Chapter 67: Mori vs. “Xiong Ying”

“Quick, his time sequence is spent again! Touch him and you’re dust!” Boppoli stood up nervously and shouted.
“Shut up! I’m calculating.”
Mori glanced at the few glowing banknotes beside him, thinking to himself, how many seconds can these buy?
[Yang Zicang returns 9999N to me.]
[I invest 9999N for Yang Zicang.]
The White Shadow Thought-Dragon kept Ma Chao’s psionic body in its mouth below, and the crashing massive blue-crystal time cage indeed didn’t harm it one bit.
……
The person mentally linked with Lu Zhishen nervously watched the other situation.
“Good thing the Nightmare Centipede seems to be digesting Ma Chao, too busy to bother with Lu Zhishen. Don’t invest to make him disappear just yet. Wait and see.”
“Damn it, this Yang Zicang has already grown to this level.”
The man said viciously.
A mighty and upright figure stood before him, a man wearing a duckbill cap like Zhao Yun, speaking calmly:
“This is how the world works—the peaceful life can be turned upside down in an instant. While Yang Zicang hasn’t decided to enter this A-level intersection yet, let’s launch our action early.”
“Lü Bu, has your bonded nightmare already entered?”
The man named Lü Bu turned his head to look at Cao Pinuo and Zhou Yu in the interleaving scene.
“Mm, inform everyone. After three countdowns, we’ll move simultaneously to clean up the monsters, then kill Zhou Heng.”
Zhou Yu nods, and a red light radiates from his chest.
“Three, two, one.”
Buzz!
As the Xiongying Squad simultaneously eliminates the monsters, the terrain within the A-class Anomaly Zone instantly expands by more than tenfold!
These pieces of land appear like puzzle pieces scattered everywhere.
The landscape begins to merge!
……
[Yan Yi wants to make an active investment in me.]
[Yan Yi wants to make an active investment in me.]
[Yan Yi wants to invest in my full-time authority timer for 10N.]
Yang Zicang, who has been canceling out a large amount of timers with Lu Zhishen in just seconds, furrows his brow; someone unknown keeps requesting a connection with him, definitely trying to communicate.
But he is currently cooperating with Mori; if he breaks the Mental Link, he might be instantly defeated by Lu Zhishen the next moment.
The White Shadow Thought-Dragon hovers below; if it charges forward, the opponent might immediately gain over ten thousand years of timer and leave this place.
“Yang Zicang, people from headquarters say all the elites of the Xiongying Squad are fighting the experts from HQ in the A-class Anomaly Zone!”
After Yan Yi’s investment request disappears, someone in the crowd below shouts as if acting as a loudspeaker.
Yang Zicang sweeps his spear, and Lu Zhishen dodges the strike by leaning his lower back back; from the initial head-on confrontation, he is now also focusing more on evasion.
[I returned Mori’s 5000N investment.]
[I received Mori’s 5000N investment.]
How fortunate—just by taking a nap, I spawned a major benefactor.
Bang!
Yang Zicang seizes the opportunity and strikes Lu Zhishen on the thigh with his spear.
This amplification of principal from millennia of temporal order was once again entirely offset, but the immense force still swept Lu Zhishen to the ground.
……
On the other side, Moli was sweating profusely, his palms moist, intently watching the battle in his perception screen, while Boppoli murmured softly beside him, almost to himself:
“Mm-hmm, right, this time selling two copies—actually, three would be fine too. Don’t worry about how many I have.”
“Mm-hmm, right, I need it right away. No, no credit. Mm-hmm, hurry it up.”
“You should know their value, mm-hmm, every one is over a hundred years of training experience. Use one and instantly become a grandmaster. What’s that? Fifty thousand? That’s way too low. Keep wasting my time and I’ll hang up.”
……
Inside the A-level dimensional overlap.
Granny Wolf, who had been making investments, was now drenched in sweat.
“Yang Zicang has an investment master behind him!”
The glowing red calculator beside Granny Wolf helplessly opened its eyes and looked around, letting the man’s fingers press randomly on itself.
“Endless, this is. And we need temporal order to keep fighting!” Granny Wolf nearly roared.
“That Yang Zicang’s temporal order is like a bottomless pit. He must have a major temporal order consortium backing him!” another person said bitterly.
“Everyone, get ready. Time for refinancing again. Damn it!”
“How about… sending Old Lu packing?”
The group exchanged words while engaging in tentative combat.
“What about Ma Chao, then?”
“Don’t you get it yet? That guy doesn’t care about revenge at all. He’s using Ma Chao as bait to string Lu Zhishen along!”
