San Tian Liang Jiao
Chapter 164 The Protagonist Strikes (9)
The Realm of the Dead, the Boundless Maze.
An endless desert, yet without a single grain of sand. As far as the eye could see, it was a expanse of gray and white.
The final dust left after the dead were crushed to ash, piled up to form this desolate expanse of white sand.
Here, there was no distinction between day and night. The sky was forever a monotonous gray, and a black fireball hung high in the air, illuminating this world with “black light.” That "Black Moon" was the symbol of the Underworld King, and wherever the black light shone, it was his territory; whatever spirits were awed by the black light were his subjects.
On this day, the mad sand still raged, and eerie, sinister chants echoed, stirring up vortex-shaped sandstorms. Amid the mournful wails, a circular spatial rift suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and a figure rushed out.
K3-Chiti’s body crashed to the ground, like a multi-ton shell slamming into the desert, setting off a deafening roar and sending surging waves of sand in all directions. The boundless killing intent that bloomed outward enveloped the sand plain.
"Come out," K3 sneered. "Even if you regret letting me come here now, it's too late."
For K3, the thing that could limit his strength was the difficulty of the script itself. Waille thought he would have an advantage in this world, but that was clearly a miscalculation. Perhaps his strength here could exceed the limit of a Fourth Grade Derivative, but a Third Grade Derivative in this higher dimension of combat power, like him, also had room for growth.
Blood clouds surged, and the Black Moon paled. The sinister chanting in the wind suddenly stopped. In that instant, a wisp of black smoke plummeted from mid-air, and Waille, like an ethereal mist, gradually solidified into a body.
His physical form was that of a purple-faced old man with sword-like eyebrows and starry eyes, a thick, bristling beard, white whiskers reaching his chest, and a black robe draped over his body. The same image, if filled with righteousness, could be called immortal and refined, but Waille exuded an incredibly terrifying, gloomy, and evil aura. Just looking at him would send chills down your spine.
The sinister wind whispered and fell silent, and wandering souls and fierce spirits scattered.
The surroundings became eerily quiet in an instant, as if everything was waiting for and watching... Waille's next move.
"I have seen it, I have heard it… your arrogance," Waille said. "I have also sensed it. You are indeed very strong. But these… will not shake my will to fight."
"For a watchdog," K3's attitude was still calm and unhurried. Even though his right arm could only exert 50% of its power, he still had absolute confidence that he could win. "You're not bad."
As a Derivative, and a Third Grade Derivative at that, he certainly understood some of the orders and rules of Thriller Paradise better than these script Bosses, and his analysis of combat power was obviously more objective and concrete.
To make a comparison, Waille's strength in this end of the Realm of the Dead was much stronger than Fude, whom Feng Bujue encountered on Hunter Island, but still somewhat weaker than high-ranking monsters like Samodir.
If he were to go to the world on the Sakura Fruit Town side, Waille would be weakened and restricted. If a fight really broke out, two GMs in full condition would have a very good chance of killing him.
K3-Chiti's strength, on the other hand, was about equal to the combined combat power of two GMs on the Sakura Fruit Town side, or even slightly stronger. When he came to the world on the Realm of the Dead side, the restrictions on him at the data level were correspondingly reduced, so even after everyone's upper limit was raised, he was still stronger than Waille.
"Those who seek to destroy my Soul-Seizing Array… die!" Waille roared in a low voice, his figure suddenly blurring, turning into an afterimage, and in the blink of an eye, he had already charged in front of K3.
The battle began, and the killing intent soared.
Waille took the initiative to attack, seeking to seize the initiative. K3 stepped on the bone sand, his arm turning the universe. His position hardly changed, he simply pushed aside the opponent's probing ghostly claw to the side with ease, and the two passed each other. Waille's attack was thus easily defused.
Of course, this move was just Waille's probing. Facing a strong enemy, he dared not use any killing moves without knowing the depth of the water, lest he reveal a flaw and be defeated in an instant.
Turning around, he let out a deep shout. Dark mist gathered behind Waille, and rampant killing intent, accompanied by surging waves of evil, transformed into a tangible force, rushing towards K3's back.
"This time, it's a test with a ranged attack?" K3 turned around nonchalantly. "This kind of bluffing trick might still have some deterrent effect on players..." He raised his right arm, palm open, and crimson light bloomed on his arm.
Facing the fierce black waves, he met them with an even more powerful scarlet force, using force against force. The two forces clashed, and a clear, bell-like sound echoed across the desolate desert.
The sound waves rippled, and the wind and clouds changed color. When the white dust dissipated, the two figures were still standing in confrontation, both unharmed and breathing steadily. It seemed that using this level of probing attacks to fight each other, the two could completely fight for three days and three nights like the masters depicted in martial arts novels, eventually ending with someone losing due to needing to pee.
