I'm Here to Give You a Cheat

The Stellaron construct's fist stopped in front of Bai Luoming's face and moved no further.

Bai Luoming did not let his guard down. He lowered his arms from their blocking position, but his muscles remained taut, ready to throw a punch at any moment.

He looked away from the Stellaron's fist, which was nearly touching the tip of his nose, and swept his gaze over the twisted body pieced together from wreckage.

The light radiating from the Stellaron in its chest had also fallen dormant.

He looked away and turned toward his companions in the distance.

Not far away, March 7th's anxious expression as she looked at him and the figures of Stelle and Dan Heng charging forward were all frozen in place, as though time had been paused.

Bai Luoming frowned and called out to the empty platform. "Where are you? You made such a big scene, and you're not going to show yourself?"

His voice carried, but there was no response. The entire world had fallen into an eerie silence.

He instinctively suspected it was the Stellaron's doing.

But the Stellaron construct before him was frozen in an attacking stance. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't seem to be the one in control.

As he pondered, a clear footstep sounded behind him.

Bai Luoming spun around and looked behind him.

A man stood a few steps away, watching him.

The man looked exactly like him. His height and build were identical, down to the last detail.

The only difference was the pair of heavy dark circles beneath the man's eyes. He looked as though he hadn't slept in hundreds of years, and his whole body appeared terribly frail.

"Heh, pretty clever, showing up wearing my face, huh?" Bai Luoming forcibly suppressed his shock and continued, "Too bad you didn't even bother to get the disguise right. I'm nowhere near that frail!"

The moment Bai Luoming finished speaking, he pushed off with his feet and shot forward like a cannonball, throwing a straight punch at the man's face without holding anything back.

The wind from his fist tore through the still air, briefly sending the snowflakes suspended around them drifting.

Faced with a punch powerful enough to smash through armor, the man before Bai Luoming merely raised one hand calmly.

He opened his palm, and with a bang, he caught Bai Luoming's fist firmly.

The snow beneath the man's feet did not sink in the slightest, and his body didn't even sway. Bai Luoming's punch seemed to have had no effect on him at all.

The muscles in Bai Luoming's arm bulged as he unleashed all his strength, but his fist could not advance another inch.

The man looked at Bai Luoming and said helplessly, in a tone Bai Luoming knew well, "Look at you, rushing in again. I haven't even said anything yet."

Bai Luoming instantly pulled his hand free and leaped back several steps to where he had been standing, putting distance between them.

Clearly, the man could suppress him so easily because his power was already far beyond anything Bai Luoming could handle.

Bai Luoming withdrew his hand but remained on guard. "If you've got something to say, just say it," he said quietly. "It's not like I'm stopping you."

The man flexed his wrist and smiled, his expression saying he had expected as much.

"As expected of me. Nice and cautious."

Bai Luoming's heart skipped a beat at those words. The man wore his face and acted as though he knew him very well.

An utterly absurd yet perfectly reasonable thought arose in his mind.

The man seemed to see through his thoughts. He spread his hands and said, "Looks like you've already guessed. I'm you from the future. For convenience, you can call me Old Bai."

He pointed at himself, then at Bai Luoming.

"I borrowed Terminus's power to come here and give you a cheat."

Bai Luoming's pupils trembled. Old Bai's words had clearly revealed a tremendous amount of information, and he thought of Terminus appearing in the story when the Trailblazer was brought down by a loaded die.

Could the arrival of his future self this time also mean that this Stellaron would make him pay some terrible price? With that question in mind, Bai Luoming spoke.

"A cheat?" Bai Luoming stared into his eyes and asked in confusion, "Could it be that fighting this Stellaron will cost me something so terrible that even your future self regrets it, enough for you to rely on Terminus to come here?"

"Nothing like that." Old Bai waved a hand, looking relaxed. "This thing isn't worth you paying any kind of price here. It's mostly because the timing is just right, so I figured I'd come install a CPU for you, so that later on..."

He stopped abruptly halfway through his sentence.

Bai Luoming waited a few seconds, but the man said nothing more, as though his signal had been cut off.

