Amidst Marcus's booming roar, Lin Jie gasped for the normal air, his brain finally getting precious breathing room after being paralyzed by sensory overload.

He lifted his head to look forward.

That pitch-black Twisted Man had focused all its attention on Marcus, this suddenly-appeared hard bone that wouldn't break.

It couldn't understand why, on this canvas that should have been painted according to its whims, there appeared a stubborn stain it couldn't smear or distort.

Its twisted body trembled at an even higher frequency, revealing its inner confusion.

The distorted space around it had become as violent as boiling magma.

Countless visible spatial folds pressed and crashed toward the safe zone where Marcus stood, yet when they touched that gray bedrock, they were silently crushed into nothingness by an even heavier, more domineering force.

Beads of sweat slid down Marcus's beard, dripping onto the bedrock beneath his feet.

The cost of activating [Unshakable Bedrock] was far heavier than his casual remark about "costing my old life."

He wasn't just resisting the UMA's laws—he was using his mortal flesh and blood to withstand the terrifying pressure of the entire area being distorted.

His muscles screamed and his bones groaned;

every additional second he endured was a massive drain on his energy.

Lin Jie's gaze swept over Marcus's shoulders trembling under immense pressure, over the shotgun standing lonely in the mud, and finally settled on the Twisted Man exerting its full power.

His brain now entered a state of calm analysis.

Marcus's [Unshakable Bedrock] had brutally revealed a fundamental combat logic to him—resisting laws couldn't rely on simple energy accumulation, but required using another, higher or more fundamental law to "hedge" and "overwrite."

What the Twisted Man relied on was the law of chaos and disorder.

It distorted space to make all physical attacks based on stability and convention meaningless.

Therefore, the key to breaking it wasn't trying to blast through with greater force like Marcus had attempted earlier—that was futile.

The true key should be to do the opposite.

Use the purest "order" to counter this "chaos."

Use the most absolute "stability" to anchor this endless "distortion."

Use the most perfect "straight line" to pierce through this spiral maze!

"Straight line"...

When this word flashed through Lin Jie's mind, his gaze immediately fell on the gun case at his waist.

His hand subconsciously gripped [Serene Heart].

He remembered the ability [Serene Heart] gained after integrating the divine scale of the "Loch Ness Guardian."

Stabilized trajectory!

The complete scale embedded in the module's front would add a "guardian" force field to bullets as they left the barrel, smoothing out unstable factors during flight to make the bullet's path display an "absolute straight line" that ignored physical laws!

Wasn't this exactly the spear of order he needed most right now?!

A new tactical concept rapidly formed, evolved, and perfected in Lin Jie's mind.

"Marcus!" Lin Jie's voice carried a tremor of excitement, "Can your [Unshakable Bedrock] provide you with an absolute 'aiming reference'?"

"What do you mean?" Marcus squeezed out the words with difficulty through gritted teeth.

Most of his willpower was devoted to resisting the distorting force constantly eroding his body.

"What I mean is," Lin Jie quickly explained, "in this absolutely stable area, can your gun-hand remain unaffected by external distortions, able to steadily point at a fixed target?"

"Of course!" Marcus gave a confident reply, "As long as my feet are planted on this ground, nothing can make my hand tremble even a millimeter!"

"Good!" Lin Jie's gaze turned sharp.

But he knew this wasn't enough.

Even with bullets that could trace an "absolute straight line" and Marcus providing an absolutely stable "launch platform," they still faced a fatal problem—was the target really there?

Directly attack this UMA in front of them?

Lin Jie rapidly thought under pressure and quickly dismissed this idea.

The law of this domain was "distortion," meaning nothing they saw could be trusted.

Although that stiff pitch-black humanoid figure before them emitted spiritual fluctuations, who could guarantee it was actually standing there?

It could be a mirage refracted from a rooftop in another district by this law's power.

Its true position could be right beneath their feet, while what they saw was just a stretched and distorted shadow projected into the distance.

Relying on visual target acquisition in this rule-rewritten world was tantamount to suicide.

Attacking that figure might cause temporary interference, but without finding the true "signal source," they couldn't destroy the event's core—it would only treat symptoms, not the root cause.

So where was the true core?

Where was the coordinate origin unaffected by spatial distortion?

Lin Jie's gaze swept over the UMA, over the violently distorted space around them, and returned once more to his own palm.

The Crooked Sixpence vibrated in sync with the chaotic pulse of this domain.

A risky idea emerged in Lin Jie's mind. He knew that using [Reverberation Touch] in his current mental state meant exposing his fragile soul to the storm—the consequences could be permanent mental trauma or even becoming an idiot.

But they had no time left;

Marcus was fighting with all his might to secure this precious stable ground for him, and Lily's condition in the distance wasn't looking good either.

He had to try!

Lin Jie gritted his teeth, his eyes turning resolute as he drove his nearly depleted mental energy into the cold, twisted coin in his palm.

A torrent of information filled with distortion and malice immediately breached his fragile mental defenses and flooded his mind!

This time he didn't see specific images.

He saw a structural diagram with surrealistic qualities!

He saw himself standing at the very center of a massive spiderweb constructed from countless black energy threads, some bright and some dark, all carrying malice.

And this enormous web covering the entire edge of White Church District was firmly anchored at its foundation to two massive "pin"-like support points emitting distorted light.

One support point was right beneath his feet, buried deep in the dark foundations of these ruins!

The other support point was far away, its black thread crossing several streets to pierce directly into the Weston family's mantelpiece.

Finally, he saw that "Twisted Man" confronting Marcus—it was merely a mimetic decoy on this massive web, meant to confuse and restrain prey!

And the web-spinner who wove all of this wasn't in this physical world;

it hid behind the two "support points," coldly overlooking this hunt it believed it had firmly in hand.

Lin Jie's body suddenly shuddered as he was forcibly ejected from that peeking that would have driven a normal person mad!

But he had seen everything!

As long as those two anchor points remained, this web woven from distortion was unsolvable;

any attack on that "mimetic decoy" would be perfectly deflected and neutralized by the web's own power.

Understanding all this, Lin Jie's back became soaked with cold sweat. He felt palpitations at this deduction, yet also pleased that he had finally grasped the "thread end" that could cut through the spiderweb.

"Marcus, I need you to do something." Lin Jie lifted his head, his eyes bright, "I need you to aim my gun at an invisible target."

"I need you to fire a shot toward the Weston family several blocks away, toward that mantelpiece holding miscellaneous items... fire a shot!"