A Glimpse

Lu Yuanming carefully pressed the Gray Light Cluster against a piece of Masterpiece Full Body Armor.

After Lu Yuanming had used Colorless Light Particles to create a Large Lathe, the workers operating it had made this suit of Full Body Armor to fit his current size. It was made up of more than a hundred parts of various sizes. As he grew taller, he could replace some of the parts to adjust the armor's size. It was, in a way, Cold Weapon Armor made with the support of modern technology.

It was a choice born of necessity.

It had been confirmed that scientific technology beyond Chemistry and Electric Energy was ineffective in this Dark Matter World. This meant that vehicles and modern firearms alike were, in fact, unusable. The guns the team currently possessed still worked only because of Lu Yuanming's Colorless Light Particles.

Unless they could find a Dark Matter World product to replace gunpowder, the use of firearms would always be limited. They could only serve as a trump card for the organization. The newly recruited soldiers now included Cold Weapon Training in their daily drills.

Once Lu Yuanming had confirmed that the Gray Light Cluster could "enchant" certain equipment, his first thought had been to make a suit of armor. This Full Body Armor was his test subject.

As Lu Yuanming pressed the Gray Light Cluster against the Full Body Armor, a strange reaction began. He widened his eyes and watched closely as the Gray Light Cluster spread like a liquid across every part of the armor. Before he could react, it suddenly expanded, enveloping him in its gray light as well.

Lu Yuanming had remained on guard the entire time. The instant the gray light enveloped him, his muscles tensed and he shot backward, escaping its reach in a flash and crashing into a car behind him.

"?"

Lu Yuanming stared around him, eyes wide. People filled the streets. He was standing in the middle of a major road, with a car behind him whose door he had dented when he crashed into it. But no one paid any attention. The car's owner had long since abandoned it and fled, while everyone else was running in a panic. Not a single person at the scene noticed the giant, over two meters tall, who had suddenly appeared.

That was because a battle was raging directly in front of him.

A large number of Worm-shaped Spaceships were descending from the sky. Aliens flew out of them, all equipped with Personal Flight Devices. They fired Energy Weapons wildly at every living thing and building around them. Many tall buildings were blasted apart and collapsed. On the ground, human troops were firing back, launching weapons like FGM-148 anti-tank missiles, while fighter jets battled the Worm-shaped Spaceships.

Compared with all that, Lu Yuanming's appearance was utterly insignificant.

"What the hell is going on!?"

Lu Yuanming was completely stunned. One moment, he had been making weapons at the base; the next, he was on this terrifying battlefield. And there was a blue sky overhead, which clearly meant this wasn't the Dark Matter World, but the real Living World... Had he crossed over again!?

Just then, an alien flew through the nearby air. It seemed to notice Lu Yuanming. That was hardly surprising: at nearly two meters and forty centimeters tall, he stood out like a crane among chickens. The alien casually fired an Energy Weapon at him.

As the alien took aim, goosebumps rose all over Lu Yuanming's body. Everything around him seemed to slow down. He watched the alien look his way, its helmet light up red, and its hand move to the Energy Weapon. Then the weapon's muzzle began to charge...

At the last possible moment, Lu Yuanming hurled himself more than ten meters to the side. A violent flash of fire erupted behind him. The shockwave and heat of the explosion spread so close to his back that if he had been even a tenth of a second slower, he would have been blown to pieces.

This was no hallucination!

Lu Yuanming would swear on the burns on his back and the bare patch of his backside that this was neither false nor a hallucination.

He really had crossed over again, into a brand-new Living World—and this world was a battlefield where aliens were invading Earth!?

Although his mind was full of questions, Lu Yuanming had no time to think them through. He rolled along the ground and ended up beneath a bus. The alien that had fired the Energy Weapon didn't even look back at the explosion. It simply flew away. The blast engulfed everything within at least a ten-meter radius; not a trace of the people who had been standing there remained. Explosions like that were happening all over the battlefield.

Crouched beneath the bus, Lu Yuanming looked around. Suddenly, the scene seemed strangely familiar. He felt as if he had seen it somewhere before—a powerful sense of déjà vu.

Just then, a Golden-red Robot flew overhead, and several laser-like attacks brought down a group of aliens. Lu Yuanming stared in disbelief.

"The Battle of New York from the Avengers!?"

Lu Yuanming shouted in shock. At the same moment, that goosebump-inducing sensation returned. Without a second thought, he rolled out from beneath the bus, but this time it wasn't an Energy Weapon attack. The bus behind him had simply vanished.

A spider made up of all manner of twisted parts stood beside where the bus had been. Its two front limbs touched the bus's outer shell, and the vehicle began to rot at a visible rate. In just a second or two, the bus had disintegrated into nothing.

"...There wasn't anything like this in the Avengers."

Lu Yuanming looked at the spider, feeling utterly horrified.

The spider wasn't very large, standing about three meters tall—twice the size of an ordinary spider from a supermarket, but nowhere near as big as a Super Giant Spider. Yet its appearance was utterly terrifying. Its entire body was made of human limbs and organs. Its legs were assembled from human finger bones, joint by joint; its eyes were made up of dozens of human eyeballs; its skin consisted of human faces; and its body was composed of strands of Human Muscle.

It was a monster whose mere appearance was horrifying and grotesque!

As soon as Lu Yuanming rolled out from under the bus, the spider moved without hesitation, lunging straight at him. Its two front limbs jabbed toward him again. Having seen how the bus had rotted away, Lu Yuanming didn't dare let it get close. He immediately turned and ran forward, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Twisted Spider. The spider seemed to have set its sights on him; wherever he ran, it followed close behind. Fortunately, it wasn't very fast. Its limbs, made entirely of human hand bones, seemed unevenly balanced, giving Lu Yuanming a chance to gradually widen the gap between them.

