Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

"Brother Zhang Heng."

“It’s Xiao Honglu,” Zhang Heng looked up, a slight smile forcing a smile on his face, which was stained with dirt and blood. “Come, your magic is just right for sealing these corpses on a large scale. First, roughly seal these corpses, then use clods of earth to make protective walls. When Alice arrives, she can then revive these people…”

“Brother Zhang Heng,” Xiao Honglu’s gaze sharpened slightly. He slowed his tone a little as he spoke, “Sister Alice may not have enough time or resources to revive these…corpses. Besides, we have a lot of things to do later…we should get down to business now.”

“But these people died because of us, and we are responsible for them.” Zhang Heng looked at him, his tone suddenly becoming serious and earnest. “It was our mistake to drag innocent people into the battle. Even if we can’t bring them back to life, we should at least give them a proper burial. If you have other less important matters to attend to, Xiao Honglu, go ahead and take care of them. I need to do some things that a man should do now.”

"..." Xiao Honglu turned his head and glanced at Ming Yanwei, who was repairing the corpse. Even without asking, he knew what kind of result he would get if he did.

[This... is really bad. You're doing things you're not even qualified to do, and you're completely unaware—this is a team battle, and we are the Reincarnated Ones, the enemies of the entire world!]

He rubbed his head vigorously, choosing to leave instead of continuing the conversation. He knew perfectly well that there was practically nothing he could do about this—what could he do? Criticize Zhang Heng and Ming Yanwei for their actions? Should they be accused of wasting their time on this?

Come on, if it made sense, Xiao Honglu wouldn't be here to see them at all.

He raised his head and looked up at the sky. A seemingly invisible mountain loomed over his heart in the clear heavens.

Go find the Overlord, and then... before deciding on the next step, see what valuable information you can obtain.

....................................

I'm thinking of setting up a bounty to motivate myself...

Alright, if there are more than 100 comments here before noon tomorrow, I'll try offering an unlimited bounty. _(:з」∠)_

Chapter 73: Growth

A few minutes later...

"...These are the reincarnators from the Celestial Team?" Xiao Honglu stared at the two objects lined up on the ground, their humanoid outlines barely discernible. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He looked at Overlord, leaning against a broken rock, his bare, scarred upper body bare, a large cigar dangling from his lips, then at Chelsea, who had materialized from her armored state and was looking around the ruins with the curiosity of a child. He repeated himself in disbelief.

"The reincarnators of the Celestial Team... are they puppets?"

"I don't think so, because they really are very good fighters, but I'm not entirely sure about the actual situation." The Overlord chuckled a few times, his numerous wounds writhing and growing granulation tissue, healing little by little at a visible pace. Some of the scars that were several centimeters long when Xiao Honglu met him were now basically just a few white lines. "So, that's why I've come to ask you, a smart person, for advice?"

“What smart person…” Xiao Honglu’s lips twitched as he shook his head. He quickly arrived at the two remains that still barely retained human-like outlines, and after releasing his spiritual energy, he began to observe them. He easily identified many semi-mechanical, semi-living structures from the remains without much effort, and also detected two different types of residual energy.

"Could you tell me in detail how you dealt with them?"

"Alright, I was planning to tell you anyway." The Overlord shrugged, a blood vessel on his shoulder bursting open due to incomplete regeneration, causing him to frown slightly. He raised his hand and pointed to the two humanoid remains in sequence.

“These two people, one male and one female. Let’s start with the male one—when I first met him, he appeared to be a Caucasian man around twenty-five years old, with an accent that sounded like he was from Eastern Europe. He used telekinesis or mental energy to guide throwing knives. When I was dealing with an orc general—” He gestured with the corner of his eye to an orc skeleton about fifteen meters away, half of which was already taller than a person, “…he tried to ambush me with a throwing knife. I dodged it at first, but then the knife curved in the air, trying to blind me. However, Chelsea blocked it for me, and I took the opportunity to unlock my genetic lock and kill the orc. Then I took out a fully charged restraint plasma cannon from my storage bag and fired it at him.”

"Containment plasma cannon, very good. No wonder more than 75 percent of the male puppet's remains were in a highly molten state—Xiao Honglu's lips twitched, then he looked at the equally fragmented female remains."

