Chapter 72: Mountain Ghost’s Feast

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: Mountain Ghost’s Feast

The Steel Warrior was a birthday gift Chen Qi received when he was three years old.

It was his favorite of all his childhood toys.

It was only palm-sized, cast entirely from a silvery-white metal. Various mysterious patterns were carved into its surface, making it exceptionally intricate and magnificent.

The toy’s most unique feature was that it could be broken down into 3,600 gears, which could then be used to assemble all sorts of creations.

This was Chen Qi’s favorite game as a child. He was quite talented at it, even earning praise from his father, who rarely complimented anyone.

Perhaps because he saw Chen Qi’s talent, his father made an exception and told him the origin of the Steel Warrior.

The Steel Warrior—or rather, the "Warrior"—originated from the Heaven-Supporting Empire.

In the modern world, its power was second only to the V5. It was ranked number one among the great nations, a position it had held for 3,000 years.

The Heaven-Supporting Empire had a unique belief system. They worshipped gears, believing them to be the cornerstone of the universe. To them, the human world was a grand machine built from an infinite number of gears.

The sun, the moon, the stars, and the movements of the heavens and the earth were nothing more than the turning of this machine’s gears.

They believed that if humanity wished to become infinitely powerful, it had to transform itself into a gear, slotting into the workings of the universe and becoming part of the grand creation.

Based on this theory, and after countless years of research and development, the Heaven-Supporting Empire finally created gears that could be "embedded" into the workings of the universe.

The "Warrior" was the ultimate creation born from this achievement.

In the Heaven-Supporting Empire, Warriors were divided into many series.

The Steel Warrior was the weakest of these.

Even so, a complete Steel Warrior was composed of 129,600 gears.

The "Warrior" name referred to its power, which was the very power that moved the heavens and the earth.

A Steel Warrior could link itself to the workings of the universe, borrowing infinite power from its movements.

In other words, a Warrior didn’t need to consume any artificial energy sources. It didn’t even have an engine or power core.

It was, by its very nature, a part of the universe’s machinery, capable of moving mountains and parting seas—feats that seemed impossible to human eyes.

As a child, Chen Qi had just listened to it as a story, not thinking any of it was particularly incredible.

Only after growing up did he realize just how terrifyingly powerful that was. No wonder the Heaven-Supporting Empire was the top Empire, second only to the V5.

The Steel Warrior toy in Chen Qi’s hands was an authentic product from the Heaven-Supporting Empire.

The seller claimed it was a perfectly scaled-down replica of a real Steel Warrior, with an identical gear structure.

If one collected all 36 different models, one could use the 129,600 gears to build a complete Steel Warrior.

According to the seller’s pitch, although this complete Steel Warrior was just a toy version, if successfully activated, it would possess terrifying power.

These toys were "educational materials" used by the Heaven-Supporting Empire for children’s development. Their sale to other countries was strictly forbidden, so very few ever made it abroad.

The model Chen Qi had bought was supposedly the rarest of the rare—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

After growing up, Chen Qi realized that the seller was just a big swindler.

Still, toys like these were genuinely rare in smaller kingdoms.

Chen Qi’s biggest childhood dream had been to collect all 36 models and build his own Steel Warrior.

But ever since he came to the Lanyu Kingdom, he had never seen a toy like it again.

Chen Qi’s Steel Warrior, however, was very likely the last of its kind in the Lanyu Kingdom.

’Thank you, Felix, you’re a real saint. Today, I finally get to realize my childhood dream.’

’Even if it’s just a Steel Warrior I imagined, in a dream, it’s real!’

CRASH! The Steel Warrior collided with the Dark Giant.

An instant later, the Dark Giant was sent flying half a block away.

This was no longer an adult beating up a child; it was an elephant playing whack-a-mole.

Fortunately, both were essentially Level 4 creations, so the gap wasn’t hopelessly large.

"ROAR!"

Its head now even more swollen, the Dark Giant let out an enraged roar and charged forward again.

"BAM!"

It was sent flying back again.

This time, the Steel Warrior didn’t give it a chance to get up. It pinned the giant down and delivered a brutal pummeling.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The entire Dream Duel Arena shook and buckled. Inside Chaotic City, buildings collapsed and the ground split open with cracks.

