Exploration

This world was inexplicably bizarre—believing made it real, and disbelieving rendered it void. Wei Yuan tested this by making a small cut on his arm, only to find that the wound appeared on his arm in the real world as well. This immediately put him on high alert. The injuries suffered in the illusory world were not illusory at all. If he assumed he had uncovered the secret between the real and illusory worlds and went charging through heedlessly, he would most likely walk straight into a trap. Wei Yuan walked out of the office area and glanced at the elevator, which was still running normally. Instead of taking the lift, he entered the stairwell and dashed toward the top floor. The stairwell contained multiple security mechanisms, but fortunately, the security clearance of the control room Wei Yuan had just visited was absurdly high—enough to shut down all the defensive measures throughout the entire stairwell. Just outside the fire door leading to the top floor, a dense web of detection lasers barred the way. At the same time, two automated laser turrets hung mounted on the ceiling. Wei Yuan's thoughts stirred. The two laser turrets had not been listed among the security installations displayed in the security room. Evidently, they operated under an even higher level of authorization. In the real world, the laser emitters had long since decayed and fallen away, leaving behind only dark, hollow cavities in the walls. The two laser defense turrets had turned into scrap metal, caked in slimy residue as if some repulsive creature had once made its nest there. The fire door hung half-open, with several cables dangling from it, a mechanism hanging at the end—parts of some unknown security trap. According to the state of the real world, Wei Yuan only had to walk straight through the doorway; all the security measures had long ceased functioning. Wei Yuan thus walked toward the tightly locked fire door, passing straight through the crisscrossing green laser beams. The two laser turrets whirred into motion instantly, locking onto Wei Yuan while blaring repeated warnings. Wei Yuan ignored them and charged directly at the fire door. With a heavy thud, he slammed solidly against it. Where he should have phased right through according to the real world, he was instead rebounded by the door! Having already locked onto him, the two laser turrets immediately unleashed two beams of supercharged laser fire straight into Wei Yuan! Yet at the very instant he rebounded, Wei Yuan used the recoil to throw himself sideways, shifting out of the beams' path. Raising his weapon, he fired two shots and blew both defense turrets to scrap. Ejecting the spent casings, Wei Yuan felt a searing burn across his back. In an exposure lasting less than a tenth of a second, the high-energy laser beams had sliced through his body armor, cut through his sturdy researcher's coat, and scorched two deep furrows into his flesh. Had he not donned the body armor beforehand, the lasers would have bored clean through him. Viewing himself through the lens of the real world, two deep gashes had appeared across his back. This world was truly fraught with traps. Fortunately, Wei Yuan was meticulous and had run a test in advance. Otherwise, it would have been all too easy to assume that whatever did not exist in the real world could not harm him in the illusory one. He would have slammed blindly into that fire door, only to be picked off and executed by the laser turrets before he could react. The traps in this world were laid with supreme ingenuity, specifically designed to snare cultivators who were quick to pierce through falsehood and glimpse reality. Fortunately, Wei Yuan possessed a heavenly demon in his sea of consciousness—an irresolvable paradox to this world—allowing him to see the real world directly and inciting his suspicion from the start. After destroying the laser turrets, Wei Yuan fired several shots into the door lock, blasted it apart, and stepped onto the top floor. Wei Yuan had been to the top floor before, including Ji Liuli's office, so the layout was not unfamiliar to him. Even so, with the recent close call fresh in his mind, he dared not let down his guard in the slightest, advancing cautiously until he finally stood before Ji Liuli's office doors. Wei Yuan reached out to push the door open, but the moment his fingers touched it, he sprang backward. Multiple laser beams instantly shot down from the ceiling, weaving into a dense web of light. Had he retreated a fraction of a second later, the lasers would have cleaved him right down the middle. Wei Yuan raised his gun and fired at the ceiling, taking them out one by one. In the blink of an eye, he destroyed more than a dozen laser emitters. When inactive, these emitters blended seamlessly into the ceiling, but once activated, the panels turned transparent to let the high-energy beams pass through. After destroying all the emitters, Wei Yuan cast another glance into the real world. There, the two cast-bronze doors leaned outward at an angle, their frames torn apart as though violently struck from within by something colossal. Wei Yuan knew the defensive strength of these doors all too well. Beneath their cast-bronze exterior lay multiple layers of superalloy, capable of withstanding point-blank fire from heavy armor-piercing shells. They were entirely beyond the power of human hands to destroy. Yet judging from the scene in the real world, Wei Yuan felt that even a super-esper would struggle to unleash such terrifying force. Wei Yuan reloaded his weapon, broke into the security room beside the entrance, and swapped out his damaged vest for a fresh set of body armor before returning to the entrance to try the access controls. To his surprise, after the scanner read Wei Yuan's retinas, the heavy doors slowly slid open. Ji Liuli's office area could only be described as vast—a colossal space spanning several thousand square meters, large enough to house an entire military unit. The office merged three vertical stories, with a ceiling height exceeding twenty meters. Vast and open, its minimalist decor exuded an air of supreme luxury. A massive floor-to-ceiling window looked out toward the distant mountains, where the setting sun was slowly sinking behind the peaks, bathing the entire office in gold and crimson. Yet the magnificent glass window was now riddled with several gaping holes, and the interior was in complete disarray, looking as though it had just weathered a violent storm. Wei Yuan possessed extraordinary vision, however, and saw at a glance that what had occurred here was no storm, but a savage battle. At least several hundred heavily armed soldiers had fought in this space. Bullet holes and gashes covered the walls, ceilings, and furniture alike. Broad stains of deep, purplish black smeared various surfaces, though they hardly resembled human blood. In the entire office, only the desk situated with its back to the grand window remained pristine and untouched, bearing not the slightest mark of damage—utterly incongruous with its surroundings. Wei Yuan walked slowly over to the desk, his mind automatically reconstructing the battle from the traces left behind. In this space, hundreds of Umbrella Company's most elite security operatives had fought a bloody battle against an unknown enemy, bolstered by more than a dozen powerful espers among their ranks. Yet their adversaries had not been human. Judging by the remaining marks, they appeared to have been monsters with asymmetrical limbs. Facing these creatures, the Umbrella Company security force had been thoroughly suppressed, falling into what amounted to a one-sided slaughter. What was strange, however, was that Wei Yuan remembered no such monsters appearing during his previous experience in the otherworldly realm, nor had any battle ever broken out in Ji Liuli's office. When, then, had this battle occurred? After Wei Yuan had left last time? But that world fragment had clearly vanished. Reconstructing the clash in his mind as he walked, Wei Yuan arrived before the desk. A microphone sat atop it, its position suggesting that someone had once sat there broadcasting something to the outside world. The desk was considerably higher than normal, and the chair was exceptionally broad. Paired with the positioning of the microphone, the image of an immense woman well over two and a half meters tall formed in Wei Yuan's mind—sitting behind such furniture, she would fit perfectly. In the real world, the desk and the space within three feet of it were likewise pristine, as though frozen in time, starkly out of place amid the ruined environment. Wei Yuan did not step into that three-foot radius. Stopping at its edge, he slowly crouched down and leaned forward to peer beneath the desk. Sure enough, stuck beneath the desktop was an adhesive note. Scrawled across it in frantic, hurried handwriting were three words: Kill me.