“…”
“…”
“…”
The three women looked at each other speechlessly. Cheng Shengnan knew that Shen Ge was up to his old tricks again.
But before the three could recover from their strong urge to complain, they suddenly saw a streak of fire spreading across the sky. Then, a huge fireball tore through the sky, appearing out of thin air.
“?”
Cheng Shengnan and the other two women were shocked. Could this guy really be possessed by Liu Xiu, summoning a meteor out of nowhere?
Boom!
With a loud crash, the massive meteor landed precisely on the ruined high-rise building. In the blink of an eye, it swallowed it whole. The huge shockwave nearly sent the women flying. Fortunately, Shen Ge was prepared. He controlled his Red Mist Armor to form a fortress, protecting them.
Once the aftermath faded, the ruined building had been leveled by the meteor, leaving only a giant, smoking crater.
“This… how… how did you do that?” Yang Yuxin was so shocked she started stammering.
Yun’er, although she had been lucky enough to see it once before, was also speechless with astonishment. Cheng Shengnan, however, seemed a bit calmer.
After all, as the first to know about Shen Ge’s “special abilities,” she had developed some immunity after all this time being “tempered” by him.
But before Shen Ge could crack a couple of jokes, they all felt a strange, powerful pressure around them. To be precise, it felt like space itself was rapidly compressing, as if trying to suck all the air out of the world.
“It’s starting to collapse,” Shen Ge said, his gaze sharpening. On their way here, he had explained the process of the dream world’s collapse to the women and told them how to catch the dream fragments.
To prevent the others from being unable to touch the dream fragments, Shen Ge, using his “Materialization Power,” equipped each of the three women with a… butterfly net.
Looking at the apocalyptic, crumbling world around them and then at the butterfly nets in their hands, the expressions on Cheng Shengnan and the others became a bit strange. The contrast was just too strong. They were fully decked out like they were going on a picnic, yet the scene around them declared they would be buried here in the next second.
“Just collapse already, hurry it up,” Shen Ge said, looking at the cracks spreading across the sky like shattered mirrors, wishing the whole world would just shatter right now.
“Um… Shen Tan, it’s the ‘end of the world.’ Maybe we should have a little sense of crisis? I’d understand panic, fear, worry, being scared right now… but cracking jokes at a time like this is kind of… inappropriate, don’t you think?” Yang Yuxin looked at Shen Ge, half crying, half laughing. She had been extremely nervous, totally focused on the sky, but Shen Ge’s one sentence broke her concentration.
The cracks in the sky were becoming more and more obvious. The familiar feeling of dizziness hit them again. With a spinning sensation, Shen Ge and the others were simultaneously plunged into the darkness engulfed by the strange energy black mist.
The moment they fell into the darkness, Little Seven took the initiative to control the secondary armor, wrapping it around Cheng Shengnan. It knew that among the four, Cheng Shengnan was the weakest, and that Shen Ge would definitely want it to protect her. Their agreement was so strong that in this situation, it knew what to do without needing an order.
Affected by the strange energy black mist, everyone fell into a brief daze. Only Little Seven was unaffected, handling most of the defensive work.
Shen Ge, even before the strange energy black mist appeared, had already deployed his Immovable Strange Domain, forming a barrier around them. So, the impact on the four of them wasn’t too severe.
However, the strange energy black mist released during the world’s collapse was the release of the entire world’s strange energy. It was so powerful that only Shen Ge, with his “silkworm cheat,” could barely withstand it.
Due to their physiques, Shen Ge, being a fusion entity of the Ancestral Weird, and Yun’er, with her monster-like body, regained consciousness first. They instinctively shielded Cheng Shengnan and Yang Yuxin beside them.
While controlling the Red Mist Armor to protect the women, Shen Ge observed the movements within the black mist. Sure enough, in the next second, the strange energy within the mist condensed into a giant hand, tightly gripping their barrier, trying to crush it!
Ever since Shen Ge started capturing dream fragments and the dream world began to collapse, he could clearly feel a “hostility” emanating from the world itself.
From the initially concealed, sneaky attacks to now openly striking at him, it seemed this “world” had stopped pretending and was completely showing its hand.
Earth: So what if I am the Weird?
But if you think of Earth as a giant Weird, then humans and other life forms are the “parasites” living on it. The situation inside high-level Weirds is like a miniature version of a “world,” which explains why the strange energy released by Earth rejects humans.
Crack.
Crack.
