Yue Shi carried Ghost and teleported outside of Lab 0.
Without pausing for a moment, he continuously activated his Traveler ability, his form flickering and jumping through reality.
With each teleport, he covered a vast distance, moving away from that deep underground laboratory as fast as possible.
The self-destruct program of Lab 0 had activated much faster and more violently than the young man’s estimate.
After ten-plus seconds, Yue Shi escaped the lab's vicinity. Just as he reached a safe range and found his footing in the wilderness...
The world fell silent.
It was as if all sound had been sucked away in an instant.
Then.
"Vrrrrmmm!"
An indescribable pillar of white light erupted from deep beneath the ground where Lab 0 was located, shattering the rock layers and piercing straight into the sky.
The light was so intense that it was like a miniature sun had been created on the spot, dispelling the darkness of the night sky.
This was only the beginning.
Following the white light was not the usual fire and shockwave of an explosion, but a more thorough annihilation.
With the rising white light as the center, space itself began to collapse inward.
Earth, rock, vegetation, air—everything that touched that invisible power of annihilation dissolved and vanished silently, like snow cast into boiling water. Not even a speck of dust remained.
There was no deafening roar, only a low-frequency hum as matter was forcibly erased.
The site of Lab 0 became a massive void.
The edges of the void continued to expand, spreading across the land at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The scene looked as if someone were using an eraser to directly rub out a section of a map.
Yue Shi watched from afar. Even at a considerable distance, he could feel the terrifying, world-ending power.
The destruction caused by Lab 0's self-destruct program was indeed staggering.
But that was all.
Yue Shi evaluated the intensity of the explosion in his mind and felt that he could probably withstand it head-on at the epicenter.
Well... he wouldn't actually try to tank it. He wasn't an idiot.
Eventually, the destructive white light and annihilation slowly subsided. The area where Lab 0 once stood, along with the mountain above it, had completely vanished, leaving behind only a bottomless, massive crater.
The edges of the crater were smooth, like a scar on the earth.
Ravens circled high in the sky. Yue Shi used his exceptional vision to gaze at the ruins from afar.
To his shock, two people who should have been dead were standing arrogantly at the edge of the crater.
It was Martin and the young man!
"Haha, hahahaha! I survived! The heavens didn't want me dead yet!" In his elementary schooler form, Martin stood with hands on his hips, letting out a wild laugh that completely contradicted his appearance.
He was perfectly clean. Despite the terrifyingly destructive explosion that had just occurred, not even a thread of his clothes was torn.
In contrast, the young man beside Martin was in a wretched state.
His body was covered in burns, his clothes were in tatters, and half of his face was disfigured.
The young man glared viciously at the gloating Martin, his eyes practically spitting fire. "Fuck, you little brat! You barged in just now and almost got me killed!"
After Yue Shi had decisively fled with Ghost, he hadn't lifted the spatial lockdown on the lab.
The young man had been unable to escape. In his desperation, he had no choice but to use his trump card.
That god-given old paper.
The protection provided by the old paper was just enough for him alone to survive this catastrophe.
But he hadn't expected that at the final moment when the protection expanded, that schoolboy would somehow find a way to crash inside!
The protective power had been split, nearly killing him!
Martin, however, ignored the young man's rage, continuing to giggle without bothering to offer a single word of thanks.
'I survived through my own skill, why should I thank anyone else?'
His small eyes glittered as he stared greedily at the old paper clutched in the young man's hand.
Since it could withstand an explosion that annihilated everything else, that paper was definitely an incredible treasure!
'This item is destined for me!'
Martin the schoolboy wore a greasy, evil expression as greed grew wildly in his heart.
The young man's expression suddenly changed.
This change wasn't because of Martin's blatant greed, but because of the old paper!
The old paper had suddenly mutated!
It was alive!
The irregularly shaped, yellowed old paper broke free from the young man's palm and, with lightning speed, merged directly into his chest.
"Aaargh!"
The young man only had time to let out a short scream before he froze in place.
After the old paper merged into his body, it immediately used his flesh and blood as nutrients to take root and sprout.
Pshhh! Pshhh!