Being left hanging like that was the worst.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and his tone turned unfriendly. "Can you finish what you're saying in one go? Is playing the riddler that much fun?"

Seeing Bai Luoming like this, Old Bai wasn't angry in the least. Instead, he looked delighted, clearly enjoying deliberately keeping him in suspense.

"Knowing too much about the future right now wouldn't be good for either of us," he explained, then raised a hand slightly. "Besides, I don't have much time left."

As he spoke, he walked over to Bai Luoming and struck his chest with his palm.

"I'll give you an 'advance' on a portion of your future. Go deal with the Stellaron first, then we'll move on to the next step."

"You don't have much time. Hurry."

Bai Luoming was just about to ask what he meant by "advance" when Old Bai's figure began to fade rapidly, turning transparent.

The snowflakes frozen around them began to fall again.

In the distance, the Stellaron construct's frozen fist also began to descend slowly.

Time was about to resume.

The instant Old Bai vanished completely, the world returned to normal.

The Stellaron construct's heavy fist slammed into the spot where Bai Luoming had been standing.

Boom!

Violent energy exploded outward. The ice beneath Bai Luoming's previous position instantly cracked in a spiderweb pattern and caved in, and the resulting wave of snow and flying rubble completely swallowed his figure.

"Bai Luoming!" March 7th cried out.

Stelle instinctively tightened her grip on the flaming lance, its flames leaping in response to her emotions.

Dan Heng and Seele sprang into action at the same time, charging toward the cloud of dust.

However, the Stellaron construct did not immediately launch its next attack.

The Stellaron in its chest flickered violently at a frenzied rate. Its massive body abruptly froze, and it assumed a defensive stance.

The next moment, a hand reached out from the swirling snow and dust and grabbed its wrist.

The hand wasn't large, but it clamped onto the wrist like an iron vise, holding it fast and giving it no chance to break free.

The dust settled.

Bai Luoming stood there, looking down at the hand with which he had grabbed his opponent, feeling the incomparably powerful Path power within him.

If Bai Luoming's Path power had been a stream before, the power surging within him now was an ocean.

"So that's how it is," Bai Luoming murmured to himself, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "This is pretty interesting."

The moment he finished speaking, golden flames erupted from within him.

The flames weren't hot, but they carried the majesty of something that could burn everything to ash. They burned away the damaged white clothing on his upper body, revealing a lean, muscular torso covered in streams of golden light.

He raised his right hand, and a vast amount of Path energy began to gather and compress, finally forming a greatsword burning with golden flames in his hand.

The entire platform atop Everwinter Hill shook violently under the sheer pressure.

"He's... fine?" March 7th quietly breathed a sigh of relief as she looked at the figure wreathed in golden flames, only to be so stunned by his new form that she forgot to breathe.

Stelle's eyes widened, and she blurted out, "Holy crap, Old Bai has a second phase? His stats in the first phase were already strong enough. Now they're probably off the charts."

For the first time, an emotion resembling fear entered the Stellaron construct's voice.

It stared at the golden flames burning around Bai Luoming, its earlier composure gone. Its voice turned shrill and distorted. "This Path energy... An Emanator?! No, impossible! How could you be an Emanator?!"

"I can't be bothered explaining. You don't deserve to hear it!"

With that, Bai Luoming took the greatsword and swung it lightly at the Stellaron.

As the golden blade descended, a crushing pressure instantly enveloped the Stellaron's entire body. In its haste, the Stellaron could only conjure a shield in an attempt to block the blow.

But it was useless. The shield the Stellaron had hastily conjured was sliced open like paper by the golden sword light. The body pieced together from machinery and flesh was cleanly cut from head to toe by the strike, bursting into fragments that scattered through the air.

The Stellaron embedded in its chest let out a mournful cry after losing every part of its host and fell toward the ground.

Seeing this, Bai Luoming dismissed the greatsword in his hand, and the golden flames covering his body withdrew back inside him.

He walked over to the Stellaron that had fallen in the snow and bent down to take it in his hand.

The instant Bai Luoming picked up the Stellaron,

a familiar sensation returned, and everything around him froze.