Plans to Sweep Through Everything

Qin Zhao heard this and sank his consciousness into his body. His Tier 2 Force Battle Suit, battle boots, and battle helmet were all worn neatly, and on his finger sat an ordinary space ring. Inside the ring were the battle blade and shield he was accustomed to using. Aside from his standard-issue equipment, the only things he could bring into the World Zone were his own insights and understanding of the laws, and these were precisely his greatest reliance.

"Collective teleportation is about to commence. Countdown: 60... 59... 58..."

The cold countdown echoed between heaven and earth, like war drums urging an advance, beating against the heart of every person. The continent, which had been somewhat noisy, instantly fell into a deathly silence. Trillions of geniuses, whether brimming with confidence or feeling anxious inside, held their breath at this moment, seizing the final seconds to adjust their states.

Qin Zhao slowly closed his eyes, and the instructions of King Lanchen flashed through his mind: "Hunt efficiently, just push through everything."

Also flashing through were the scorching gaze of King Yanlong and his expectation to "charge into the top ten of the entire universe." More than that, it was his own longing for the path to the pinnacle, and the excitement of clashing with billions of geniuses across the universe. Pressure? Yes. But more than that, it was a boiling fighting spirit!

"10... 9... 8..."

The countdown entered the final ten seconds.

Qin Zhao opened his eyes, his gaze clear and sharp as a blade. The aura around his body was restrained to the extreme, yet he felt like a volcano about to erupt.

"3... 2... 1! Teleport!"

Boom!

As the final word "Teleport" fell, the entire vast Assembly Continent, with its dense, trillion-strong crowd of geniuses, became blurred and illusory in the same instant, then completely vanished!

A brief sensation of space-time shifting arrived. For Qin Zhao, whose soul and consciousness strength had reached the peak of the Domain Lord level, this teleportation caused almost no discomfort.

The next moment, his feet touched solid ground, and he had already appeared in a brand-new environment.

A dry, scorching wind carrying sand and gravel blew against his battle helmet, making a fine rustling sound. What met his eyes was a boundless desert; the sky was a dim yellow, and several blurred, dark-red stars hung in the sky, casting light that lacked warmth. In the distance were rolling sand dunes and some dilapidated, strangely styled ruins of giant stone buildings, as if telling the story of this world's former civilization and its current deathly silence.

"World Zone 39." Qin Zhao glanced at the screen on his arm, which displayed his information—

Participant: Qin Zhao (Noah Universe Kingdom)

Points: 0

Ranking: None

Current World Zone: World Zone 39

World Zone Introduction: ...

Below were simple rules: Kill an opponent to gain half of their points. The leaderboard ranking changes in real-time, and death ends the preliminary round. The preliminary round lasts for one year, and at the end, the top 1,001 participants will advance.

"A desert environment, huh... It offers a slight advantage to those with insights into the Pulse of the Earth."

Qin Zhao's thoughts stirred, and a strand of Spiritual Force spread out silently like mercury pouring onto the ground, instantly covering a radius of several hundred kilometers. Although he was a warrior, he possessed Spiritual Force as well, though it was completely incomparable to his Force-based methods.

Almost the moment his Spiritual Force swept past, Qin Zhao detected hidden malice and killing intent in more than one place. This seemingly dead desert was already surging with undercurrents the moment the preliminary round began, and in some places, intense collisions of Force and screams had already erupted.

"As expected, there is no shortage of people rushing to their deaths anywhere." Qin Zhao felt indifferent. His goal was efficient hunting and rapidly accumulating points; he had no interest in playing hide-and-seek with these "campers" who held onto wishful thinking.

Just as he prepared to take the initiative, three sharp attacks suddenly shot out from a cluster of huge weathered rock pillars about fifty kilometers to his rear-side!

A scorching flame blade aura tore through the sky, sweeping over with a wave of heat! Following closely behind were dozens of ice cones flickering with ghostly blue cold, and a silent spiritual spike that pierced straight into the depths of the soul! A three-person team—a warrior, an elemental Controller, and an Illusionist—their coordination was tacit, clearly having ambushed him here long ago, treating him, the "loner," as their first hunting target.

