

That was the raw material for manufacturing phase-shifting demons.

Li Cheng understood at once: Dr. Noah of GOC was right—the phase-shifting demon was indeed a conceptual-level living weapon created by an alien civilization.

The scene shifted: to the left, right, above, and below the demon's cell, there were row upon row, column upon column of cells—numbering at least ten thousand.

Each cell held numerous types of phase-shifting demons, differing in size, color, and shape, seemingly evolved for different worlds.

Some even bore limbs and heads vaguely resembling humans.

Michael took half a step forward, silently activated his video transmission ability, and synced the scene to GOC headquarters' main screen.

If the volume of each cell represented the power of the contained phase-shifting demons, then that world contained at least two to three thousand transcendent beings above Lv34.

And this was merely a small section of the alien civilization's prison zone.

Shhh—

Outside the video, a dense rhythm of footsteps sounded; a colossal entity slowly shuffled past along the corridor beneath the prison.

It stood eight meters tall, draped in blue fabric, with a snail-like dorsal shell—or perhaps a hunched spine.

Its face was obscured by a hood; only two glowing points, resembling eyes, were visible.

This snail-like behemoth clearly ranked higher than the phase-shifting demons; it moved slowly down the corridor, following some standard protocol, using invisible force to remotely open cell doors and release one phase-shifting demon after another.

Just as it was about to pass, it suddenly sensed something, snapped upward from the ground, and fixed its gaze on the cell where the video was projected.

Beneath the hood, the two blue eye-points flared intensely, flashing at speeds imperceptible to the human eye.

A cold, curious gaze seemed to pierce through space and time, bypassing the battlefield's restrictions, locking onto Earth, locking onto Li Cheng standing on the satellite debris.

The blue fabric slowly parted; the colossal entity raised a mechanical arm and extended it toward Li Cheng.

Boom!

Michael drew his sword; blazing flames spread a kilometer wide, tearing through space; the hooded figure retracted its mechanical arm in pain, and the memory footage ended.

Li Cheng stepped back half a pace, and within the six-fold Foundation Establishment neural pathways, the surging thrill of adrenaline reverberated, "What was that?!"

The 【Visualized Memory】 skill originated from the kill arena.

It could, and could only, replay memories. Moreover, it wasn't even under Li Cheng's own control — he couldn't freely speed up, slow down, or pause it.

Felt worse than QuickTime.

"For some artifacts of above-Legendary quality, time and causality are sometimes not linear. The creator of the Phase-Change Demon, at that moment, knew he was being observed. So he reacted to it."

Michael sheathed his sword, paused for a beat, then said calmly: "The good news is, that world's level cap is the same as Earth's — also Lv40."