chsdbacks Chapter 664 The Real Researcher and One Punch
Chapter 664 The Real Researcher and One Punch
Chapter 664 The True Researcher and One Punch
Jemin emerged from behind the stone pillar.
Although he maintained the Tai Xu Step technique, he deliberately reduced its power, revealing his true appearance.
He looked at the professor, his expression calm, but with a hint of curiosity in his eyes.
"It seems you're not curious about my appearance," Jemin said. "Do you know anything about me?"
'
On the professor's blood-red face, his mouth moved slightly, making a kind of "self-deprecating" expression.
"No." His voice was much lower than before, with a metallic resonance. "But there's a familiar feeling about you. That person—although their aura is completely different from yours, the feeling you give me is very similar."
Jemin's eyes lit up slightly.
He certainly knew who the professor was referring to as "that person".
That's the wizard who collaborated with the man in black robes in this dimension and provided the bizarre fusion technology.
He had been tracking that person's whereabouts, but had not found any direct clues.
"May I ask about the other person?" Jemin asked calmly.
The professor fell silent.
Jemin could sense that the silence wasn't a rejection, but rather an attempt to recall.
"It's not that I'm unwilling to tell you," the professor finally spoke, his speech much slower than usual, as if each word required great effort. "But it was only after merging with this strange entity that I discovered there was such a person in my life."
Jemin raised his eyebrows slightly.
The professor meant that he had been completely unaware of the wizard's existence until he merged with the Blood Web and his soul's essence changed, at which point he discovered that someone had been secretly operating around him all along.
The fact that the wizard could conceal himself to this extent suggests that he must also be skilled in some soul-based magic.
That's why you can block others' perceptions at the conscious level.
Jemin nodded without asking any further questions; he knew the professor had already said all he could.
"It seems that your will hasn't been greatly affected after merging with the supernatural entity," Jemin changed the subject.
The professor lowered his head and glanced at his blood-red hands.
"This technology isn't perfect." His voice lowered further. "My consciousness is rapidly fading. I can feel it—I'm forgetting. Forgetting their names, forgetting their faces, forgetting why I'm doing these things."
His gaze returned to Jemin.
"What do you want to do with me?" Jemin asked.
The professor's blood-red humanoid figure took a step forward.
The transparent mesh stretched as he moved, always maintaining complete coverage of the surrounding space.
He pulled a black-covered notebook out of his body.
The notebook's surface was blank, but the edges were worn white, and there were obvious creases along the spine, as if it had been read countless times.
"I once made a deal with that person." The professor held the notebook up in his hand, not handing it over, but letting it float above his palm. "He provided me with the foundation for the bizarre fusion technology. I have also been constantly refining its structure, methods, and the underlying logic of the seal—but, with my abilities, I cannot take it any further."
Jemin's gaze fell on the notebook.
With just a light sweep of his mental energy, he was already able to sense the massive amount of information contained within the notebook.
It's not just words and charts, but something deeper, like a soul imprint.
During the research process, one's thoughts, deductions, and even emotions during failures are etched into the fibers of the paper.
"This is all the data from my research." The professor's voice held an emotion that Jemin had never heard in him before. "Don't you beings love knowledge? Now it's yours. I only hope that once you've perfected this technology, you'll give it to the people of this world, so they can truly be free from the eerie threat."
The notebook floated up from his palm and slowly flew towards Jemin.
Jemin reached out and caught it.
His mental energy probed into the notebook the moment it touched it, scanning all the contents in less than a second.
The notebook contained not only technical data on the bizarre fusion, but also the professor's comprehensive analysis of the world's bizarre ecology, detailed dissection records of every bizarre creature he had encountered, and his ultimate reflections on the proposition of "humanity coexisting with the bizarre."
This information was of great help to his research.
But what concerned Jemin even more was another aspect.
"I initially thought that as a cult leader, you would have some kind of brainwashing techniques," Jemin said, his tone ambiguous, a mix of sarcasm and wistfulness. "But it seems that's not the case."
A slight expression suddenly appeared on the professor's previously indifferent and empty blood-red face.
That was self-satisfaction.
A sense of satisfaction that comes from within.
"We are all acting according to our own will."
His voice was no longer deep; it even carried the confident and composed tone he usually used in lectures.
Jemin looked at him and remained silent for a moment.
Even at the cost of many innocent lives?
The professor's smugness did not diminish.
He looked into Jemin’s eyes, a look that was not the rebuttal of a cult leader to a dissident, but the answer of a martyr to a questioner.
"This is a necessary sacrifice in order to free humanity from this eerie threat."
Jemin gave him a deep look.
If other cult leaders said this, they would be completely misleading people to their deaths.
Those people shout lofty slogans while holding knives, always stabbing others in the chest.
But this person is different.
He really did risk his own life.