"After taking down the guy, I noticed the main god hadn't given any warning, so I immediately became alert and charged the plasma cannon. Sure enough, this woman had somehow appeared in the shadows nearby, planning a surprise attack—first, she unleashed a psychic storm… um, have you ever played StarCraft? It's the kind the psychic units use, a bit different from Zhan Lan's but about the same power… Anyway, I barely managed to withstand it thanks to Chelsea's firepower, and then I ended up looking like you just saw. After that, Chelsea canceled her armor and transformed into a cloud of mist to help me surround her. I took twenty or thirty spells from her, and she took twenty or thirty punches from me. In the end, she died, and I survived, that's how it is."

Ba Wang spoke lightly, but Xiao Honglu could easily imagine the thrilling scenes of the battle between the two... the three of them. But whether it was thrilling or not was now in the past. For Xiao Honglu, the most important thing was whether he could glean additional information from these anomalies.

He glanced at Overlord—even disregarding Overlord's equipment and assistance, the fact that this bear-like Russian man could chat and laugh with him like this, instead of being trapped in thoughts that didn't belong to them like Zhang Heng or Ming Yanwei, meant that Overlord was now at a level close to, or even equal to, his own. And the Celestial Team Reincarnators who could fight against such an Overlord, even nearly killing him—they were probably not just simple puppets.

"These aren't puppets; they're artificially created avatars," Xiao Honglu concluded. "The Reincarnators of the Celestial Team created avatars in their own likenesses, then replicated their enhancement systems onto these avatars and used them to fight in place of their true selves... Overlord, were you the only one attacked by these puppets?"

“This…” A pink-haired guy with headphones on in the Overlord Dynasty cast a pleading look at her.

"No, just as we were finishing off the battle here, Zhang Heng and Ming Yanwei seemed to be experiencing some kind of unusual energy reaction besides Sauron's dark power. But it only lasted a short time; I didn't even have time to figure out what it was before a beam of light from the sky 'BOOM!' blasted it to pieces!" Chelsea winked at Xiao Honglu and made a shooting gesture. "Didn't you just come from their direction? Didn't you look for them?"

“Zhang Heng and the others…” Xiao Honglu shook his head. “Forget it, we can’t count on them now. But we could try contacting Zhan Lan…”

"No need, Luo Gandao and I have already come down. Besides, I've never encountered these things before."

Before he could finish speaking, a broad shadow covered the ground where Xiao Honglu stood. He looked up and saw the Knight Titan of Logan Road, its long tail of flame trailing behind it, transitioning from a high-speed descent to near-air hovering. The next moment, the shrill whistle of the sonic boom and the scorching wind caught up with the speed of telepathic communication, slamming heavily into the ground and sending up large swaths of rocks and sand.

Dressed as a Prophet of the Eldar, Zhan Lan leaped from her machine, carrying her lightning-crackling halberd. Just before she touched the ground, a whirlwind caught her toes. She casually put away the halberd, adjusted her glasses, and then stepped onto the ruined ground.

"Rogando and I encountered a group of gargoyles and crows that could unleash lightning up there... It's amazing how high they could fly, so we dealt with them before they got close using psionic storms and missile barrages. But we only encountered gargoyles and crows; as for the ones on the ground..." Zhan Lan adjusted her glasses again. "My mental scan didn't detect them. Even now, they're still not present in my mental perception. I was a little confused as to why Zhang Heng had me bombard the open ground earlier, until I activated optical observation and understood why."

She glanced around, and as she didn't see Zhang Heng and Ming Yanwei, a sense of understanding dawned on her. Her gaze then shifted, and as she looked at Xiao Honglu, Luo Gandao's Knight Titan landed on the ground with a thud.

“Besides that, there’s another piece of bad news: I can’t contact Chu Xuan. I can’t find Zhang Jie either, the satellite network signal has been cut off, and my mental scanning can only reach a visible area within a radius of 100 kilometers.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I think you know what this means, Xiao Honglu.”

