Chapter 595: The Day of Godslaying

Let's move on to the final surgical procedure.

The tail of that sentence still hung in the air, and Chu Che didn't even get up.

Eight special metal rings—the Federation's current highest-specification Suppressing-Weird chains, forged from Zhou Ping's fragment alloy, theoretically capable of suppressing the rule operation of a Quasi-S-Weird.

At this moment, the metal ring closest to Chu Che's wrist showed an extremely fine crack on its surface.

It wasn't torn open by external force.

It began to disintegrate from within.

The metal's molecular structure collapsed visibly, the alloy surface turning into grayish granules that sifted down, falling onto the interrogation room floor without making a sound.

Second. Third. Fourth.

Lord Wei's pupils contracted to the limit in that instant.

He saw it. Chu Che didn't move a finger from start to finish. Those chains were vanishing on their own—not melting, not breaking—but losing the right to exist.

"Trigger a first-level alarm—"

Lord Wei's hologram snapped its head sideways, having only spoken half a sentence.

There were no signs whatsoever.

An invisible force expanded outward from Chu Che's coordinates—not wind, not a shockwave, not anything within the realm of physics.

It was rule.

Pure, supreme, crushing-all rule.

The anti-weird inscription arrays etched on the six walls of the interrogation room didn't even struggle before this force, fading out in whole sections. The three-layer bulletproof glass shattered in the same second—not cracking like a spiderweb—but being pulverized into powder, leaving no fragments.

The entire Federal Weird Investigation Bureau headquarters building, all floors' weird detection instruments emitted the highest-pitched shriek at the same moment.

Then they exploded.

Not just one or two—all of them.

From the underground three-level top-secret containment area to the aboveground seventeen-level command center, hundreds of precision instruments overloaded collectively, screens bursting, sparks flying, and monitor feeds turning to snow.

Before L's main console, thirteen screens went black simultaneously. Her hand hovered over the keyboard, fingertips frozen for a full two seconds.

Then she took off her headset.

"All frequency bands... completely lost contact."

Her tone remained flat, but her speech was faster by 0.3 seconds. To those who knew her, this was Lin Linling's state closest to panic.

Outside the interrogation room, in the corridor, glass powder still drifted in the air.

Jiang Yuan was the first to move.

The Shadow Legion exploded from behind him, a black tide bearing roaring ghost faces surging toward the interrogation room. Su Ming's pupils took on the grayish sheen unique to time, the Time Marrow Worm emitted a sharp wail, exerting all its strength to slow the rule's spread. Liang Wen's fingerless gloves lit up with patterns, power gathering beneath his black windcoat.

Qin Zhixia didn't hesitate.

Her mechanical prosthetic arm rose, aiming the gun barrel at the figure amidst the rubble.

She pulled the trigger.

An orange-red fire line tore through the air, cutting through dust, straight for the target.

Then—

It vanished.

It wasn't blocked. It wasn't deflected.

It was that, upon reaching the line ten meters around Chu Che, all attacks simultaneously lost meaning.

The moment the vanguard of Jiang Yuan's Shadow Legion touched that invisible boundary, an entire rank of ghost-face soldiers was erased—not killed, not dispersed, but shifted from existence to non-existence, leaving no residue.

Su Ming's temporal rule came to an abrupt halt before that ten-meter line, the Time Marrow Worm emitting a howl he had never heard—a sound of being directly negated by a higher-dimensional law.

Qin Zhixia's shot of nameless fire passed through dust, through the rubble, and at a point 9.7 meters from Chu Che, was silently swallowed.

No explosion. No cancellation. No feedback whatsoever.

It simply ceased to exist.

Liang Wen's attack didn't even get a chance to be released—his ability was shoved back into his body the instant he tried to activate it, the muscles in his arm beneath the black windcoat twitching once, and the patterns on his fingerless gloves faded out.

In the corridor, everyone's movements stopped.

It wasn't because they chose to stop.

They simply couldn't move.

A pressure rising from deep within their bones pinned everyone present to the spot. Liang Wen's knees trembled; he exerted all his strength just to avoid kneeling. Su Ming's spine bent at an angle, sweat trickling from his forehead. Qin Zhixia's grip on the nameless fire shook—not from fear, but because the servomotor of her mechanical prosthetic arm emitted an overloaded hum under this rule's suppression.

Jiang Yuan's Shadow Legion was compressed to a space three inches behind him, the surviving ghost-face soldiers silently screaming.

The dust settled.

The interrogation room no longer existed. Its walls, ceiling, and equipment had all turned into uniform fine powder, covering the floor.

Chu Che rose from that debris.

His movement was slow. His spine stayed straight. His gold-thread glasses still sat properly on his nose bridge, lenses unblemished by dust. His white lab coat remained spotless.

But his face had changed.

On the right half of his face, a deep-gray mask had somehow appeared—rock-like in texture, lacking any facial features, only a black eye socket. The mask's edges melded perfectly with his skin, showing no seam.

The left half of his face remained the same warm, handsome countenance, the left lens of his gold-thread glasses reflecting light.