The sounds of flesh being forcibly torn and bones being twisted and snapped mixed together.
The young man's body swelled and deformed violently.
Beneath his skin, countless root-like shadows writhed frantically. In an instant, they burst through his clothes and tore through his skin.
A strange, viscous liquid that emitted a sweet fragrance mixed with blood, seeping continuously from the gashes.
The young man's features twisted, his eyes bulged, and his mouth stretched open to an impossible degree, yet he could make no sound. Only a raspy "he-he" noise came from his throat.
Then, from his chest and abdomen, countless branches pierced through. These branches shimmered with an ominous metallic luster and were covered in thorns that dragged out fragments of internal organs as they grew wildly upward and downward.
The countless branches tangled and fused, differentiating into various structures. Within just a few breaths, they had grown into a towering Strange Tree.
The trunk displayed a strange metallic texture, as if cast from molten bronze and pale bone. Its surface was covered in writhing, twisted patterns that looked extremely similar to human blood vessels and nerve bundles.
The branches branched out willfully, displaying characteristics of countless different plants on a single tree. Some were needle-like leaves that shimmered with a cold light, while others were soft vines.
Some branches bloomed with flowers as red as blood, their petals edged with sharp serrations. The center of each flower was an eyeball.
Between the flowers were many emerald-green leaves, their veins forming various human faces that were laughing, crying, or angry.
Martin was so terrified by this sudden scene that he nearly wet his pants.
He took a closer look at the Strange Tree.
And then...
Eyes! Countless eyes!
In the centers of the flowers, on the backs of the leaves, in the cracks of the bark, and even at the tips of tiny twigs, countless eyeballs opened—some cloudy, some blood-red, some indifferent, some insane, and some hideous!
These eyeballs rolled around, scanning the surroundings.
The entire Strange Tree was shrouded in a faint fluorescence. This light gave off a twisted sense of divinity, mixed with an unreal sense of eeriness and misfortune.
Martin felt his soul leave his body. The horrific scene before him far exceeded the limits of his imagination.
Thinking this was a terrible side effect of using that old paper, he immediately used every ounce of strength he had to crawl and scramble away from the Strange Tree.
As for the young man, he wasn't dead yet; his consciousness was still clear.
However, his body had completely mutated, becoming the carrier vessel for this Strange Tree to descend into this world.
The young man's face was embedded in the center of the giant tree's trunk, its silhouette still faintly visible. His limbs had turned into the main branch bifurcations.
Due to the extreme agony, his expression was horribly distorted, and he let out a continuous, mournful wail.
Remaining alive was likely a misfortune for him.
In the distance, Yue Shi's pupils also shook.
Even from such a distance, he could clearly see the Strange Tree that had suddenly grown.
The Strange Tree radiated a massive aura of chaos. The moment he saw the tree, an extremely ominous premonition washed over his entire body.
He felt a wave of spine-chilling horror. His body and soul instinctively rejected the damn thing, and an extreme sense of disgust welled up from his heart.
This was a feeling he had never experienced before.
The golden vertical eye on his forehead fully revealed itself, shimmering with golden light.
He did not use Insight to peek at the Strange Tree's information; some vague spiritual intuition warned him not to do so.
This time, Yue Shi activated his Anticipation ability.
A second of the future flashed before his eyes.
As he observed the Strange Tree, the Strange Tree also observed him.
The Strange Tree seemed to ignore space. The moment it "looked" at Yue Shi, the solid ground beneath Yue Shi's feet instantly mutated.
Countless twisted branches covered in dense eyeballs erupted from the ground like ghost hands reaching out from hell.
Every eyeball on the branches fixed its gaze on Yue Shi simultaneously, reaching for him with a viscous greed and intent to imprison!
Yue Shi felt his heart jump.
Without the slightest hesitation, omitting even the act of thinking, he activated his Traveler ability with high frequency and intensity.
His figure vanished from the spot, then flickered in the distance, vanished again, and appeared even further away. He jumped continuously through reality, disregarding the cost, just to get away from that Strange Tree.
The second after Yue Shi's figure vanished.
The scene from his anticipation occurred.
Psh! Psh-psh!
