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Chapter 144 Strong Rule Ability

An invisible sense of oppression suddenly made Lu Lixin feel like she couldn't breathe.

This was the first time she had ever seen such a nonchalant way of avoiding forceful seizure.

For a moment, Lu Lixin felt that the other party was about to launch an attack, but he simply passed by him quickly, always maintaining a distance of three or four meters.

"Could it be... that you also want to participate in this battle of abilities?" she asked, feigning delight, while simultaneously preparing to surround herself with nerve gas.

Chen Xuan completely ignored her.

Forcible takeout is a physical contact attack, which is quite useful for ambushing inexperienced ability users, but once you've made contact a few times, this method becomes less effective.

As for the ability to alter gas... that's not a lie, because it can be confirmed with a barcode scanner. Whether it's the ability to alter gas by sight or by physical contact, Chen Xuan wasn't sure. That's why he never intended to get close to the other person in the first place. The reason he went up on stage and moved to a position behind Lu Lixin was because only from this angle could he see the entire filming studio.

Now, the security guards at the gate and the stagehands who help her control the audience have all come into her view, along with Lu Lixin.

He counted them; there were nine people in total.

Now they are all in my sight.

Chen Xuan activated his Divine Eye Technique again, completely slowing down the surrounding commotion, and then selected all nine people as the targets for fusion—this would effectively avoid alerting her and prevent her accomplices from also having the means to detonate the balloon.

Before taking the stage, he had already adjusted his abilities to include the Heavenly Cloud Technique, Divine Eye Technique, Splitting and Remelting, and Seed of Flesh and Blood.

With the LV9 Flesh Seed, he can initiate Disintegration and Remelting without paying any price!

The moment I locked onto them, I also calculated the amount of energy I would need to consume.

About two and a half of myself.

Time seemed to stand still. Chen Xuan saw himself slowly extend his hand, spread his five fingers in front of him, and then clench his fist tightly!

The level of the Seed of Flesh and Blood instantly dropped to LV6.

The fusion also happened at that moment—

It requires neither contact nor a direct hit; once the cost is paid, the effect is immediately realized. This is the powerful rule-based ability Chen Xuan spoke of; once it is activated, it is as inviolable as the laws of nature.

"Aaaaaah—!"

The first to scream weren't Lu Lixin, but the contestants and audience members on stage. The stagehands who had been watching them just a second ago suddenly melted as the man rapidly collapsed to the ground, his internal organs spilling out and merging with the floor. What was truly horrifying was that not a single drop of blood flowed from his body, and his exposed organs continued to pulsate slowly.

This nightmarish scene turned everyone's faces deathly pale instantly.

The internet celebrity contestant even sat down on the ground with a thud.

What exactly happened?
Why... has my gaze... lowered?

Lu Lixin stared blankly as the crowd screamed, pushed, and tumbled off the stage, then crawled and scrambled towards the audience area, as if there was something extremely terrifying there.

Damn it... these idiots dared to ignore my orders... and flee the stage area without permission. How can the show continue like this?

They need to be taught a lesson.

Let half of the corrosive balloon overhead burst...

Wait... where are my hands? Why can't I find... the remote control?
Lu Lixin felt her consciousness becoming increasingly blurred, as if her brain was being submerged in an oil drum and was being gradually separated from her body.

No… it’s that strange person…

I've fallen victim to his power!

Wake up!

But her increasingly fragmented thoughts did not revive despite the cries from within. She had a vague feeling that the sluggishness of her consciousness was not a result of her abilities, but rather that she herself was rapidly degenerating... as if she were regressing from a human being to some primitive, low-functioning creature...

This was also the last thought that remained in her mind.

Chen Xuan saw that Lu Lixin had merged with a broken mannequin at her feet. Her intestines and heart and lungs were hanging from the mannequin's arm, almost completely unprotected, and would break at the slightest touch. Her head was stuck in the missing part of the mannequin's head, but it was not complete. Only her tongue and half of her brain remained, while the rest of her body had burrowed into the mannequin's body.

Even he himself felt a little horrified.

As for the security guards at the gate, they were simply integrated into the gate itself.

Faced with this shocking scene, fear overwhelmed the audience's remaining rationality. They no longer cared whether the balloons above their heads would burst or how many people the poison gas inside could kill. All they wanted was to escape the hall as quickly as possible and get as far away as possible!

Chen Xuan walked straight backstage without looking back.

Entering the curtained corridor, he confirmed there were no cameras around before taking out his barcode scanner and activating his teleportation ability. After teleporting back to the store, he used the customer recall function to bring Lin Qing over as well.

"The move you just used... was the same ability you had when you fused with the grasshopper?" The latter seemed equally shocked, after all, fusing with a living person was far more impactful than fusing with a grasshopper. Chen Xuan nodded.

"I thought you were going to use the Thousand Thoughts Sword to deal with them." Lin Qing looked at him with considerable worry. "What will you use as the price? Your appendix?"

"It's a long story, but I didn't pay any price."

"You're not lying to me, are you?" She reached out and touched me directly. "Let me give you a checkup."

