Chapter 85: First Battle After Leaving Seclusion

Chapter 85: First Battle After Leaving Seclusion

Picking up where I left off—Pu Liuqian had me surrounded, staring at me like she couldn’t work out where all this confidence of mine was coming from today.

She swept the area around the building with same-frequency sensing, then checked the feedback from the Sky Eyes. No important figures nearby, no backup. Just me, alone. No sign of the resistance anywhere.

So where was I getting the nerve?

She hesitated. Rather than move on me herself, she waved a hand and sent the patrol team forward to make the arrest.

I watched the capture net come flying at me and didn’t move. Just stood there and watched it come.

Right as it dropped toward me, about to close over my body, I gave it a shove with my mind and sent it flying straight at Pu Liuqian instead.

The net was a highly intelligent piece of gear, tough as anything, even more intelligent than the flying capture net the Soul Hunters used. It carried a strong-magnetic-field ionic phase state, which made it nearly impossible for ordinary weapons to hit or destroy.

And that same intelligence was exactly what made it so easy for me to hijack.

Intelligence meant AI. AI meant semiconductors. Semiconductors meant micro-electrical waves—electromagnetic waves drifting through the air, which my cosmic force of consciousness could reach into and use.

So this time the net closed around Pu Liuqian instead, and that kind of net tightens on its own—the harder you struggle, the tighter it gets.

She was furious, practically steaming, with no idea how I’d pulled it off. All she could do was scream at the patrol team to cut her loose, and then scream at them again to open fire on me.

Thirty-some patrol members raised their ion guns to fire at me. No matter how fast I moved, I couldn’t outrun ion beams.

But in that split second before they fired, I used my mind to yank Pu Liuqian directly in front of me, right into the line of fire.

A lot of them saw what was happening and tried to hold back, but the signal had already left their muscles. The arrow was loose. There was no calling it back.

Twenty-odd shots rang out, every one landing on Pu Liuqian. The pain sent her flickering through transformations, roaring, shape-shifting, and trying to heal herself as fast as the damage came.

Even so, she ended up badly burned.

I dropped her and the net together on the ground and said, “I told you to bring a few more avatars so I could take my time with you. How many did you actually bring this round?”

From inside the net, she looked up at me in a state, furious. “You—how is your force of consciousness this strong?! It’s not possible! Feng Du and I talked about this. Even if you spent every day in the Eighteen Levels of Hell harvesting force of consciousness, there’s a ceiling. That place doesn’t support anything above rank fifteen. What you’re showing me now is at least rank thirty.”

“Rank thirty? You want to certify that for me?” I said. “Either way, it’s more than enough to beat you. So no, I’m not scared of you coming after me. That’s where my confidence comes from. Clear now?”

Seeing her thrown down like that, the patrol team raised their guns again, ready to open fire on me once more.

This time I didn’t hold back either. I used my mind to yank every ion gun out of their hands at once, crushed them together into a lump, then stomped them flat with a few kicks.

The move left all thirty-some of them stunned, weaponless, just standing there trading looks, not knowing what to do with themselves.

I kicked Pu Liuqian toward them. “Well? Aren’t you going to free your master? What are you standing around for?”

That got them moving, fumbling to untangle her from the net.

Propped up by a couple of patrol members, she struggled to her feet and snapped at me, “You’ve got nerve. Dare to come with me to Shadow Pavilion Tower?”

I laughed. “Pu Liuqian, do I look stupid to you? Go with you to Shadow Pavilion Tower? Feng Du alone is rank thirty. God knows what rank Pu Xuande is, but he’s got to be stronger than Feng Du. No telling how many other experts the Shadow Pavilion’s got tucked away, but I’d bet there’s no shortage. Walking in there right now would be suicide. Why would I bother proving anything to you at a time like this? Go with you—please. This is all you’ve got. Bully the weak, cower before the strong, and the second you lose, you go crying to the grown-ups. Pathetic.”

She had never been talked to like that in her life. Her face went white on the spot, and she spat another three liters of blood before collapsing outright.

Just as she hit the ground, a cold, murderous presence swept through the air.

I looked up. An old man in black robes was walking toward me, an invisible weight of force of consciousness pressing ahead of him.

My coat caught it before I did—no wind at all, and yet it snapped and fluttered like it was standing in a gale.

The old man wore shuttle boots. Heavy as his presence was, his steps were light, silent on landing. I couldn’t even tell how he’d crossed the distance to stand right across from me.

I didn’t know him. But I could guess well enough who he answered to.

“You’re Gu Beichen,” the black-robed man said. “I’m Xiang Bianfeng, from the Shadow Pavilion Legal Affairs Department.”

“Xiang who? Never heard of you. What do you want?”

“Insolent. Even Wang Rongliang wouldn’t dare speak to me like that.”

“I already told you—I don’t know you. Who are you? What do you want?”

He glanced back at Pu Liuqian, unconscious on the ground, then turned to me. “Feng Du came to the Shadow Pavilion and sang your praises to me once. I expected some kind of prodigy. Turns out you’re just an ignorant child who doesn’t know how high the sky is or how deep the earth runs.”

