The air was silent for a full two seconds.
Mo Wan and Lin Zhu both got goosebumps.
They had no objection to the attribution of the name Jiahao.
Judging by this attitude, it would be an injustice if anyone in the world didn't call themselves Jiahao.
But this doesn't mean Mo Wan intends to forget what just happened.
"Where did this pretentious bastard come from! Does he think I'm made of clay or something?!"
A flash of light appeared on Mo Wan's ring, and a Cosmic Ring materialized in her palm.
She flung the Cosmic Ring out, and golden light traced an arc in mid-air.
"Go! Catch this scoundrel!"
Wang Jiahao looked at the flying Cosmic Ring, but instead of dodging, his smile deepened.
He slowly raised his hand, covering one eye, while the other eye remained open between his middle and ring fingers.
"Miss, it's not good to be angry~ I just wanted to say hello~"
His voice was light and composed.
"Reincarnation and the future... are all in my hands."
The moment he finished speaking, countless afterimages suddenly appeared in his eyes.
That was a rehearsal, his calculations and insights into future actions.
Each frame represents a possible reaction from Mo Wan, and each frame represents a response he is about to execute.
The afterimages overlapped, eventually converging into a smooth, almost perfect attack path.
Iron Mountain Lean!
His body transformed from stillness to explosive power in a fraction of a second, hurtling straight towards Mo Wan.
The strong wind was cleaved by his figure, and the goods on the shelves were blown away by the gust of air.
I don't like women with short tempers!
His fist was already inches away.
But in that very instant!
The Cosmic Ring that he had easily dodged suddenly turned around in mid-air!
The speed was so fast that even Wang Jiahao's preset afterimage couldn't capture this frame.
With a flash of golden light, his body tightened within the Cosmic Ring, binding him like a wooden stake.
"What?!"
Wang Jiahao's smile was still frozen on his face when, in the next second, he fell straight backward.
Mo Wan patted the crumbs off her hands, looked down at Wang Jiahao was lying on the ground, and sneered, "That's it?"
Lin Zhu leaned over from the side, still chewing on Potato Chips, and mumbled an indistinct comment, "That's it?"
However...
Wang Jiahao laughed again.
"If that's all there is to it, I don't have the guts to fight you two ladies."
His right hand had already secretly formed a hand seal.
Reincarnation.
The world silently regressed a few seconds.
Mo Wan blinked and found that the Cosmic Ring had fallen to the ground, and Wang Jiahao had also disappeared.
But her memory is continuous and complete.
She had clearly hit that guy just now, and her circle was starting to shrink and reset, but she suddenly disappeared.
"Looks like this thing isn't very obedient."
Wang Jiahao dusted off his cowboy hat and snapped his fingers.
"If I'm not mistaken, that brief moment was probably the Future Reincarnation of Sequence 024, right?"
Mo Wan recalled the Cosmic Ring and looked at the man in front of her for the first time.
"That's interesting."
No wonder he dares to be so arrogant in front of me.
"Reincarnation... returning to a few seconds ago? Three seconds? Five seconds?"
"Ten seconds."
Wang Jiahao held up one finger, a bright smile on his face. "Ten seconds."
"Just enough for me to calmly dodge any attack, and enough for me... to see your moves clearly."
"Your circle automatically targets enemies, huh? That's impressive."
"But after experiencing it once, its flight path looked no different from slow motion to me."
He spread his hands, his tone so sincere it made you want to slap him.
"So, can we stop fighting? I genuinely want to make friends with both of you beautiful ladies."
"Screw you!"
The veins on Mo Wan's forehead throbbed; she was truly enraged this time.
The Cosmic Ring was put into the storage ring, replaced by two muffled impacts.
Two wheels landed on the ground, each about the size of a washbasin.
Mo Wan pointed at the two wheels with both hands simultaneously.
"Hundred Forgings!"
A burst of red light erupted from the surface of the wheel, and flames ignited out of thin air!
The entire wheel was enveloped in blazing orange-red flames.
Wind Fire Wheels!
Mo Wan leaped onto the Wind Fire Wheels with a push of her feet, and a red-tasseled spear reappeared in her hand, the long tassel twitching in the firelight.
"How dare you tease me! I'm furious, and the consequences will be severe!"
She looked down at Wang Jiahao, flames roaring beneath her feet.
The opportunity to apologize has passed.
"Now, either crawl over here, kowtow three times, and call me Grandma, or I'll roast you into charcoal and give you to Lin Zhu to grind his teeth with!"