Left with no other choice, Chen Xuan had to tell the other party about the new ability he had acquired. However, he still concealed the fact that there was internal strife within the ability, treating it merely as an extra reward derived from the splitting and remelting advancement.

It's indeed hard to explain how two items in an Excel spreadsheet can conflict with each other.

"I see, you should have said so earlier." Lin Qing was relieved. "By the way, I have some good news for you. While I was waiting in the corner, I also removed a safety signal light from the wall and hacked into the studio's surveillance system through its communication line. I can't interfere with the videos taken by the audience with their phones, but at least the TV station won't be able to access tonight's surveillance footage."

Chen Xuan nodded, made himself and her a cup of coffee to calm their nerves.

"Has the security situation in Jiangcheng really deteriorated to this extent?" he asked, frowning.

That guy named Lu Lixin was obviously serious. Her abilities weren't just for show. If she hadn't been promoting her so-called "superiority of ability users" philosophy, but instead had been aiming to kill people from the start, probably all the more than a thousand people in the filming studio would have been killed.

“Actually, it was alright before. They were all petty thefts and the like. There was a lot of discussion online, but the actual impact wasn’t that big. The most serious one was the mall bombing, but because of the lack of actual evidence, it was never definitively proven,” Lin Qing said, sipping her coffee. “But after today’s incident, the situation should be completely different.”

Chen Xuan remained silent.

The expansion of erosion will trigger the awakening of many people's abilities, a fact known from the beginning.

Now he has to accept this price.

……

"Red Lotus, White Swan, over here!"

Zhang Yingzi waved from the entrance of the TV station.

"You're here!" Wang Baihu hurried over. "How did you get here so quickly? I thought Honglian and I were the first ones to arrive in the team."

When they received the news that someone capable of committing a crime, they were on their routine street patrol. In order to get there as quickly as possible, Honglian practically stepped on the accelerator, running countless red lights along the way. Wang Baihu, who was sitting in the passenger seat, almost threw up his dinner.

“My rented apartment is nearby, so I came straight here,” she said, shaking her head. “Unfortunately, I was still a step too late.”

"I heard on the channel that the matter has been resolved?" The three of them exchanged information about the incident as they walked toward the scene.

"Well... fortunately, only ten people died and one was seriously injured."

"Ten...ten people dead!?" Wang Baihu was shocked. How could this be considered lucky? Double-digit casualties were a truly shocking situation even on a national scale!

“Don’t worry, nine of them are criminals,” Zhang Yingzi added.

"Uh—" He choked abruptly, "What?! Just say it all at once!"

Honglian couldn't help but curl the corners of her lips into a smile, but quickly returned to her indifferent expression. After spending a few months with her new colleagues, she found them to be quite capable and responsible, the kind of trustworthy and high-quality partners. However, she still found it difficult to consider Zhang Yingzi a friend for the time being, since Zhang Yingzi was, after all, someone brought in by her new boss... and in order to bring in Xiao Kanong, her original leader, Wan Chongshan, had been kicked out of the organization's branch.

"How did they die?"

"I don't know the specifics yet, but there's no doubt it's due to some kind of ability."

"Have all the witnesses at the scene been brought under control?" Honglian saw that the entrance to the filming hall had been cordoned off, and the red and blue lights of two police cars were flashing continuously.

Since the news of the existence of people with special abilities was exposed, the government has responded actively, including setting up ability testing points in various places and cooperating with local governments to provide them with ability consultation services. This incident is a good example. The audience made a large number of emergency calls, and the emergency call center not only notified the nearest police station, but also forwarded the relevant information to the government office.

That's why the task force was able to get there in the shortest amount of time.

“I’ve asked the police, and it’s not going well,” Zhang Yingzi replied. “When the first police car arrived, the audience was fleeing. One officer and two auxiliary officers simply couldn’t stop so many people. I just received a notification two minutes later that the TV station’s surveillance system also malfunctioned, apparently due to a technical intrusion. All of today’s records have been overwritten, so we have no idea how many people have escaped.”

"You mean it's been hacked?" Wang Baihu looked up in surprise, glancing at a security camera mounted on a streetlamp not far away. "Isn't the surveillance here a closed-circuit system?"

“No, they created a remote access system so that the leaders could easily access and view the information at any time.” Zhang Yingzi shrugged, seemingly unsurprised by this. “It’s not the TV station’s fault. Apart from some places that require strict confidentiality, which leader wouldn’t want to be able to check whether their employees are slacking off just by lying on the sofa in a hotel and moving their fingers? If it weren’t for the law, there would probably be cameras growing in the toilets.”

Honglian and Wang Baihu both turned their gazes away.

As working people, isn't it only natural that we get paid to use the toilet during our working hours?

"By the way, although it's said that ten died, that's not entirely accurate," Zhang Yingzi added, "because the condition of the other nine was somewhat delicate."

"Subtle?" The two were taken aback. "What do you mean?"

"You'll see when you see it." Her tone suddenly changed, no longer as relaxed and lively as before. "Let me warn you in advance, you'd better be mentally prepared, the scenes in the shooting studio are not so pleasant."

(End of this chapter)