Chapter 92: The Puzzle and the Correction – 2

“Thank you for the comfort…” Qin Meng recalled his past experience. “No one was willing to take me into those intertwined spaces. Not until someone told me to collect the scenes of others.”
Isn’t that… murder?
“They’d use frequency crystals to find the passages, but instead of entering, they’d wait for the victims to go in. Then they’d make me ambush those who entered the scenes first and ‘devour’ their timelines.”
Qin Meng said painfully:
“If I didn’t obey, they’d beat me to the brink of death, until I was in agony. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I devoured them.”
Suddenly, land pieces burst out from beneath Qin Meng’s feet in all directions—like a vivid scroll.
[I sense that excess terrain is creating itself. It’s being born.]
Yang Zicang could read Qiu Mneng’s gaze—a look of determination, as if he was walking toward his death.
“You don’t have to make that choice,” Yang Zicang shouted quickly. “Stop, Qin Meng!”
Everyone suddenly heard a voice in their minds—not the model’s, but another person’s.
{Interesting. I thought I’d be trapped here forever. I didn’t expect the master of this cage to be the one that couldn’t hold on first.}
It was an unknown language, yet one could understand it directly.
Wang Chong’s eyes went wide. Zuo Feixian cautiously took a step back, looked around, then picked up a stone from the ground and gripped it tightly as a weapon.
The feeling was so familiar. Yang Zicang looked into the distance.
“Not good, everyone, run!”
Beneath a hillside that flickered like a scene backdrop in the distance, a nerve-wracking pressure began to surge forth.
There, a dark red, scene-like patch of earth tried to surface several times but was suppressed by some unknown force.
“That’s it.”
Qin Meng said with a grim look: “Too many scenes pieced together into a bizarre terrain. Inside it, a moonlit monster was born. So I can’t release it. I can only constantly reinforce the rank to increase the storage time and seal it away. But now, I can no longer suppress it.”
All color drained from heaven and earth. Wang Chong and the others scrambled to run outside.
From the chaos of glittering fragments, grasslands, forests, rivers, small lakes, a patch of snow, and a semi-translucent camp by the foot of the mountain gradually took form and solidified.
In the camp lay many bones: those of beasts and humans, twisted, mummified, hanged, made into emergency rations…
Boom! A stretch of the ground sank downward.
Everyone looked around. Outside this newly appeared region, it became a hazy darkness, as if cut off from the outside world, forming a space of staggering, shattered layers through which sight could just pierce.
“They won’t die immediately.”
Qin Meng bent over in pain, his whole body trembling.
“They struggle to survive inside my ‘body’.”
The model on his chest flickered wildly, countless fine lines intertwining on the illusory ground beneath.
“Yet they can only despair…”
A blurry figure emerged from the camp in the distance.
The humanoid monster was wreathed in black mist, its entire being radiating an oppressive aura like a humanoid missile on the verge of explosion at any moment.
{Finally, I’m free—serving up delicious food as soon as I come out, that’s not half bad.}
Its nails, long and sharp like steel forks, pointed toward YangZicang from afar.
……
YangZicang’s face darkened as he stared gravely at the figure; the model on his chest extended toward Moli in the Hub Town but failed to connect.
At this early hour, Moli and Boppoli were probably still asleep.
YangZicang gazed at the dark silhouette, “That’s a humanoid creature born only within the Interspace.”
{So there’s this much terrain after all—which means this place is still part of an Interspace.}
Suddenly, on the surface of the shadow creature, all the darkness retracted into its body, its form swelling again and emitting a crimson-tinted dark mist that seemed two shades redder.
[The Moon-shadow-level opponent has adjusted its strength.]
{So you’re the new strongest one.}
The monster stared at Yang Zicang, its claws swiped, and the energy current it flung slammed against two human skulls hanging from trees beside it, making a loud banging sound.
“Damn it!” Yang Zicang felt a shudder of dread.
Although it was a thousand meters away, every move it made felt right in front of everyone, so clear that even Qiu Meng, with his bad eyesight, could see it distinctly, as if it were directly projected into their minds.
“I am forever stronger than the strongest here, that’s my privilege. Ha, so there’s something here stronger than those two.”
The aura it emitted was greater than any opponent Yang Zicang had ever faced.
Yang Zicang had no doubt it could kill Lu Zhishen the moment it saw him.
“A shadow under the moon that’s just slightly more capable than me in overall strength.”
Suddenly, the terrain under Yang Zicang’s feet vanished without warning, but before it disappeared, his figure had already dashed to the edge of that land.
He glared angrily at the distant Qiu Meng, “What are you doing, are you trying to swallow me whole?!”
Meng Qin’s mental waves flickered, and he said, “No, I was trying to stop you. Sorry, Brother Zicang. I didn’t expect this monster could still get stronger even now. I, I thought you could handle it.”