Wang Jiahao's smile finally faded a bit.
He stared at the Wind Fire Wheels beneath Mo Wan's feet, then glanced at the red-tasseled spear in her hand, a look of surprise flashing in his eyes.
"Hundred Forgings..."
He murmured thoughtfully, "Sequence 055, the Hundred Forgings."
"Unconditionally upgrade weapons and items by one level, with a maximum upgrade level of Special Grade."
"It really is this Supernatural Ability."
What? Scared?
Mo Wan sneered.
No, it's admiration.
Wang Jiahao took off his cowboy hat, placed it in front of his chest, and bowed slightly, as if genuinely expressing respect.
"To be able to utilize the Hundred Forgings to this extent, your future is definitely bright."
"That circle was originally A-Class, but you managed to elevate it to S-class."
"These two wheels are probably no lower than A-Class now."
"To be honest, you're very strong."
He straightened his hat, squinted, and his entire demeanor changed in that instant.
"So, I should get serious too."
He slightly parted his legs and lowered his center of gravity.
The lips opened and closed silently.
In Mo Wan and Lin Zhu's vision, a very faint blue light enveloped the edges of Wang Jiahao's body.
Future.
Within 0.1 seconds, execute all the actions you will perform in the next ten seconds.
This is not foresight, but a reversal of cause and effect.
The action occurs first, and the reason is given later.
His opponent can see his movements, but by the time he sees them, the attack is already over.
"They've arrived."
Wang Jiahao's lips curled up slightly.
Then a powerful suction force suddenly came from behind him!
It felt like a hand grabbed his back and pulled him backward.
He lost his balance on the spot, his Supernatural Ability were interrupted, and his heels plowed two white tracks into the ground.
"What!"
Wang Jiahao turned his head.
Lin Zhu had somehow gotten behind him.
Her feet were planted firmly on the ground, her upper body leaning forward, and a black vortex was spinning in her mouth, devouring everything around her.
The snacks on the shelf began to slide toward her.
"That was close."
Lin Zhu stopped eating, snapped her mouth shut, and wiped the corner of her mouth.
That move you just made looked pretty dangerous.
"My sister may be unreliable, but she's not a bad person. If you really hit her, I'll have to go through all the trouble to get revenge for her."
"So you'd better not move."
Wang Jiahao steadied himself, looked at Lin Zhu's expressionless face, and suddenly smiled.
"I see."
"Absorbing... the only Supernatural Ability that can grow."
"Starting from F-class, you level up by devouring everything."
"Legend has it that if one can devour enough things, one can even evolve into Gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins."
He sighed, straightened his cowboy hat, and smiled.
"Your rank is already pretty high, isn't it? S?"
"Or stronger?"
"I never expected to encounter both Hundred Forgings and Devouring in this wretched place. My luck today is neither good nor bad."
"Bumping into us is your bad luck."
Lin Zhu said expressionlessly, "My sister wants you to call her Grandma, are you going to or not?"
"No, my grandma doesn't have such a violent temper."
Wang Jiahao smiled politely, "Besides, I haven't lost yet."
"If I were facing someone else, and two people with Supernatural Ability of this level at the same time, I probably would have already run away."
Wang Jiahao formed hand seals again, and the blue light shone brightly once more, this time even brighter than before, with tiny blue Electric Arc even crackling from its edges.
"But I'm one of the few... who can win!"
The future is here!
The world has lost its color.
Wang Jiahao stands in a world interwoven with black and white.
The surrounding flames froze, the Potato Chips chip crumbs floating in mid-air stopped, and the angry expression on Mo Wan's face also froze.
He had broken down the next ten seconds into detailed slices and laid them out before him.
"Alright, who should we deal with first?"
He strolled leisurely past the frozen flames and walked towards Lin Zhu.
The approach is very clear.
Devouring is a growth-type Supernatural Ability with an unknown upper limit, and it must be addressed as a priority.
As for Mo Wan, although Hundred Forgings is strong, she relies on a weapon, so we'll deal with her later.
One step, two steps, three steps.
Then he stopped.
Because...
There is a shadow behind Lin Zhu.
The thing was hanging upside down from the ceiling, completely black, with a baby-sized body curled up inside.
His limbs were locked in a reverse joint around the ventilation duct, and his head was twisted downwards.
Its mouth, split open to below the ears, was filled with fine teeth.
She smiled silently at Wang Jiahao.
Wang Jiahao's brain experienced a nuclear explosion at that moment.
