Chapter 154: Open!

Angry shouts continued ringing out beyond the barrier.

"Qing Zhu! Move aside!"

"That Fortuitous Encounter does not belong to him!"

"He is stealing the gate’s energy!"

Qing Zhu rested the bamboo staff on her shoulder and looked at the dozen or so nonhumans she had just sent flying, none of whom seemed willing to retreat.

"I have already said this several times." She tilted her head slightly. "The gate has not even opened yet."

An Elven elder ground his teeth. "But the energy has already appeared. Everyone has the right to..."

"Then go absorb it."

Qing Zhu directly pointed toward the pile of ashes on the other side.

"I am not stopping you."

The air fell silent for several seconds.

She looked from face to face, the corners of her lips slowly curving upward.

"Too scared?"

The elder’s face immediately flushed red. "That is different! He is clearly using a special item to cheat!"

"Cheating again."

Qing Zhu chuckled softly.

"When you cannot absorb it, you call that the rules. When Ethan can absorb it, suddenly it becomes cheating." She tilted her head. "Interesting."

A nonhuman standing farther back suddenly shouted, "Stop talking to her! Break the barrier!"

He was one of the people Qing Lian had noticed earlier. His pupils were unnaturally dark, and his killing intent was so intense that he seemed almost unconcerned with the consequences.

Three others immediately responded.

"Right!"

"As long as we kill Ethan, that is enough!"

They quickly split toward both sides. Their target was not Qing Zhu, but the barrier Qing Lian was maintaining.

Boom!

Three streams of energy struck simultaneously.

The barrier only trembled slightly.

Qing Lian, standing inside, showed no change in expression, but her gaze lingered on those three longer than usual.

She sensed something buried deep within their auras.

So faint it almost did not exist.

Cold.

Black-purple.

It felt exactly like the time she had looked at Ethan and realized that another existence was watching him.

Qing Lian still said nothing, because among those currently shouting that Ethan should be killed, only a small portion carried that strange aura.

The rest were completely lucid.

They wanted to kill him because of fear, greed, or simply because the rapid growth of a genius from another race made them uneasy.

That was, in some ways, even more troublesome.

At least someone influenced by an outside force had a cause that could be traced. A group of completely clear-minded people who could find their own reasons to kill needed no one behind the scenes controlling them.

"Keep attacking!"

A Harpy elder shouted.

Dozens of people began gathering power at the same time.

Qing Zhu watched the scene and finally lowered the bamboo staff from her shoulder. The smile remained on her lips, but her pale red eyes had grown several degrees colder.

"I really hate people who do not listen."

She took one step forward.

Boom.

The ground did not explode, but all energy within several kilometers suddenly stopped.

A second step.

The wind began spiraling backward, and the clouds that had only just closed overhead were once again dragged apart toward both sides.

Only on the third step did Qing Zhu raise her bamboo staff.

An extremely thin ring of green light ran along its length, no thicker than a strand of thread, yet every powerful figure standing ahead felt their scalp go numb at the same time.

"Retreat!"

Too late.

Qing Zhu swept the staff horizontally.

Whoosh.

The phantom bamboo appeared again, but this time it was no longer limited to a few hundred meters.

It stretched all the way to the horizon.

BOOM!!!

The sky trembled.

A row of airship hangars in the distance simultaneously erupted under the pressure of the air, while the attack itself passed precisely above the heads of the gathered nonhumans.

No one was struck.

Yet every one of them was forced to their knees at the same time.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Knees slammed repeatedly against the ground.

The aura of a King stage 1 erupted from Qing Zhu’s body, pressing down until the ground cracked and the air became thick and heavy. Even those who had only been watching from a great distance instinctively retreated farther away.

Qing Zhu slowly walked among the people struggling to raise their heads.

The bamboo staff in her hand lightly tapped the shoulder of a Harpy elder.

Tap.

"I can deliberately miss."

She stepped to the side and tapped an Elf on the head.

Tap.

"I can also hit."

Finally, Qing Zhu stopped in front of the nonhuman who had shouted for them to break the barrier and bent down slightly.

The smile on her face was beautiful.

"Which one would you like to try?"

The nonhuman’s body immediately stiffened.

He opened his mouth but could not make a sound.

Only then did Qing Zhu straighten again.

"Then behave."

Inside the barrier, Ethan suddenly opened his eyes.

Boom!

A ring of compressed air burst outward from his body.

Platinum stage 3.

The breakthrough happened with extreme smoothness. His foundation showed no sign of instability because the energy he had just absorbed had been completely refined by the Legendary Heavenly Gate.

However, Ethan had no time to examine his new strength.

His consciousness was suddenly pulled away from reality.

In a single instant, the airship hangar, the barrier, and all the nonhumans around him disappeared, leaving Ethan facing an endless darkness.

At the center of that darkness floated an enormous sphere of light, dazzling like a sun.

