CHAPTER 613: CHAPTER 534: BREATHING

The bodies of Claudia, Mian Yue, and Wanli Sealed Blade all lay against the wall, their lungs empty.

Li Cheng reached out to close their eyelids, took a deep breath, and stood up straight.

He replaced his lung with a bottled one from Wanli Sealed Blade, held the Four-dimensional Square Box in his left hand, the Ice Axe in his right, and had two high-pressure gas cylinders strapped to his waist, each showing less than 50% gas left on their pressure gauges.

It was time to set off.

Li Cheng took a deep breath and stepped into the tunnel.

The air around him was thick and oppressive, the pressure noticeably increased, and his brain felt like it was plunged into ice water, painfully numb.

This numbness directly came from the rules of the Land of Beautiful Dreams, unrelated to actual pressure. Even if Li Cheng were to put on a pressure suit, it wouldn’t change or reverse this effect.

He pressed against the tunnel wall, advancing slowly, as the numbers on the Casio F91W electronic watch on his wrist ticked faster and faster.

Clang clang clang.

The sound of chiseling grew clearer ahead, and Li Cheng panted heavily, changing his walking stance from lifting his feet to sliding them against the ground—slowed thinking made actions delayed,

lifting one’s feet can keep them hovering in the air for quite a while, so sliding is more labor-saving.

His limbs felt heavier, vision doubled, and Li Cheng decisively removed his left lung to replace it with a new gas cylinder.

He found it.

The astronaut stood with his back to Li Cheng, holding an Ice Axe, rhythmically and steadily chiseling at the metal dome.

The blade of the Ice Axe reflected a faint arc of light, not radioactive fluorescence, but the glow of high-frequency vibration cutting.

Fragments of metal fell down, and the astronaut sensed someone behind, glanced back at Li Cheng, then continued chiseling. His calm voice echoed within the suit, "Is it just you now?"

His spacesuit was more advanced, maintaining better pressure differential, so in Li Cheng’s ears, the words seemed sped up by twice the speed.

"It’s just me."

Li Cheng nodded, having

been prepared, didn’t open his mouth, mimicking Will’s way, rotated the handle of the Ice Axe to the designated position, activated the high-frequency cutting mode, and began swinging it at the wall,

while using the Assembly Puppet to connect to the embedded AI program’s loudspeaker, speaking at double speed the lines in his mind,

"The road to the gold mine is just you and me now. Ten years later, your son drives a Bentley to high school, your father-in-law beams every time he sees you, in forty degree weather your villa is as cool as if it were twenty degrees, sipping Flying Moutai at breakfast, young models clamor every night to marry you, all because you stayed with me and didn’t run, and also bottomed out."

In hand ???

If the astronaut were from Earth, surely he’d retort, "Dude, are you talking about crypto or CS skins."

The astronaut didn’t understand any of this and continued chiseling the wall silently.

Li Cheng pressed the loudspeaker button again, asking, "So is your current personality Will, or the Level 40 Transcendent from thousands of years ago?"

"That question is like asking if an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old are the same person."

The astronaut paused for a moment and indifferently said, "I am both Will and the Level 40 Transcendent you refer to. Translated into your language, my ID is [Heavenly Enemy]."

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow and casually remarked while chiseling, "So, bro, you’re kind of like a Transformer then."

"Transform what into what, never heard of it."

The astronaut said coldly, "The town under this dome is my hometown, located at a very far corner of the killing field.

I was the smartest Engineer of my race and the first to discover that the world was heading towards death,

the heat death equilibrium was inevitable, and the only way to survive was to excavate the dome before the end."

He swung the Ice Axe, slicing large chunks of metal, "I invented the high-frequency oscillation cutting technology in my final days, chiseling the dome with an Ice Axe, digging tunnels.

I succeeded; the moment the tunnel was opened, air flowed violently, the high-pressure gas accumulated under the dome leaked out to the world outside.

All machinery driven by the pressure difference started once again. The blades in the townsfolk’s brains resumed high-speed spinning.

