Chapter 211: Eradication!

Wu Chang and He Yun passed through the light and returned to the main hall in reality.

The Mother God's emergency return was naturally within Wu Chang's expectations.

When he had communicated with He Yi earlier, he had already used He Yi to figure out the rules of the Mother God's comings and goings in the soul space—every time the Mother God entered or exited, the Desire Stone Tablet in the soul space would light up.

Because the Mother God had never imagined that anyone could enter her space to rescue someone, she had never hidden anything in front of He Yi.

Wu Chang's long-range teleportation could only manage to bring He Yun in to rescue He Yi; to leave, they had to wait for the Mother God to open the door herself.

The space where He Yi was located, similar to the Golden Kingdom he had created with the Golden Throne, was the Mother God's exclusive space. Since they had smuggled themselves in, the Mother God would sense it soon enough—there was no fear she wouldn't open the door.

What if she never opens the door?

Wouldn't that be even better? Once Wu Chang's long-range teleportation cooled down, he could leave on his own.

Back in the main hall in reality, Wu Chang looked at He Yun and asked, "Do you have any usable vessel on you?"

"Vessel?" He Yun didn't understand what Wu Chang meant for a moment.

Wu Chang said, "Something that can move on its own—a robot or a robot dog will do."

He Yun suddenly understood and reached into his portable toolbox to search.

"It's just a temporary body for your brother, after all. As long as it can move, there's no special requirement," Wu Chang added.

Hearing Wu Chang's words, He Yun silently stuffed the self-destructing robot dog back and took out a thirty-centimeter-tall multifunctional drone.

"Will this do?"

"Should be no problem."

As Wu Chang spoke, he waved his hand, and a mystical ritual appeared before his eyes.

He placed the drone into it, then shook the Four Directions Age-Fire Lamp, releasing He Yi's soul from within the lamp into it as well.

With all the elements gathered, after a burst of flashing light, the drone on the ground flew up on its own without anyone controlling it.

The signal lights on the drone flickered a few times, and then He Yi's voice rang out before the two of them.

"I really got out?"

Even now, He Yi still found it hard to believe that a strange stranger had actually broken into the Mother God's domain with his sister and rescued his soul from within.

Honestly, compared to what had happened in reality, he would rather believe it was all a Mother God trick—a trap she had devised to break his Dao heart.

He was afraid that when he believed everything was real, the Mother God would suddenly appear and destroy everything he saw before his eyes.

He Yun looked at the drone in the air, spread her arms, and said:

"Welcome home."

He Yi thought for a moment. With the notion that at worst the Mother God would win once, he slowly landed on He Yun's arm.

He had originally intended to hug her, but only upon approaching did he realize he had no hands.

Watching the two's awkward reunion, Wu Chang said:

"Later, have He Yun build you a robot body. I'll help put your soul into it, and you'll be able to move like a human again."

He paused, looked at the He Yi drone, and said:

"It's just that you won't be able to make little people in the future, but I saw an ad in the city for an Invincible Big Cannon—two thousand extensions and retractions per minute, not only can it heat up and discharge, it also rotates. Absolutely works great."

He Yi: ……

If only the drone had weapons mounted on it, he would definitely give that bastard a full burst.

He Yun briefly recounted what had happened after He Yi fell asleep, and Wu Chang supplemented the details on the side based on the obsessions he had seen.

After hearing the events of that year, the drone's propellers spun rapidly, and the indicator lights on the display screen pieced together into an angry face.

"I knew that bastard Mercury had a problem. If only I had killed him first before sealing the Desire Mother God!"

He Yun did not pay too much attention to Mercury. She turned to look at Wu Chang, and a rare gentleness appeared on her face.

"Although we were both schemed against by the people behind the scenes, manipulated by them at will, it's also my fault for not being firm enough in my will. That's why I fell for Mercury's trick, fled from the past, and sank into depravity."

"Since meeting Heping, with his help, I gradually found my former self again, and dared to bear everything once more. When I stand here again, when I see you again, Brother, I have completely recalled what happened back then, and I am ready to face all of it."

An ellipsis appeared on He Yi's display screen. After a few seconds of silence, the ellipsis turned into a pair of eyes. They looked at He Yun and asked:

"Are you sure you're ready?"

He Yun nodded seriously, then turned to face Wu Chang and said with a smile, "You'll still be by my side, right?"

Wu Chang said matter-of-factly, "No matter how many times you want me to answer this, whatever you want to do, I will walk with you to the very end."

Sensing the strange atmosphere, He Yi flew two circles around Wu Chang. After observing him from every angle a few times, he flew in front of Wu Chang and said:

"Although I find you very disagreeable, kid, my sister is in your care."

