Chapter 563: Eternal War

A rather hellish joke is that the United Nations, as the world's most authoritative and legitimate intergovernmental organization, had an annual budget of merely 3.7 billion U. S. dollars before the Killing Field descended, often delayed by the United States in paying its dues, feeling less substantial than MiHoYo's revenue.

The Global Occult Coalition (GOC), theoretically a subordinate body of the United Nations and on par with the World Bank and the World Health Organization, saw everything change after Michael rose to prominence.

When the first batch of transcendentals reached Lv5, Michael was Lv10. By the time the main force barely reached Lv10, she was already Lv19.

The chasm of power, coupled with the ideals of maintaining international peace, security, and development, attracted a large following (including agents, spies, corporate spies, and ambitious schemers) to join the GOC.

The snowball grew larger and larger, its authority expanded rapidly, and the supernatural research fund it established directly built laboratories within the Killing Field, continuously analyzing and converting Killing Field artifacts into academic papers and scientific achievements, then producing products through its controlled corporations.

Civilian products included anticancer drugs, gene therapy injections, and mechanical prosthetics; military products naturally included firearms, ammunition, holy water, and peach-wood swords.

In addition, the GOC was also the largest real estate developer in Slum Street, and because players had average physiques comparable to Captain America and could phase through walls and see through objects, construction materials had to be specially formulated concrete.

By the way, the GOC's subsidiary real estate company was named Eternalgreatness, which could also be translated as "Evergrande"...

Li Cheng shook his head and tossed the chaotic thoughts behind him.

The GOC, with its vast financial resources, could recruit talent from across the globe, so its documentation was highly professional and comprehensive, especially for high-tier items like the Nine-Toothed Rake and the Ginseng Fruit—each item led to hundreds of papers and experimental records—

This also explained why internationally renowned scientific institutions were willing to collaborate academically with the GOC: the latter was genuinely inclusive and open, willing to share its best assets to help everyone publish papers.

"Atomic structure analysis of the Nine-Toothed Rake, quantum tunneling effect behind size-shifting mechanisms of the Nine-Toothed Rake, response mechanism to specific sonic commands..."

Li Cheng read the papers with great interest; the GOC's inventory of Nine-Toothed Rakes did not come from the original Journey to the West, but were looted by players from treasure chests, themselves epic items requiring Qi to activate.

The GOC's scientists were bold and inventive: they discovered the Nine-Toothed Rake responded to specific sonic commands by changing size, so they partnered with the Evil Science Alliance to selectively breed a batch of swine-like subhuman transcendentals with intelligence and consciousness, roughly Lv10 in strength, dressed them in identical blue-green linen robes from the Journey to the West's Zhu Bajie, and implanted false memories via brain-computer interfaces, making the subhumans truly believe they were Zhu Bajie, banished from heaven for flirting with Chang'e.

As the swine subhumans uttered sonic commands in Tang-era elegant speech, the Nine-Toothed Rake, after a brief hesitation, changed size autonomously without consuming the user's Qi.

The scientists immediately confirmed: the rake contained a hidden artificial intelligence akin to a "spirit within the artifact," adapting its behavior to the user.

By extension, epic-tier and higher supernatural items, beyond their listed effects, might harbor additional hidden properties.

As for subsequent experiments with the Nine-Toothed Rake... the spirit soon realized its master was not Zhu Bajie, merely a counterfeit creation, then floated upward, killing all the swine subhumans, several scientists who couldn't escape the lab in time, and two armed security squads.

It was only finally suppressed by arriving high-tier transcendentals.

Li Cheng had no need for the Nine-Toothed Rake; he didn't need Ginseng Fruit either—his Six-Mineral Genome's self-healing ability alone let him live for thousands of years effortlessly.

After nearly twelve hours of searching, he finally selected from the GOC's inventory... a rather peculiar item.

It was a paper scroll five meters by ten meters; the scroll itself bore no patterns, but generated maps based on surrounding terrain.

【Item Name: The Eternal War Map】

【Type: Universal】

【Quality: Epic】

【Effect 1: Soldiers as Chess Pieces. Convert all soldiers, vehicles, unmanned units, command centers, etc., under your control into chess pieces and store them within the map. When needed, unfold the map, place the pieces, and deploy friendly units to designated positions.】

【Effect 2: Eternal Game. Passive effect. Once the map is unfolded, the user receives real-time data uploads from every unit and can issue commands via thought to control every unit's movement in real time.】

【Effect 1 Cost: Each map deployment consumes no less than 200 Qi points; subsequent costs depend on strategic map area, number of controlled units, and duration of control.】

【Effect 1 Cooldown: None】

【Usage Requirement: Intelligence attribute greater than or equal to 20; completed high-difficulty challenges in ten real-time strategy games.】

【Note: Units converted into chess pieces are bound to the holder of the Eternal War Map. When the holder dies, all units vanish simultaneously—unless they remain outside chess form for over a year.】

【Note: Warfare is a state's greatest affair, a matter of life and death, survival and destruction—must be thoroughly examined.】

【Note: Learn my operations, the rest is just F2 and A-click.】

"Whoa, does the GOC really allow this strategic-level item to be sold?"

