Chapter 206.2: A Way Out Part 2

Ji Jue unleashed a relentless hail of fire. And so, the slaughter inside the shopping mall began.

It was as if an invisible giant were swinging an unseen iron hammer, brutally smashing into the enemy’s face again and again. Amid screams and wails, the bullets tore through iron and stone alike as the bitter cold spread through them. Even after driving the opponents into a corner with nowhere left to retreat, the bombardment showed no sign of stopping.

With every thunderous impact, another crack split open in the wall behind, while the broken ceiling panels came crashing down like a torrential rain.

At last, with a broken, choking whimper, the flames guttered out. The Ruins aberrant stood frozen in place. Its head, struck by the final bullet, burst. Fragments of its remains scattered like a furnace blown apart, leaving burning chunks in every direction.

“Thanks, Ji Xue,” Ji Jue said through the radio. “A pleasure working with you.”

Ji Xue looked down at the rapidly cooling corpse, a string of question marks practically popping up over her head. Pleasure working with me? Working with me, my ass! I spent the whole fight getting chased around! I didn’t even get the chance to attack!

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, as she looked at the countless bullet holes peppering the walls, her heart skipped a beat. It felt just like watching a livestream where the host personally tested a skincare product. Their skin came out flawlessly smooth and radiant, every pore so perfect it looked like a work of art.

Is it really that effective? I'm placing an order right n... Wait! You bastard, at least put up the product link first!

Boom!

Above the shopping mall’s collapsing roof, another barrage of bullets blasted apart the rapidly gathering lightning. Through the rumble of thunder and the piercing crackle of electricity, a roar of pure, impotent rage cut through the air.

Streams of destructive lightning surged like enraged dragons, crashing into Tong Shan again and again as countless arcs of electricity lanced toward him, though they had no way of breaking through the barrier of telekinesis. Instead, the Entropy Chosen One found himself being toyed with like a maddened bull slowly bleeding to death as he was effortlessly manipulated by Tong Shan, with not the slightest glimmer of hope in sight.

Caught off guard by such a sudden assault and robbed of the initiative by an Origin-type, he had been forced into this miserable predicament. There was nothing surprising about it. In fact, once an Origin-type seized control of the battlefield, the battle was already half lost.

It was like foolishly jumping into the ocean to wrestle with a shark. What he had to face wasn’t only the fangs and jaws of the shark from afar, but also the crushing pressure from every direction, the suffocation of having no oxygen, and the dark currents surging with no end. Beyond that, there was the loneliness and helplessness of feeling as though he were standing alone against the entire world.

Even someone from the Entropy Path, universally acknowledged for its terrifying destructive power, couldn’t stir the slightest ripple against such flawless control.

Tong Shan manipulated air pressure at will, creating layer upon layer of invisible vacuums. Guided by his power, specks of dust and iron filings filled the air, dispersing and redirecting the lightning.

The Entropy-type’s destructive power was reduced to less than thirty percent, and even that was effortlessly blocked by the shattered walls and rubble Tong Shan casually pulled into its path, failing to leave so much as a scratch on him. An overwhelming torrent of lightning was neutralized, dispersed, and erased by an even greater tide of telekinesis.

Even using his blessing to fundamentally enhance his lightning wasn’t enough to overpower Tong Shan. Having such a hope was simply absurd.

After only a few short seconds, his heart had gone completely cold. He could no longer see any possibility of victory, yet he didn’t dare turn and flee. He didn’t even dare leave the slightest gap or opening.

There was a terrifying aura surging within Tong Shan, he could sense it. As long as he relaxed even a little and gave Tong Shan the chance to finish channeling whatever he was preparing to unleash, the Entropy Chosen One would be reduced to dust before he could break through the outer telekinetic barrier. All he could do was attack desperately and in vain, gradually losing the strength to resist, like a frog slowly being boiled alive.

No, he wants to capture me alive!

The moment that realization struck him, the lightning-transformed aberrant felt a bone-chilling terror so sudden it felt almost unreal. Many faces formed from intertwined arcs of electricity, twisting into savage expressions.

“I’LL FIGHT YOU TO THE END!”

He threw caution aside completely and made a ruthless decision. Lightning filled the sky, then contracted and converged until it became a single beam of searing radiance so dazzling that it burned the eyes of anyone who looked at it. He didn’t care that it exceeded his limits, nor did he hesitate, even if it meant burning his own soul as fuel.

The Burning Star Manifestation appeared once more behind Tong Shan, and the two clashed.

No sound could be heard. Even the thunderous explosion was completely erased beneath the force of the unleashed telekinesis. Only the shockwaves swept in every direction. A tiny strand of lightning was enough to tear apart two layers of flooring. Wherever it passed, everything melted and shattered, while muddy streams formed from dissolved sand and stone, pouring down like a violent rainstorm.

When the blinding light finally faded, the entire shopping mall had been reduced to a wreck. All that was left was the stench of burning decay as fragments of rubble scattered everywhere.

There, suspended in midair, Tong Shan held a shriveled, gaunt man in his hand. Blood slowly trickled from the man’s mouth and nose. He was barely alive.

But even more gruesome was Tong Shan’s right arm. It looked like charcoal. His fingers were broken, leaving only two intact, yet they remained clamped tightly around the man’s neck. Telekinesis seeped in through every opening, taking control of his victim’s life and soul.

With a wave of his hand, Tong Shan brutally smashed him into the ground.