As the giant hand formed from the strange energy black mist kept tightening its fingers, the barrier Shen Ge had created began to slowly show cracks.
Yang Yuxin and Cheng Shengnan gradually woke up. Seeing the terrifying scene before them, they were instantly struck speechless.
“What… is that?” Yang Yuxin stared at the giant hand. In all her time as a Weird Investigator, she had never seen such a colossal Weird.
Shen Ge had confirmed during his last trip to the dream that Earth itself is a Weird. He hadn’t reported this situation yet and was still hesitant about whether to do so.
After all, letting the higher-ups, let alone all of humanity, know that Earth wants them destroyed – the panic and despair that would cause would be impossible to control.
Although Shen Ge could now easily face high-level Weirds, he was still completely helpless against the ultimate Weird – Earth.
The random recovery item from his last dream trip unfortunately didn’t give him the “silkworm cheat” again. That cheat was his only means of dealing with Earth, and even then, it was only for dealing with the fragments after the collapse. Besides, he had already left the dream world at that point and didn’t know the outcome of the collision between Earth and the Moon.
Currently, without the “silkworm” providing infinite strange energy, Shen Ge couldn’t summon the Moon again. Even draining all of Yun’er’s strange energy to fuel his “Misfortune” ability would, at best, create a large meteor. That works against high-level Weirds, but against Earth… it would probably just be a tickle.
Feeling the terror of the world collapsing for the first time, if Shen Ge hadn’t been right there, the hearts of Cheng Shengnan and the other two would probably have been consumed by despair.
But even with Shen Ge, that “sense of security,” beside them, the sheer visual impact of the entire sky shattering and the earth crumbling made it impossible to control the fear inside them. Their bodies trembled uncontrollably.
“The fragments are about to appear! Get ready!” Shen Ge looked at the cracks in the sky, his expression serious as he warned the three women.
The first time he saw the world collapse and the different endings of Worlds 1/2 flash by, his inner shock wasn’t much less than theirs. So he understood exactly how they felt.
But right now, the dream fragments were what mattered. Shen Ge didn’t have time to focus on their psychological states.
He began to control the barrier’s position, then used the jumping power of his Strange Skin Boots to move them all upward.
As they crashed into the shattered sky, it felt like breaking through dimensional barriers. They moved at incredible speed through a torrent of time, the images within the mirrored fragments flashing by like different endings at high speed.
Seeing this for the first time, Cheng Shengnan and the others were overwhelmed with shock. They had never seen such a magical and “beautiful” sight.
The streams of light flashing with various scenes streaked past them like shooting stars. Initially, it was “beautiful,” but as Earth exploded repeatedly within the images, that “beauty” was gradually replaced by despair.
Then, those images began to shrink, transforming into glowing fragments that scattered in all directions. But compared to the number of glowing fragments, there were far more dull, unlit ones around.
Shen Ge stared intently at the changes in the fragment images in the sky, while Little Seven made its final preparations.
Among the other three, Cheng Shengnan recovered the fastest. Partly because she was more rational, and partly because she was protected by the secondary Red Mist Armor and didn’t have to worry about safety.
Most importantly, though, was her trust in Shen Ge. She knew that as long as he was by her side, he would never let her get hurt.
All she had to do now was remember Shen Ge’s instructions and help him capture as many dream fragments as possible. Rarely getting a chance to help him, Cheng Shengnan became incredibly focused.
Little Seven controlled the Red Mist Armor to extend dozens of rotting blood tentacles from its back, turning into a spider-man octopus. Two of the tentacles coiled around Yang Yuxin’s and Yun’er’s waists, “delivering” them into the midst of the glowing fragments so they could capture them using the butterfly nets condensed from Shen Ge’s strange energy.
Cheng Shengnan had her secondary armor, which could connect directly to the main Red Mist Armor, so she didn’t need help from Shen Ge or Little Seven.
The difference this time was that Shen Ge also “joined the battle personally,” using the barriers of his Immovable Strange Domain to frame the scattering fragments.
As each image in the sky crumbled and shattered, the glowing fragments felt incredibly distant, but in the blink of an eye, Shen Ge had taken the three women “up to the heavens.”
The fragments were now fading away like specks of starlight. Guided by Little Seven, the four began trying to catch these “stardust specks.”
Remembering Shen Ge’s advice, Yang Yuxin first tried to touch a stardust fragment with her bare hands. But unfortunately, the stardust passed right through her palm. However, Cheng Shengnan, who followed, successfully caught it with her hand wrapped in the rotting blood armor.
