A World Gone Berserk

From the same place? Could he be a Reincarnator too?!

Saeko Busujima automatically filled in the meaning behind Zhu Shen's words.

So he was a veteran! The thought flashed through her mind, and she became even more respectful. She was about to thank Zhu Shen for coming to her aid when—

Suddenly, Zhu Shen furrowed his brow slightly and muttered to himself,

"Again?"

Most of the Parasyte Planet's fate energy had already been absorbed by the Main God Space, and even the former Child of Destiny had become one of its people. This had thrown the world's consciousness—or Gaia Consciousness, as it was also called—into confusion.

Gaia Consciousness could be described as a super-consciousness composed of everything in a world. It was the will of the planet. Zhu Shen, too, could be called the Gaia Consciousness of the ninja world.

When the Gaia Consciousness of the Parasyte Planet sensed that the world's fate energy had diminished, it was only natural that it would take action.

Perhaps it had no concept of fate energy, but it could instinctively sense the weakening of the world's source! This might not be reflected in any one person or event, but it would manifest across an entire era!

If the world's source weakened, then for a long time to come, the technological world would suffer from stagnant progress, a break in the succession of scientific talent, or even a major technological regression. In a cultivation world, spiritual energy might grow scarcer by the day, eventually ushering in the so-called Age of Declining Dharma, when the Dao vanished and immortals and gods disappeared!

The Gaia Consciousness of the Parasyte Planet had sensed the crisis. It had detected the presence of another threatening being of its kind: Zhu Shen! Instinctively, it wanted to destroy him.

At the same time, in a military base on the Japanese islands, a subconscious force began influencing some of the people there.

At a port where the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was stationed, two Atago-class destroyers, four Kongo-class destroyers, along with various smaller destroyers and frigates, all left port under the orders of Sakai Ryomiya, the highest-ranking officer at the Self-Defense Force base.

On the command ship, Sakai Ryomiya's eyes were bloodshot as he muttered,

"Destroy it! Destroy it!"

Dozens of steel warships left the base and headed straight for the harbor in the city where Zhu Shen was...

At that moment, Zhu Shen was watching with interest as Saeko Busujima comforted the newly awakened Shinichi Izumi.

Shinichi's face was stricken with grief. He treated Saeko Busujima—the woman who had steeled herself to kill his girlfriend—with coldness, yet completely ignored Zhu Shen, the one who had turned his girlfriend's body to dust!

In truth, he was conflicted. On one hand, Saeko Busujima had saved him and killed the last monster. On the other, Satomi Murano had indeed died at Saeko Busujima's hands! Though Gotou was to blame, Saeko Busujima wasn't at fault.

Still, whenever he thought of how not even a trace of Satomi Murano remained, Shinichi could only sneak glances at Zhu Shen with a deeply resentful look.

Zhu Shen, however, paid him no mind. He was focused on waiting to see how the Gaia Consciousness would react.

"Are you all these so-called Reincarnators?"

Shinichi suddenly asked Saeko Busujima.

Saeko Busujima looked troubled. The Main God Space forbade revealing information to outsiders. She had no idea how Shinichi had found out, but she didn't dare break its rules.

After all, when they had first entered this world, during their first escape mission in the municipal building, one newcomer had ignored the Main God Space's mission requirements and left the mission area. The Main God Space had immediately erased him!

The sight of the man being wiped away by some mysterious force, reduced to particles of nothingness, remained deeply etched in the minds of everyone who had been there!

"There's a voice in my head telling me that I've become a novice Reincarnator too."

Shinichi understood Saeko Busujima's concerns and spoke up first.

Saeko Busujima's eyes widened.

"You received an invitation from the Main God too? What's your Novice Mission? Sorry, I was just asking."

In the Main God Space, asking about another person's reincarnation mission without thinking was a major taboo! You could never know whether your mission would conflict with theirs. If it did, one of you was bound to die!

Shinichi, however, calmly revealed his Novice Mission.

"Stay alive for the next 48 hours by any means necessary!"

"A survival mission?"

Saeko Busujima's brows knitted together. Survival missions were among the most troublesome kinds, because they meant that all sorts of dangers could be lurking around.

If even the Main God Space judged a situation dangerous enough that you had to fight to survive, then you couldn't simply hide in some so-called safe house, avoid everyone, and expect to make it through unscathed.

Missions like these usually meant there were dangers no one could anticipate!

Just then, dozens, even hundreds, of ship-launched missiles streaked across the sky and blanketed the forest!

Zhu Shen rose to his feet, blinked out of sight, and appeared in the sky above the house where the others were sheltering.

He looked impassively at the rain of missiles hurtling toward him, their exhaust plumes blazing. He made no move at all. Relying solely on his Psychokinesis, he controlled every missile with an invisible hand and sent them shooting straight upward.

"Boom!"

Explosions rang out without pause, and a vast barrage of gunfire blossomed into a spectacular fireworks display in the sky.

After that wave of missiles, aboard the fleet off the coast dozens of kilometers away, the deranged Commander Sakai stared at the gunfire vanishing from his radar, completely ignoring the telephone beside him.