But, it was all too late.

The minds reset to zero couldn’t return to normal computational states, even if airflow was reinjected, it merely awakened zombies.

This topic was too heavy, even Li Cheng didn’t make silly jokes or puns, saying things like, "Would robot zombies be sweet or salty rice dumplings?"

Instead, he asked earnestly, "And then?"

The astronaut replied calmly, "As the only survivor of my race, I sealed the metal dome, roamed around, became a Summoner, learned about the existence of the killing field, and also that my race was most likely a mechanical race designed, created, abandoned, and stored by the killing field."

Li Cheng couldn’t help but ask, "Does the killing field actively create races?"

"Otherwise, where do you think those Security Guards come from?"

The astronaut glanced at him, "I grew stronger and gradually discarded my original body, transforming into a giant mechanical life form driven by a nuclear fusion engine, becoming the so-called Level 40 until the end of my life."

Li Cheng felt a stir in his heart; the enemies he had encountered, each had more insane life-saving tricks than the last.

There was Gouchen assembling good people, Joker using relic chips for possession and reincarnation, and a multitude of iterative clone plans.

Even for Li Cheng himself, if he wanted to cling to life, he could use Assembly Puppet + Merciful Soul-giving Gloves to upload his consciousness onto a server and restore it into a clone body when needed.

It was hard to imagine a Level 40 Transcendent would lack a trump card for survival.

He was just about to inquire when the astronaut suddenly stopped his actions, leaned against the wall, and slowly sat down.

"After my death, perhaps due to an overwhelmingly strong final wish, my essence split in two, one part became a mechanical python, and the other became the original Will.

The former followed instincts, hunting, feeding.

The latter repeatedly returned to the Land of Beautiful Dreams, reliving childhood memories and trying to rewrite the ending."

The astronaut’s speech slowed down as he too neared the end of his air, with effort wielding the Ice Axe with his still-moving right hand.

"Rewriting?" Li Cheng continued chiseling, astonished, asking, "What do you mean."

"A Summoner once told me that the Land of Beautiful Dreams, is a part of the Hidden Room [Wish Room]..."

The words ultimately remained unsaid, the astronaut lowered his head and made no more sound.

"...Leave it to me."

Li Cheng removed the last high-pressure gas cylinder from his waist, replaced the empty one on his right lung, picked up the Ice Axe by Will’s side, and swung both axes heavily.

Metal splattered, leaving only the heavy sound of Li Cheng’s breathing.

centimeters, one meter, two meters.

The debris and gravel piled up increasingly at his feet, breathing became laborious and challenging, like a tattered bellows.

Four meters, six meters.

His mind involuntarily wandered, as if he had eaten undercooked mushrooms, bizarre and colorful scenes appeared before his eyes.

"New Three Kingdoms" was selected as the greatest TV series of the 21st century; Optimus Prime was arrested for solicitation due to ordering a ride through a mobile app; the principal, to save the dignity of students who couldn’t afford spiked shoes, scattered nails all over the track...

This wasn’t hallucination from exhaustion, but a result of instability in pressure causing disordered spinning of the blades in his brain.

The Ice Axe fell heavily, his limbs no longer possessed a bit of strength, Li Cheng’s head pressed forward against what seemed like an impenetrable metal wall, his body slowly sliding down.

Clang clang clang—

Behind the dome suddenly came an intensive chiseling sound, a strong light illuminating the darkness, stabbing into Li Cheng’s retina.

In his blurred vision, liquid metal from the Gray Rain slipped through the narrow crack, entered the tunnel, gently lifting him up.

The pressure balance broke instantly, a violent gale swept from the castle into the tunnel, circled around Li Cheng’s body, blowing into the low-pressure beach world beyond the crack.

The pressure gauges on both sides of his lung cylinders pointed to zero, yet Li Cheng no longer needed to breathe. He stretched his arms wide, allowing the gale to pass through his airways and rush into his brain.