Chapter 38: Escaping the Jaws of Death

In 0.1 seconds, Mo Wen unleashed 1,200 strikes.

The slashes cleaved through everything in his vicinity. The entity—a monstrous growth that chewed through steel, birthed flesh, and expanded like an immortal beast—had its life severed. Its already unstable genetics deteriorated rapidly, rendering it incapable of further self-replication. Yet, because death arrived with such overwhelming speed, the creature mistakenly believed it still possessed vitality and struggled in vain. Ox-horns, deer antlers, snake-pupils, eagle-eyes, horse-tails—traits of countless beasts flickered across its various parts. But in the end, it was merely a mass of finely sliced flesh, unable to maintain its integrity, scattering as it fell.

A slender, elongated gash remained one meter above the fortress floor, penetrating every structure and living thing on the surface. Mo Wen had never managed to locate the device or the individual responsible for imposing gravity upon him, but he believed that by creating enough destruction, he would inevitably kill the culprit in the process.

Everything above one meter that connected to the ground was severed. Those who attempted to move felt a strange confusion as their upper bodies slowly slid away, while their lower halves inexplicably lost all sensation. Some buildings remained perfectly in place, as if nothing had happened due to the razor-thin smoothness of the cuts, while others exploded, soaring amidst pillars of fire and triggering chain reactions.

The fortress's energy systems were likewise destroyed. The power that held it aloft and maintained its shielding could no longer be sustained; within a few short breaths, the failing systems would turn inward and consume the fortress entirely.

A Level 5 corporate psionic who had come to suppress Mo Wen was cleaved in two right down the center before he could unleash his finishing move. He struggled to piece his severed self back together, but to no avail. His power was formidable; setting aside his track record of decimating others, he would have had a high chance of victory even against an unarmed Mo Wen. But now, his life was over, and all his struggles could not prevent his body from falling apart.

Yet, his luck was relatively better than that of a few others. One man had his head split down the middle, his energy core destroyed, stripping him of both the ability to think and to exist. In the next moment, the explosion would swallow his entirety, despite the fact that his perfect defenses had only two insignificant gaps.

Even those who were not on the battlefield, but were launching attacks from thousands of kilometers away, were also slain. A sharper, more refined psionic force crossed space, ignoring distance to erase their consciousness.

There were no living things left around Mo Wen.

Had he survived?

The sense of impending death remained, yet his psionic perception could find nothing. Mo Wen could only guess that this was because he had not yet escaped, and enemy reinforcements were about to arrive.

So, he would leave.

He no longer needed to worry that fleeing would take him too far from the danger, rendering him unable to fight back. Mo Wen carved a straight tunnel through the fortress and leapt down.

Next, he needed to vanish, find a way to maintain or replace his Dreamweaver, repair his prosthetic body, locate a spacecraft, or modify himself to break free from the planet's gravitational pull—ultimately, to ensure his complete safety.

Mo Wen relaxed for a single instant.

And in that very instant, he felt something that was fundamentally incompatible with his existence.

It had descended.

Below the fortress, amidst the collapsing steel, the scattering flesh, and the fiery glow of explosions, a resplendent, radiant humanoid figure appeared abruptly directly in front of Mo Wen.

It was powerful—chillingly, incomprehensibly powerful. Even by simply standing there, it made Mo Wen feel as though he were facing an irresistible force, his spirit gradually dissolving. All the formidable enemies and technologies Mo Wen had encountered thus far could be explained by logic—they were experimental technologies far beyond current standards combined with psionics—but this entity had absolutely surpassed all human research on psionics on the planet Avil.

Level 6? Or higher?

What was more terrifying was that Mo Wen felt an infinite sense of benevolence emanating from it—a sense of love, the courage to change the status quo, a prayer for justice, compassion for the weak, and a longing for the future. It was as if all the noble qualities of humanity had been forged into this being. Merely looking at it made Mo Wen feel the stinging of his conscience; he could not help but want to repent for slaughtering those innocent people who might have been deceived into becoming his enemies—the weak whose deaths would not have affected his own survival.

But the entity's subsequent actions could by no means be described as beautiful.

An extreme sense of crisis forced Mo Wen to ignore the possibility of self-destruction and drive his psionic power back up to Level 5, and even further.

Everything in his field of vision seemed to freeze; even gravity ceased to function, unable to drag him downward. Only that thing moved, casually extending its palm, pausing for a moment, and then releasing a beam of light.

In the face of its radiance, Mo Wen finally understood where the energy for the war satellites' cannons had come from. The energy this entity unleashed was far stronger—not merely by a factor of a few times. If he were a sun, then the jets from the war satellites were but mere flickers of firefly light.

On this planet, every area touched by its radiance—day or night—lit up as if the heavens had turned the brightness and exposure to the maximum and tossed out flashbangs. Even those hiding inside buildings could not avoid the light as it shattered walls and blasted into their eyes.

Everyone who looked up at that moment was blinded, regardless of whether they saw the source of the light. But they did not need to worry about how to live after becoming blind, because the psionic shockwave vaporized their physical bodies.

Over three billion people were wiped out in an instant. Dozens of cities were turned into ghost towns, and countless empty sets of clothing drifted to the ground. Very few survivors remained.

And Mo Wen, naturally, left not even a bone behind.

The faster-than-light psionic beam, with a radius of over two thousand kilometers, continued unabated after obliterating Mo Wen, casually erasing the moon of Avil as it surged forward into the cosmic void.

Perhaps one day, it would be swallowed by a black hole or blocked by some peculiar planet, but until then, the people of Avil could look up and see the ever-extending trail of light in the starry sky.

"Is that what the Group wanted to hide? Is this a weapon that humans can research and create?" The Dragon-Sword Ninja felt his worldview completely collapse. He endured the violent headache and the burning pain of his prosthetic eyes being incinerated, turning his head to ask Ren Sisi if this was just a hallucination.

The moment he probed with his psionic sense, he found nothing there. She had already vanished.

The squad, which had just been replenished to three members, had lost two today, leaving him entirely alone.

"This is truly..."

The Dragon-Sword Ninja lost the strength to speak. He fell silent, adjusting his landing posture, attempting to return to the branch office.

This outcome was even worse than if he had simply died.

...

In the yellow sands, a phantom... Mo Wen opened his eyes, looking blankly at the sky.

He did not return to the "Respawn Point." Instead, flashes of special psionic applications played through his mind, accompanied by the phantom's voice.

"Live on, do something. You are more important than I am."