Defeat Magic with Magic, Devour the Bizarre with the Bizarre!
"Tap. Tap. Tap."
The crisp sound of footsteps echoed on the retro, deathly quiet Fifth Avenue.
Jiang Li, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and his hands in the pockets of his black trench coat, swaggered down the middle of the street like a leisurely person taking a stroll after dinner.
Around him was an extremely absurd and Shocker scene.
An out-of-control old Ford sedan came hurtling towards Jiang Li at 120 mph, heading straight for his back. However, at the moment the front of the car made contact with Jiang Li's trench coat, there was no collision, no loud noise.
The car seemed to pass through a holographic projection, piercing directly through Jiang Li's body and crashing into the fire hydrant in front of him with a loud "bang."
A column of water shot skyward, splashing towards Jiang Li, but vanished into thin air half a millimeter away from his skin.
Untargetable state (Ghost).
This is the underlying patch that the universe's most intelligent [Grey Matter] applied to him. On a physical level, he exists; but on the level of the universe's "causality and rules," he is a non-existent null Null.
Warning! An illegal and erroneous file is being moved!
"System cannot be locked! Cannot be erased!"
The firewalls throughout the entire ERROR-404 universe were frantically alarming. The black sun in the sky was flashing violently, like a mainframe CPU on the verge of crashing due to overload.
[Rule 3 has been triggered... Execution failed!]
[Rule 1 has been triggered... Execution failed!]
Along the way, Jiang Li not only stared directly at the eight patrolling, rusty Iron Man, but even patted a few passersby on the shoulder. However, the inevitable causal punishments that fell upon his "Null" body were like punching thin air, with no reaction whatsoever.
"Is that all you've got?"
Jiang Li exhaled a puff of green smoke and looked up at the end of the street.
That place is the heart of the city— Stark Tower.
But the building before them was completely different from the iconic, technologically advanced structure in the main Marvel Main Universe. It resembled a giant insect hive made of steel and flesh. The building's surface was covered with rusty metal pipes that pulsated rhythmically like blood vessels, spewing out nauseating black engine oil.
Just as Jiang Li about to reach Stark Tower, there was only one block left.
The piercing air raid siren suddenly stopped.
At the same time, all the pedestrians on the street turned their heads and stared at Jiang Li with stiff smiles and empty eyes.
"Since we can't lock it down through rules, we'll perform a dual cleanup of both physical and conceptual elements."
A mechanical, neither-male-nor-female voice echoed simultaneously from passersby in all directions.
Immediately afterwards, the space in front of Jiang Li distorted like ripples on water.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
A dozen or so figures dressed in black suits appeared out of nowhere, blocking Jiang Li's path.
They have no face.
The face, where the facial features should be, was instead a black and white screen with static, like an old television set with no signal, emitting a "buzzing" static noise.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..?
No, this is the universe's "system cleanup procedure".
They didn't have guns in their hands, but rather short sticks that shimmered with an eerie gray light.
One of the faceless figures suddenly sprang up, breaking the sound barrier, and slammed the gray short stick in his hand down towards Jiang Li's head!
Jiang Li neither dodged nor retaliated; he simply tilted his head slightly.
Call--!
The gray short stick grazed Jiang Li's cheek and missed, hitting a mailbox next to him.
There was no explosion.
The red tin mailbox vanished from the world the instant it came into contact with the gray light. Its shadow on the ground, and even the letters inside, were completely erased.
"Concept Shredder?" Jiang Li raised an eyebrow.
Once this thing hits an entity, it doesn't destroy it; it simply deletes that line of code from the universe.
"That's interesting. Since the rules can't control me, why not send in antivirus software to forcibly clean me up?"
Jiang Li watched as the dozen or so faceless men gradually approached, casually tossing away his cigarette butt, a cruel, maniacal smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"But aren't you guys mistaken? Just because I've patched it doesn't mean I'm a phantom that can only take a beating."
Jiang Li slowly raised his left arm.
On his wrist, the streamlined dark matter [Multiversal Energy Core] erupted with an unprecedentedly dazzling green light. The central Phoenix Galaxy vortex spun wildly, emitting a deep rumble.
What are the core functions of the Omnitrix?
It's not a transformation.
Rather, it's gene harvesting and data plundering!
Since the essence of this universe is code and rules, then...
"I can even use gods as power banks. A few strings of mutated code dare to talk back to me?"
Jiang Li suddenly opened his left hand.
"Swallow them!"
Boom!
With Jiang Li's angry shout, more than a dozen extremely thick green tentacles shot out from the Omnitrix!
But these tendrils are different from before. They are no longer physical vines, but a green torrent of data composed entirely of "0"s and "1"s!
This is the Upgrade [Low-Level Hacker Infiltration Mode] for the watch face by Grey Matter!
Pfft! Pfft!
The green data tentacles, moving at an absolute speed exceeding the speed of light, pierced deep into the chests of the dozen or so faceless men!
"Zzzzz!!!"
The snow-like screen on the faceless man's face suddenly erupted with an extremely ear-piercing electric scream. They tried to use the Concept Shredder in their hands to smash off these tentacles.
But it didn't work!
Using magic to defeat magic, using data to fight data. Jiang Li's data tentacles are on a level many dimensions higher than these low-level cleaning programs!
Glug! Glug!
The green tentacles transformed into greedy straws, frantically extracting the "abnormal rule code" from the faceless human body.
Those once-arrogant cleanup programs began to convulse violently, collapse, and pixelate. In just three seconds, more than a dozen faceless figures were completely disintegrated in a burst of green light, turning into the purest code data, which was forcibly sucked into the Omnitrix!
[Ding! Illegal exception code detected!]
[Initiating low-level parsing... Parsing complete!]
[Successfully captured: Concept Shredding Protocol (Incomplete)!]
[The dial's antivirus database has been updated. Resistance to anomalous rules in this universe has been increased by 15%!]
As the notification tone faded, the green light on Jiang Li's chest display dimmed, and a deeper power merged into his body.
"It can not only kill people, but also be eaten as a tonic."
Jiang Li twisted his neck, feeling the data patches on the watch face constantly improving, and the savagery and excitement in his eyes grew stronger.
"Using the bizarre to devour the bizarre—that's the correct way to use the ultimate cheat."
Jiang Li raised his head; there were no more obstacles in front of him.
The massive, steel maw-like door of Stark Tower was right in front of me.
Faint sounds of gears grinding and flesh tearing could be heard from inside.
I hope the code on you will give me a good meal.
Jiang Li sneered, strode up the steps, and walked into the steel insect hive that symbolized cyber Hell without hesitation.