From the end of the world

Chapter 664 Meeting Again
Upon receiving this report, Dongche's expression turned serious.

"Who is 'that guy'?" I asked curiously.

“Not long ago, we captured a cultivator from Peach Blossom Village around the shelter,” Dongche explained. “He is very powerful and intends to summon monsters from the surrounding area to attack our shelter.”

"Before he could prepare for the attack, I used my senses to pinpoint the source of this threat, and then my companions and I launched a preemptive strike to capture him. Judging from his strength, he must hold a high position within Peach Blossom Village and likely knows about its military deployment in this city. If we can obtain this intelligence, it will be of great help to our survival in the future."

"Unfortunately, we couldn't pry him open for the time being, and he almost escaped. Although we quickly resealed him, not long after, a Grandmaster-level expert from Peach Blossom Spring led a large number of monsters to attack. It's likely that the prisoner took advantage of the chaos to transmit our coordinates to the outside world."

"We were supposed to lead everyone to a new shelter next, but..."

“Now that I’m here,” I said, “if any more enemies try to attack this shelter, let them come at me. I’ll take care of them all. It will also make the city a safer place.”

"Or, we can first interrogate the prisoners you mentioned to obtain information related to the enemy's combat deployment, and then I can wipe them out one by one. You don't need to be polite to me. Anyway, I have nothing to do until I can exert my full strength, so I'll just treat it as a walk outside."

Upon hearing my words, the demon hunter who had come to report looked as if he were in a dream. However, apart from him, everyone present treated my words as if they were perfectly normal. Perhaps he also knew that I had previously defeated a Grandmaster-level expert from Peach Blossom Village, so he didn't utter any questions and could only stare at us blankly.

"Leave the interrogation to me. With my Word of Power, I should be able to extract information that you can't get out of me," I said.

"Shouldn't we continue discussing how to restore our strength first?" Fuyuki seemed unwilling to bother me with that kind of work.

"Since we can't reach a conclusion for the time being, why don't we find something else to do? Maybe it will spark some inspiration," I said.

“Then…we’ll take our leave now,” said the leader of the believers.

They probably had other work to do at the shelter, and they had to put aside their work to come and see me.

Junior Sister Qiao seemed to realize she shouldn't stay any longer, "Then I'll..."

"Wait," I called out to her.

She looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“Hold out your hand,” I said.

Xiao Qiao, a junior student, stretched out her left hand with a puzzled look. I focused my gaze on the back of her hand, and then, as if her palm was covered in fuel and heated by a lighter, it suddenly burst into flames.

She was startled and reflexively let out a terrified cry, frantically shaking her left hand to try and shake off the flames. But my flames weren't so easy to get rid of. Instead of dissipating, the flames clinging to her left hand quickly converged towards the back of her hand, eventually forming an orange-red mark.

It was a simplified flame totem symbol, resembling both a blazing fire and a hand with five fingers pointing upwards.

I remember Lu Chan showed me the "Zhuangcheng Faith Totem" before, and it looked like this. Here I drew it on the back of Xiao Qiao's hand.

“This mark stores a small portion of my flame, containing my preset commands,” I said. “If you encounter danger later, the flame inside will automatically defend and counterattack, and will also automatically burn the surrounding space to recharge when its energy is insufficient. Although it is small in scale, as long as you don’t encounter a Grandmaster, it can keep your life safe.”

I then looked at the believers and said to them, "She is a friend of my fiancée Zhu Shi, and also my junior from school. If it's convenient, I hope you can look after her a little."

“—As you command.”

The leader of the believers looked intently at Xiao Qiao's hand, as if to memorize it, and then respectfully said to me, "We will continue to try to help you regain your strength. If we find a good solution, we will report back to you. Please take care of yourself."

Then, he made a gesture of farewell and left with all the believers present.

I had already explained the details of my current situation to them and was looking forward to finding a solution. Before arriving at this exhibition hall shelter, I had considered some options, but they all repeatedly failed.