Surrounding it were countless black-silver structural rings in motion.

Some lay horizontally.

Some stood vertically.

Others followed tilted trajectories that intersected one another.

Across every ring were billions of symbols too small for Ethan to make out.

The entire scene resembled an incomplete Dyson sphere surrounding a star.

Of course, that enormous scale existed only within his consciousness.

Ethan stared at the structure before him while an inexplicable sense of familiarity continuously came from his left arm.

’Primordial Armor?’

The glowing sphere at the center suddenly contracted.

One structural ring detached from the system and shot directly toward Ethan.

Boom!

It passed into his body.

Countless memories that did not belong to Ethan immediately flooded into his mind.

They were not complete images or memories belonging to another person. They consisted only of methods of use, functions, and operating instincts that the Primordial Armor had known for a very long time, but had previously lacked the conditions to awaken.

Ethan opened his eyes.

Reality instantly returned.

His left arm released a low vibration.

He lowered his gaze toward the Primordial Armor.

Its outer surface had barely changed, but Ethan knew the armor was no longer the same.

The Decomposition ability, which had previously only affected objects touched by his palm, had unlocked a new method of use.

Weapon integration.

The Primordial Armor could overlay its own structure onto a weapon chosen by Ethan, strengthening its material, stabilizing its energy, and transmitting the property of Decomposition into its attacks.

Ethan took a deep breath.

But the final concept within the new memories was what truly left him silent the longest.

Decomposition had never been limited to physical matter.

Once Ethan became strong enough, even elements could be decomposed.

Energy could be taken apart.

Even fully formed magic could potentially be broken down into its most basic structures.

Ethan lowered his gaze toward his left arm, the corner of his mouth slowly rising.

"So this is what you wanted back."

The energy around the spatial tear had now visibly decreased.

The Primordial Armor had also stopped absorbing it at the same rate as before.

It had taken enough of what it needed.

Ethan extended his right hand.

Realm Breaker immediately appeared.

The Mythic-rank handgun rested neatly in his palm.

Ethan placed the left hand covered by the Primordial Armor against the body of the gun.

For one beat, everything was silent.

Crack.

Black-silver metallic lines immediately spread from the gauntlet and crawled onto Realm Breaker like countless tiny blood vessels.

They did not cover the entire surface. Instead, they traced along the body of the gun, wrapped around the energy core, then stopped at the barrel.

Realm Breaker trembled slightly.

Ethan could clearly feel that its power had increased.

This was not as simple as pouring additional energy into the weapon.

The Primordial Armor was reinforcing Realm Breaker’s very structure from within.

Before he could test it, a loud shout suddenly rang out from outside the barrier.

"Cheating!"

Ethan raised his head.

The Elf from earlier was still kneeling beneath Qing Zhu’s aura, yet he continued staring at Ethan through gritted teeth.

"He used Qing Lian’s barrier to steal all the energy! That is not his own strength!"

Ethan looked at him for several seconds, then glanced down at Realm Breaker in his hand.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.

"Is that so?"

Qing Lian realized he had finished and gently lowered her hand.

The screen concealing Ethan quickly became transparent.

Everyone immediately saw him.

Platinum stage 3.

His aura was clearly one stage stronger than before.

The expressions of the nonhumans grew even uglier.

Someone immediately shouted, "See! He took the Fortuitous Encounter that belonged to everyone!"

Ethan stepped out of the barrier.

Laira immediately approached him. "Finished?"

"Mm."

Ruo Yan looked at Realm Breaker, now covered in black-silver metallic lines.

"Something new again?"

"Looks like it."

Mumu happily bounced over as well.

"Mumu!"

It was just about to throw itself at Ethan in a hug when Laira grabbed the top of its body and pulled it backward.

"Wait."

"Mumu..."

Ethan ignored the two of them and looked directly at the people ahead.

"You said I cheated?"

No one answered immediately.

He pointed toward the pile of ashes left by the dead nonhuman.

"That energy is still out there."

Ethan laughed.

"If you want it, go absorb it."

Several expressions immediately tightened.

"I am not stopping you."

He spun Realm Breaker once in his hand, then looked toward the Elf.

"But when you cannot do something yourselves, and the moment you see someone else succeed you immediately call it cheating..."

The smile on Ethan’s lips faded.

"That is rather pathetic."

"You...!"

The Elf was just about to curse when a terrifying sound suddenly erupted behind him.

CRACK!

Everyone turned around.

The spatial tear, which had originally been less than two meters long, was suddenly ripped wide open by a terrifying force.

Ten meters.

Twenty meters.

Fifty meters.

Blue-purple light erupted, illuminating the entire aerospace center.

The ground shook violently, while the clouds overhead were dragged into a vortex by an enormous suction force.

Qing Lian immediately raised her head.

The smile on Qing Zhu’s face also disappeared.

The gate...

was about to open.