Chapter 20: Finding New Clues about Time

The ratman slammed the spear with a clang into the hard steel, then swiftly scurried to the tip of the upright spear. With a forceful stomp, he bent the spear shaft in an instant.
Whoosh!
The Ratman Leader’s entire body sprang into the air as if launched.
Still midair, he coiled his long tail around the spear shaft, pulled it out of the iron slab, and swung it upward like a whip to stab!
Bam!
The spear shot through the ten-plus-meter span like a sharp blade, striking the protruding steel pipe opening above. Using his tail to grip the spear, the agile Ratman Leader clambered up in two or three moves.
Liang Xi watched as if his heart were being torn apart.
In this world, there’d hardly been anyone who truly cared for him—was he going to die too?
Last month’s end, during those last two minutes… That was when he and his father had just learned that 150 years on their timestamps were to be deducted per person after 120 seconds.
The shock on his father’s face flashed in his mind… Ah Liang gritted his teeth and charged deeper into the passage.
“You gotta hang in there! I must… find that legendary weapon and bring it to you!”
……
Dozens of kilometers away, at the Monster Hunter Alliance base, Chu Qiang sensed the mental link image, hesitated a long time, then sighed.
“So there’s no option to hide your name, huh…”
He walked to the fourth-floor window.
Down on the wide stone platform, Mu Xiaoyu was holding water and chatting with others, none of whom had received this mental link image.
……
Clang, clash!
Spear shadows rained down like a storm, and Yang Zicang couldn’t dodge them all. After just two hits, he lost two hundred years of duration. As he retreated quickly, the tail, moving like a dexterous hand, swung the spear again to strike.
Bang! Yang Zicang felt another hundred years of his duration vanish.
Each time, it was exactly a hundred years. It struck him instantly: Could this spear be a Century Weapon?
The three figures chased after Yang Zicang, rushing with incredible speed into the cavern-like room. The nearby crowd, who had been curious about what was up there, finally got a glimpse.
“Such high-purity magic stones,” said the person beside Luo Xin.
“I thought there’d be something special up here, but it’s just these things.”
Within just a few seconds, chaos erupted. The rat-man’s spear style was fierce and dominating—two strokes swept through the area, sending countless shattered magic stones flying everywhere.
“Damn it! Including my principal, I only have a little over three thousand years of duration left now!”
He dared not stop using his regulatory ability, but Yang Zicang was still grazed by the vicious winds. The spear’s sweep covered the entire cave.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
This strike carried immense force. Cornered against the wall, Yang Zicang instinctively raised the pitch-black iron book to block it, but the power was overwhelming. The spear pinned him into the wall.
The wall collapsed with a thunderous roar.
His duration vanished instantly by several hundred years.
“Ugh—!” His mind surged with blood, dazed. The shadow of death loomed over him.
Rumble!
Suddenly, from the gap where the iron door was ajar behind the three ratmen, countless crimson-tinged dark shadows surged forth.
The rubble blocking the iron door had been pulverized by the spear’s shadow.
The girl’s mournful murmurs echoed.
Yang Zicang, covered in dust, opened his eyes to see the three ratmen frozen in place, as if awestruck by something. The silver-white halos on their chests rapidly turned dark red and deep, flickering with eerie light.
{A hundred away still…}
A deep, male voice, utterly devoid of emotion, rang out in the hearts of all watching attentively.
The Ratman Leader suddenly erupted into a frenzy of piercing shrieks.
Outside, the rats surged forward recklessly, charging off the cliff and plummeting vertically into the pit below. Countless dark shadows emerged from the crushed carcasses of the monsters, streaking through the open space toward the iron door.
……
Within the grand hall, the monstrous aura latent within the silhouette that had hung suspended for unknown ages slowly intensified.
{Daddy… died, wuwuwu, ughhh, ahhhh!}
Under this voice, Yang Zicang’s emotions spiraled toward insanity.
{Ten more, just ten more, don’t stop.}
The silver light on the ratmen flared brightly, suppressing the red glow.
The shrieking ceased; the ratmen seemed to have gained some additional strange power, deflecting the “Defender’s” mental influence as one brandished a triangular spear in a thrust.
The iron door behind the rat-man was simultaneously pushed open by an invisible force, and two rat heads struggling while holding their own heads exploded with a bang.
{Only eight more left, quickly continue to give the order and make sacrifices for me.}
Behind the door, the scarlet compound eyes of that figure in the main hall opened, gazing in this direction.
After Yang Zicang met its gaze, his head buzzed, and he lost consciousness, just staring blankly at the other.
This spear thrust from the Rat Punisher was now unavoidable.
[Virtual Zero Chronology input, 1000N, 12 minutes and 47 seconds remaining. Because I am the Mysterious Triangle, I can amplify it threefold!]
A black phantom suddenly flashed at the point where the silver-white spear connected, like a rotating micro black hole, pulling the young man’s body forward.
Also pulled up by the suction was another object—the already shattered Iron Book.
Bang! The spear pierced through the black hole phantom, through the deity image on the page, through the entire Iron Book which had shattered into a large hole, and the spear tip stabbed into Yang Zicang’s chest, scattering bright red blood.
