The Development Was Abandoned? I'll Take It Off Their Hands!

"The sky is dark... the rain is coming..."

"Who is behind you... watching you..."

Accompanied by the muffled tolling of a bronze bell, Hongdou's shrill, ethereal singing pierced the barrier of space in an instant and echoed across the rooftop of the unfinished building.

The song sounded gentle, yet it carried an irresistible power of law.

The spatial distortion that had been crushing Su Bai frantically froze the instant it heard the song, as though someone had pressed the pause button.

"Wh-what is that sound?!"

The bloodshot eyeball atop the enormous mountain of flesh began to tremble violently.

Though it was a peak second-tier rule entity, its rules were "Spatial Labyrinth" and "Physical Crushing."

Hongdou, on the other hand, had a "sure-kill rule" that directly targeted the soul and causality!

Though the two were close in tier, the absoluteness of their rules was on an entirely different level!

The flesh mountain monster instinctively sensed extreme danger.

It tried to turn its enormous eyeball to find the source of the singing.

But the instant it formed the intention to "look back" or "shift its gaze"-

[Rule one: Death Gaze, checking trigger condition...]

Because the flesh mountain monster had no human neck in the conventional sense, Hongdou's rule check stalled for an extremely brief moment.

But only for an instant.

The power of the rule acted directly on the enormous eyeball at its very core!

"Hee hee hee..."

At some point, Hongdou had floated out of the Divine Kingdom's rift and was hovering eerily right above the flesh mountain monster.

Her deathly pale hands gently cradled the enormous eyeball.

"It hurts so much..."

Crack!

A deafening, teeth-grating crack rang out!

Hongdou had forcibly twisted the enormous eyeball, over two meters in diameter, a full 180 degrees in its socket!

Squelch-

A torrent of foul black blood gushed from the socket like water from a high-pressure hose, splattering across half the rooftop.

"Aaaagh!!!"

The flesh mountain monster let out a heart-rending howl, and countless tentacles made of steel and concrete flailed wildly through the air, trying to swat Hongdou down.

But after landing her blow, Hongdou turned into a red blur and vanished into the black mist, leaving every one of the monster's counterattacks to strike empty air.

"While it's down, finish it off!"

Su Bai stared at the maddened flesh mountain, his eyes red like a ruthless bandit who had spotted a mountain of gold.

"System, suck it dry! Don't leave it so much as a brick!"

Boom!

The rift to the Divine Kingdom, more than ten meters wide behind Su Bai, erupted with a terrifying devouring force.

Severe wasteland contamination at 99.5 percent concentration poured frantically from the rift like solid black tentacles, coiling tightly around the flesh mountain monster's enormous body!

This was an extremely brutal, extremely primitive form of "body snatching"!

The unfinished-building Domain the flesh mountain monster had once prided itself on was like paper before Su Bai's wasteland contamination, stripped away, corroded, and assimilated layer by layer.

The construction debris and human remains inside it, along with the immense "Spatial Labyrinth rule origin," were being pulled steadily into Su Bai's Divine Kingdom.

"No... my development... my life's work..."

The flesh mountain monster struggled desperately, trying to control space and fight back.

But under the absolute suppression of the Divine Kingdom's core and the devastating blow Hongdou had just dealt it, its resistance was pitifully weak.

It could only watch helplessly as its body was dragged bit by bit into the bottomless abyss, darker and deeper than itself.

In the distance, Zhang Lei and the other two lay motionless on the ground, watching in utter stupefaction.

What the hell is he doing?

Swallowing a peak second-tier Anomaly whole?!

The sight was ten thousand times more horrifying than the Anomaly itself!

Zhang Lei looked at Su Bai's not particularly tall figure and the black rift behind him, radiating endless deathly energy and despair. Stormy waves surged in his heart.

"He's not destroying the Anomaly... he's... eating?!"

Zhang Lei swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.

The first rule of the City Appearance Bureau's Abnormality Division: never try to understand or assimilate dark matter. That was courting destruction.

But the harmless-looking high schooler before him was not only assimilating dark matter, he was even swallowing a fully formed rule Anomaly like a snack!

What kind of Divine Kingdom has he been raising?!

Time ticked by, second by second.

Under Su Bai's frenzied devouring,

the flesh monster that had once been like a small hill had shrunk by two-thirds.

Its aura grew weaker and weaker, and its despairing screams gradually faded into barely audible moans.

[Ding! Absorption of a large quantity of high-quality construction materials complete!]

[Ding! Absorption of the Spatial Labyrinth rule origin complete!]

[Fusion progress: 90%... 95%... 99%...]

As he listened to the numbers ticking up in his mind, Su Bai's heart beat faster.

Almost there! Just a little more!

"Get in here!"

Su Bai clenched both fists, and the Divine Kingdom's rift erupted with one final burst of suction.

Whoosh!

A muffled rush of air sounded.

The last remnant of the flesh mountain monster's core body, along with its twisted enormous eyeball, was pulled straight into the Divine Kingdom in one go.

As the core Anomaly vanished completely,

a tremendous rumble shook the entire unfinished Sunshine Waterfront residential complex.

The gray-black miasma hanging over the complex rapidly dispersed into the night wind, as though it had lost its backbone.

The distorted Spatial Labyrinth collapsed in an instant, restoring the unfinished buildings to their original physical state.

The rooftop fell deathly silent once more.

Only the deathly pale moon continued to shine quietly on the mess covering the ground.

Su Bai let out a long breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Although the whole process had looked like crushing dry weeds and smashing rotten wood, opening the Divine Kingdom passage at full power had also consumed a tremendous amount of his mental energy.

