Chapter 1 Battlefield Book Reading

The so-called battlefield book reading was just a joke, of course. Hao Ren just wanted to ease the atmosphere and let Leah relax a little—but to be honest, he really didn't expect Leah's new weapon, which she had carefully prepared for so long, to look like this.

He originally thought Leah would forge a new divine sword, or some other "normal equipment"—after all, she used a sword when she chopped up Feng Xiao back then. Her proficiency with one-handed weapons must be higher than other talents, but he didn't expect her to come up with a bible… or a book of study notes, if you will.

He felt like he had overemphasized "knowledge is power" when he instilled that idea in her, causing her to develop a wrong worldview…

But then again, Hao Ren wasn't worried about Leah making the wrong decision when choosing a new weapon—although she looked quite small, she was still a goddess who had lived for tens of millions of years, experienced the Feng Xiao War and the Godslaying War, and had a genius for learning. Her choice to shape her weapon into a "holy book" must have been carefully considered.

Hao Ren felt that he just needed to trust Leah's judgment at this time, just as she trusted his and Vivian's plan.

"Actually… at first, I really thought about attaching an iron chain to it, so I could swing it around like Mom's bible and use it as a meteor hammer," Leah said, while weighing the big book in her hand up and down. "But after thinking about it, I realized I'm not good at meteor hammers—practicality comes first. Blindly pursuing coolness and handsomeness will delay things."

Hao Ren slapped his forehead: "I don't think attaching an iron chain to a bible and using it as a meteor hammer is cool at all…"

Leah smiled slightly, put away the big book in her hand, and walked towards the exit of the bridge: "Of course it's cool—any weapon is cool when it's smashed into the enemy's face."

Hao Ren shrugged, picked up the Star Destroyer Crowbar, and quickly followed: "Let me lead the way—you still get lost on this ship."

The Petrified Tortoise was advancing in a sea of darkness and chaos. The bizarre twisted objects that kept popping up in the surrounding space and the flashes of light constantly bursting on the ship's shield made it seem like it was sailing in a stormy sea. And in front of the ship, a strange "mirror space" was constantly approaching.

The scene of that "mirror space" was magnificent and terrifying—it was like countless mirrors spliced together at various angles, forming a spherical barrier that was so wide that it was hard to imagine. It was so huge that when the ship was still tens of millions of kilometers away from the barrier, it was already blocking the way like an endless vertical wall. It was as if the entire universe had reached its boundary, and everything came to an abrupt end in front of it.

Despite the obstruction of darkness and chaos, the scene of the entire universe was still reflected on the fully reflective mirror surface—the relationship between them seemed to bypass the general laws of optics and was more like a mapping of information. Through the external monitors, Hao Ren saw that the mirror surface was full of starlight, and all the stars of the Dream Plane were listed in it. However, each starlight was alienated: in the countless "mirrors" at various angles, the starlight was stacked and compressed together, presenting a dim and pale hue, as if every star was gradually burning out.

And as the distance continued to close, the shadow of the Petrified Tortoise finally appeared in those mirrors. On the mirrors at various angles, hundreds of thousands of projections of the ship suddenly appeared, and each projection was a scene of the ship being destroyed: some were fragmented, some were cut in half, and some were even melted into a blob of unrecognizable liquid metal.

"Whoa," Nolan's holographic projection appeared beside Hao Ren, "That scared this ship."

Hao Ren glanced at Nolan while dismantling the metal shield in front of him: "Your tone isn't convincing at all."

"What a bunch of pretentious little tricks," Leah looked at the pictures sent back by the external monitors with some disdain, "Using this layer of 'mirror' to show off the 'great power' with which it is about to destroy the world? I can't believe such an embarrassing guy would be my clone…"

This was the propulsion group's mechanical compartment of the Petrified Tortoise. Under normal circumstances, this place was maintained by autonomous machines and the personnel通道 [tōng dào, passage] would not be opened, but under Nolan's control, Hao Ren and his party arrived at this special place.

And prepared to do some things that did not comply with safety regulations according to plan.

The low hum of the machines in operation came from all directions. These hums were now Nolan's heartbeat. They sounded steady and powerful, not at all like they were about to be stabbed half to death with a big iron rod.

The last layer of protective plate was removed, revealing parallel rows of crystal pipes, like lampposts, inside. Those crystallized energy conduits emitted a faint blue light, providing energy for the nearby safety devices.

At this time, the buzzing sound around became louder.

Nolan hugged her arms and shrank her neck: "I… I'm a little nervous."

Hao Ren raised the Star Destroyer Crowbar and gestured on the energy conduits: "It's okay, it'll just hurt for a moment, and then it won't hurt anymore."

