Wei Yuan stood inside the spacious elevator, gazing at the surrounding steel grating that gleamed with a dull gray sheen.
The elevator crept downward at an erratic, sluggish pace, the only source of light being an emergency lantern set in a corner.
"So, what on earth did we come down here to do? Or rather, what are we looking for?" Wei Yuan asked.
"Then what did you come here for?" Ji Liuli countered.
"Me? I was dragged here by force by you. How should I know what we're here to do?" Wei Yuan put on an expression of complete grievance and innocence.
Yet beneath Ji Liuli's gaze, as clear as still water, he felt the surrounding air begin to solidify. He could only throw up his hands and say, "Fine, I came to look for something."
"Look for what?" Ji Liuli pressed.
"I don't know the specifics either. I'll know it when I see it." This time Wei Yuan spoke the complete truth, though he had not told the whole story.
That a world fragment such as this could exist at all depended entirely on the lingering grievances of powerful beings unable to find release. Wei Yuan's objective in entering this world of resentment was to locate the resentful spirit or the potent obsession it had left behind, and then shatter that obsession. Doing so would bring an end to the illusion born of resentment, thereby yielding the final wisp of origin qi sustaining the world fragment's existence.
Such origin qi was naturally not to be spoken of in the same breath as that of a true, great world, yet it was far stronger than the Star Pivot Stones generated by a mindscape world. After all, this was origin qi naturally produced by the Xuanhuang Universe. Even if decayed, broken, and fallen in grade, it remained beyond compare.
Previously, when Wei Yuan vanquished the resentful spirit in the supermarket, his harvest had been the awakening of spirituality within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, allowing it to spontaneously breathe the origin qi of heaven and earth. This time, the Umbrella Company's resentment was several times more powerful than that of the supermarket; the benefit it would bring to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was bound to be immense.
The greater the harvest, the higher the risk.
The resentful spirit here seemed to have already anticipated the purpose of Wei Yuan's arrival. Its opening move had been a lethal strike, intended to slaughter Wei Yuan along with the physical vessel he possessed. Moreover, the treacherous snare buried within that body had actually survived Ji Liuli's potent poison purge, activating right when Wei Yuan faced a fatal sneak attack and refusing to obey his commands, nearly causing Wei Yuan to suffer a deadly blow.
Wei Yuan had never expected this resentful spirit to completely throw out the playbook, laying out an ultimate killing strike right at the start without the slightest regard for gradual escalation.
And the resentful spirit had likewise never expected the Great Joy King Buddha to disregard the playbook just as thoroughly, directly jolting Wei Yuan awake. From the resentful spirit's perspective, for this King Buddha—who stood near the very apex of the world—to meddle in such a manner was truly a blatant disregard for martial ethics.
Yet Wei Yuan was no moral crusader, nor was he a cultivator focused solely on solitary duels. Most of the time, he was a Military Commissioner of the Great Tang commanding an entire realm, the Domain Lord of Qingming ruling over twenty million souls. Thus, words like 'face' and 'fairness' held entirely different meanings for Wei Yuan than they did for others.
Provided he was certain of victory, Wei Yuan cared a great deal about face. Likewise, only from a position of absolute superiority would Wei Yuan ever grant his opponent fairness.
Having awakened ahead of time and obtained the Indestructible Dharma of Emptiness and Form—a scripture pointing straight to the Great Dao—Wei Yuan already held the benefits firmly in hand. It was far too late to refuse. Consequently, what concerned him now was how to pay as small a price as possible, or even none at all. Paying in full was out of the question.
Following his awakening, although he still had to rely on the innate abilities of this physical vessel, the scope of what Wei Yuan could accomplish had expanded dramatically. Taking advantage of the remaining time while the soldiers manually lowered the elevator, Wei Yuan conducted a thorough inspection of his body.
The elevator finally descended to the designated level. Ji Liuli spoke into the radio transceiver pinned to her collar, "We're in position."
At this, the soldiers on the level above let out a collective shout and pulled hard on the winch cables, halting the elevator's descent. Several technicians were attempting to restore power to the elevator sector, yet no matter how hard they tried, the electrical current seemed to pour into a bottomless pit, completely swallowed by something unknown.
Inside the elevator, Ji Liuli pulled open the gate and said, "Down here is the thing you ability-users need the most: gene stabilizers."
Relevant information surfaced in Wei Yuan's memories, and he instantly understood why the Alliance had staked everything on a single throw, risking the loss of their entire force to raid this place.
The gene segments representing different superpowers were extraordinarily complex. Grafting them onto the fragile and relatively simple foundation of human genetics was like erecting a skyscraper on a sand beach; issues with the foundation would inevitably emerge in short order.