"Sakai! You bastard! What do you think you're doing?!"

He simply hung up on the furious call from the Cabinet. His mind was consumed with eliminating his target!

But when he ordered every missile launched in a saturation attack, the target vanished from the screen.

A moment later, an aide's urgent voice came through his earpiece,

"Sir, the target has appeared 50 meters above the coastline ahead of the fleet!"

As if possessed, Sakai screamed hysterically:

"Fire!"

Above the coastline in front of the fleet, Zhu Shen quietly hovered in the air, gazing at the mad warships. He sighed softly.

"Though I do seem like the villain here, your actions make you look a lot more like one than me!"

All at once, the fleet opened fire. Countless destroyer-launched missiles shot out in succession, and a terrifying barrage of fire obscured Zhu Shen's view.

There were so many shells that no one could count them. Perhaps thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. But the number no longer mattered. Everything within sight was covered by the barrage!

Faced with this apocalyptic scene, the people bustling about in the prosperous city behind him hadn't yet realized what was happening.

Some dockworkers might have spotted the fleet in the distance, but they would never have imagined that the ships flying their country's flag would attack them.

So when the barrage filled the sky, everyone who noticed it froze, their minds going blank. All they could do was stare dumbfounded as it unfolded.

Facing the fire blotting out the sun, Zhu Shen merely stretched out his right hand. His pale, slender arm emitted no visible energy or matter, bringing to mind the idiom "a mantis trying to stop a chariot." But was that really the case?

In the next instant, every shell seemed to hit a pause button, freezing in place all at once!

The rockets and missiles that had been screaming toward him a moment earlier abruptly stopped moving, shifting in an instant from extreme motion to absolute stillness!

The sight, as if time and space had frozen, left everyone unable to think...

Inside the emergency meeting hall of the Japanese Cabinet.

The high-ranking officials attending the meeting watched the unbelievable scene on the satellite broadcast. An eerie silence fell over the entire room...

Why? Why had that lunatic Sakai provoked someone like that?

What was this? A superpower? A time stop? Or a god?

Was this still the familiar world they knew? The surreal sight left everyone there feeling as if they were caught in a dream...

Then the scene on the screen changed again.

The mysterious figure on the broadcast gently snapped the fingers of his outstretched right hand.

Every metal object held frozen in place—the shells, helicopters, bullets, and more—slowly came apart like ash, breaking down into their most basic particles and scattering on the wind until they vanished without a trace...

"Er, that's not a normal human anymore, is it? Could that be a god of our country? After all, he did protect the people, in a way."

After a long silence, one official finally forced himself to speak.

But no one else responded. After all, no one knew whether that being would treat Sakai's actions as an act committed by the entire country!

No one wanted to test what the consequences would be!

But they couldn't just do nothing, either. The state machinery sprang into action. Commander Sakai Izumiya soon became a prime suspect on multiple charges, including espionage and treason. The evidence was conclusive enough for a military court to sentence him outright!

The entire fleet under Sakai's command was also stripped of the ability to fire. Of course, they no longer had the means to fire, either. Every mid- and high-ranking officer involved was brought under control through a series of orders.

Meanwhile, two helicopters carrying orders to negotiate departed from the military base, preparing to make contact with the mysterious man.

But how could the Gaia Consciousness simply give up on saving itself?

Just after Zhu Shen had destroyed the fleet's firepower, the commander in chief of the U.S. military base in the Japanese islands had already fallen under the Gaia Consciousness's control. Several aircraft carriers had quietly left port. Each one carried dozens of fighter jets, and they sailed in a mighty formation toward the target harbor.

As luck would have it, the U.S. military base was in nearby waters, so Zhu Shen soon spotted the carrier fleet.

Several enormous steel aircraft carriers and dozens of escort vessels slowly revealed their fangs. In an instant, every gun opened fire!

Zhu Shen watched with interest as this terrifying spectacle unfolded before the eyes of ordinary people.

He let the shells fall within the range of his particle-control field. The moment the gunfire and other objects entered the field, which spread outward from him, they lost all momentum, hanging motionless like prey caught in a spider's web.

Zhu Shen had no intention of taking his anger out on the soldiers. They had merely been caught up in the clash between him and the Gaia Consciousness.

So after neutralizing the attack, he didn't strike back at the fleet. Instead, he extended a psychokinetic shield to protect the minds of the fleet's senior officers and block the Gaia Consciousness from controlling them.

The moment the mid- and high-ranking officers were freed from its control, most of them nearly fainted from sheer terror!

Fortunately, most of them were disciplined soldiers. They managed to regain control of the situation and promptly shut down the weapons systems, preventing any further attacks.

As Zhu Shen broke the Gaia Consciousness's control, however, several secret bases in the two countries with the world's largest nuclear arsenals—the Soviet Union and the United States—were already preparing their nuclear missiles for launch!

The world had descended into chaos!

The United Nations convened an emergency meeting, with the permanent members accusing one another of secretly initiating nuclear strikes.