Before he knew of Jemin's existence, if he wanted to run away, the three people from the Overlord Association wouldn't have been able to catch him at all, given his control over this alternate dimension.
But he didn't!
In order to obtain the final data personally, he stood here, in this alternate dimension he had created himself.
The soul has begun to merge with the eerie, and consciousness is irreversibly slipping away.
His purpose was not for power and wealth, nor for any "interests" in the worldly sense.
He truly believed that everything he did was to help humanity escape the shadow of the supernatural.
Jemin lowered his head, looked at the black notebook in his hand, and put it into his inner space.
"Have you put them away?" the professor asked.
"It's been put away," Jemin nodded.
The smug expression on the professor's blood-red face gradually faded, replaced by a look that was a mixture of relief and regret.
"The technology isn't perfect yet." His voice grew low again. "My mind can't hold on much longer. You should be able to take care of me, right?"
He asked calmly, as if asking about the weather today, or as if asking the audience of a lecture if they understood his explanation.
Jemin nodded.
But Jemin did not act immediately.
He stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at the professor, and began to talk about something else.
"Why does your fusion technology's basic structure have a branching point at the node for the third-layer energy loop? Wouldn't it be more efficient to run it directly through the main path?"
The professor was taken aback.
Then he laughed.
It was a genuine smile, the kind of joy a researcher feels when recognized by their peers.
"You think I haven't tried?" His voice regained its vitality. "I've tried at least two hundred times. If you go directly down the main road, the strange power will break through the human host's mental defenses within three seconds. Diverting the flow can distribute the impact to seven different nodes, with each node bearing a portion, increasing the upper limit of human willpower's resilience by at least four times."
"What about the return flow after the seventh node? How is the energy reintegrated after the diversion?"
"That's the key; the recirculation is the biggest challenge. I'm using layered recirculation. Those with strong willpower use high-level recirculation, while those with weak willpower use low-level recirculation. But the energy loss from low-level recirculation is too great, exceeding forty percent, which directly affects the fusion's combat power. I've been looking for an optimization solution, but time is running out —"
The two stood in the core hall of the alternate dimension, with the remnant of the light orb that had fused with most of the professor's power above them, and cracks and fragments on the gray ground beneath their feet.
They were like two colleagues in a university lab, standing in front of a blackboard discussing a technical problem, their tone serious, focused, and even carrying the kind of intense, confrontational excitement one finds in academic debates.
Jemin knew what he was doing.
He was stalling for time because he hoped the professor could exist a little longer as a "human".
As Vidor Raine, a researcher, a scholar, and one who has reached the forefront of the study of the bizarre in this plane, I will exist a little longer.
In the distance, the sound of explosions grew closer.
The guild leader and the two support personnel are rushing back from the direction they were teleported away.
When a catastrophic level psychic goes all out, this catastrophic level staircase is simply no match for them.
They moved extremely fast and were less than a kilometer away from the core hall.
The professor looked up and gazed in that direction.
His expression remained indifferent, but something was rapidly fading from his blood-red eyes.
"It's time," he said.
His voice had begun to distort, carrying a resonance that was not of human origin.
The blood-red humanoid figure suddenly exploded.
The blood network that made up his body spread outward from the core, covering every corner of the entire hall in milliseconds.
On the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor, in the air —
A dense network of blood-red threads emerged from the void, enveloping Jemin at its very center.
Bloodweb launched an attack.
Countless threads tightened at the same moment, like a noose made of countless tiny blades, strangling towards Jemin.
The cutting power of those mesh fibers is enough to shred steel into powder, and enough to tear ordinary monsters into pieces.
Jemin was wrapped in a thick web of blood, the threads of which embedded themselves in his clothes, making a harsh metallic scraping sound.
But Jemin seemed completely unaffected.
He glanced down at the web wrapped around his right hand, casually tugged at it, and easily broke the web like ordinary spider silk.
"Has it reached its limit? —"
Jemin looked up at the blood net that was gathering around the hall.
"Since we're in another dimension—" Jemin's voice wasn't loud, but every word was as clear as if it were engraved on glass, "then I can exert a little more force."
He clenched his right fist with all five fingers together, just like an ordinary person would.
Then, take a step forward.
The surrounding blood net tried to stop his movements, but it couldn't.
The moment the ball of the foot landed, the gray ground exploded.
Centered on his landing point, the entire ground rippled outwards like the surface of water, creating wave-like cracks.
The cracks spread in all directions at an alarming speed, tearing the entire hall floor into countless fragments.
Consider this a farewell gift for you.
Jemin threw a punch at the professor, who had already scattered into a web of blood.
The movements were unremarkable.
It looks like an ordinary person clenching their fist and swinging it at the air directly above them.
Then, the blood web disappeared.