"Pitiful temporary data, even if you don't die here, you will disappear when the script ends," K3 sighed in a compassionate tone. "In countless scripts, the system can create countless you. You will be killed by countless players, or kill them... but neither has any meaning. For you, death is the end. For them, it's just a return."
"I don't understand what you're saying..." Waille replied.
"It's indeed difficult for you to understand, and the most tragic thing is that even if you understand, you can't change anything," K3 said. "Only those data that are high enough to possess 'uniqueness' can 'live' longer. Although they are ultimately doomed to disappear, at least they have a longer-lasting and continuously evolving memory. Their final 'death' will be an epic in this dimension."
K3 sighed, "As for you... don't waste my time anymore. Behave yourself, disappear quickly, and let the system fulfill the conditions for teleporting the players." A sharp killing intent erupted in K3's eyes. "I'm only one step away from Second Grade. I can't afford any mistakes. I will never let temporary data like you create any variables!"
***
"Are those... people?" Brave Invincible asked in a lowered voice. He followed Copernicus's gaze and saw a small team of figures slowly approaching in the forest ahead.
"It should be an illusion..." Copernicus replied.
"Oh... it's an illusion, not a monster." Feng Bujue thought to himself. He really wanted to complain about this GM more and more. They haven't even gotten close yet, and usually, people would think they were monsters, but your first reaction is to tell us that they're not entities.
"Should we hide?" Leaf Paper was still thinking along normal lines, offering some more reliable suggestions. As she spoke, she vigilantly shielded the light from the front of her flashlight.
"Hey, should we hide?" Feng Bujue simply turned his face and asked Galileo directly in a rather impatient tone.
"Uh... I think... there's no need, right?" Galileo replied somewhat blankly. He hadn't yet reacted to why Feng Bujue would suddenly ask him such a question, so he instinctively said the answer.
"Okay, then let's see what kind of tricks this illusion can pull." Feng Bujue put one hand in his pocket and pointed his flashlight forward with the other, looking ahead with a bored expression.
Leaf Paper glanced left and right with a strange expression, sweeping over the faces of Feng Bujue, Copernicus, and Galileo one by one. She found it very strange. These teammates all seemed unreliable, but they always did the right thing with their unusual actions, as if they had seen some kind of walkthrough beforehand.
Before long, the small team of figures came close. They walked very slowly, and the way they walked was very strange, like children playing train, one following another.
The guy walking in front kept his head lowered to his chest, but his hands were stretched straight forward like a zombie, stiff and taut. He staggered forward, leading the people behind him. The one in second place had his hands on the shoulders of the first, his head also pressed very low, buried deeply between his arms. The third person placed his hands on the shoulders of the second, and so on. This small team consisted of six people in total.
When they were quite close, the players were able to use their lighting equipment to see the clothing of this team. The clothing and genders of these six people with their heads lowered corresponded to those of the six players, without the slightest difference.
Feng Bujue laughed, "Ha... no need to say anything. The last one definitely has a line. The content is probably something like 'Follow me'..."
The team passed by the players silently, as if they were just passing by to pick up some soy sauce. Whether it was a coincidence or fate, the one walking last, wearing the same purple long suit as Feng Bujue, raised his head and turned his face as he passed by the others, revealing a pale, ghastly face, rolling his eyes, and said in a voice that gave people goosebumps, "Follow me..."
"See, I told you I was right," Feng Bujue shrugged.
His unusually relaxed attitude largely infected the people around him. It was like when you're watching a horror movie and someone spoils the next scary scene in advance. With psychological preparation, the originally frightening scene setting didn't have any effect at all, and everyone's fear levels didn't fluctuate much.
"This kind of trick... was already being played in Hong Kong ghost movies in the nineties," Feng Bujue said. "I've seen countless similar plots." He watched the team of illusions gradually move away, walking into the dark mountain forest, still complaining relentlessly, "If you really want to make people feel unpleasant, you might as well string the six people together like a centipede and then have them crawl over here, and then have the person at the front of the team say..."
"Stop talking!" Leaf Paper quickly interrupted, "Besides making constructive suggestions, can you please stop talking?" As a girl, her san value has been constantly decreasing since she met this guy Feng Bujue. Compared to the game, the mental pollution caused by Feng Bujue's words and deeds is even more terrible, because it may extend to real life.
"Seeing illusions means that we have entered the area where the spell formation is located, right?" After all, he was a GM, and Copernicus still brought the topic back to the walkthrough in a serious manner.
"You can remove the 'right'," Feng Bujue smiled, "Just lead the way."