He has never been afraid of anything since he was a child.
He was able to come in first place in the elite training camp at the Seventh Base of the Lion Country, and was praised by the elders for his extraordinary character.
They can calmly plan their escape route as if flipping through a book in front of the gaping maws of S-class alien beast horde.
But he had a fatal weakness, a secret that even the elders didn't know.
He's afraid of ghosts.
That kind of fear that surges up from the depths of your bones.
When he was six years old, the neighbor's naughty child locked him in an abandoned morgue and left him in a morgue cabinet for a full three minutes.
Those three minutes completely bound him to his fear circuit.
From then on, anything that looked like a ghost...
Black and white shadows, blurry human figures, and something hanging upside down.
Any of these could cause his brain to shut down instantly.
And before us hangs a pitch-black baby upside down from the ceiling.
It was fear itself.
"Ghost... Ghost..."
Wang Jiahao's eyes were unfocused, and his lips trembled slightly.
He tried to muster his mental strength to resist, but fear had already taken over his central nervous system before reason could.
His eyes rolled back, his body went limp, and he fell backward.
As he fell, his lips moved unconsciously, uttering the last syllable.
The future continues.
It perfectly replicated all the actions he wrote in the preset.
He charged at Lin Zhu, thrusting his finger towards her throat, and then...
I was terrified by that thing on the ceiling.
From the heroic charge to the moment of unconsciousness, it's all done exactly as it was, without any shortcuts or compromises.
The blue light of the future faded, and the world regained its color.
What Mo Wan saw was...
Wang Jiahao suddenly moved, rushing a few steps towards Lin Zhu, and then suddenly stopped moving again.
He fell straight down, his head hitting the floor tiles with a loud thud.
His posture was serene, like that of an infant.
Lin Zhu looked down at the man on the ground, her eyes full of confusion.
He just said to be serious.
"Then he collapsed. Was that his ultimate move? A sleep attack?"
"Who knows! This guy's probably crazy!"
Mo Wan floated over on her Wind Fire Wheels, her face also filled with disbelief.
But her combat instincts told her that whether the guy was genuinely stunned or faking it, giving him a finishing shot was definitely the right thing to do!
This reduces competition!
She had just raised her red-tasseled spear...
Behind Lin Zhu, two green lights appeared, like two will-o'-the-wisps.
As they rose higher and higher, Lin Zhu finally saw what they were.
A pair of eyes.
On the baby-shaped, jet-black body, the eyelids were slowly opening, revealing empty green light inside.
"Lin Zhu! Don't move!!!"
Mo Wan's muscles reacted faster than her mind, and the red-tasseled spear slipped from her hand.
The red-tasseled spear, forged and strengthened Hundred Forgings, was wreathed in flames, leaving a crimson streak in the air.
This throw was made with all her arm strength; the tip of the gun pierced directly above the two green lights, shattering the concrete ceiling.
"Squeak!"
The thing let out a whistling sound.
Its Claws ripped out of the ceiling, pulling down a large chunk of plaster from the wall.
Taking advantage of the opening, Lin Zhu lunged forward, rolled forward, and crashed into the pile of shelves.
"Forget the muskets! Run!"
Mo Wan grabbed Lin Zhu by the back of her collar and lifted her onto the Wind Fire Wheels.
With a stomp of her foot, the Wind Fire Wheels shot out two trails of flame, carrying the two of them upwards and rushing towards the upper level of the shopping mall.
"That guy's just going to ignore it?!"
Lin Zhu was being held by the back of her collar by Mo Wan, and she even glanced back at Wang Jiahao lying on the ground.
"He's already exhausted, what's the point of worrying! I'm afraid he'd be less effective than you eating a couple more cookies!"
Mo Wan didn't turn her head, her voice suddenly carrying a hint of panic.
"Look closely, see what those things behind you are!"
Lin Zhu paused for a moment, then turned around.
The entire basement level of the shopping mall wasn't just filled with a few green lights, but with countless green lights.
They seeped out from the gaps in the shelves, dripped from the grilles of the ventilation ducts, and squeezed into the cracks in the walls.
Clumps of pitch-black bodies, about the size of infants, crawling with their limbs joined backwards.
Some were hanging upside down from the ceiling, some were moving rapidly along the walls, and some even emerged from the floor.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands.
Densely packed, layer upon layer, it turned the entire underground level into a pitch-black Abyss.
Ghost Infant.
Those were the real alien creatures that Li Yang described, active during the day.