Pandora's box had been opened. Some countries had launched nuclear strikes under the Gaia Consciousness's control, while some smaller nations had inexplicably launched their own attacks, with the United States as the target!

But after the orders were issued, every nuclear strike target changed, in the most bizarre fashion, to the Japanese islands!

When the Japanese Prime Minister received the report that dozens of nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles were heading for the islands, he fainted pitifully on the spot...

When had humanity first used nuclear weapons? Oh, that's right—it was during the previous world war. And the unfortunate recipient of those nuclear strikes had also been the Japanese islands.

Now humanity had once again unleashed this ultimate weapon, but tragically, its use was no longer under human control...

If we could zoom our view out to the entire Parasyte Planet, we would see dozens of brilliant missiles streaking across its surface, one after another, all heading toward a single island nation in the middle.

Their flaming tails seemed to herald the end of the world!

Zhu Shen looked down at the civilians beneath him, feeling a little troubled.

He had only wanted to simply obtain a world's source. Why was the Gaia Consciousness of this world reacting so violently?

Did it really have to fight him to the bitter end, even at the cost of humanity on this planet?

With a soft sigh, Zhu Shen didn't want the world he had worked so hard to develop and conquer to become a wasteland, so he let out another quiet sigh.

Zhu Shen's body began to grow, larger and larger. In the blink of an eye, he had returned to his original form: the seventy-meter-tall Ten-Tails Body. Yet he continued to grow, as if inflating like a balloon.

In just a few minutes, Zhu Shen had become a nearly one-hundred-thousand-meter-tall humanoid energy being. His entire body seemed to be made of glowing virtual particles, and his features had grown indistinct, making him appear divine...

At this point, his body's size no longer limited his strength. The will of the Main God had descended into this world through the Ten-Tails Body!

He was now like a planetary consciousness forcibly descending into this realm, and the Gaia Consciousness seemed to have been provoked beyond measure. More than a hundred nuclear missiles shot into the sky from around the world, flying toward the giant luminous figure that had appeared above the Japanese islands.

People could now see Zhu Shen's godlike figure. At that moment, people all over the world stared at the mighty being in the sky in utter disbelief.

"Oh my god!"

Media outlets and television stations around the world went wild, broadcasting the sudden appearance of the glowing figure and the nuclear weapons running amok!

Theories about the end of the world, the Apocalypse in the Bible, the Lord's messenger, and the descent of Satan... all sorts of speculation ran rampant.

Only the Reincarnators waiting in the deep forests for the time to return understood that this terrifying being wasn't any devil, Satan, or Horseman of the Apocalypse. He was a Reincarnator from the same place as them!

Sweat poured down Shinichi's forehead. He stiffly turned to look at Saeko Busujima.

"Busujima, are all these veteran Reincarnators... are they all this outrageous?"

Shinichi gave an extremely stiff smile, as though it might make the subject easier to talk about.

Saeko Busujima swallowed with difficulty, too.

"I haven't met many veterans, but I don't think there can be too many who've reached this level. P-probably."

Like everyone else, she was afraid of such overwhelming power and the uncertainty of life and death. But hadn't she also been greatly inspired by it?

Perhaps one day, she could possess power like this too! Then she could change the apocalypse of her own world! She could completely transform that world where no one could see a future, that man-eating world of utter despair!

That kind of power could definitely do it! Saeko Busujima's heart burned with excitement. Her heart pounded, her blood began to boil, and she yearned for strength, yearned for battle!

At that moment, an incredibly powerful conviction and desire surged from her boiling blood and flooded into her mind.

Saeko Busujima's whole body burned like fire. It was as if a shackle had been lying dormant in her mind, and under the impact of this immense surge of emotion and conviction, it shattered...

Sensing this little development, Zhu Shen spared some attention for the group of Reincarnators. He strengthened their protective barrier and set it to return them automatically in 24 hours, then paid no further attention to his audience.

What did it feel like to be surrounded by more than a hundred nuclear bombs at once? Zhu Shen thought there couldn't be anyone who understood it better than he did.

More than a hundred nuclear bombs struck his energy-based body one after another. At that instant, the entire planet went blind!

The sun seemed to shine across the whole planet! Every corner of the world seemed to be illuminated by a flash of light.

Yet, strangely, there was no destructive force. An invisible wave of energy rippled outward, while all the tremendous energy released by the chain reactions inside the nuclear weapons remained confined within Zhu Shen's several-hundred-thousand-meter-tall body.

The explosions, theoretically powerful enough to destroy the entire Japanese islands, were like dud firecrackers sealed in a bottle: loud, but unable to unleash any destructive force.

The luminous figure Zhu Shen had become gently swung the arm that could blot out the sky. Countless missiles and shells immediately flew out from within him.

As if time were reversing, every intercontinental missile and hydrogen bomb flew backward toward Zhu Shen, nose-first.

They returned to the places they had come from—the United States, the Soviet Union, Germany, France, and elsewhere—as if none of it had ever happened.

At that moment, the entire world fell silent!