Chapter 579

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 and glinted off his silver-white armor, 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 itself.

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 locked in stasis.

“Holy shit.”

Li Cheng, floating in orbit, clicked his tongue and 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 satellites, Michael had effectively traveled 295,000 kilometers in a few breaths, detonating each satellite one by one.

Sun Wukong, the legendary first demon of all generations, could only cover 108,000 li in a single somersault—still nowhere near as impressive as this.

No wonder everyone says each level after Lv30 is a wall; the gap between Lv33’s Ten Thousand Li Blade Seal and Lv40’s Michael is like the difference between Three Kingdoms: New Era and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, between room-temperature, sugar-free, unchilled cola and ice-cold iced black tea, between Wang Laoer from the village’s toilet-paper literature “My Lower Body” and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

It was fine before the comparison; now, it was unbearable.

“Achoo—”

In the corner of the Special Affairs Bureau’s 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 still-intact right hand, fearing Michael far away couldn’t see, and specifically pulled a large LCD screen from his 3D storage, typing “Stop! 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 the ant?"

Michael’s voice echoed around him, a cold tone carrying a faint trace 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 Brother Ce describes me.”

???

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 Lv40, the strongest on Earth and founder of GOC, paused, then said calmly: “Do you want 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 by Michael, pressed his gloved hands against the demon’s shriveled, sunken body, and activated the skill [Visualized Memory].

Effect: Extracts the target’s most recent and vivid memory and replays it as a video.

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

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

Found it.

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

It showed a highly advanced industrial facility, with silver self-leveling floors made of high-molecular polymer material.

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

From the 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-soil wasteland, dotted with supermassive reactors, distillation towers, and cooling towers, each at least a thousand meters tall.

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: Noah of GOC had been right—the phase-shifting demons were indeed conceptual-level living weapons 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 other 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 resembling humans.

Michael stepped half a pace forward and silently activated his video transmission ability, streaming the scene to GOC headquarters’ main screen.

If the volume of each cell represented the power of the contained phase-shifting demon, 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 rapid clatter of footsteps sounded; a colossal entity slowly moved past beneath the prison corridor.

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

Its face was obscured by a hood; only two glowing points, likely 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 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 being projected.

Beneath the hood, the two blue eyes flared intensely, flashing at speeds invisible to the human eye.

A cold, curious gaze pierced through space and time, transcending the killing field’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, tearing through space; the hooded figure recoiled in pain, retracting its mechanical arm, and the memory footage ended.

Li Cheng stepped half a pace back; adrenaline surged through his Six-Base neural circuitry, sending tremors through him: “What the hell was that?!”

The [Visualized Memory] skill originated from the Killing Field.

It could, and could only, replay memories—and it was not under Li Cheng’s control; he could not speed up, slow down, or pause it.

It felt worse than KuaiBo.

“For certain items of Legendary quality, time and causality are not always linear. The phase-shifting demon’s creator, at that moment, knew it was being observed—and reacted accordingly.”

Michael sheathed his sword, paused, then said calmly: “The good news is, that world’s level cap is also Lv40—just like Earth’s.”