Soton Arrives

Jess and Rose visibly relaxed after seeing Rui Mengmeng agree.

Seeing that the discussion had more or less wrapped up, Wang Lei showed off his skills and treated the two of them to the Great Universe Fried Rice that had made his fortune. They probably had not eaten properly since morning. They wolfed it down with gusto.

After finishing, Jess even asked Wang Lei whether he wanted to join the Super Soldier Company as a chef. That way, he could see Qi Lin and Rui Mengmeng every day.

Wang Lei then showed him how much other people had booked and paid for one of his meals. Jess promptly shut his mouth. He could not afford a chef who charged five figures for a single meal. He quickly took his leave in embarrassment.

Well, the farewell dinner that night had gone from one person to two. The next day, Qi Lin took Rui Mengmeng to report in. Wang Lei became a lonely man once again.

But being alone had its advantages. With Mengmeng gone too, Wang Lei simply stopped opening the shop and spent every day in his room experimenting with Aether Encoding.

After more than a week of experimentation, Wang Lei finally figured out how to use Aether Encoding.

The system had not cut corners. The Aether Encoding it had exchanged for Wang Lei was the most complete version. Perhaps no one on the entire Punklorde Planet possessed the set of Aether Encoding in Wang Lei's hands anymore. Its ability to edit all things was no exaggeration.

The reason his previous data modifications kept triggering warnings that items had been damaged was simple. From the perspective of Aether Encoding, everything was a program.

Wang Lei wanted to alter the values within it, but he did not change the corresponding code logic. If a set of code specified that the maximum value was 5, and Wang Lei insisted on changing it to 10, all sorts of bizarre bugs would naturally appear.

If a bug appeared and the program could still run, it resulted in mutation. If the bug made it unable to run at all, the item would be directly damaged.

For example, if Wang Lei wanted to raise an ordinary sheet of A4 paper to the same strength as wood, he would end up with a pile of wood chips. That was still a good result, since paper was primarily made of fiber and also contained lignin.

If Wang Lei directly set the strength of A4 paper to that of iron, the paper would explode from excessive compression, and the explosion was not weak either.

Fortunately, Wang Lei noticed something was wrong and quickly used a rift to transfer it a hundred meters into the air. That was the only reason it did not cause a major incident. The people below merely assumed someone had set off fireworks in broad daylight.

Therefore, if Wang Lei wanted to alter an item's properties, he needed to make comprehensive modifications. Changing its strength alone was not enough; he needed to alter the material of the paper itself accordingly. The sheer amount of computation made Wang Lei feel as though he had returned to his days debugging at an internet company.

Eventually, Wang Lei gave up on directly changing the fundamental nature of items. Instead, he began researching methods to enlarge existing things or transfer objects.

These two operations required far less computational power. As long as he worked out an algorithm, he could directly apply it to later items with the same properties.

For example, Wang Lei could now easily control the flames on the stove, turning them into a chibi Qi Lin who danced Gokuraku Jodo for him.

He could also quantumize an object on the spot and send it to coordinates he designated. This was a transportation method different from a Micro Wormhole. He could put on a demonstration for Angel Yan later.

However, Wang Lei had not expected that his opportunity to perform would come so soon.

Just as Wang Lei had finished his initial research into Aether Encoding and was preparing to cook himself a good meal as a reward, he suddenly spotted an orange unidentified flying object in the sky while shopping at Jianghai Seafood Market.

It moved at tremendous speed, falling onto a street roughly one or two kilometers away with a BOOM.

Others might not have seen clearly what had fallen, but Wang Lei, whose physical abilities had been continually strengthened by the Stellaron, saw it distinctly. It was a large crocodile nearly two meters tall. There was no need to guess—it had to be Crocodile God Soton.

So, while everyone was looking toward the site where the unidentified object had landed, Wang Lei found an empty alley, immediately put on his Exoskeleton armor, and used a rift to move to where Soton had landed.

At this point, that idiot still had not figured out what was going on. Sitting on the ground, he said he needed to rest for a while.

Wang Lei was worried that the Taotie's subsequent capture operation would harm nearby civilians. He immediately activated mass quantum transfer. Groups of more than a dozen people transformed into quantum particles and were sent to blocks several hundred meters away. Before long, no one remained on the street.

Soton looked utterly bewildered. Pointing at Wang Lei, he said, "Hey, black bun. Where did all those other buns go? Don't tell me you made them disappear."

Wang Lei could not be bothered to waste words on this fool. He had just tried using Aether Encoding to directly read its data, but this third-generation Beast Body apparently exceeded his ability to modify. He could not see any of its basic data at all.

However, Wang Lei knew that although Soton was still a third-generation Beast Body, it had been sealed away for too long. Its stomach was growling with hunger, and it had almost no energy left in its body. Even Taotie whose Combat Strength was merely that of First Generation Super Soldiers could send it flying in a one-on-one fight. It was a crocodile stranded in shallow waters.

So Wang Lei did not hesitate to fire a fireball at Soton. Then, using Aether Encoding to increase its intensity and alter its form, he directly turned the fireball into a Fire Dragon that tightly coiled around Soton.

Moreover, Wang Lei could now freely adjust the temperature of the flames. As long as the Stellaron energy in his body could keep supplying it, he could raise the temperature as high as he wanted.

Thus, Wang Lei directly raised the flames to 3,000 degrees. The fire turned orange, burning Soton until he howled, "Ahhh! Black bun, stop burning me! Ahhh, I'm going to be cooked! Grilled crocodile doesn't taste good!!!"

If not for the Taotie, Wang Lei really would have wanted to roast Soton right there. The crocodile might have been dumb, but Wang Lei was not strong enough to crush it like Morgana could. Even if he defeated it while it was weakened, it would still betray him later. Most importantly, he did not want to expose himself to the Super God Academy so soon, so he had nowhere to keep it. He might as well roast it.

But the Taotie could not simply stand by and watch Wang Lei roast the Beast Body created by their own main god. This was a third-generation Beast Body.

Just as Wang Lei continued roasting it, an energy beam suddenly sniped at him from a sixty-degree angle to his upper right rear. At the same time, two Taotie riding flying motorcycles charged at him from directly behind, while two more Taotie rushed straight toward Soton from above the front.

Their movements were laid bare by Aether Encoding's scan.

Wang Lei directly opened a small rift in front of the energy shot. The other end of the rift opened behind one of the two Taotie in the rear. The unlucky fellow was instantly killed by his own side's sniper fire.

As for the other Taotie attempting a sneak attack, Wang Lei directly used the Path of Erudition's innate ability to split his focus three ways. With his left hand, he flung out a flaming whip that transformed into a crimson arc. It blasted apart the flying motorcycle while wrapping around the Taotie.

Then, with a flick of the whip, he hurled the already charred Taotie, flames and all, at the two Taotie in front who had come to rescue Soton, smashing them off their flying motorcycles.

The Taotie were evidently still within the range that Wang Lei's Aether Encoding could modify. He directly altered the temperature of the Energy Batteries inside their bodies, turning the two Taotie who had survived the fall into firecrackers.

Just as Wang Lei finished dealing with the attacking Taotie and was about to continue roasting the crocodile, he suddenly discovered energy rounds raining down upon him from the sky. Dozens of Taotie riding flying motorcycles had suddenly appeared overhead.

With so many attacks, Wang Lei could only evade for now. He decisively used a rift to leave the area.

However, the Taotie apparently were not trying to eliminate Wang Lei. They did not care what had happened to him amid the smoke and dust from the barrage. They immediately fired several grappling hooks, seized Soton—whose flames had gone out after Wang Lei left—and swiftly vanished over the horizon.