Half human, half mask.

How like Sai Men.

——This made everyone realize once again that he was the mastermind behind the creation of Sai Men.

Chu Che raised his right hand. His fingers were long and fair, joints distinct—exactly the same hands he used to treat students' wounds at Qiu Ce Yuan.

Between his fingers, a black staff materialized out of thin air, its tip inlaid with a living eyeball still slowly turning.

"Ladies and gentlemen."

Chu Che's voice came from the ruins. Steady, clear enunciation, without any ripple.

"Six years. From Cavity Person to Blood Moon Descent, from Smiling Dummy to Lu Dou's downfall. I have watched every step of your growth."

"Wonderful. Really. As a doctor, seeing patients produce such a strong stress response to treatment, I am relieved."

His gaze swept over everyone pinned in place in the Corridor.

"But the final step of the surgery requires an audience."

Chu Che's mouth corner curled slightly. The gentle smile on the left half of his face and the hollow darkness of the right half Mask formed a scene that made one's scalp tingle.

"You will witness——the birth of a god."

No one in the Corridor could speak. Not that they didn't want to; it was that their vocal cords in the throat were suppressed and frozen by that kind of rule.

Liang Wen's peach-blossom eyes showed pure anger for the first time. He wanted to shout a curse, his lips moved, but not a single word could be squeezed out.

Su Ming's brain was racing. He was calculating. Calculating whether this level of rule suppression had any loopholes, any time window, any exploitable weakness.

The answer——none.

This isn't some clever rule design. It's pure, crushing dimensional disparity—like ants cannot understand why humans can step on them and kill them with one foot. It's not a matter of skill; it's a difference at the species level.

Chu Che took a step forward.

Then——

In the deep underground of the headquarters building, in a room that had never appeared in any files, a machine activated.

Hum.

Extremely low-frequency vibrations rose from the ground.

Duke Wei.

Not a hologram. A real person.

An old man with white-and-gray hair appeared at the end of the Corridor at some point, the buttons of his Zhongshan suit still fastened to the topmost one. His right hand pressed against a panel embedded in the wall, and his fingerprint and iris were verified simultaneously.

"Activate the Anchor Protocol."

His voice wasn't loud, but every word was crystal clear.

Chu Che stopped his steps.

His eyebrow twitched——this was the first time today, in the Interrogation Room, that he showed an unexpected expression.

From all sides of the headquarters building, countless invisible particles poured out from the ventilation ducts, wall cracks, and floor seams. They were particles ground into nano-scale powder, dark reddish-black in color.

Sinful Crown fragments.

He Chuan spent three months grinding, purifying, and reassembling the Sinful Crown fragments left by Zhou Ping, embedding them into the building's entire architectural structure.

This is not a weapon. It is a cage.

When the nano-scale crown fragments reached critical concentration in the air, the absolute rule suppression surrounding Chu Che showed a faint visible ripple.

Ten meters.

Nine meters.

Eight meters.

That invisible boundary line was contracting.

Liang Wen's knees gave way first. He almost sat down directly, but quickly braced himself against the wall, gasping for air.

Su Ming's spine slowly straightened. The Time Marrow Worm's wail weakened.

Qin Zhixia's mechanical prosthetic arm regained response, the servo motor's hum returning to normal frequency.

Chu Che lowered his head to glance at his own hand.

Then he laughed.

"Doctor He Chuan." His tone held a hint of sincere praise. "Turning my creation into shackles—quite interesting."

He raised his head, looking toward Duke Wei at the end of the Corridor.

"But how long do you think this can hold me?"

Duke Wei did not answer him.

The old man turned his head, looking at the people in the Corridor who had just regained mobility. His gaze swept over Jiang Yuan, then Su Ming, then Qin Zhixia, then Liang Wen.

"Children."

Duke Wei said.

"Now it's up to you."

Chu Che tilted his head, the darkness within the eye holes of his Mask unfathomable.

"Oh?"

At the front of the Corridor, Jiang Yuan knelt on one knee. That recent suppression had caused his Shadow Legion to lose nearly thirty percent of its troops. His knees ached, his lungs ached, the backlash of the suppressed rule made his internal organs protest.

But he heard Duke Wei's words.

Jiang Yuan pressed his hands to the ground and slowly pushed himself up.

The remnants of the Shadow Legion regrouped behind him. The ghost-faced soldiers no longer screamed; they fell silent, awaiting orders.

Jiang Yuan stood straight.

He raised his head, looking at the half-masked man in the ruins. That man, who over six years had killed untold numbers, destroyed countless families, and turned the whole world into an operating table—the "School Doctor."

The base color of Jiang Yuan's pupils changed at this moment.

Not the grayish-black of when Shadow is activated, but a deeper, purer black. This is the color that, since the First Generation Weird Master awakened, all the swallowed Weird, all the suppressed resentment, and all the endured Abyss have accumulated together.

He spoke.

His voice was a little hoarse, but each word landed solidly.

"Today, I will slay a god."