"Urgh-!"
As a beastlike roar erupted from the hooded man's mouth, Chen Xiao felt the body pinned beneath his knee suddenly grow heavier-or rather, more solid!
Then an immense force far beyond human strength exploded beneath him!
"What?!"
As though a hydraulic press had lifted him, Chen Xiao lost his hold in an instant. Not only could he no longer grip the hooded man's arm, but he was flung clear off him.
He landed hard on the stone paving several steps away, grunting in pain.
"I... want... you... dead!"
The hooded man struggled out of the mud, his body covered in foul-smelling sludge and suspicious filth.
"How did this guy suddenly get so strong?"
Chen Xiao rubbed his numb backside and slowly stood up.
Studying the changes in the hooded man, he quickly noticed something wrong. Although his appearance hadn't changed, the coloring of his body was now drastically out of sync with his surroundings.
It was like a real person entering a video game. No matter how realistic the game was, you could still tell the real person apart at a glance.
That was exactly how the hooded man looked now.
He was no longer on the same layer as this space!
"Tch!"
Chen Xiao gritted his teeth and charged forward again to test just how much the man had changed.
Smack-!
His punch was caught with ease.
"Uh..."
Chen Xiao glanced at his trapped fist, then at the hooded man.
The man's eyes were bloodshot, burning with a fury that seemed ready to incinerate everything. He no longer looked at Chen Xiao as a person, but as trash that had to be crushed into nothing.
An ordinary person who hadn't awakened really couldn't compare to a superhuman with awakened powers...
Chen Xiao: "Hey! Can we talk this out?"
"Die!"
The hooded man wasted no words. An immensely heavy uppercut slammed into Chen Xiao's abdomen!
"Ugh-!"
Chen Xiao instantly doubled over like a shrimp, his eyes bulging and his mouth gaping open. Violent, twisting pain shot from his stomach straight to his head, almost suffocating him.
He instinctively wanted to vomit, but this was a dream. His stomach was empty, leaving only relentless nausea and the choking sensation of spasms churning through his chest.
"Worthless! Trash! Maggot!!"
The hooded man cursed furiously. At the sight of Chen Xiao's agony, a twisted pleasure finally edged out some of the rage from his humiliation.
"I wasn't planning to bring my real body all the way into the dream, but you goddamn bug actually dared to fight back! Huh?! And you put me through... this humiliation!"
He bent down, his mud-covered hand clamping around Chen Xiao's neck like an iron vise!
"Urgh-!"
Chen Xiao's throat was locked in his grip, his breathing cut off instantly.
He instinctively tried to pry the man's fingers loose with both hands, but they were like cast steel and wouldn't budge.
"Heeheeheehee... give up. How could a body imitated by your consciousness compare to actual human flesh? You and I aren't even on the same level of substance!"
A malicious smile returned to the hooded man's face, this time with less mockery and more murderous intent.
"If you'd cooperated with my game, I might have let you live a little longer in this world. But now... I'll just squeeze you to death!"
"Hh... hh..."
As the air was completely stripped from his lungs, the edges of his vision began to blacken and contract.
Chen Xiao's struggles grew weaker and weaker, his consciousness sinking like a stone cast into the deep sea.
Am I... going to die?
The thought slipped through his consciousness as darkness threatened to swallow it.
Yet the parade of memories from his past and present lives that Chen Xiao had expected never appeared.
There were no old red-brick houses from his hometown, no hardworking parents, no complicated look in Lin Qi's eyes, no noisy university dorm...
Instead, cold images were forced into his mind, one after another, like a broken projector.
The front door of his villa was marked with cold, official seals, while several people in work clothes roughly hauled the furniture out.
The figurine display cabinet he treasured was pried open, and all the exquisite figurines were swept haphazardly into a huge black garbage bag, mixed with discarded model-making materials.
Dust filled the air. Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating their hollow, lifeless eyes inside the bag.
Although every one of them was crafted with exquisite care, a figurine's value didn't lie in the figurine itself, but in the fictional work it represented.
Yet in this world, no one but him knew they existed, nor were there any works associated with them.
There was naturally no value to speak of.
So once Chen Xiao died, the proof that they had existed in this world would soon disappear, as though they had never come into it at all.
No... how could... how could this happen...
What remained of Chen Xiao's consciousness roared.
But the images of the "future" didn't stop for his impotent rage.
The black garbage bag was transported out of Magic City to some unknown place, then carelessly tossed into a corner of a dim secondhand goods warehouse.
