As soon as those words were spoken, Ren Yi froze on the spot.
What would happen if there was another physical entity at the location where you "reappeared"?
Wasn't this the most classic and fatal bug of teleportation-type abilities? It was a staple trope in web novels and films!
He instinctively began to imagine various famous scenes.
If the destination of the teleport was a wall...
In comedic works, characters were usually stuck as "a person embedded in a wall," limbs flailing but unable to pull themselves out—pathetic and hilarious.
In horror works, the scene would be far more gruesome.
The cement molecules of the wall and the molecules of the teleporter's internal organs and flesh would squeeze and fuse together, rearranging themselves into a grotesque mixture of meat and concrete.
And that unlucky fellow would end up bleeding from all seven orifices in a twisted "artistic pose," dying on the spot.
But on second thought, those settings were for Humans or flesh-and-blood creatures. Would it be different for him?
He wasn't human; strictly speaking, he wasn't even a flesh-and-blood creature.
His True Form was a grey, misty Anomaly that could gather or disperse, be molded or pieced together.
If he really got "stuck" in a wall, it shouldn't be impossible to get out, right? At most, he'd be sliced in half by the wall, and then he could just piece himself back together—no big deal.
As for molecular fusion... Ren Yi felt a bit of doubt.
Do Anomalies like them actually have "molecules" as their smallest building blocks?
He hesitated for a moment as material science and his abstract understanding of his own existence clashed.
After a moment, Ren Yi gritted his teeth, his gaze gradually turning firm.
"Regardless, let's give it a try."
Whatever the result, experimenting on The Alliance campus was better than hitting a landmine later in a Promotion Instance or an unknown world.
He didn't want to get stuck in a wall in front of other Participants because of such a rookie mistake.
"Okay!" Zhang Qiuqiu nodded immediately, her expression turning serious as she pumped her fist to cheer him on. "Try it and see if you die-it!"
Ren Yi's lip twitched, and he looked at her helplessly, a faint vein throbbing on his temple.
Class monitor, why do I feel like you're a little too excited?
You didn't mean the "die" part literally, did you?
Despite the banter, the two quickly finalized the experimental plan.
As for the "object" used to occupy the space, they obviously couldn't actually haul in a wall.
They looked around the office and eventually settled on a large but barely movable desk.
Zhang Qiuqiu rolled up her sleeves and stood by the desk, leaning forward slightly, ready to push at any moment.
Ren Yi stepped back to his original position, gripped the cold marble in his palm, and took a deep breath.
"Three, two, one..."
The moment the last word fell, Ren Yi didn't hesitate for a second, immediately channeling the Anomaly energy within him into the marble in a steady stream.
This time, he didn't try to control the output, letting the energy surge wildly through his fingertips.
In the next second, his figure vanished from the office into thin air.
Almost simultaneously, Zhang Qiuqiu mustered all her strength and, with a loud shout, gave the desk a violent shove.
The heavy desk slid rapidly across the smooth floor.
With a loud clatter, it slid precisely into the spot where Ren Yi had been standing, completely occupying that space.
Zhang Qiuqiu held her breath and counted three seconds. Just as she was wondering why Ren Yi hadn't reappeared yet, in the next second—
BOOM!
A deafening blast shook the office windows, and a violent gust of air swept through the room.
...
In Ren Yi's perception, the scene from a moment ago was far more intense—a literal hellish experience.
First was the energy in his body.
This time, it wasn't the gentle, gradual drain from before. Instead, it felt as if he had been targeted by some extra-dimensional black hole.
The energy within him was violently yanked by an invisible force, drained dry in an instant without a single drop remaining.
Before he could even react, his energy hit rock bottom, and an extreme sense of emptiness and weakness washed over his entire body.
It was no longer as simple as "a chunk of his body was missing." It was an absolute void, as if everything below his neck had vanished, and even his consciousness began to blur.
Without the energy to sustain it, the human shell he had been struggling to maintain fell apart yet again.
Ren Yi could clearly feel his body exploding in all directions, with the energy void as the epicenter.
His once-solid structure became sparse and instantly regressed into a viscous, semi-liquid state, depending on the distance from the core of the explosion.
Some parts even evaporated directly into a gaseous state, scattering everywhere.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
At the exact moment his body burst apart, he felt a terrifying vector force.
That force could no longer be described as "being hit head-on by a dump truck." It was as if he had stood directly in the path of a space rocket's takeoff.
Violent, searing, and unstoppable.
His body fragments, which had been exploding in all directions, were insignificant before this massive force.
The trajectory of every fragment was forcibly tamed by this power, "fired" in the same direction at an incredible speed.
As for Ren Yi himself, his vision blurred, the world spun, and his consciousness was blasted blank by the impact.
An incredibly violent and powerful force exploded from the front, slamming into his out-of-control True Form and punting him away like a ball.
BANG!
A deafening explosion rang out. Before Ren Yi could even process what was happening, he was hurled away by this downward diagonal force, smashing straight into the office's glass window.
With a sharp shatter, jagged shards of glass sprayed in all directions.
Immediately after, a powerful sensation of weightlessness gripped him as he fell straight from the second-floor office like a discarded brick.
By the time he barely regained his senses and groggily expanded his perception, his misshapen True Form was lying limply on the student activity plaza on the school's first floor.
Ren Yi struggled to wiggle his True Form, vaguely feeling not only the cold floor beneath him but also some fine fragments of rock.
Even though he wasn't entirely solid, the violent explosive force triggered by the "mutual repulsion between appearing matter and existing matter" had actually managed to shatter the floor, which was supposed to be protected by rules.
He had even left a long, hideous gouge on the floor.
Although he had prepared himself for the experiment to go south, this was... a bit too much, wasn't it?
It was so intense he almost fell apart—no, wait, he had fallen apart.
Waves of dizziness washed over him, and his perception was as muddled as paste; he couldn't even tell which way was up.
This was also the first time Ren Yi realized that when an Anomaly was dazed by a massive force, their perception would become like this.
It was like a three-dimensional, 360-degree kaleidoscope, with nothing but twisted light, shadows, and chaotic sensations before his eyes.
His True Form was so scattered it was on the verge of dissolving completely. He exerted all his strength to sort through his disordered perception, gathering his scattered fragments bit by bit in an attempt to pull himself back together.
Just then, within his slightly recovered perception, two youthful voices faintly drifted over.
"What's up? Why'd you stop all of a sudden? Hurry, class is about to start."
One voice was full of confusion, urging their companion.
The owner of the other voice paused for a moment before speaking in a low whisper, their tone clearly surprised and uneasy.
"Didn't you hear that?"
"It sounds like something just crashed down!"
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