Wu Chang replied, "Leave it to me. I won't let her come to harm."

He Yun, whose face was slightly flushed, gave a dry cough to draw the two's attention back and said:

"You've gone off topic. The main business hasn't been finished yet. When, with Heping's help, I dared to face the past, I recalled what had happened back then, and why the entire Underground Shelter No. 88 had fallen into a bizarre underground loop."

"Because……"

Just as He Yun was about to get to the most critical part, a black shadow suddenly shot over from afar and slammed heavily into the ground. The enormous crash cut He Yun off.

From within the smoke kicked up by the impact, Helmet Man slowly walked out. He looked at He Yun and said:

"Found you."

Although Helmet Man had agreed under Meng Yawen's coercion and inducement to help her rescue people first, for him, completing the mission on his body always came first.

Sensing an abnormal energy reaction in the Stone Temple, he had wondered if He Yun had snuck in, and he hadn't expected to actually catch her red-handed.

Only it was different from what he had imagined—He Yun hadn't infiltrated alone. Beside her was an unfamiliar Wasteland Realm player, and a... drone?

He Yi sized up the suddenly appeared Helmet Man, recalled what He Yun had just said, and asked Wu Chang:

"Is this bastard the one who wanted to deal with Little Yun?"

Wu Chang nodded and added, "This is the bastard who wants to deal with Little Yun."

He Yi's propellers spun very fast, heat began gushing from the top of his head, zero-frame startup, instantly going red-hot with rage.

"Dammit, if I still had my own body, I'd chop that bastard into ten thousand pieces!"

But no matter how heated he got, beyond the "Warning, Warning" prompts, it brought no power at all.

Once invincible across every plane, He Yi was now just a reconnaissance drone with no combat system installed — this feeling was even more helpless than when he had faced countless mecha warriors alone back in the day.

Wu Chang stepped forward and walked to He Yun and He Yi's front, saying:

"Leave him to me. I'll beat your share for you too."

The helmeted man watched Wu Chang step forward as if to duel him one-on-one, and burst out laughing with a snort.

Wasteland Realm players really were interesting — only before climbing out of the well and seeing the broader sky would one possess this kind of fearless confidence.

But very soon, he couldn't laugh anymore.

Because as Wu Chang drew closer, he actually developed a sense of dread toward this Wasteland Realm player.

This was impossible!

The so-called impossible was merely a matter of one's vision being too narrow, unable to understand what was happening.

If the helmeted man's strength were a bit higher, if he had a divine seed within his body — even a slumbering divine seed — he would have been able to see, behind Wu Chang, a pulsing rune.

Unlike Zheng Ruiyuan, perhaps influenced by his other class talent — Mysticism Mastery — the Chaos Authority entity Wu Chang condensed was not a heart, but a rune.

A rune representing chaos and order in mysticism.

Though the form differed, the way the authority was used was similar.

As the Chaos Rune pulsed, all those affected by the Chaos Authority had the Chaos Authority seeded within them pulse along with it.

A massive amount of attributes flowed along the Chaos Authority and poured into Wu Chang's body.

Because they had been fighting too happily earlier, and Wu Chang had kept the authority's output very small, the Chaos Authority had already burrowed deep into their bodies.

Suddenly erupting now, it drained at least a quarter of each person's primary attributes.

With the injection of vast attributes, all of Wu Chang's physical attributes approached 200, and his Strength directly broke through the 300 barrier, reaching 322 points.

As one side rose, the other fell — Wu Chang's attributes surged while the helmeted man's plummeted in an instant.

The helmeted man was a Strength-specialized player. That strike from Wu Chang had drained 65 points of Strength from him, meaning the helmeted man's original Strength should have been around 260.

Even without the Rank Barrier, this value was not something he could have handled at their first meeting.

Unfortunately, the 65 points of Strength drained from the helmeted man needed to pass through two Strength barriers at 200 and 300, weakening it.

Of those 65 points of Strength, only 6 points actually reached him.

But how much he could add was a small matter — what mattered was weakening the helmeted man.

Having a quarter of his primary attributes vanish out of thin air, the helmeted man's legs went weak, as if he nearly failed to stand steady and would have dropped to his knees on the spot.

That sudden-onset weakness was no longer the kind of clutching one's waist and saying it felt like the body had been hollowed out — it was hollowing out to the degree of one's marrow being sprayed out.

He could guarantee that this kind of power absolutely should not belong to the Wasteland Realm.

Let alone the Wasteland Realm, he hadn't seen it even in the Reason Realm.

The helmeted man stared at Wu Chang in panic, exclaiming, "Who are you!" Wu Chang slowly walked toward the helmeted man and repeated the self-introduction from their first meeting.