As time passed, a thick layer of dust gradually covered the bag. Inside, the once-brilliant figurine girls lost their luster, their colors turning dull and gray as tiny cracks spread across their exquisite paintwork...
They weathered and decayed in silence.
Their once-vivid, lively eyes froze completely into lifeless pieces of cheap plastic, until even the faintest gleam disappeared.
An unknown amount of time passed.
An impatient-looking middle-aged man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth dragged up the heavy garbage bag, swearing as he headed toward a huge, foul-smelling trash compactor.
"A pile of junk nobody wants. Just taking up space!"
He swung it hard. The bag traced an arc and landed squarely in that "abyss" full of rotting food and filthy water.
The mouth of the bag fell open. The last thing Chen Xiao saw was half the face of Mahiru's figurine before she sank into the filthy slime. Her amber eyes, once brimming with tenderness and love, held nothing but endless darkness and deathly stillness.
Lost forever, never to rise again!
"No-!!!"
Soul-rending pain and overwhelming terror, a hundred, a thousand times stronger than the agony of suffocation!
They detonated deep within Chen Xiao's mind as it teetered on the brink of extinction!
I will never let this happen!!!!
That thought erupted like a volcano, instantly igniting something dormant within Chen Xiao!
Humm-!
The next moment, a dazzling white light burst from Chen Xiao without warning!
"Wh-what did you do?!"
Blinded by the sudden glare, the hooded man instinctively shut his eyes, and his grip around Chen Xiao's neck loosened for an instant.
"What the hell is this light?! Fuck! You're awakening a superpower?! Are you... are you some fucking novel protagonist?! Unlocking cheats on your deathbed?! No cheats! No cheats! Just fucking die already!!"
Shocked and enraged, the hooded man's murderous intent instantly soared to its peak!
He forced open his eyes, streaming with tears from the harsh light. The muscles in his arms bulged as he prepared to crush Chen Xiao's throat with all his strength!
Shhk!
A crisp tearing sound rang out.
There was no violent collision, no clash of metal, only the ease of a red-hot knife slicing through solid butter.
The hooded man felt a brief, icy numbness in his wrist.
Then he saw a familiar hand...
It spun through the air, trailing a spray of dark red blood that looked almost unreal in the white light, before leaving his field of vision and landing in the mud nearby. Its fingers were still clenched in a spasmodic grip.
The severed surface was as smooth as a mirror.
Then the delayed pain crashed through the hooded man's nerves like a tsunami!
"Aaaaaaah-!!! My, m-m-my... my haaaand!!!"
A shriek too agonized to sound human burst from the hooded man's ravaged throat. He staggered backward, his left hand clamped over the bleeding stump of his right wrist. The madness in his eyes was completely replaced by boundless terror and pain.
"Urgh... cough, cough! Cough, cough, cough..."
Chen Xiao, who had nearly lost consciousness, was released as well. He clutched his neck and coughed violently, the light around him fading. Fortunately, his backside struck the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the stone paving helped bring him back to his senses.
"...Am... am I saved?"
Chen Xiao raised his head with difficulty. Across from him, the hooded man also forced down his pain and stared ahead, his face contorted.
The object that had sliced off the hooded man's hand now stood between them.
It was a long, pitch-black blade.
This clearly wasn't the superpower of the bug he'd almost strangled to death. After all, activating a superpower generally required conscious intent, and Chen Xiao had been so close to having his mind strangled to death that he couldn't possibly have activated anything!
Which meant...
There was a third person in this space!
"Who? Who the hell... how could anyone... cough, cough! How could anyone get in here?! Urgh, cough, cough... this is my turf-my domain!"
The agony of his severed hand made the hooded man's words slur.
After all, if he'd been a mental projection, he could have simply endured it, just as he had when Chen Xiao's punch made him bite through his tongue.
But now his real body had entered the dream!
Having his hand cut off meant suffering in both mind and flesh at once!
Yet no matter how the hooded man shouted, no one appeared.
Then the two men, both struggling for breath, suddenly fell silent, trying to make out the strange sound faintly reaching their ears.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-!!!!
It was the flapping of a trench coat in a fierce wind!
"Above us!"
Realizing what it was, both men looked up at once.
A pale, slender figure was plummeting straight down from the sky, her arms and legs spread wide. The stirring sound, like an entrance theme, came from the long black trench coat she wore.
Then they felt a rush of bitterly cold wind descend from above, sweeping away the lingering stench of blood.
She landed between Chen Xiao and the hooded man in a classic superhero pose. As she raised her head, azure flames blossomed like flowers in the girl's eyes.
"Black Rock... Shooter?"
Before you continue