Under Jemin's abnormally exaggerated power, the blood net that filled the sky was like a piece of paper that had been set on fire, spreading outward from the center and being completely "annihilated" in less than a moment.
The fine red threads that make up the blood network lose all structure and properties the moment the fist force passes through, turning into the most basic energy particles.
Then those energy particles were crushed into more basic existences by the force of the punch, and in the end nothing was left.
The existence of the "blood web" was completely erased by this punch.
But after easily destroying the Blood Web, the power of Jemin's punch was not consumed.
At this moment, the dissipating power triggered a massive shockwave visible to the naked eye.
A tsunami-like shockwave swept through the hall, through the steps and rooms that were suspended in mid-air.
Ultimately, this force, with its absolute power, easily broke through the boundary of the alternate dimension strangely created by the "staircase".
Then, it crashed into the bottom of the Fog City Mental Hospital.
boom!!!
The building's foundation shattered like a biscuit under the impact of the shockwave; the reinforced concrete structure offered no resistance to the force of the punch.
The entire building collapsed from the bottom upwards, and the whole building was lifted into the air.
Broken glass, broken bricks, twisted steel bars, and cracked cement slabs—everything was swept into the sky by the shockwave and gradually twisted into fragments under its force.
The shockwave burst out of the ground, out of the foggy city, and flew straight towards the sky itself.
As the altitude increases, the power also spreads rapidly.
The thick, dark clouds that had perpetually shrouded the city, almost obscuring the sun, were torn apart like a thin sheet of paper by the shockwave.
A huge circular hole appeared in the center of the cloud, its edges as smooth as if drawn with a compass.
Behind the emptiness lies a clear blue sky.
That blue was something the people of Chongqing had never seen before; it was a pure, gem-like blue.
The remaining shockwaves transformed into a gale, sweeping outwards from the center of the void in all directions.
It blew across the harbor, and the thick fog in the harbor was as if it had been pushed aside by a giant hand; it blew across the old town, and the cobblestone streets that were damp all year round became dry in the gale; it blew across the factory area, and the black smoke billowing from the chimneys was instantly blown away.
The thick fog that filled the entire city was blown away by the aftershocks of that punch.
At that moment, the sky over the "Fog City" became clear.
The president of the Psychic Association was swept out of the ground by the shockwave.
He stood on the edge of the mental hospital ruins, covered by a thin layer of storm barrier that shielded him from the falling debris and dust.
His eyes were wide open, reflecting the huge circular cloud hole and the azure blue he had never seen before behind it.
The male and female support personnel sent from headquarters leaped off the ground behind him.
The female support staff member's mouth was open, but she couldn't speak.
The male supporter clenched his fist and then loosened it, then loosened it and clenched it again.
Not far away, Harding and Dirk ran over from outside the cordon, their steps stumbling among the rubble.
Harding was pale, and Dirk's lips were trembling.
They looked at the sky, at the enormous void, at the thick fog that had been blown away, and couldn't utter a single word.
The crowd that was being evacuated around the mental hospital also stopped in their tracks.
A nurse was holding a child, standing by the roadside, looking up at the sky.
The blue light was reflected in her eyes, and tears silently streamed down her cheeks.
Even the nurse herself wasn't sure whether her tears were from fear or something else.
The child stretched out his hand in her arms, pointed to the sky, and made indistinct babbling sounds.
At the factory workshop entrance, Eric heard his coworkers scream and ran out.
He stood in the open space outside the door, shielding his eyes and looking up at the sky.
Then, he froze.
The sky over the foggy city has turned blue.
In his twenty-six years of life, he had never seen such a sky.
It was a color he had seen in picture books, imagined in his dreams, but had never seen in reality.
A gust of wind blew by, making his hair a mess.
He didn't flinch; he just stood there in the wind, head tilted back, mouth agape, like a blade of grass bent by the wind.
After the thick fog was blown away, the visibility was exceptionally clear, and everyone present could see the figure.
It was a vague, indistinct outline, like a mark someone had made by rubbing an eraser in the air.
It stood in the center of the mental hospital ruins, directly beneath that enormous void.
Surrounded by collapsed buildings and flying dust, it stood there, its presence enough to attract everyone's attention.
No one could see what it looked like.
The Tai Xu Step blurred Jemin's appearance into an unfocusable shadow.
But the fact that he exists is clear.
Everyone saw him, and everyone instinctively knew: it was he who threw that punch.
The president unconsciously took a step forward.
Jemin turned his head, his gaze piercing through the ruins and dust, landing on the chairman.
The president stopped in his tracks, the question he wanted to ask stuck in his throat.
Jemin's figure became completely transparent in that instant.
He activated the Tai Xu Step at full power, and his existence completely disappeared from all perception, like a drop of water merging into the ocean, leaving only the bewildered and terrified crowd present.
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