At this rate, the Dark Giant wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.

...

’This... how is this possible?’

’I don’t believe it. It has to be an illusion.’

’There’s no way Red Heart 7 could have collected 500 Dream Gems! How could he have possibly advanced to Level 4?!’

The ground trembled, and Felix was so shaken he started to question his own existence.

He couldn’t wrap his head around it. How had his opponent suddenly become so strong?

’Did he cheat?’

’Damn it, if this keeps up, I’m going to lose!’

’Red Heart 7, you forced my hand.’

’Even if I can’t devour your Spirituality, I’m still going to kill you.’

In this life-or-death situation, an exasperated Felix decided to break the rules of the game and cheat as well.

He hadn’t done it before only because he wanted to devour his opponent’s Spirituality.

Once he used his "special methods," the Spirituality of a defeated player would be consumed by the arena itself, leaving Felix with nothing.

But he couldn’t worry about that now!

The next instant, Felix waved his large brush, writing a string of code on the ground.

The moment the code was complete, a pile of gems overflowing with iridescent light appeared at his feet.

"Hahaha! A full 500 extra Dream Gems! Let’s see you survive this!"

"I’m going to make you experience the cruelest death imaginable."

Felix didn’t absorb the Dream Gems himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but that the rules forbade it.

The entire dream amusement park couldn’t withstand the power of a Level 5 being.

But just because Felix couldn’t absorb them didn’t mean his creations couldn’t.

The Dark Giant was a useless piece of junk, but he, Felix, had other tricks up his sleeve!

His confidence surging once more, Felix waved his large brush and painted the *Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting*, a work teeming with grotesque and bloody imagery.

...

Every nation, no matter how small or insignificant, develops its own myths and legends if it exists long enough.

Thousands of years ago, the Lanyu Kingdom was just a savage, untamed island.

To be more precise, it was a land of Mountain Ghosts, a place filled with bloodshed and cruelty.

The natives who lived here were required to make sacrifices to the Mountain Ghosts at a specific time each year.

The offerings they presented were the various flesh and organs of human beings.

A complete human body would be carefully and meticulously dissected into over a hundred parts to be consumed by the Mountain God and his Hundred Ghosts.

The *Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting* depicted this very scene: the Mountain Ghost and his spectral followers feasting on human sacrifices.

In the painting, the Mountain Ghost and the other spirits were all shrouded in a gray mist.

However, their identities could still be distinguished by their seating arrangement and the organs they consumed.

The Mountain Ghost sat in the seat of honor, consuming only the human brain.

His ten Ghost Generals, in turn, consumed the five major organs, the limbs, and the eyes.

The remaining, less significant parts were devoured by the Hundred Ghosts under their command.

The painting perfectly captured the ferocity and cruelty of the Mountain Ghosts, as if the artist had witnessed the scene firsthand.

Of course, Felix couldn’t have traveled back thousands of years to watch the Mountain Ghosts’ banquet!

The Mountain Ghost, though it appeared as a phantom, was in truth the Spirit of the land’s mountains and rivers according to legend.

Then one day, thousands of years ago, a meteorite fell from the sky and destroyed the island’s largest mountain range.

The Mountain Ghost and its followers had long since been turned to dust.

The meteorite’s impact site was none other than Chaotic Star Rock.

Only after the Mountain Ghost vanished did the magnetic Mist enveloping the island dissipate, allowing humans to enter in large numbers.

Otherwise, under the influence of the magnetic Mist, any human who entered would become lost, never to find their way out again.

When Felix was young, he had traveled to Chaotic Star Rock and chanced upon a stone carving on a cliff face depicting the scene of the Mountain Ghost sacrifice.

He revisited the site in his later years and, inspired by a dream, created the *Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting*.

If he had remained merely a second-rate painter, this picture would have been useless.

But after he became a player, especially since the Superpower he gained was a perfect fit for his profession, the painting became his trump card.

’So what if you can control metal?’

’Just wait until I summon the Mountain Ghost. It’ll devour you in a single bite!’

Without a moment’s hesitation, Felix threw the 500 Dream Gems into the *Mountain Ghost Banquet Painting*.