“Barrier, spatial lock, world rift.” Xiao Honglu tugged at the ends of his hair, pulling out a few strands. “It’s nothing more than this… I remember before we made our move, Sister Zhan Lan, you told me that Chu Xuan had arranged reinforcements for us. It was the East America team… no, it’s now Xilin, a member of our Central Continent team. She would help us hold off the fourth-tier Reincarnators from the Celestial Team. However, until now, none of us have observed any signs of a battle between fourth-tier powerhouses. So, considering our current situation…”

The overlord's expression turned serious: "Xiao Honglu, speak plainly."

Xiao Honglu gave a bitter smile.

"If I'm not mistaken, then at the same time Chu Xuan confirmed that the Celestial Team would attack us, the Celestial Team's Reincarnators also learned that their operation plan had been leaked. By besieging our stronghold and ambushing our reinforcements, the Celestial Team used Soren's elite troops and the Reincarnators' artificial avatars to deal with us, creating the illusion that they wanted to annihilate us here. But their real purpose was to ambush our reinforcements—no, their plan should have more than just that."

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then opened them. The light in his eyes when he opened them again bore a striking resemblance to that of Alice!

"It should be a double, no, a triple scheme... Chu Xuan planned to use the Reincarnators from the Celestial Team to hone our skills. So he sent Xilin to help us suppress the fourth-tier members of the Celestial Team. But the strategists of the Celestial Team also guessed Xilin's actions, so they redeployed Reincarnators outside the fourth tier, using them as surprise troops to create traps, attempting to outmaneuver Xilin. However, Chu Xuan also calculated that the Celestial Team would ambush Xilin, so he must have sent other forces as insurance for Xilin to counter-ambush the Celestial Team. On top of that, the Celestial Team created a second trap!"

"The Celestials' real target is our reinforcements' reinforcements! We're currently trapped in a large spatial rift, but rather, we're just a byproduct of this rift. Its true purpose is to trap Sirin in some way. Then the Celestials can free up all their strength to deal with the last person to arrive!"

"Who is that person!" Ba Wang suddenly jumped up, almost grabbing Xiao Honglu's collar as he shouted, "Is it Zheng Zha?! Damn it, if it really is him, we're in trouble. He doesn't seem like the type to be able to detect traps!"

Xiao Honglu shook his head vigorously.

“No, it’s not Brother Zheng.” He subconsciously pulled out a few more strands of hair. “Brother Zheng’s ‘strength’ is too great. The Celestial Team won’t risk being overwhelmed by his brute force to deal with him… and Chu Xuan wouldn’t let him do such delicate work as reinforcements! And besides Brother Zheng, who else has the time and ability…” He suddenly remembered the few wisps of wind that brushed past his ear before the Ringwraiths appeared. “It was Sister Alice! This is terrible. I was able to deduce this situation because I knew the intelligence from the inside, but she, trapped on the outside… no, she might be able to calculate it too, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing now!”

"We must find Sirin immediately. She must be trapped in a space near us, or perhaps she's even nearby!" Before he finished speaking, a spiderweb-like spatial crack suddenly appeared ten centimeters behind his head!

..............................

Good heavens, there are already ten sections!? Didn't it always only have ten sections until the bounty ended? _(:з」∠)_

Chapter 74 - Oops [1/14]

The instant the rift appeared, Xiao Honglu's eyes shrank to the size of pinpoints. His entire body bristled with fear and terror, which instantly overwhelmed him. This turbulent emotion shifted in an instant, culminating in a roar that erupted not from his throat, but directly from his mental energy!

[Watch out! The collapse of the spatial structure could pull us in as well!]

In an instant, layer upon layer of protective barriers were erected behind him. Then, all the protective barriers were twisted into scattered magical energy by the energy waves surging from the cracks. The spiderweb-like cracks expanded rapidly outward, tearing apart the ground and shattering the atmosphere. The Overlord roared, his entire body bursting open with his still unhealed wounds. He took a step forward, his outstretched hand pulling Xiao Honglu behind him just before the cracks were about to tear him apart and swallow him whole.