As the man groaned hoarsely, Tong Shan slowly descended from the air and stepped onto his ribs, grinding down with savage force. “Tell me the way, and I’ll spare your life.”

The man grinned and spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm at Tong Shan without the slightest hesitation. The instant it flew from his mouth, it was deflected to the side.

A myriad of threads of telekinesis, sharp as blades, pressed into every nerve in his body at once, unleashing pain without restraint. The rebel screamed, thrashed, and rolled on the ground, his eyes rolling back for a few short seconds that stretched on like an eternity.

When the agony stopped and he was forcibly brought back to consciousness, that miserable face, streaked with tears and snot, twitched, and a mocking smile spread across it. With barely a breath left in him, he spat out a curse.

Then came more endless screams and wails. As convulsions wracked his body, he rolled across the floor, clawing uselessly at his skin. Even when he tore deep enough to expose bone, it did nothing to lessen the agony Tong Shan had inflicted on him.

The scene was so cruel that it almost made one wonder whether the roles between the two sides had been reversed. Even Ji Jue, who had just walked in through the entrance, couldn’t help but soften his footsteps. He stood off to the side and took in a deep breath, not daring to say a word. Compared to Yan Chong, that bastard who had sold out his teammates faster than he would sell his own ass, this guy really had a backbone. No matter how he was tortured, he clenched his jaw and held on.

“Tell me the way, and I’ll spare your life,” Tong Shan repeated expressionlessly without the slightest wavering.

The aberrant grinned and coughed weakly, on the verge of death. “Heh... heh heh heh... I don’t know. No idea. Never heard of it. What’s that supposed to be? I will never... betray the Priest— Aaaaaaah!”

His screams went on without end. In just a few short minutes, the aberrant had been reduced to a broken, unrecognizable state. Even after his sanity was completely gone, he still didn’t speak. He only mumbled something over and over in a slurred, incoherent voice.

At last, under everyone’s heavy gazes, his breath ceased.

Tong Shan raised his hand, instinctively wanting to check the time, only to see a lump of metal that had been burned black by lightning. It was completely useless now.

“It’s been two and a half minutes,” Xu Guan said. “We have thirty seconds left.”

“Search the place,” Tong Shan said, expression unchanged. “Look all over. Take every relevant record and file with us. Ji Jue, you go check the electronic devices.”

“Will do.”

Ji Jue nodded and headed into the mall first. Unfortunately, Deus Ex Machina wasn’t all-powerful in a situation like this. Aside from a few light bulbs and two or three phones, there was hardly any usable equipment in the entire mall.

The phones were full of pornographic images, and there wasn’t a single important message or useful piece of intelligence to be found. At most, there was a little gossip of some value, such as who had fought with the Shepherd of the Dragonrite Society and how the fight had gone.

In one of the rooms, Ji Xue found a communication device. Its verification process was extremely strict, so Ji Jue didn’t dare make a call with it. He only read through the message history, but discovered that the last order had arrived when they were fleeing the ruins of the base. It had instructed everyone here to stay inside the mall and strengthen their defenses.

Other than that, they found nothing. This had been a wasted trip.

Ji Jue sighed and looked up. He was just about to speak when he noticed Lou Feng, who seemed zoned out.

Lou Feng lowered his head, studying the patterns beneath his feet. His gaze swept across the floor before finally stopping at a storefront on the first level in the center of the mall, which had somehow escaped being buried under the collapsed debris.

There were still footprints on the ground, showing that people had gone in and out, but the inside was completely empty.

“Something seems... a little off.” Lou Feng brushed his fingers over the dust on the floor, where the Exquisite Work matrix keenly detected abnormal signs of workmanship.

At first glance, it looked like part of the original ruined structure and was perfectly integrated with everything around it. But there was a deliberate, aged quality to it, as if someone had intentionally made this place look the same as every other part of the mall. At the seams, however, they had left behind marks that couldn’t be erased.

“There’s definitely something wrong here.” Ji Jue touched the floor, knocking against it with his knuckles. It sounded hollow, but the spirit matter fluctuations that his knuckles sent into the floor slowed strangely as they dispersed. The physical properties were uneven, like sonar suddenly detecting some object underwater.

To anyone else, those scattered signals and bits of feedback would have meant nothing. But what the Dissociation Technique needed most was precisely this kind of feedback from spirit matter fluctuations in order to read an object’s internal condition and information.

“A hidden layer?” Ji Jue asked.

“There isn’t enough space. Besides, a hidden layer couldn’t fool an Aether-type,” Lou Feng said. “It feels a little like a realistic illusion created by a Mirror-type that overwrote reality, but not quite enough.”

It was obvious that this wasn’t the case. If there really were some big shot here who could overwrite reality with illusions, then all of them would have been toyed with in ten thousand different ways.

Disregarding the dust and grime, Ji Jue lay down on the floor, his spirit matter fluctuations spreading from both hands in countless fine threads across the surface. Amid all the static, however, there was hardly any feedback that was actually useful.

He could only vaguely sense that something was here. The reaction was faint, but it carried a subtle resilience. It formed a system of its own, and its overall structure was highly complete.

It felt almost like...

Ji Jue and Lou Feng looked up at the same time, meeting each other’s eyes. Realization dawned on both of them.

“A workshop?!”

From behind the illusory disguise, someone swallowed nervously. The gulp resounded clearly in that sealed space.