“Ma Chao is done for.”
“Should we really send Lu Zhishen away? But we’ve finally got a chance to take in a Defender. If he leaves, what will we do with the Guardian?”
Zhou Yu, shouldering a fan-like nightmare dejectedly, said through gritted teeth:
“The plan was flawless, and then that Yang Zicang had to come out of nowhere! Old Lü, I told you not to stick me with the title Zhou Yu—Zhuge would’ve been way better, or at least Kongming Lantern. Just look at how this has messed things up.”
Boom, boom—the earth trembled as a diamond shape flashed across the surface on the opposite side, raising a fortress-like thick wall.
Lü Bu stepped forward and said, “Zhou Heng, come out and die.”
“If I die, no one lives,” came a distant voice from behind the wall. “I’m going all out to help Yang Zicang destroy your containment, and the rampaging Defender will level this city! Not a single moth, not even a single ant, will make it out alive!”
“That’s a bit much.” Tong Wenqi muttered, pursing his lips quietly from beside Zhou Heng.
Lü Bu stared silently at the far side, his aura slow and heavy as the ebbing tide.
“What are you still deliberating? Every second sees thousands of ages consumed.” Zhou Heng added.
Over by Yang Zicang, they were locked in a spine-chilling war of chronology with Lu Zhishen.
Each attack was measured in tens of thousands of years—an unimaginable quantity for the average person. It was truly staggering how that kid, here only a few days, could pull it off.
Beneath his baseball cap, Lü Bu’s expression turned resolute. He gave a mocking laugh and taunted:
“Zhou Heng, even you have lived to see the day you say such words. Seeing you in this state, at least this trip wasn’t a complete waste of energy.”
Both sides were on the brink of open conflict, and Zhou Heng chose not to respond and provoke him. After all, dealing with someone coexisting with nightmare demons, a careless word could set off an explosive rage.
Unknowingly, Yang Zicang had become the final fulcrum maintaining the fragile balance between the two camps.
Following a signal from Lü Bu, Zhou Yu, shouldering a fan, said, “Let Yang Zicang go, and we’ll give you the frequency crystals.”
A member from the headquarters snorted but offered no provocation.
……
Soon, someone from below shouted up to Yang Zicang the benefits offered by the headquarters: an A-class cross-space turn slot, a long-term private room in the central town, triple “time sequence deduction” offsets, priority equipment, food and luxury goods from Earth.
Almost every single item was something everyone here dreamed of possessing.
“Get lost!”
Yang Zicang thrust his sword into Lu Zhishen once more. Was it the eighteenth or the nineteenth strike?
The people below shivered and pleaded urgently, “Containment has failed; The Defender will be beyond negotiation. It will slaughter everyone. For the sake of tens of thousands of lives, stop, Yang Zicang!”
Yang Zicang’s eyes were already consumed by madness.
[I returned 5000N to Morrie.]
[Morrie invested 2340N for me.]
“Calm down. This is for everyone’s good.” Lu Zhishen dodged continuously, trying to create distance.
Yang Zicang’s heart tightened—he had grown accustomed to immediately receiving whatever he returned, but this time there was no such alignment of timing.
Moli’s timing had also run out.
With such immense consumption, it was already remarkable to hold out this long.
Yang Zicang glanced upward, sensing an observer’s gaze—that of a councilman, he felt.
Was this battle unwinnable?
Yet at that moment, he saw Lu Zhishen retreat two steps, his qi-wave armor shattering under the strain!
His armor’s defense was gone. The urge to kill surged anew in Yang Zicang’s heart.
Suddenly, the entire cavern trembled, and the Defender’s deep, terrifying voice echoed in everyone’s ears.
[Kill him!]
Through mental perception, everyone knew whom “him” referred to.
Yang Zicang flashed a devilish grin and glanced at the weapon in his hand.
[Thanks, Moli.]
{Hold on, some timing should come through soon—Boppoli is auctioning.}
[No worries, I’ve got a bit of spare.]
Beneath the red canopy that blanketed the cavern, the bald, burly man warily eyed the young man across from him.
Seeing Yang Zicang genuinely pause his attack, Lu Zhishen thought he was considering his proposal, and so stopped his own movements—for unless the containment succeeded, the Defender would annihilate the city.
If it really came to that… the man turned his head to glance down the passage, where at least thirty or forty people were locked in chaotic combat.
Yang Zicang broke the link with Moli. Suddenly, he swung his longsword, with no amplification whatsoever, and thrust it straight at Lu Zhishen.