Li Cheng couldn't help clicking his tongue; this 【Eternal War Map】 alone was equivalent to a super-large-capacity space compression device, a long-range teleportation apparatus, a power projection system, a full-spectrum battlefield perception system, and an AI command-and-decision system.

It utterly overturned modern warfare tactics.

Imagine an Asian tourist, part of a tour group, departing from Yin City, flying to the U. S. East Coast, touring Boston, New York, Washington D. C. over ten days, even wearing a New York tourist cap while visiting the Lincoln Memorial, then suddenly pulling out a map, dropping chess pieces, and summoning two fully equipped modern heavy combined arms brigades.

Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, rocket artillery, missile launchers, air defense missile systems—all present, even aircraft and reconnaissance planes requiring no airfield, and submarines and cruisers beneath the water.

Viewing the battlefield from a god's-eye perspective, as if granted divine sight, with every unit responding instantly to his will, he could sweep up every old man in Congress and every wealthy elite who came to attend the meeting.

"Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, Space: Above and Beyond..."

A series of war-related literary works flashed through Li Cheng's mind; any military strategist would crave this artifact—Zhuge Liang with the Eternal War Map could launch a northern expedition all the way to Siberia, Napoleon could sweep across Europe and reclaim his glory, Yang Guang... ah, forget him—Guangshen's absurdity was about on par with Gao Liang River's Car God, the Wari student, —

and Chiang Kai-shek sitting at the same table.

"But the GOC listed the Eternal War Map for sale for a reason."

Li Cheng rubbed his chin; transcendentals, especially high-tier ones, still held overwhelming advantages on modern battlefields.

Forget suicide drones and rockets—even hypersonic missiles flying at Mach 5 were useless against transcendentals above Lv35.

Either they couldn't lock on, couldn't catch up, or simply couldn't kill them—the latter could just teleport underground hundreds of meters and shrug off missiles like child's play.

Aside from mutually assured destruction via instant nuclear detonation, only transcendentals of equal level could counter the myriad tricks of high-tier transcendentals.

Precisely because of this rule, global government elites and wealthy magnates spared no cost to invest in cultivating their own players, even becoming players themselves or turning their relatives into players.

The Eternal War Map was useful, but Lv40 didn't shake the world order much—after all, the note said: kill the holder, and all chess pieces vanish.

Yet for Li Cheng, the Eternal War Map solved several critical problems.

First, the capacity of his 3D warehouse could no longer accommodate the ever-increasing number of Magic Cannon Vehicles; he could now store all of them within the map.

Second, the deployment speed and command limit of the vehicles.

The vehicles' firepower was not weak—a hundred Magic Cannon Vehicles firing simultaneously equaled a heavy combined arms brigade, capable of threatening high-tier transcendentals like White Horse Tombstone or Blood Lion Roar—but as battles progressed, transcendentals moved at high speed, the battlefield shifted constantly, and the vehicles couldn't keep up, easily left behind.

The Eternal War Map could consume Qi to retract the chess pieces, carry the map, and constantly shift battlefields, always providing fire support.

Meanwhile, the Eternal War Map's thought-command feature could greatly expand the number and variety of weapon platforms the Magic Cannon Master class could control.

If a vehicle was destroyed, no loss—it was hand-crafted from screws, recyclable scrap metal, my fifty-game-coin vehicles were infinite, while your Qi points kept draining. jpg

Michael was extremely busy, so Li Cheng contacted Dr. Noah: "Hey, Brother A-Nuo, I want the item with serial number L-352, the Eternal War Map—can you arrange it?"

??

Either call me Noah, or call me Doctor—what's this "A-Nuo" nonsense?

Then let me ask you: is your head pointy or bald?

In the forum chat box, Dr. Noah fell silent for a moment, then replied: "If it is a promise made by Archangel Michael, then of course there is no problem. But may I ask Master Pi Fu, how exactly do you plan to use the Ten Thousand Ages Eternal War Map?"

As time passed, the impact of the London incident was slowly fading, but the hair those GOC personnel assigned to clean up in London had burned out would never grow back.

Dr. Noah had heard junior agents burn incense and pray more than once that unstable elements like Master Pi Fu would never pull another big stunt again.

The Laughing Troupe pulls a major stunt at most once a year—you're even more terrifying than the Laughing Troupe.

"Purpose?"

Li Cheng thought for a moment, then typed: "Start a cross-dimensional tour group—invite domestic Warhammer players to wage war in the Warhammer universe, lure readers of Blade of the Immortal to hunt down Griffith, and lead Cthulhu fans into mortal combat against the Ancient Ones. Something like that."

The ellipsis clearly conveyed Noah's headache, "We will send someone to deliver the item to Zhu Xing Zhen Tai in ten minutes. Please receive it."