A flash of lightning appeared, and the psionic lightning bolt shot from Zhan Lan's halberd transformed into hundreds, even thousands, of energy tentacles upon touching the spiderweb-like fissures in the collapsing space, completely confining and filling the fissures that were directly impacting Xiao Honglu and the others. However, even more fissures immediately erupted from the point of explosion, pulverizing the psionic energy closely connected to her spirit while simultaneously causing blood to spurt from her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose!

She delayed for a moment.

But that's not enough.

No! There's no way to escape like this! If we can't temporarily eliminate these cracks, we'll all be crushed to dust!

What should I do?

Time seemed to slow down in that instant. Xiao Honglu's mind raced, and as his thoughts raced, the gene lock, nearing its critical point, stirred once more. His brain immediately began calculating at an even faster pace, attempting to devise a way to escape within that narrow gap of less than tens of milliseconds!

[The spatial rifts will fully unfold in a maximum of sixty-six milliseconds. This is a force that neither I nor the Overlord can withstand head-on at this stage. Once touched by these rifts, death is inevitable.]

He saw the Overlord blocking his way, trying to shake him off. In this infinitely slowed-down time, Xiao Honglu could even clearly see the ruptured blood vessels on the Overlord's skin and the surging of the subcutaneous meridians. He knew that the Overlord was subconsciously imitating Zheng Zha's use of 'explosion'. However, unlike Zheng Zha, he did not have positive and negative energy within his body for counteracting the impact, and Chelsea, which could protect his body and distribute the force between his body and the surface, was not wearing armor on him.

The Overlord couldn't hold out for long. Even if he could, he couldn't hold out for more than a hundred millimeters... or even a fraction of a second, enough for others to escape the impact.

What lies beyond the rift... is not worth considering now. Whether the one who created this rift is friend or foe, the fact remains that this rift itself poses a tremendous threat to us. I must find a solution as quickly as possible... no, not by myself alone, but with the help of others...

He saw the rift in the void crawling outwards on a scale of less than milliseconds. More branches sprouted from the black rift, and something strange seemed to be writhing at the origin of the eruption. Something unknown was struggling to break free from it!

If I were Alice, what would I do?

His brain struggled to function, but his mind remained blank. The help he had been so heavily relied upon was utterly useless at this moment, as if if the witch had stood here in his place, Xiao Honglu's choice would have been to make no attempt to hide or resist.

[I'm so stupid! If it were Alice, she wouldn't need to hide at all, but I'm different. I have to figure out how to deal with this spatial rift!]

[I had no choice but to bite the bullet and go for it!]

The flow of time returned to normal in Xiao Honglu's perception. He could almost sense something colossal, like a mountain... no, far greater than a thousand, ten thousand of the most majestic mountains, about to emerge from the other side of the spatial rift. Before that, the spreading spatial rift expanded outwards again, the crack that had been delayed by Zhan Lan widening further, spewing out clusters of matter and violent gusts of energy almost like a tsunami!

And that devastating wave was about to touch the hand of the overlord at the very front, which was blocking his way!

"Spells..." A sharp shriek erupted from Xiao Honglu's heart, flowing outwards from within him, not from his lips. His face instantly turned from rosy to pale. His thick, short black hair lost its color, transforming from a smooth and vibrant black into a dry and lifeless white.

Something precious and rare was rapidly disappearing from his body. At the same moment, a ethereal and pure light gathered before the Overlord!

"...Light Protection Barrier!"

A solid and thick wall of radiant light suddenly unfolded before the Overlord, the spreading spatial rifts just touching his arm. At the same instant, Xiao Honglu's withering arm suddenly exerted force, deflecting the inertia as the Overlord was thrown backward, pulling the Overlord backward in the opposite direction!

"Get out of my way!"

Power surged, and blood boiled. The radiant protective barrier, which had nearly consumed ninety percent of Xiao Honglu's life force, managed to seal the incredibly sharp spatial rift for a full 130 milliseconds before collapsing! And that 0.13 seconds was more than enough time for everyone present to react in time!

A sound seemed to ring in Xiao Honglu's ears, but before he could react, he felt a chain wrap around his waist. The chain then extended from him to Bawang, creating a huge backward pull that violently dragged the two of them backward!

