In the dim underground world, two humans faced off against a giant centipede. In terms of size alone, the humans were at a disadvantage.
The giant centipede was curious. It made a very human-like gesture, using one of its legs to stroke its chin, just as humans habitually rested a hand beneath their chin while thinking. With its limited intelligence, it simply could not imagine how this human could keep it here, so it decided the human was bluffing.
"Let me see, then. How exactly do you plan to keep me from getting out?" The giant centipede swayed its head from side to side and spoke mockingly.
"Don't rush." Ming Jing smiled. He even pulled Konan down to sit cross-legged on the ground, then looked at the giant centipede and asked, "I'm curious. How did you grow so large?"
"That?" The giant centipede thought back, then pointed with one of its legs toward the end of the tunnel beneath their feet. "Right, there's an underground spring at the very end of this path. The water there is different from everywhere else. Wait, why am I telling you this? Damned human!"
"Mm, I understand. We'll take a look later." Ming Jing nodded, his expression serious.
The giant centipede was startled. Although it did not know why the spring water had made it so large, there was no doubt that the water was good stuff!
Good things should belong to one centipede alone!
Having sorted out its thoughts, the giant centipede sneered. "You won't get the chance. I'll eat you right here!" As soon as it spoke, it opened its enormous mouth and lunged down at Ming Jing and Konan.
With a thunderous boom, the giant centipede laughed smugly. It thought it had succeeded!
But a voice shattered its illusion.
"Genjutsu: Pushing the Platform into the Wall!"
Not far away, Ming Jing stood in front of Konan. His left hand was still holding hers, while his right hand gave a gentle push forward. When Ming Jing had pulled Konan down to sit, he had already cast a simple genjutsu on the giant centipede—the Heart Fox Technique. It had shifted the apparent positions of himself and Konan nearly ten meters back from where they sat, so the giant centipede had bitten nothing but dirt.
Seeing Ming Jing's movement, the giant centipede suddenly felt itself falling. It had not felt this at all while it was in its dazed state, but now it could clearly feel itself dropping.
All of a sudden, the giant centipede's vision brightened. It had clearly been underground just moments ago, yet now it was in the air, staring at the blinding sun. Even more terrifyingly, it was still falling! It desperately twisted its body and finally saw the scenery below: a lush green forest.
With a loud bang, the giant centipede snapped several trees before finally hitting the ground. Relieved, it instinctively tried to burrow into the earth. Suddenly, it felt something grab its tail. The giant centipede froze and turned around, only to discover that a huge figure had somehow appeared behind it, dressed in a red-and-white bodysuit with eyes shaped like half eggshells. This was a creature called Ultraman, and it loved beating up little monsters.
"Cha!" The giant grabbed the centipede's tail and gave it a fierce swing, actually flinging it into the air! Then, the giant hurled the centipede straight toward the sky.
Before the giant centipede could react, its body began descending again. This time, below it was a cluster of towering skyscrapers. On the roof of one particularly tall building, an enormous gorilla threw back its head and roared. Anyone who had seen the movie King Kong would probably find this familiar. Wasn't this the gorilla that fought airplanes atop the Empire State Building for the girl he loved?! Of course, those had been real airplanes!
The giant centipede sensed King Kong's provocation and roared back without yielding. King Kong became completely enraged. Before the centipede could land, he leaped up and swung his thick arms like pillars holding up the sky. The giant centipede had no way to dodge in midair and could only take the blow head-on. The furious centipede made up its mind—once it landed, it would make King Kong pay!
With King Kong's assist, the giant centipede returned to the air once more. Pulled by gravity, it began to fall again. This time, it successfully landed on the ground. Just as the excited giant centipede was about to roar, another majestic roar cut it off. Looking up, it saw a green giant in black shorts descending from the sky, one foot stomping its head into the dirt...
"What happened?" Konan asked curiously as she looked at the motionless giant centipede.
"Hehe..." Ming Jing laughed smugly before explaining, "It's dreaming right now! And it'll never wake up."