A bizarre species that does not exist in any of Blue Star's biological systems.
"It stinks!!!"
Lin Zhu's face scrunched up in a frown.
Her devouring Supernatural Ability comes with sensory abilities, allowing her to smell the energy of other creatures.
At that moment, her nostrils were filled with a rotten, sour smell.
"These things are spirits! Their energy composition is completely non-physical; my teeth can't bite them!"
"Who told you to bite me! Let's run!"
Mo Wan urged the Wind Fire Wheels to reach their maximum speed.
It rushes straight up to the glass dome at the top of the shopping mall.
Behind them, the Black Tide began to move.
Countless Ghost Infant simultaneously emitted silent shrieks; they did not pursue Mo Wan and Lin Zhu.
Instead, they surrounded Wang Jiahao was lying on the ground.
The sunlight from the shopping mall's fluorescent lights streamed down from the dome, casting Wang Jiahao's Shadow on the ground.
The Shadow was stretched long, trailing across two rows of shelves, its outline as clear as if etched into the ground.
One of the Ghost Infant was the first to lie down.
Its faceless form moved close to the edge of the Shadow, then it opened its mouth and took a bite.
It didn't bite into anything, but it was chewing on something, and the chewing sound was like chewing glass.
Shadow bit off a piece of the shadow.
The other Ghost Infant swarmed forward, sprawling on the Shadow and pouncing on the last piece of flesh.
The sounds of chewing rose and fell, and the Shadow shrank at a visible speed.
From a complete human figure to a fragmented half, and then to just a blurry outline of a head.
Wang Jiahao suddenly opened his eyes.
The fear didn't disappear, but the instinct for survival was stronger than the fear itself.
Without a second thought, he sprang up from the ground, braced himself with his hands on the ground, and rushed toward the window that Mo Wan had smashed.
"Depend on!!"
He didn't even bother to pick up his cowboy hat when it fell off.
Hands form a hand seal, Supernatural Ability activates once more, the future is about to begin!
But the instant he started it, he sensed something was wrong. That
The timeline that was pre-set in my mind, which was originally a clear and complete ten seconds, became a blurry and fragmented two seconds.
It was a full eight seconds short.
"What's going on... why is my future so short?!"
He had no time to think.
The pre-set two-second action began; he stepped onto the edge of the window and leaped out.
The sunlight outside was so bright that he couldn't open his eyes.
But he couldn't care less.
Using the exterior wall of the shopping mall for leverage, he climbed onto the rooftop parking lot, his hands supporting his knees as he gasped for breath.
Sunlight shone on him, casting Shadow long, complete human figure on the concrete ground.
"Thank goodness... we're out... what the hell was that thing anyway?"
His words caught in his throat.
The Shadow at my feet had a piece bitten off at the end.
It's not an illusion.
The circular notch was located at the Shadow's heel, its edges so smooth it looked as if something had bitten it off.
He looked around; no Ghost Infant came chasing after him. The sunlight kept them inside the shopping mall.
But the sunlight cannot block out the Shadow.
The long, dark shadow stretched out, its end just past the edge of the sunlit area, resting on the half-shaded outdoor unit of an air conditioner.
Several Ghost Infant were lurking in the shadows, their mouths agape, gnawing at the last part of his Shadow, one bite after another.
No... no no no no!
Wang Jiahao ran forward desperately, trying to pull his Shadow out of the shadows.
But no matter how he ran, his Shadow remained connected to the darkness, like a rope tied to his ankle.
The chewing sounds grew faster and faster.
The Shadow is getting shorter and shorter.
His eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
It's not that I'm sleepy, it's that I'm cold.
He lost sensation first in his legs, then in his torso, and then in his fingers.
He knelt down just steps from the sunlit area, his Shadow already devoured.
He opened his mouth as if to shout something, but his lips moved only slightly without making a sound.
The glint in his eyes slowly faded, like a candle being blown out.
His skin began to crack, starting at his fingertips.
It spread across her arms, across her chest, and onto that face that had lost all expression.
A gust of wind blew by.
Wang Jiahao's body turned into countless tiny particles, which drifted in the sunlight for a few seconds before disappearing completely.
Only one person's charred remains were left on the parking lot ground, spread out in a starfish shape, the color fading rapidly in the sunlight.
An extraordinary individual died just like that.
There was no epic battle, no final lament, just a group of creatures the size of infants.
Like eating snacks, I nibbled away at the Shadow, one bite at a time...