But he had no time to worry about his exhaustion. He eagerly sank his consciousness into his mind.

"System! Settlement!"

[Ding! Devouring complete!]

[Congratulations, host. All of the peak second-tier rule entity Resentment Real Estate Development's accumulated resources have been successfully absorbed.]

[The Thirteenth Step blueprint fusion progress has reached 100%!]

[Beginning creation...]

Su Bai's consciousness appeared in the wasteland Divine Kingdom.

Beside the abandoned classroom building,

a flight of extremely eerie stairs slowly rose from the ground amid a burst of dazzling gray light.

The stairs looked thoroughly dilapidated, with broken handrails and steps covered in dried bloodstains and dark green moss.

They led to no building, but stood alone on the barren wasteland. At the top of the stairs lay an impenetrably dense black fog.

[Ding! Urban legend created successfully!]

[Congratulations, host. You have obtained a second-tier urban legend Domain attachment: The Thirteenth Step.]

[Familiar panel generated.]

Su Bai immediately opened the panel to take a look.

[Name]: The Thirteenth Step (Spatial Labyrinth-type urban legend)

[Tier]: Second tier (can grow)

[Core rules]:

1. Endless Loop: Any enemy who steps onto the stairs and silently counts the steps will be forced into the hidden space of the Thirteenth Step upon reaching the last step of a normal staircase (the twelfth). Within that space, all sense of direction and distance fails, creating a ghost-wall loop.

2. Roll-Call Response: Within the hidden space of the Thirteenth Step, one will randomly hear someone calling one's name. If one answers "present" or looks back, a part of one's body will be forcibly taken by the steps and turned into nourishment for them.

[Way out (blind spot)]: When stepping onto the stairs, keep your eyes closed and walk backward the entire way, without counting in your head under any circumstances. This grants immunity to the spatial pull. If you hear your name called in the hidden space, immediately draw a cross on the ground with blood and remain absolutely silent for ten minutes. The labyrinth will automatically open a gap.

[Growth conditions]: Devour the despair and fear of those who have lost their way, as well as the origins of spatial-type Anomalies.

After reading the panel, Su Bai couldn't help sucking in a breath of cold air.

Incredible!

This was a top-tier dungeon practically born for group battles!

With the Thirteenth Step, even if an army of thousands charged into his Divine Kingdom in the future, they would have to spend ten days or half a month wandering the stairs before they even got to see Hongdou.

What was more, it came with the compulsory damage rule of "roll-call deprivation."

Paired with Hongdou's Death Gaze, it was a completely unbeatable combo!

What a haul! I've won so hard this time!

Su Bai laughed heartily in the Divine Kingdom.

He had gained more than just a powerful urban legend.

After devouring such an enormous second-tier Anomaly, his Divine Kingdom had expanded from a pitiful ten square kilometers to fifteen!

Although it was still a hundred and eight thousand li away from a Divine Kingdom like Gu Chengfeng's, which measured tens of thousands of square kilometers,

every bit of Su Bai's Divine Kingdom was a genuine "high-concentration contamination forbidden zone," with every inch of land full of deadly danger.

Perfectly satisfied, Su Bai withdrew his consciousness from the Divine Kingdom.

He opened his eyes to find Zhang Lei, Xiao Li, and the female operative supporting one another, gazing at him in awe as though they were looking at a god... no, a monster.

"B-Brother Su..."

Zhang Lei swallowed, his voice terribly hoarse.

"That monster... you destroyed it?"

"Huh? Oh, right." Su Bai straightened his clothes, returning to his harmless high schooler appearance.

"It was rather stubborn, so I used a few 'special methods' to purify it completely."

Purified?

You call forcibly devouring it without leaving a scrap purification?!

The corner of Zhang Lei's mouth twitched, but he wisely refrained from asking what was going on with Su Bai's Divine Kingdom.

In this world, every powerhouse had secrets.

The more you knew, the faster you died.

"Whatever the case, Brother Su, you saved the lives of all three of us today."

Zhang Lei bowed deeply to Su Bai.

"Words cannot express such a great debt. From now on, if you ever need me, Zhang Lei, in Linhai City, I'll go through boiling water and blazing fire without hesitation!"

Xiao Li and the female operative also bowed deeply.

They were genuinely grateful to Su Bai. Without this strange young man, they would already have been built into a wall as load-bearing supports.

"Don't mention it. When you take someone's money, you deal with their troubles."

Su Bai walked over with a smile and patted Zhang Lei on the shoulder.

"Come on, it'll be dawn soon. Captain Bai is probably getting anxious waiting outside."

"Oh, right, Captain Zhang. Since I saved you all, there's the travel expenses, compensation for emotional distress, and the wear and tear on my shoe sole from that kick just now..."

Zhang Lei froze for a moment, then gave a rueful smile. He pulled an anonymous black card from his pocket and pressed it into Su Bai's hand.

"Brother Su, this is a small token of my personal appreciation. There's fifty thousand yuan on it, and the password is six eights. Please don't think it's too little."

"Oh, you really shouldn't have. We're all colleagues."

Though Su Bai said he was embarrassed to accept it, his hand tucked the black card into his pocket faster than lightning.

On top of the hundred thousand yuan Bai Lan had promised him, he had just pocketed another fifty thousand.

This trip to the unfinished buildings had not only netted him a second-tier urban legend for free, but also earned him 150,000 yuan in cash!

Double happiness at his door!

"Come on, let's go home and have breakfast!" In high spirits, Su Bai swaggered downstairs, leading the three operatives behind him.