This was thanks to Lu Yuanming's current Physical Quality. After his soul had grown again, he could now run a hundred meters in about seven seconds. It was a very strange thing: even though his body had grown larger and stronger, his agility and speed had improved as well. So despite his height, he wasn't slow at all—in fact, he was remarkably nimble. Once he started running, the distance between him and the Twisted Spider kept growing. After he had run through a block, he had left it at least five hundred meters behind.

Lu Yuanming ran away from the battlefield. It was far too terrifying. The movie had shown the Avengers beating up aliens, but in reality, these aliens were devastatingly powerful. A single attack could annihilate everything within a ten-meter radius. If an Energy Weapon fired from one of the Bug-shaped Spaceships, it could cut a building in half. Lu Yuanming didn't dare go anywhere near a battlefield like that.

Just as Lu Yuanming was preparing to flee as far away as possible, he suddenly saw thick fog ahead. It stretched across the street at the next intersection. The closer he got, the less it showed any sign of thinning. He couldn't see anything beyond it, and the closer he came, the greater the fear rising in his heart.

Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go in...

When he was five meters from the fog, Lu Yuanming began to tremble all over. His instincts told him to get away at once and never, ever touch the fog or go inside. There was a Great Terror within it, something beyond anything he could imagine.

The instinct was so direct that it was almost as if a voice had spoken inside his mind. Lu Yuanming began to back away without thinking. Just then, the fog roiled, and an enormous blue-gray claw reached out and swiped at him. It passed so close that it nearly brushed his body. Lu Yuanming had escaped being caught by the claw by the narrowest margin.

The instant the claw swept past his eyes, Lu Yuanming's heart pounded wildly, and every sound around him vanished. The claw seemed to move incredibly slowly, passing him inch by inch. But it was only an illusion. As the claw moved, Lu Yuanming and everything around him seemed to freeze. This was merely the Bullet Time state he entered when facing death in the most extreme circumstances—or, more precisely, his Death Replay state!

In this state, Lu Yuanming watched the claw pass in front of him and noticed its many details. It was blue-gray, and its material was neither flesh nor metal, nor shell or chitin. It was made of something he couldn't understand. Its surface was covered in twisted symbols and shapes that seemed alive, constantly changing and warping. Though Lu Yuanming had seen them, he couldn't understand or remember them. The moment he looked away, his memories of the symbols and shapes he had just seen vanished...

The claw swept past, then withdrew into the fog. At the instant it disappeared, it lifted a tiny corner of the fog, and through that narrow gap, Lu Yuanming saw countless monsters. They were grotesque, roaring, terrifying, incomprehensible, indescribable...

Lu Yuanming felt a sharp pain in his eyes and a ringing in his ears. It was as if some incomprehensible force had churned his brain into mush. He fell to his knees in agony, blood seeping from his eyes, nose, and ears. Unseen by Lu Yuanming, the instant the blood left his body, it became animated. Each drop seemed to turn into some living, bizarre life-form, all of them fighting to burrow back inside him.

At the same time, without Lu Yuanming's knowledge, the Colorless Light Particles hovering around him began to fall into his body one after another. With each one that entered, the images in his mind of the hand and the monsters beyond the fog grew fainter. Within a short time, at least twenty Colorless Light Particles had merged with him. By then, the images of the Giant Hand and the monsters in his mind had become completely distorted.

It was like dreaming.

When people dreamed, they often saw things that seemed terrifying, funny, or incredibly impressive to them. But once they woke up, those feelings quickly faded. Even if they still remembered the dream, it no longer felt the way it had while they were dreaming.

That was how Lu Yuanming felt now. He still remembered the Giant Hand and the monsters beyond the fog, but he no longer felt what he had felt just moments ago.

Only then did Lu Yuanming finally emerge from his agony. He straightened up from his crouch and wiped his face with his palm. His hand was covered in blood. He flicked the blood away, then didn't dare look at the fog again. Instead, he turned his back to it and looked down the street he had come from. The Twisted Spider had appeared at the far end.

The Twisted Spider had been a hideous and terrifying monster, but now Lu Yuanming didn't find it frightening at all. Compared with the Giant Hand and the monsters beyond the fog, this spider was nothing more than a harmless little bug.

I know what the Gray Light Cluster is now. It's a Fragment of Human Civilization Essence, and this spider is the distortion produced as a Fragment of Human Civilization Essence falls into the Dark Matter World. As for that Giant Hand, those monsters...

They're the real monsters of the Dark Matter World. They don't come from our human civilization!

At that moment, Lu Yuanming glimpsed a pitch-black and terrifying corner of the Dark Matter World.

Countless monsters lay in wait in the depths of the Dark Matter wilderness, as vast as mountains, as vast as stars, beyond all description. The moment human civilization fell from the Material Universe was the moment they would pounce and feast...

Lu Yuanming took a deep breath, then charged toward the Twisted Spider. He ran faster and faster, then leaped more than four meters into the air, dodging the spider's stabbing front limbs and pouncing onto its body.

Fists, claws, teeth.

At that moment, Lu Yuanming seemed to have lost all reason. He used every attack at his disposal to tear into and pummel the Twisted Spider. He paid no heed to its grotesque appearance or any of its counterattacks.

No one knew how much time passed before Lu Yuanming rose from a puddle of mangled flesh. Everything around him began to crack apart, bit by bit. By the time he came to his senses, he was back at the base, and the Full Body Armor in front of him had fallen apart.

Then, with a thought from Lu Yuanming, a suit of Golden-red Full Body Armor covered his body. At the same time, the name of this piece of protective equipment appeared naturally in his mind.

Armor: Iron Man!