"My name is Peace, but people in the Wasteland Realm like to call me the Mysterious Newbie."

The helmeted man exclaimed in surprise, "The Mysterious Newbie who broke through that B-rank rampaging instance in the trial dungeon?"

Wu Chang smiled and nodded. "Yes."

The same self-introduction, but the situations the two were in were completely reversed — the positions of offense and defense had swapped.

Anyone who had played Abyss Game knew what would happen to a Level 1 player entering a B-rank solo survival instance on the verge of going out of control with zero intel.

So even though there were many rational analyses of the Mysterious Newbie's posts, even the most rational analysts would mutter to themselves: isn't this kid running some kind of cheat?

The helmeted man was thinking the same thing right now.

The helmeted man was, after all, an old hand. He forcibly suppressed the panic in his heart and asked, "What kind of ability is this!"

Wu Chang sensed the other was stalling for time, but what a coincidence — with his Authority activated, the last thing he feared was others stalling for time.

He cooperatively answered, "My name is Peace, so the power I use is, of course, the power of peace."

!

The helmeted man had by now gradually adapted to his weakened body; it no longer trembled. He said:

"Although I can't see the true form of your power, I can sense that it's a terrifying and ominous power. It will only bring disaster — it can't bring any peace."

Wu Chang wagged his finger and said, "Not so. If I take you down, I can bring peace to this place — how is that not the power of peace?"

By now the helmeted man had steadied himself, regained control of his body, and his confidence had returned along with it.

With the Rank Barrier in place, even after losing some primary attributes, he still possessed absolute suppressive power against Wasteland Realm players.

Could some mere Wasteland Realm player really overturn the heavens?

The helmeted man strode toward Wu Chang, ready to take him down on the spot.

Wu Chang employed the Lei Guang Phantom Step. Driven by 200 points of Agility and nearly 300 points of Energy, Lei Guang Phantom Step split into five real afterimages, all throwing punches at the helmeted man simultaneously.

The helmeted man's body paused; he raised a foot and stomped down. A circular shockwave spread outward, instantly shattering all five afterimages.

Wasteland Realm skills were this fragile before Reason Realm players.

The Rank Barrier didn't only appear on people!

Wait — no, that's wrong. All the afterimages shattered, so where's the kid's real body?

The helmeted man had originally thought that stomp would shatter four afterimages and leave only the real body, but he hadn't expected all five to be afterimages.

His heart lurched violently.

Could it be…

"Where are you looking?"

Wu Chang's mocking voice came from behind the helmeted man. While using Lei Guang Phantom Step to create afterimages, his real body had already activated Social Anxiety Disorder and Elite Stealth, and while the helmeted man wasn't paying attention, circled behind him.

Everything unfolded exactly as it had when the two first met.

The helmeted man also noticed Wu Chang's movement. He drew in a breath, tensed his whole body, and turned to grab Wu Chang, planning to rely on his rank barrier to take the hit head-on and subdue Wu Chang by surprise.

The instant he turned his head, he saw Wu Chang's fist coming straight at him.

He had already been preparing how to explain the existence of the rank barrier after pinning Wu Chang down, but when Wu Chang's fist was half a face's distance from him, he sensed something was wrong.

Because his usually unremarkable spiritual sense was now warning him of danger.

But wasn't it a little late to only warn him now?

This punch—Wu Chang had thrown it using iai strike.

Boom!

Wu Chang's fist pierced through the rank barrier like a finger poking through a flimsy layer of plastic wrap. The force on the fist slammed into the helmeted man's helmet, producing a thunderous roar like a cannon striking a wall.

The helmet the helmeted man wore was blown apart on the spot. He didn't even have time to reach out and grab Wu Chang before his mind went blank and his whole body flew sideways, crashing into the stone pillar of the main hall and splattering a pillar's worth of blood.

He Yi, who saw this punch through a high-speed camera, was so stunned his propellers stopped spinning. If He Yun hadn't caught him in time, he would have crash-landed in a manner comparable to a face-plant on flat ground.

In the nightmares woven by the Mother Goddess, he had honed his combat skills tens of thousands of times through battle. Those powerful skills had made him bold enough to entertain the thought of fighting a mech with his bare body.

He hadn't expected that the kid called Peace before him could completely forgo technique and crush the strongest mech with raw physical stats alone.

With power like this, maybe he really could bring peace.

He asked in a low voice, "Little Yun, has he always been like this?"

He Yun looked at Wu Chang, as if surprised that her brother was the one amazed, and bragged:

"He always does things no one expects. I believe in him, just like you believe in me."