Those were chains that Chelsea had transformed into. After gaining precious reaction time, she immediately transformed them into a tool to help Xiao Honglu and the others escape. As she put herself into use, Zhan Lan also put her mental injuries to use in a new countermeasure—a thick stone wall rose up after the light barrier collapsed, which bought her an additional dozen milliseconds.

then……

"Take this!" A blazing beam of light shot from the cannon of the Knight Titan piloted by Logandao. The destructive surge of light, modified by the witch, swept across the airspace surrounding the rift network with a power and intensity far surpassing that of spatial rifts. Inside the cockpit, Logandao's eyes were wide open, veins bulging, clearly indicating that he too had entered a state of unlocked genetic potential.

The distortion of space was forcibly distorted further under the onslaught of high-energy artillery fire. However, whether it was collapse or annihilation, a stalemate would occur until the energy jets ceased. This brief window of time gained was enough for the reincarnators to adjust their formation and assume an attack stance—the weakened Xiao Honglu was shielded behind Ba Wang and Zhan Lan, while more effective protective shields and even defensive positions were immediately generated than before in their hasty response.

The reincarnators exhausted all means and played every last card, and they were determined to succeed.

However, just as each of them braced themselves for an even more perilous attack, the turbulent time and space abruptly ceased under some unknown force. The shattered black rifts smoothed out, the surging energy tides reversed, and apart from the origin of the rifts remaining, everything that could be called a spatial calamity completely vanished from this tiny world.

Then a slender hand reached out from the origin—Rogando tried to launch a second round of artillery fire, but he found that some kind of instinctive restraint prevented him from pressing the fire button at all—after the hand came the shoulder, and after the shoulder came the body, and in the blink of an eye, a purple female figure appeared.

"Finally, we broke through that barrier... Those Celestials are actually quite capable. Anyway, first we need to resolve Alice's request, then we'll help Alice..." Sirin, with her golden, slanted cross-shaped eyes, emerged from the original point, panting softly as she planned her next move. And then...

She saw the town reduced to ruins in her field of vision, the rifts torn open by spatial rifts in the ground, and the Zhongzhou Team Reincarnators, all of whom looked severely injured but were all looking at her with vigilance.

Her eyes twitched involuntarily, and a sense of foreboding suddenly welled up inside her.

"Did I...mess up again?"

....................................

—The effect of Light Barrier in Yu-Gi-Oh! is to consume 1000 LP to prevent monsters with an attack power equal to the consumed amount from attacking. So I changed it to consume Life Points to resist external attacks... Actually, I modified Xiao Honglu and Neos's card abilities in the same way before. But I'll only mention it here once, and won't talk about it again.

—I have to admit I underestimated the big shots at Bookke… I originally thought the final result would be the same as before, with only ten chapters added at the end of the bounty, but I didn't expect it to be fourteen already… Oh well, starting tomorrow, I, Jiuyuan-chan, will get serious. Let's see who can't keep up with whose speed!

—Of course, paying in cash is out of the question, and paying off the debt with women's clothing is also impossible. I've prepared myself for a long battle, staying up late every day until the end of the month or even the next month... but I still hope it doesn't turn out that way _(:з」∠)_

Chapter 75 - The Scene Was Extremely Awkward

About several tens of seconds later...

"This is a copy of something called SCP-500 that I retrieved from the story world before. It's a panacea that can cure all diseases and heal all injuries outside of causal relationships. Using it should quickly repair everyone's injuries."

Several small white pills appeared on Sirin's fingertips, then disintegrated into dust, flowing into the wounds of each injured reincarnator. Almost visibly, wounds deep enough to expose bone, even those that had destroyed internal organs and parts of the skeleton, rapidly healed—flesh and blood reformed, broken bones and neural networks regenerated, and even injuries from over-activating genetic locks and mental shocks were repaired extremely quickly. And once the physical damage was healed, the healing power even spread to their clothing and weapons.

Damaged clothing became as new as if it had just been woven, and weapons that had cracked, torn, or even had broken energy pipes in the previous battles were quickly restored to their optimal state after being modified. This was less a form of healing and more a manifestation of the miraculous power of time reversal, which deeply shocked some uneducated bumpkins—even those who thought they were already well-informed.