"Could it be the Ten-Tails Sword?" Konan frowned and asked. Legend said that anything pierced by the Ten-Tails Sword would be drawn into Susanoo's sake gourd and permanently sealed within a drunken dreamscape.
"It's different from the Ten-Tails Sword!" Ming Jing continued, "Pushing the Platform into the Wall is, in a sense, hypnosis. It pulls consciousness into a dream. But the dreams created by Pushing the Platform into the Wall have layers. The deeper the layer, the slower time flows. Time in the first dream layer flows twenty times slower than in reality. Time in the second layer flows twenty times slower than in the first. In theory, the dream world created by Pushing the Platform into the Wall has infinite layers, and so on..." In fact, there were two main reasons Ming Jing had succeeded so easily against the giant centipede. First, the centipede itself was not very intelligent, and its resistance to genjutsu was practically nonexistent. Second, its intelligence and thought patterns had been nurtured by Ming Jing himself. Was there anything easier than opening a door with the key in hand?
"There's no way for it to wake up? What if I attack it now?" Konan continued.
"If you attack it now, I'm afraid it's already too late. I don't even know what dream layer it has reached by now. But that kind of pain will probably never catch up to its sleeping consciousness." Ming Jing took Konan's hand and spoke as they walked. As for the centipede? It would probably starve to death here eventually.
"Even you can't wake it?"
"This is my first time using this technique. In theory, every dream layer has a key 'totem.' As long as you find the 'totem,' you can leave that layer and return to the previous one. But right now, I don't know what the 'totem' is in each layer either."
"Why didn't you use this technique earlier?" Konan fell silent for a moment before suddenly asking.
Ming Jing was embarrassed. It felt like Konan had misunderstood something! He could only explain, "It wasn't that I didn't want to use it. I couldn't. Centipedes have terrible memories and don't even possess basic logical thinking. Everything they do relies entirely on instinct encoded in their genes, so genjutsu was completely ineffective against it back then!"
"So you directly granted it logic and intelligence just to lay the groundwork for this technique?" Konan said leisurely.
"Not really." Ming Jing shook his head. "At first, I wanted to overload its brain capacity with knowledge. I didn't expect it to accidentally gain the ability to think."
"We're here." Konan stopped and pulled her hand from Ming Jing's. Before them was a cave. At its center was a tiny spring, its water glowing with a faint emerald light that illuminated the cave. Around the spring grew a plant resembling ivy. It covered the entire cave, and red fruits grew from some of its vines.
Konan was about to walk over when Ming Jing grabbed her. Konan frowned slightly and turned back to glare at him in dissatisfaction.
"Don't you find it strange?" Ming Jing said seriously. "Why is there such a thriving plant in this cave? Centipedes are omnivorous insects!"
Konan was startled and turned to examine the cave. Before long, she spotted the issue as well. Other than the pool of spring water and that plant, there was not another living creature to be seen.
"Is the problem with the plant, or with the spring water?" Konan muttered to herself.
"Both are problematic!" Ming Jing pulled Konan slowly backward. "Let's get out of here first." As he spoke, the plant's vines suddenly began moving without wind. The red fruits rang like bells, producing a jingle, jingle, jingle. Then the vines slowly raised themselves like venomous snakes awakening from hibernation, their tips swaying as they aimed at Ming Jing and Konan.
"Run!" Ming Jing abruptly leaped backward, pulled Konan around, and ran. The vines behind them seemed to realize their food was escaping, and the ringing of the red fruits became urgent. Thousands upon thousands of vines erupted from the cave, filling the tunnel in an instant.
Ming Jing dragged Konan along in a mad sprint. He was beginning to wonder if his luck stat was negative. The two wild monsters he had encountered were, in a sense, both fucking immune to genjutsu!
Only after they had run nearly ten kilometers did they finally shake off the vines. Ming Jing collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath. He had run more in these past few chapters than in all the dozens before them combined!
"Looks like its limit is less than ten kilometers." Konan looked back to confirm. "And it isn't very fast. An ordinary chunin could outrun it through speed alone."
"Huff... huff... Thanks for the compliment!" Ming Jing rolled his eyes and replied between gasps.
Before you continue