This punch left the watching He Yun and He Yi merely stunned, but for the helmeted man who actually took the hit, it wasn't just stunning—it was concussive.

Although before being struck he had activated every defensive skill he had at the fastest speed of his life, being hit in the head by this punch still made blood seep from all seven orifices.

He now tried to crawl up from the ground, but the tremor from his brain made his limbs disobey him, his legs and feet shaking violently.

By the time he braced himself against the stone pillar and stood up, lifting his head, he saw Wu Chang already standing before him.

Wu Chang shook his head, as if mocking:

"When we first met, you weren't like this. A few days without seeing each other, and how come you've gotten so weak?"

The helmeted man spat fresh blood mixed with three broken teeth and said in confusion, "We've met before?"

Wu Chang said, "Looks like you don't remember. You blocked me and He Yun at the power station before, and killed an acquaintance of He Yun's, making her sad for quite a while."

The helmeted man's face was blank. How could he have absolutely no memory of this? Could the guy in front of him have mistaken him for someone else?

Wu Chang pointed at the helmeted man and said, "You don't believe it, right? Just wait."

After saying that, he paused the battle and started rummaging through his backpack, as if searching for some evidence.

The helmeted man was also curious about what was happening, waiting while his brain's tremors subsided.

After about three minutes, Wu Chang stopped moving, looked up at the helmeted man curiously, and asked, "You weren't really waiting for me to find evidence, were you?"

In Wu Chang's eyes was a gaze full of care for the intellectually challenged—no, care for people whose intelligence had been challenged.

The helmeted man said blankly, "Weren't you the one who said you'd find it and show me?"

No, bro, what do you mean?

Wu Chang set down his backpack and said, "I just told you to wait. I never said I'd find it and show you."

The helmeted man: "Then what did you tell me to wait for?"

Wu Chang blinked and said, "Silly, of course I'm waiting for your Chaos value to hit the execution threshold."

After Wu Chang finished speaking, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers. The chaos runes behind him trembled violently. Under the effect of the chaos runes, the chaos light on the helmeted man shattered, and along with it, the helmeted man's consciousness.

Wu Chang had used the Sea Giant and the Chaos Authority to stack his attributes beyond the helmeted man's, but that didn't mean he could kill the helmeted man easily.

The fact that rank barriers existed not only on people—even if the helmeted man hadn't said it—he could sense it himself.

Whether techniques or items, all possessed rank barriers. The helmeted man had only taken his punch earlier because he'd been overconfident. If the helmeted man really fought desperately, even if he couldn't counter-kill, escaping wouldn't be a problem.

Fighting the cornered helmeted man head-on would be a trade of injuring the enemy a thousand while losing a hundred, even if he won. Moreover, the Age Fire he used to save He Yi had been his life-preserving trump card, so in a real fight for his life, he didn't have the advantage.

So from the very start, Wu Chang had never planned to determine victory or defeat through a direct confrontation with the helmeted man.

Under the influence of the concussion and the Chaos Authority, the helmeted man's consciousness was in complete chaos, unable to tell whether his brain was shaking or whether the Chaos Authority was affecting him, the chaos light on his body surface resonating.

Before long, his Chaos value reached the threshold for erasure.

It had to be said, Authority was indeed the exclusive power of high-level deities. When he used the Chaos Authority to erase the helmeted man, he couldn't feel the rank barrier or the helmeted man's resistance at all.

It was as easy as deleting a program from a computer.

He inhaled the helmeted man's vitality. The vitality entered his body, providing him with 70 points of Strength.

The helmeted man was indeed extraordinary. Among players on the second layer of the Abyss, he was much more nourishing than Scalpel.

The benefit of stacking Strength with the Sea Giant showed itself now. After two layers of reduction, he still received 34 points. In contrast, the 65 points of Strength absorbed through the Chaos Authority only yielded 6 points. The difference between the two was worlds apart.

After taking down the helmeted man, he thought the battle was over, but there was no time to mourn the second-layer Abyss helmeted man—the Desire Mother Goddess immediately arrived on the battlefield.

Accompanied by a burst of brilliant pink light, the Desire Mother Goddess suddenly appeared in the main hall.

Wu Chang quickly returned to He Yun and He Yi, watching the towering pink light with a grave expression.

That pink light was the light of a plane's origin. Although the color was a bit faint, it was genuine origin light, on the same level as his Origin Knight's origin.

When the pink light faded, Wu Chang saw the Desire Mother Goddess clearly within it.

Wu Chang examined her carefully for a moment, then took out his phone, snapping photos and recording video.

Oh no, he had originally only meant to goof around, but now he really wanted to say, "Bro, you smell so good."

(End of chapter)