[Chronology reduced by 3000N.]
Yang Zicang felt his life force rapidly waning; within seconds, his hair turned gray, and this piercing pain briefly sharpened his already numb, scrambled nerves.
[Sanction completed.]
Having delivered this strike, the Punisher seemed to have fulfilled its task, and the model’s radiance on its body faded.
It immediately let out a frenzied roar, reverting to its identity as an ordinary nest leader.
The red light behind the door effortlessly merged into the Ratman Leader’s body, causing it to let out a high-pitched, piercing howl!
Outside, in the broken passage, monsters scattered and fled in all directions, leaving only a few rats that hadn’t run far; upon hearing the howl, they disregarded their own lives and turned back to rush toward the cliffs.
Before the snow-haired Yang Zicang’s chest, a halo appeared.
The digits after the decimal point inside it rapidly decreased.
[Remaining timeline 0.0R]
Yang Zicang struggled to lower his head, his blurring vision fixed on the spear thrust into his chest.
A black hole at the silver spear’s tip began to spin, causing the shaft to twist and spiral back into the black hole, about to vanish from this world.
Suddenly, the digital segment within the ring before his chest elongated…
The pattern seemed determined to find a non-zero number in the face of utter impossibility.
A red blood cell died, followed by a contorted neural network grasping at the skin withering away.
[Remaining timeline 0.000000001R.]
“This is not Earth; this is… the Hall of Timelines.”
His body trembled as countless bacteria and cells simultaneously perished.
[Remaining timeline 0.00000326R!]
The head-lowering Yang Zicang grabbed the silver-white shaft embedded in his heart with both hands.
In his dazed mind, only one command remained—
Before his life returned to zero, find a new timeline.
At the same time, the cold, indifferent voice declared:
{Just one more, just one more left.}
All of this happened in the blink of an eye.
The blood vessels on the somewhat shrunk head of the rat leader abruptly bulged.
“Ahhh!”
The aged YangZicang, using the last of his strength, pulled out the shortened spear and hurled it.
The silver spear, already mostly withdrawn into the black hole, shot through the space ahead!
Bang!
Just as the rat leader’s head burst apart, the spear swept through its skull!
It’s unclear who should claim the final blow.
Countless explosive filth, carrying a large part of the monster’s agony-ridden head, was sucked into the black hole by the silver spear! Along with it, the newly born darkness—invisible to all—was also pulled inside.
{How dare you!}
The Defender’s thunderous roar erupted in thought.
[I have harvested 56.3N.]
The great hall was filled with crimson light as hundreds of shadows burst forth from the monster’s body, streaking across the hall and charging toward him.
“Ah!”
YangZicang roared madly.
[Basic Corpse Leap, activate.]
With its legs bent and pushed off, the bloodstained, aged and withered him truly lunged forward like a revived zombie.
Skin and hair color rapidly restored.
[Adjust.]
YangZicang twisted his body in the air at an unnatural angle, adjusting his posture so that while his hand reached out to slam the iron door shut with a bang, he would also crash against it, pinning the door tight.
Bang!
The ominous and terrifying sensation vanished instantly.
……
No one knows how much time passed.
[The 41st Assessment Judge was astonished by my mental resilience. Merely because after the chrono reset to zero, I extended my body’s instinct by an additional 3.26 seconds through sheer willpower and completed the chrono seizure.]
[I found new possibilities in the direst circumstances.]
[I, the Great Quadrilateral, have harvested a Complete Stamp Emblem. This is the Assessment Committee’s compensation for my survival.]
The skin is plump and full, the heart resumes beating, but more fresh blood rapidly flows from the horrifying wound in the chest cavity.
[The 41st Assessment Judge revoked the ownership of the gun-shaped Chrono Weapon.]
[The 41st Assessment Judge informed me that I missed the optimal moment to kill the “Abandoned Matrix.”]
[The 41st Assessment Judge marked the presence of the “Mature Defender” for me.]
[Mature Defender found. Discoverer: Selected Candidate YangZicang.]
YangZicang leaned groggily against the iron door, with the boulder used to block the path—shattered by the monster—lying beneath his waist.
In the end, his life had already returned to zero, but the residual momentum of his body still executed the final command from his brain: draw the gun, swing the gun.
The gun barrel that was constantly shortening and entering the black hole stopped, then reversed, revealing the complete appearance of a long silver gun. Several lines from a Mental Link swept in, but the unconscious YangZicang no longer had the waking willpower to accept them.
……
Somewhere.
This carriage of the rusty-yellow subway car was clean and bright.
The silver-uniformed man, standing with his sword, sat silent and bowed his head on the metal bench.
His eyes were half-open, his gaze deathly still.
A fragrant breeze wafted by, and a pair of exquisitely toned, slender legs came to a halt beside Ma Chao. The girl crouched down and said,
“They say he’s dead. Now you can come back with me, right? We’ll go to the silver-white A-class cross point.”
“He’s not dead.”
The man lifted his head, his handsome face cold and ruthless.
“It seems even the world agrees that he is destined to die by my sword. I’m beginning to appreciate him a little.”
He could sense it—the mark he had planted had not disappeared!