“I can!” Yang Zicang charged forward.
Suddenly, several small glowing light clusters appeared in the sky.
“Oh, breaking news.”
“Let’s see who’s suddenly become so famous.”
“So many fine places, there’s never been anything like this.”
Whoosh! Yang Zicang turned into a blur, rushing towards the scene blocked by dark energy and flickering model lines, as a few distant figures glanced back while running.
The monster walked to the edge of the plot and plunged its hands into the ground.
{Did you really think isolating me would stop me from dealing with you scum? How typical of low-level life’s thinking.}
Rumble!
Beside this illusory plot, countless twisted black thorns rapidly grew, each spike as long as a finger, densely covering the ground. The plants near the thorns quickly withered, and the soil lost its life aura, becoming barren.
All the nutrients of the plot were concentrated onto the rapidly growing thorns!
“Die!”
Yang Zicang stopped in his tracks and kicked a stone on the ground, which, as it flew, was coated in a golden phantom flame.
BAM BAM!
The rock only penetrated one meter into the thorn forest before its forward momentum ceased.
[I canceled out six 300N; I guess each layer of thorn forest cancels out 300N from me.]
……
{Cutie pie, which city are you reporters from?}
{What about you, handsome big eyes, are you a reporter from Crimson?}
{Yes, yes.}
The glowing little orbs seemed alive as they floated across this land, and now they were all turning toward the scene where the thorns had emerged.
……
The moon-shadow monster with its hands plunged into the ground curled the corners of its mouth, a look of undisguised mockery directed at Yang Zicang in its gaze.
The monster suddenly lifted its head.
A silver long spear, trailing a gold-red phantom, suddenly stabbed into its forehead.
Snap! The monster’s head split in two; the spear drove straight into its torso, pierced through its body, and nailed it into the ground.
The people in the distance stared in shock at the red-flame spear that had appeared out of nowhere.
Even Qin Meng, at the center of the block, stood frozen in place.
“That’s… it? Success?”
Two small light motes flew down, floating beside his face, chattering persistently against his cheek.
{So, what are you thinking now, our big celebrity, Mr. Meng?}
{Hey, you know your fame is already over fifty, right?}
Qin Meng turned a deaf ear, his eyes fixed solely on the monster’s silhouette beyond the thorn forest across from Yang Zicang—the one pierced clean through by a spear.
That figure had always exuded a ferocious, insurmountable menace in his mind, yet now, pierced through its body so easily by that sudden spear!
But Yang Zicang frowned.
He hadn’t sensed the feedback of temporal sequence!
……
Though mutual slaughter in a lost-frequency zone didn’t award the opponent’s temporal sequence, this rule didn’t apply to monsters.
“Impressive. As expected of the strongest opponent.” The moon-shadow monster’s voice rang out.
Of course… it wouldn’t be that easy this time.
With a sigh, Yang Zicang imbued the stone chunk with temporal sequence, and it instantly lit up with a phantom glow.
“I wonder, if the target you chose continues to grow stronger afterward, would you also grow stronger along with it?”
The monster, its body pierced through, had its head split into two halves, and those eyes slanted upward, their pupils trembling slightly as they turned to look at him.
{No. But it’s a fact that I am stronger than you. Don’t even think about growing at this moment.}
One of the monster’s hands pulled itself up from the ground, reaching toward the spear shaft that had impaled it.
The moment it gripped the silver spear, Yang Zicang had already activated Gravitational Arc Light. A twisting suction force appeared beneath the monster’s body; with a bang, the lower section below its abdomen was shattered by gravity and sucked into a miniature black hole. The remaining part of the silver spear whizzed in, swallowed completely by the black hole, and vanished.
The others watching from afar shuddered—imagining how painful that must be—yet the monster seemed utterly indifferent.
……
The monster’s face, which had turned a dark green, was now split in two, but the flesh writhed inside, reforming to make the missing parts plump once more.
It had turned into two heads!
“You actually possess a body that can regenerate, like a plant. That is indeed an ability that can counter mine,” Yang Zicang said, his expression turning somber.
{Do you want to know why?}
“What?”
{Because the moment I saw you, I, as a projection of the moon, gained a new Ring of Bloodline.}
Yang Zicang’s heart stirred.
Suddenly!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Yang Zicang flicked his toe and quickly retreated, while the thorn forest in front of him exploded violently. Countless icy gleams were swept up by the surging force and sent toward the figure opposite!
All the bursting thorns were scorched with pale phantom flames!
[Trajectory Dispatch!]
Hundreds of shards in front of him twisted their trajectories, crashing into other nearby thorn spikes. A thunderous collision erupted, unleashing clouds of smoke.