Superpower Showdown

The dim air was thick with the smell of mold.

The reception desk and sofas in the lobby were still there, buried beneath a thick layer of dust. Trash covered the floor; after only a couple of steps, he could spot instant noodle wrappers and plastic bottles. Someone had probably used this place as a temporary shelter.

"Why hasn't the organization discovered this Erosion Point yet?" Chen Xuan asked quietly.

Over the past two days, he had learned quite a bit about otherworldly invasions and ability users from Lin Qing. No one knew exactly when these anomalies had begun. By the time they had seriously affected the modern world, it was already the early twenty-first century. He had to admit, that was later than he had expected. It meant the Dimensional Limit Organization was not much older than he was.

"There's a machine in the Dimensional Limit Organization that can detect gravitational disturbances during an invasion, but most of the time, it only records noise," Lin Qing explained. "Only when an invasion expands and keeps recurring, causing the same waveform to appear repeatedly, can the machine identify it."

"Doesn't that mean there are undiscovered Erosion Points everywhere in the world?"

"That's why there's a saying within the organization: the world is already riddled with holes, and only the organization is patching it up. But don't worry too much. Erosion Points have a rather unusual adhesion effect. They tend to cluster in one location, like the city you live in."

Lin Qing had told him about that before.

An invasion sounded rather mystical, but once visualized, it was like a door or a room. Passing through it would take one into another world. There was also a corresponding relationship involved. For example, something like saving Joan of Arc was more likely to occur in a medieval European setting. When Chen Xuan had first heard this, he immediately thought of the heavily criticized Window of the World in town. Everyone joked that its owner was a tasteless bumpkin, yet its underlying concept had turned out to be so fashionable.

So-called other worlds were, in essence, all Earths... all kinds of Earths.

At least he no longer had to worry about receiving aliens.

They climbed the stairs beside the lobby to the second floor. The lighting suddenly became much dimmer, and the moldy smell grew stronger. Slippers and towels lay scattered throughout the hallway. Clearly, they had not been worth moving, so they had simply been left behind. Chen Xuan curiously glanced into one room and found several unopened packs of condoms still sitting on the coffee table.

Erosion Points had an adhesion effect.

Then whatever was attached to the other side of an unlicensed club probably was not a respectable place either.

"Am I right?" After thinking it over, Chen Xuan decided to ask.

"It wasn't mentioned in the intelligence, but judging from Fei Wuniang's abilities, she should be quite skilled at seeking pleasure."

"The Dimensional Limit Organization hasn't gone over there to take a look?"

"Interfering with another world has always been a major taboo to the organization. Ability users traveling back and forth also worsen the expansion of Erosion Points. So unless they are apprehending someone or have a special reason, they generally won't venture too deeply inside."

In other words, Mad Judy had turned into a witch and disrupted the royal court specifically because of him, Chen Xuan thought.

But they did not know that he did not need to use an Erosion Point to travel between worlds. As long as he stayed in the Ability Store, he could instantly arrive wherever a customer was.

Moreover, the Ability Store opening its doors did not seem to alert the Dimensional Limit Organization. Otherwise, considering how frequently he contacted Liu Shuyue, they should have caught him long ago.

He had asked Lin Qing whether ability users caused invasions, or invasions created ability users. Her answer had been the latter.

To this day, the cause behind Erosion Points remained a mystery. But one thing was certain: every otherworldly invasion brought anomalies, and personal abilities were one manifestation of them. Even after gaining abilities, many people lived out their lives in obscurity because they never realized they had become fundamentally different. The organization called such people the Hidden.

Their counterparts were the Awakened, who actively used their abilities to profit for themselves. Among the Awakened was an even rarer kind, drawn to the Erosion Points that had triggered their mutation. They traveled between two or more worlds, making them even harder to track. The organization called them Wanderers.

According to the Dimensional Limit Organization, these three types grew progressively more dangerous.

Fei Wuniang was a Wanderer.

She had most likely been born in the world on the other side. If she had not traveled repeatedly between the two places, allowing the machine to filter out the Erosion Point's waveform, she would never have attracted an execution squad from the Dimensional Limit Organization.

Chen Xuan stopped at a door at the end of the hallway.

Beyond it was a spacious private room, large enough to accommodate more than a dozen people at once. The "Erosion Point" mentioned in the intelligence was on the private room's bathroom door.

"I'm here."

"Mm. Now we wait for her to show herself," Lin Qing replied.

To be honest, Chen Xuan really wanted to push open that door and take a look at the world on the other side. But once he considered that doing so would draw the Dimensional Limit Organization here early, he ultimately decided against it.

He looked around, found a relatively intact chair, and sat down. "How long do we have to wait?"

Fei Wuniang's time of death had been recorded as nine o'clock that night.

"Either way, she'll definitely show up today."

"If she doesn't, that proves your theory is wrong, right?"

Silence came from the other end.