I probed him with same-frequency sensing. His force-of-consciousness rank read high—higher than mine, clearly. But I wasn’t afraid of him. If anything, I wanted to see exactly how far mine could go.

A fight isn’t only about rank. Take my match against King Qinguang—he was rank ten, and I was only strong rank five. I still didn’t lose. That was probably half the reason Feng Du had taken an interest in me in the first place.

“The Legal Affairs Department,” I said. “What exactly is that supposed to be? Have I broken some law?”

“Entering the Elite World without authorization as an elite person is illegal in itself.”

I laughed. “Did your family write that law? Elite people are people. Are Mundane World people not? Why should only elite people get to enjoy human intelligence and everyone else be left out? Human rights, equality for all—that’s the whole world’s consensus. Don’t you get that?”

“A joke,” Xiang Bianfeng said. “When has humanity ever been equal? It’s always been the strong devouring the weak. Human rights are just something people tell the weak to keep them quiet. And you actually believe that? Pathetically naive.”

“Fine. You’re strong, so you get to skip reason, do whatever you want, devour the weak whenever it suits you. Then why bother talking law with me at all? Just show me your fists and be done with it.”

“Indeed. I’ve wasted enough words on you already. Since talk clearly isn’t getting through, you can have a taste of this old man’s Tiangang Hand.”

“Wait. One question first. What’s your rank in the Shadow Pavilion? What rank is your force of consciousness?”

“This old man’s martial technique and force of consciousness both sit at rank thirty-five. I’m Minister of the Legal Affairs Department, and the Fourth Pavilion Elder.”

“Fourth Pavilion Elder? Pu Xuande’s the First Pavilion Elder. So there are two other Pavilion Elders above you, stronger than you?”

“It’s not quite the ranking you’re imagining. Among the other Pavilion Elders, yes—some are stronger than I am.”

“Ah. Fair enough. So—force of consciousness, or martial technique?”

“Gu Beichen, you’re actually funny. Do you think this is some kind of wager between us? I represent the Legal Affairs Department. I’m here to arrest you.”

“Fine. Since we’ve come this far, it’s down to fists. Show me this Tiangang Hand of yours, then.”

Xiang Bianfeng didn’t waste another word. He struck out with a row of palm-prints aimed straight at me.

Not a single strike—a whole line of them, coming from far off and growing larger as they closed in, whistling through the air.

This was martial technique.

He was rank thirty-five. The highest martial technique I’d copied at the base topped out at rank twelve. The Sweepers’ techniques barely broke rank eight. There was no comparison.

So I had no intention of taking it head-on.

I turned invisible in an instant, shielding my brain information along with it.

His Tiangang Hand passed clean through the space where I’d been standing and slammed into the antenna array on a building across the street—a boom, and it shattered to pieces.

I shifted around behind him, meaning to land a kick, but his senses were sharper than I’d expected. He spun and threw a punch—another row of fists closing in from a distance, not just one.

The Tiangang Hand really was something. And it looked incredible doing it.

I had no interest in trading techniques with him. I couldn’t win that fight. All I could do was dodge.

So I called on my cosmic force of consciousness and broke his Tiangang Hand down into a flat plane—turned its linear time into space, unfolded it, curled it back, and pointed it at him.

The move worked perfectly. His own Tiangang Fist landed with a Bang—square on his own face.

His face turned to a bloody, swollen mess in an instant.

He repaired it just as fast, then raised both hands and gathered a surge of force of consciousness, driving it toward me with everything he had.

I spun it into a massive vortex in the air.

The sheer power of that spinning force knocked over the patrol members still watching nearby—some dropped where they stood, others got pulled straight into the vortex.

I’d found something useful: turning a strong force of consciousness into a vortex was a great way to neutralize it. No matter how powerful the attack, it couldn’t reach you directly that way. Of course, this only bought me a stalemate—it wasn’t a way to actually hurt him.

Xiang Bianfeng clearly saw that coming. They must have studied me carefully beforehand. He shifted tactics at once, pulled his force back, and struck again from another angle. He kept switching, hitting from all sides, until I was surrounded on every front by pressing force of consciousness—like standing inside a pressure cooker.

My own force wasn’t weak, I could tell that much. But I still had no interest in meeting him head-on.

Ever since I’d taken in cosmic consciousness, brute confrontation had started to feel like the stupidest option available. I could just as easily break the whole thing down into meaningless fragments and grind it to nothing.

So that’s what I did. His force of consciousness came apart in my mind like it was nothing, scattered into the air like shredded paper, drifting down in pieces—each one carrying a faint blue glow, since each still held a trace of energy.

The patrol members stared at the blue light falling around them, baffled. A few even reached out to catch a piece, curious what it was. But the moment it touched their skin, it left a faint burn, and then nothing.

Turning an opponent’s powerful, multi-directional attack into nothing in an instant—no one watching could make sense of it.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

Xiang Bianfeng and the patrol team were completely thrown by the stunt. Nobody understood how I’d done it.

It was too much to process. The patrol members just stood there, mouths open.

Xiang Bianfeng, for his part, had no time to think it through and no room left for panic—only a rising, humiliated fury.