Gene stabilizers reinforced an ability-user's genetic architecture, specifically tailored to resolve this flaw. Without them, an ability-user's genes would gradually be eroded and warped by their superpower genes. Not only would their powers progressively spiral out of control, but their physical forms would also slowly break down, ultimately mutating into grotesque monstrosities.
Across the globe, only the Umbrella Company produced stabilizers of the highest efficacy—after all, many of these ability-users had been engineered by the company in the first place.
The Superpower Alliance's supply of gene stabilizers had grown critically depleted, leaving them unable to do anything but watch as peripheral members perished.
Thus, they had orchestrated a series of diversions to draw Ji Liuli away, intending to risk it all in a bid to seize enough gene stabilizers and, if possible, obtain the chemical molecular blueprints to solve the crisis once and for all.
Ji Liuli continued, "We have your people planted among us, and your ranks harbor my people just the same. Down here, there are not only gene stabilizers, but also out-of-control monstrosities that must be eradicated. My subordinates alone couldn't accomplish this task. So, when I saw you all laying your trap, I simply played along and lured you here, transferring those runaway abominations down to this level as well.
"Those men of yours will take another route. What they will face are monsters transformed from ability-users. If they do a splendid job, I won't mind letting them leave with some gene stabilizers as a reward. And as for you, you'll receive an extra reward."
"Do you give such rewards to others often?" Wei Yuan asked out of the blue.
Ji Liuli paused in surprise, then burst into hearty laughter. "Are you jealous?"
Wei Yuan did not reply, quietly waiting for her answer.
Ji Liuli arched an eyebrow. Answering such a question made her feel slightly weak, stirring an instinctive resistance within her. Yet for some inexplicable reason, she still said, "I only reward those who can match my capabilities. How many people like that do you think there are?"
Wei Yuan pressed no further, following Ji Liuli into the eerie subterranean world.
The ambient light was dim, with only a few sporadic lamps flickering. Office supplies and documents lay scattered everywhere, and large patches of viscous biomass of unknown composition clung to the floors, walls, and ceiling.
Entering a grand lobby, Wei Yuan's pupils suddenly contracted. Floating before them was an octopus-like creature gliding slowly through the air, completely defying common physical sense. Along the flank of the octopus, a slender row of runes faintly glowed.
Wei Yuan recognized that row of runes!
Many runes were specialized symbols used in formation arrays, possessing no inherent meaning on their own. They relied on varied combinations to resonate with the surrounding environment, spiritual qi, or even the Great Dao of heaven and earth, thereby manifesting the array's functions. The function of this particular row of runes was to grant the octopus levitation and a degree of void-traversing capability.
Wei Yuan's divine sense swept over their surroundings, revealing that the subterranean spatial fabric was broken even more severely. Many patches that appeared pitch-black were in fact gaps where space was missing, opening directly into the void teeming with turbulent spacetime currents. Anyone drawn into them would face total annihilation. Yet in such an environment, traversing the void became remarkably effortless.
At that moment, the octopus sensed the two intruders. Hundreds of eyes lit up across its body, and two tentacles abruptly lashed out, piercing into the void.
In the next instant, two tentacles materialized directly before Wei Yuan and Ji Liuli, their tips razor-sharp, lunging viciously toward them!
The strike was unimaginably swift. Just as Wei Yuan prepared to dodge, his legs suddenly lost all sensation! That split-second delay was lethal; the tentacle struck Wei Yuan directly in the chest.
A brilliant surge of golden light immediately erupted across Wei Yuan's body, absorbing the majority of the impact. Even so, the residual force drove the tentacle deep into his chest, piercing straight through his heart.
A muffled shriek echoed from deep within Wei Yuan's body, as if several bubbles had been punctured and dissolved into nothingness. In an instant, Wei Yuan actually felt considerably lighter, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from him.
Wei Yuan's expression darkened. He had not anticipated that this body harbored yet another hidden trap, one primed to trigger only at the brink of life and death. Had it not been for the tremendous potency of the Indestructible Dharma of Emptiness and Form, that single blow would likely have stripped him of most of his combat strength, leaving him with no choice but to find a way to awaken Ji Liuli or escape the illusion entirely and plot a comeback at a later date.
At the same time, Ji Liuli was also struck, the tentacle driving her through several walls in succession. Gripping the tentacle tightly with one hand, Ji Liuli drew her combat knife with the other and sliced through the appendage in a single stroke!
The sharp tip of the tentacle had merely torn a small slit in her military uniform, failing even to pierce the shirt beneath.
The tentacles recoiled, their sharp ends entirely severed. The front portion of the tentacle embedded in Wei Yuan was likewise sheared away by the golden light. The segment lodged inside his wound was already being dismantled, purified, and converted, becoming a part of Wei Yuan's own body.
Ji Liuli's expression turned uncharacteristically solemn. "This isn't one of those things that went out of control. They weren't this powerful."
Chapter 788