But the next second, the glowing stardust vanished from Cheng Shengnan’s hand. More accurately, it merged into the rotting flesh of the Red Mist Armor.
Shen Ge wasn’t surprised by this. He remembered that last time, it wasn’t him who absorbed most of the dream fragments, but rather Little Seven and the Red Mist Armor.
Because of that, the Red Mist Armor’s functions had been fully upgraded, and merging with the secondary armor had gone particularly smoothly.
Yun’er also tried to catch a stardust fragment with her bare hand. And then, something strange happened. The fragment that had passed right through Yang Yuxin’s hand was successfully caught by Yun’er, and the next second, it merged into her body.
“Oh?” Shen Ge noticed this, his gaze turning serious. He suspected it was similar to how strange energy rejects humans. Dream fragments, being aggregates of strange energy from a collapsing world, also reject normal people but can be “merged” with by monsters.
This made the motives of the Monster Association, who had been fixated on Shen Ge as the “key” to open the dream world, very clear.
Shen Ge had absorbed the power of dream fragments before. He knew just how powerful those little things were. Gaining just two gave him his own strange domain and the ability to actively open a path to the dream world. No wonder Doctor Chen schemed so hard for them.
Shen Ge now started capturing dream fragments himself. Based on his previous experiences, he focused on using barriers to prevent the stardust from scattering, herding them instead towards the Strange Stomach controlled by Little Seven, trying to get it to swallow as many as possible.
The four humans and one AI worked together with all their might to help the Red Mist Armor absorb more dream fragments. As the dream world completely shattered and collapsed, the “memories” that Shen Ge had been suppressing gushed out again. Fortunately, he had experience now and immediately used hypnosis to suppress them again.
This time, without the “silkworm’s” infinite strange energy, he focused the barriers mainly around the group, carefully controlling every bit of strange energy.
Bang!
A powerful shockwave erupted from within the strange energy black mist, blasting them from the sky down towards the ground. It felt like smashing through a pane of glass, a rapid descent from a great height.
“Master, we’re back in the real world, and we’re falling fast!” Little Seven was the only one who remained completely conscious. Its reminder jolted Shen Ge’s memory of the falls from his previous trips.
He didn’t want to cause another commotion. He immediately worked with Little Seven, helping the women “climb” up a nearby high-rise building. Using the mobility of the rotting blood tentacles, they quickly moved to the rooftop.
“Hoo.”
“Hoo.”
They collapsed on the ground, panting heavily. In fact, from the start of the dream world’s collapse to the end of capturing fragments and returning to reality, only a few minutes had passed. But for them, it felt more draining than a full-on battle with a high-level Weird.
Especially for Yang Yuxin and Yun’er. Without the protection of the Red Mist Armor, the strange energy black mist affected them far more than it did Cheng Shengnan.
“You okay?” Shen Ge stood up and asked the others.
Yang Yuxin shook her head, too tired to speak. Yun’er was about the same but managed to weakly reply, “I’m… okay.”
Shen Ge looked at the two butterfly nets beside them, condensed through “Materialization.” Stuck to them were several thumb-sized glowing fragments, as well as dull fragments ranging from the size of a fingernail to a fist. Even without counting his own larger share, this haul far exceeded the previous one.
Just as Shen Ge was about to check on Cheng Shengnan’s “harvest,” he heard her usually calm voice become a little urgent: “Shen Ge, I… something feels wrong with me!”
“Master, there seems to be a problem with the secondary armor. I can’t detach it from the mistress,” Little Seven reported.
Then, Cheng Shengnan raised one hand, palm up. Gurgling dark red blood blisters bubbled up from her palm, as if the rotting blood armor was boiling.
Shen Ge stepped forward, grabbed Cheng Shengnan’s wrist, and tried to control the Red Mist Armor to absorb the secondary armor back. But the Red Mist Armor had no reaction to the secondary armor, as if it wasn’t something it had released, but two completely unrelated things.
“How can this be?” Shen Ge tried directly pulling the secondary armor off, but its strength obviously wasn’t something he could just yank away.
“Scanning now. Master, I’m detecting extremely high-intensity strange energy within the secondary armor. It seems to be a reaction caused by the power of the dream fragments,” Little Seven said.
Just as Shen Ge was about to try using his own power to “suck” the dream fragment energy out of the secondary armor, he heard Cheng Shengnan say anxiously, “Shen Ge, they… seem to be merging into my body.”