The ground where Yue Shi had been standing was easily pierced. Countless branches covered in eyes drilled out, waving and clawing frantically, but they all caught only empty air.
Being one second ahead was enough for Yue Shi to run very far.
On the branches, the eyeballs among the flowers and leaves all turned toward the direction where Yue Shi had finally disappeared, the greed in their eyes turning into confusion.
"How is it a male?"
"Did we find the wrong target..."
Back at the site of Lab 0, the young man was still letting out agonized roars.
Martin hadn't run very far before he was suppressed by an invisible pressure. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to the ground.
That was a great terror originating from a crushing difference in life-tier.
It wasn't that he didn't want to run, but that he simply couldn't.
The aura radiated by the Strange Tree crushed his will, leaving him paralyzed in fear and stiffness, even making it difficult to breathe.
The Strange Tree didn't continue growing indefinitely. It seemed to be affected by some kind of interference, as the fluorescence around it began to flicker.
Between the flickers of light, it looked like a massive, semi-transparent curtain, faintly revealing some fantastical scenes.
The core of that scene was beautiful, comparable to a fairyland, filled with strange flowers and exotic herbs never heard of before.
The sky was indistinguishable between day and night, covered by the root system of an incredibly massive inverted tree.
In one corner of the image, a cracked Black Guanyin statue was pierced by countless sharp branches, hanging in mid-air.
In the background, countless plants seemed to be bowing and worshipping the Black Guanyin statue.
"Father God!" With the last of his strength, the young man's distorted face shouted those two words, pleading toward the scene in the light and shadow.
"Today, I am Mother God~" Its voice came from nowhere, responding to the young man.
The young man was instantly filled with terror. He had forgotten that midnight had passed; today was an even-numbered date!
He was finished!
"Stupid and useless child, you must be punished."
The moment the words fell.
Bang!
The young man's remaining body parts, along with his face and consciousness, suddenly exploded into a spray of flying meat and slime.
Then, Martin watched with his own eyes as the Strange Tree spawned by the old paper—seemingly because it lost its carrier vessel or because it was rejected by the rules of the real world—could no longer maintain its power for long.
The Strange Tree's monstrous, evil body began to grow unstable. Finally, in a way that defied all laws of physics, it rapidly contracted and faded like a movie playing in reverse, eventually returning completely and vanishing into the garden scene presented by the light and shadow.
Everything returned to a deathly silence, leaving only the giant crater and a few lingering traces of chaotic aura in the air.
But at the very last moment before the Strange Tree completely vanished, It seemed to notice that there was still a living person, Martin, nearby.
Martin was currently paralyzed on the ground, playing dead.
A leaf fell from the fading silhouette of the tree.
The leaf had fine serrations on its edges and a dull eyeball in its center. Blown by a breeze, it swayed and wobbled, landing precisely by Martin’s trembling hand.
Silence enveloped the area.
After a good while, once he was sure the Strange Tree had truly vanished, the "dead" Martin finally crawled up from the ground, shaking all over.
Before the relief of surviving could even well up in his heart, his gaze met the eyeball on the evil leaf.
The eyeball was staring straight at him.
"Awoooo!" Martin let out a weird cry, so frightened that he leaked a few drops. His legs went soft, and he nearly tumbled to the ground.
He didn't want any contact with this weird thing, not even for a single second!
Without bothering to check his direction, he ran like a madman without looking back.
Only when he was sure he had run far enough and the surrounding scenery was that of the normal wilderness did he stop, panting heavily. He propped his hands on his knees, gasping for air.
Thinking back on this entire day's experience, it was certainly stimulating.
"This random ability is really fucking life-threatening," Martin complained in a low voice.
An elementary schooler truly lacked the power to protect himself. The priority now was to find a safe place to hide.
He knew exactly how random and unreliable his ability was.
Fortunately, he wasn't completely unprepared; he carried supernatural objects for saving his life and escaping. He had "borrowed" them from others when he had rolled powerful abilities.
A night breeze blew past, swirling the leaves in the air. One leaf happened to land right on top of his head.
Martin's movements froze as he stood there, stunned.
Rate on N.U.