"I'd be a fool to believe you!" Nolan glared, but this was her own plan after all, so she could only bite the bullet and rush forward even if she was nervous. "You… you be accurate when you strike later, just the two pipes in the middle—don't break the ones next to them!"

Hao Ren curled his lips while raising the crowbar: "Don't worry, I'm proficient in all eighteen weapons, how can I not handle a mere crowbar? You have to cooperate well, I'll smash it down with one blow, and you immediately rush towards that layer of 'mirror', and then blow up this layer of space-time structure. If you rush too early or too late, it'll be a waste of my blow…"

Nolan glared: "Nonsense, you'll only waste a blow, and I'll waste a kidney!"

No sooner said than done, as soon as Nolan finished speaking, Hao Ren had already swung the crowbar and smashed it down with all his might!

Nolan: "Holy crap, that hurts, ahhhhh!!!"

She hadn't even screamed so miserably when she was hit into a big wreck by the storm of divine power in the X-cluster—it seemed that having a kidney stabbed off with a crowbar really hurt.

But despite the screaming, Nolan, as an AI, still maintained the precision and efficiency that was consistent with the program when controlling the ship. Almost at the moment when the safety device of the void engine fully alarmed, the engine of the Petrified Tortoise emitted a bright stream of particles. The ship, which had already been slowing down slowly, suddenly turned into a stream of light and slammed into that "chaotic space-time structure" disguised with countless mirrors.

The safety device was destroyed, and a large amount of energy, under Nolan's conscious guidance, poured into the ship's void engine module. The void engine, which could not have been turned on within the world barrier, was immediately forcibly activated and reached a state of severe overload within a few seconds.

Bright bursts of fire began to erupt from the ship's waist. The unstable Order Field tore hundreds of cracks in the ship's engine shield area. A large amount of metal fragments and crystal dust spewed out from the cracks. At the same time, the space around the ship also produced obvious collapses—a large number of curved rays of light formed uneven curved surfaces, wrapping the Petrified Tortoise layer by layer.

The moment those curved surfaces touched the ship, the ship lost control. It began to appear and disappear randomly in the entire space. The completely irregular spatial structure destroyed the continuity of the course, making navigation impossible—however, the overload of the void engine had also reached its limit at this time.

There was no earth-shattering explosion. When the void engine core melted down, the Petrified Tortoise's waist only flashed brightly, and then a faint, bubble-like sphere appeared around the ship. This layer of spherical "membrane" quickly expanded, reaching dozens of kilometers in size in the blink of an eye, and then shattered silently like a real soap bubble.

And that "mirror surface" that enveloped the core area of the Dark Abyss was also shattered in an instant: the information shock released when the void engine melted down, the complexity of which far exceeded any kind of space-time law, disintegrated that chaotic space-time. All the distorted space-time mappings were washed away in the flood of information, leaving only the original appearance of this space.

At the cost of sacrificing a kidney of her own ship spirit, Hao Ren broke the last door of the Lord of Feng Xiao.

At the moment when that chaotic space-time disintegrated, Hao Ren seemed to have a hallucination. He saw those broken "mirrors" flying in all directions, wandering and spreading throughout the space. The tiny mirrors penetrated the ship's shield and armor like phantoms, filling the cabins, and slowly swiping in front of him.

Leah and Vivian beside him had disappeared at some point.

He looked at those mirrors slowly moving in the air. From the mirrors, he saw his own face, the distant starlight, and the old, dilapidated, South Suburb streets that had been forgotten by the city in his memory.

He saw a pale figure appear in one of the mirror fragments. The white face smiled at him: "What do you see? Do you see yourself? Do you see me?"

Hao Ren smiled: "As an appetizer, these hallucinations are too uninspired."

"What's the difference between illusion and reality?" The pale evil god continued to smile, "This universe will eventually perish, your struggles are only delaying it a little bit. After the end comes, all reality is just data floating in the wind in chaos and nothingness… If it will eventually dissipate, what's the point of your obsession with the boundary between reality and illusion?"

"Meaning? I never said I was pursuing any meaning," Hao Ren smiled, and casually crushed a piece of "mirror" floating in front of him. The image presented on the mirror was the scene of the Crystal Nucleus Research Station being destroyed, with countless crystal towers fragmented and floating in space. "You have never seen the true scene outside the world. Even if I tell you what I'm pursuing, you will never understand it."

The pale face twisted, revealing a terrifying smile: "Mortal, rhetoric won't save you. In the face of this great power that destroys the world, how much weight can your pursuit have?!"

"My weight? The key is not how much weight I have, but how little value you have—"

Hao Ren laughed and directly crushed the piece of "mirror" that showed the other party's image: "In my eyes, you're just a moving year-end bonus!!"

In that instant, all the hallucinations vanished.