Facing this sudden siege, Qin Zhao did not even turn around. He merely tilted his head slightly, his gaze seemingly piercing through space to land behind the rock pillars where the three were hiding.

"Hum—"

An invisible, intangible, yet suffocatingly heavy force suddenly descended! With Qin Zhao as the center, the space within a ten-kilometer radius seemed to solidify instantly. The air stopped flowing, the flying sand and gravel froze in mid-air, and the whistling flame blade and dense ice cones fell into an invisible amber, their speed plummeting, their light dimming, until they dissipated and dissolved powerlessly a hundred meters away from Qin Zhao!

Black Stone Prison—Basic Gravity Field, deployed!

The three people hiding behind the rock pillars saw the cruel smiles on their faces instantly turn into shock and terror! They felt as if they had been buried ten thousand meters underground; a terrifying pressure squeezed in from all directions, not only making their bodies unable to move, but even making the circulation of Force within their bodies difficult and sluggish! The Illusionist who had launched the spiritual attack was even more miserable; the moment his spiritual spike touched the gravity field, it was like hitting an invisible, thick wall, and the backlash made him grunt as blood seeped from his seven orifices!

"No! We kicked a steel plate! It's an expert who has stepped into the threshold of the origin laws!" The flame warrior roared in his heart, wanting to struggle, but he couldn't even lift a single finger.

Qin Zhao still did not look back. He just casually raised his right hand, his five fingers slightly spread, and squeezed gently toward the direction of the rock pillar cluster.

"Rumble!"

That cluster of dozens of giant rock pillars, over a hundred meters high, along with the earth beneath them, seemed to be gripped tightly by an invisible giant hand! The terrifying gravity instantly increased by more than several dozen times!

"Puff!" "Puff!" "Puff!"

With three consecutive soft sounds, the bodies of the three ambushers, along with the rock pillars they were hiding behind, were instantly turned into three clouds of blood mist under the suddenly surging, terrifying pressure, as if they were crushed watermelons, before being refreshed and vanished by the Virtual Universe system.

The points on the screen on Qin Zhao's arm jumped from 0 to 3. It was effortless, not costing him a shred of energy.

However, seeing this, his brows furrowed slightly.

"Too slow." Qin Zhao thought to himself, "Finding them one by one, killing them one by one, the efficiency is too low. This World Zone is vast; even with trillions of people, once they are scattered, to accumulate points quickly, I must use a more efficient method."

His gaze swept across this boundless desert again. Within the range of his Spiritual Force perception, there were still dozens of scattered life auras lurking, moving, or currently locked in battle.

"Since that's the case..." Qin Zhao's eyes narrowed, and he made a decision, "Then I'll just push through without wasting time!"

With a thought, he stopped holding back.

"Swish!" "Swish!" "Swish!"...

Nine metal balls, each about the size of a fist, pitch-black all over, with naturally formed strange patterns on their surfaces that seemed to contain the rhythm of the Pulse of the Earth, condensed from his hands and hovered in front of him.

This move was exactly the special version of Black Stone Prison that Qin Zhao had specifically developed for this preliminary round! One metal ball represented one force field, and these nine metal balls, moving along specific trajectories, could extend the range of Qin Zhao's Black Stone Prison by a full ten times! The original coverage of over a hundred kilometers of the Black Stone Prison instantly expanded to over a thousand kilometers after being strengthened by this move!

As Qin Zhao guided them with his intent, the Nine Black Stone Cores emitted a low hum, instantly transforming into nine streaks of black light that shot out in nine different directions from him, flying over a hundred kilometers in the blink of an eye before occupying a massive area in a spherical formation centered on him.

Following this, Qin Zhao lifted his hands into the air, his surging internal Origin Power violently driving the Law of Earth Origin he had comprehended!

"Hum--!!!"

A terrifying force field, ten to a hundred times more powerful than before, erupted from the nodes of the Nine Black Stone Cores, instantly enveloping a massive circular area with a radius of over a thousand kilometers centered on Qin Zhao!

This time, it was no longer a simple Gravity Binding.