The simplest and most direct method would be to summon my slag weapon—the Slag Impermanence Sword—into the city's barrier, then activate its third form, "Corona," to break through the omnipresent resistance and forcibly restore the power of the Great Impermanence. However, just as I cannot transmit a sufficient amount of flame into the city's barrier, I cannot summon much of the "slag" mixed within the flame. Even if I forcibly summon it, the total amount would still be less than that of the Slag Impermanence Sword in Wintercar's hands. Gradually transporting it into the barrier little by little is also not feasible, as the resistance against me as an intruder would limit the maximum amount of "slag" that could exist at any given time.

Similarly, I cannot increase my scale of existence by burning large amounts of matter to create flames within the city's barrier. Just as my perception range is limited by resistance, my scale of existence is also firmly capped. Theoretically, even if a warehouse full of fuel were placed in front of me, my flames would not be able to spread into a sea of ​​fire there, unless they were downgraded to ordinary flames that do not possess my personal attributes.

The route of manipulating a large number of ordinary flames through mental invasion and converting them into one's own strength will also be impossible for the same reason, and will encounter a hard bottleneck after the conversion reaches a certain point.

There is only one way to break through this predicament—I cannot gradually increase my strength, but must achieve the effect of breaking through the hard bottleneck by explosively increasing my strength, as if I want to make the omnipresent resistance unable to react.

Although such a direction has been identified, the corresponding means are not yet available.

After the believers left, the witcher who was in charge of reporting also left. Little Qiao, perhaps not wanting to participate in the so-called interrogation, wanted to leave with them. At that moment, Dongche called her back.

"May I ask you to observe the next part of the interrogation?" he asked solemnly.

"Ah, me?" Junior Sister Qiao pointed to herself.

The winter cart nodded.

Although she didn't know why he had asked her to join in, Xiao Qiao obediently complied. I was a little curious about his motives. It seemed he didn't intend to explain immediately. If I had asked, he would probably have given an honest answer, but I decided to respect his decision and continue to look forward to what would happen next.

Led by him, we arrived at the refuge's cell.

This place, originally intended as a storage room for the exhibition hall, was temporarily used as a prisoner's cell. The prisoner was bound to the ground by countless steel chains. Some of these chains were attached to the ground and could not be easily pulled out; others pierced through various parts of the prisoner's body, preventing him from moving freely.

It's clear that these chains have been specially treated with magic. Even the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room have been treated with a barrier spell. It's likely that even continuous bombardment by a cannon wouldn't cause any damage.

The prisoner raised his head; his face was covered in blood, and his expression was one of pain and rage.

The ground was covered in blood from the struggle, and the air reeked of blood. Faced with this gruesome scene, Xiao Qiao, though seemingly disgusted and repulsed, didn't say much. She had likely witnessed countless bloody and cruel scenes in the past twenty-odd days, and whether she liked it or not, she could no longer be the ordinary college student she was when she first met me.

On the contrary, Jiao Shu, who had been silently following me, was very surprised.

"What happened..." she looked at the prisoner in disbelief. "Weren't you burned to death by Xuanming?"

This prisoner was the same high-ranking monk from Peach Blossom Spring who had appeared at the subway station shelter last time.

To observe the resurrection phenomenon caused by the city's restart, I left thermal marks on him. Because I burned his brain tissue remotely when I killed him, Jiao Shu probably didn't realize he was killed by me, but thought he was killed by the Xuanming Fire. I didn't specifically infuse him with killing intent when I killed him, so it's normal for him to resurrect due to the restart phenomenon.

Later, I found Jiao Shu through the thermal energy mark, but I didn't find the Peach Blossom Village cultivator. This was not because I forgot about him, but because when Xuanming's flame avatar appeared with the sea of ​​fire, the flames burned his corpse to ashes, destroying the thermal energy mark attached to it as well.

I never expected that, after all these twists and turns, I would run into him again in this very place.

The imprisoned monk from Peach Blossom Village looked up and saw my face; the pain on his face was replaced by astonishment.

“You, you…you are—” He stared at me with wide eyes.

"Do you think you can get away from me?" I said.

Perhaps this is inevitable. Blessed by the power of jinx, I too possess the nature of a vortex of fate. Once entangled with me, it's impossible to easily extricate oneself. For the weak, this is merely a curse; but for the strong, it is also a power.

The cultivator from Peach Blossom Village glanced at the winter carriage beside him, and as if he had made a connection to something, an expression of fear and despair appeared on his face.

(End of this chapter)