For some reason, Chen Xuan suddenly felt a little sorry for her. After all, her mission was to stop humanity from going extinct, and she firmly believed she could accomplish that here. But if the two worlds were not identical, it would mean that the very foundation supporting her beliefs would cease to exist.

Could someone who lost their faith still live well?

"Ah... this is troublesome," he suddenly sighed.

"What happened?" Lin Qing's voice immediately tightened.

"I looked around and found that this private room is the only one with a restroom, but the restroom has already become another world. If I need to take a leak, doesn't that mean I have nowhere to go?"

"Huh?" The girl's voice jumped an octave. "I thought the Dimensional Limit Organization had arrived! Can't you just find an empty spot and deal with something that trivial?"

"Right."

"...Mr. Shopkeeper, you're teasing me on purpose, aren't you?"

"She's here."

"You don't need to tell me when you want to use the restroom."

"It's Fei Wuniang."

Chen Xuan suddenly saw the battered door open. Even though it only revealed a narrow crack, he could tell that the scene beyond did not belong behind the door of an abandoned restroom. Then a woman flashed out and stopped before him. The instant she saw a stranger in the building, she was startled. The two simply stared at each other, neither making another move.

"..." After a moment of stunned silence, Lin Qing asked, "Are you sure!?"

Her tone was even more excited than Chen Xuan's.

Naturally, the other woman was not going to pull out her ID or introduce herself the moment they met. Yet Chen Xuan knew that this woman was Fei Wuniang from the intelligence report—she was prettier and more alluring than in her photograph. Even standing still, she exuded a suggestive sensuality that made people want to draw close to her.

She wore a long, corseted gown. Its style alone made it impossible to tell which era it belonged to, but the neckline plunged low, with only a single silk thread connecting the two sides, as though one casual tug would pull it completely open.

"You..." The woman finally reacted. Looking somewhat panicked, she covered her chest with one hand. "...Who are you?"

"No matter what she says, don't let her fool you!" Seeing that he had not responded for so long, Lin Qing hurriedly stressed, "She is exceptionally good at bewitching people and disguising herself as a vulnerable victim."

Chen Xuan could feel it.

Although she showed no hint of threat, and her expression contained only the panic and fear of a woman encountering an unfamiliar man, the Voice of Trust conveyed endless malice, enough to make his skin crawl. It was the first time he had experienced such intense malice. It was more than ten times stronger than that colleague who had blocked him before.

He had not intended to blindly trust all the intelligence Lin Qing provided. He needed to observe what kind of person she truly was before reaching a conclusion. But now, Chen Xuan had to admit that Fei Wuniang's heart was utterly different from her appearance.

"You killed so many people. Did you never think this day would come?" Chen Xuan deliberately demanded in a hard tone. At the same time, he aimed the Scanner Gun at himself and switched Voice of Trust to Golden Cicada Shell. Thousand Thoughts Sword, Divine Eye Method, Heavenly Cloud Skill, and Golden Cicada Shell were the most suitable combat combination he could assemble at present.

"Killed people? I don't understand what you're talking about—" She looked utterly shocked on the surface, but a sinister wind quietly rose. Something darted out from behind her, circled over the ceiling, and pounced down at Chen Xuan from above!

She was attacking already?

She really did not hold back...

Chen Xuan saw it clearly. It was a semitransparent chain.

It seemed well concealed and swift, but beneath the Divine Eye Method's gaze, it moved as slowly as a choppy animation.

This was probably the Strong Seize ability.

If an ordinary person was caught, they would die without warning, seemingly from cardiac arrest. If an ability user was caught, one of their abilities would be taken and used by the opponent.

She was willing to kill after being questioned just once. What kind of person Fei Wuniang was no longer needed saying.

Chen Xuan pretended to be caught off guard. He staggered forward as though dodging the ambush and barely avoided the claw strike.

The woman did not miss this opening. She drew a pistol from her waist and immediately raised it toward the unsteady Chen Xuan before firing!

This was supposed to be a battle of abilities, so why did everyone love firearms so much?

Fortunately, the Divine Eye Method had reached LV4 along with the shopkeeper level. Its slow-motion effect could now last nearly two seconds. Before Fei Wuniang even fired, he had already judged her aim: the first shot would miss, and the second would hit his shoulder. He dipped his shoulder and dodged both shots. Before she could pull the trigger a third time, he seized her wrist with one hand and yanked her toward himself. At the same time, he clenched his right hand into a fist and slammed it solidly into her cheek!

The punch left Fei Wuniang completely dazed. Her body spun halfway around, her knees gave out, and she fell to them. With a violent heave, she spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with several broken teeth.

Their positions had also switched perfectly.

Chen Xuan was now standing before the Erosion Point door, while Fei Wuniang was in the middle of the room. Even if she realized the situation had turned bad, she had no way to flee back to the other world through the Erosion Point.