The middle-aged man whose face was riddled with scars and ulcers slowly turned around. He met the eyes of an Asian man that had appeared out of nowhere.
The Asian man did not speak to him but went straight to the bookshelf next to him instead and began browsing the collection of books.
Shortly after, he picked out a book titled Chronicles of the Empire.
The middle-aged man was unsettled by this. He glanced at the window that was somehow opened without his knowledge, then at the intruder by the bookshelf. He slowly rose from his seat. A part of him wanted to scream to alert the guards but the rational part of him told him that doing so would only result in himself getting killed instantly.
What followed after was a suffocating silence.
The atmosphere in the room continued to thicken to a point where the middle-aged man was having a hard time breathing at all. His body continued to shake, sending quaking beads of sweat tapping against the floor. It did not take long before his clothes were drenched entirely in sweat.
“Knock, knock, knock…”
Suddenly, they heard knocks coming from the door. The middle-aged man was delighted to hear this sudden intervention. He did not speak but only continued staring at the mysterious man who had his back turned toward himself. The door opened with a gentle creak.
It was the butler.
“Master, somebody sent word…”
The butler was an elderly man with a patch of white beard. He saw the stranger standing by the bookshelf, then he turned to his master who looked back at him with evident fright written in his eyes.
“Ah, I see that you’re attending to your guest.”
The butler seemed to have realized something, but he responded quickly and did not let on his suspicions. With that, he slowly retreated from the study while informing, “I’m very sorry for the intrusion…”
Before he even left the room, he suddenly felt a sting at the back of his neck which was followed by a warm, pulsing sensation.
Startled by this sudden unfamiliar sensation, he lifted his hand and touched the back of his neck. It was hot and wet.
“Thump!”
As soon as he reached for the back of his neck, his head started to slide off his severed neck. His body seemed to have caught on to what happened and thumped onto the ground without any warning.
The door to the study closed with a gentle click as if blown by an unknown source of wind.
“Glug…”
Upon witnessing the horror of what happened, the middle-aged man took a large gulp.
“Sigh…”
The Asian man suddenly sighed and slowly turned around. His eyes were unfathomably dark. “So, you’re the master of the city Laman, Niuceus Laman?”
The middle-aged man nodded and put on his most polite smile. “My Lord, may I know what brings you here today? If memory serves me correctly, I don’t believe I’ve ever offended any advanced-level psionicist.”
The intruder was not as keen at entertaining as Laman was. “Of course, you didn’t offend me but there’s something that I want you to do for me.”
“Yes my Lord, what is it, if I may ask?”
Niuceus tiptoed around this man as he spoke. He was a third-generation Duke and was nowhere near as unbending and ruthless as the founders of his family. The years of pampered life as a noble had long since weakened his will. The only thing that mattered to him now was to make it out of this alive.
“I’ll need to use your identity to collect all sorts of information of this era that may prove useful to me.”
The Asian man rattled his fist against the bookshelf with a playful grin. “I want to know everything there is to know about the Divine Fusion Empire, Divisine Fusion Vatican, the Joint Resistance Army, and your God – Alosorthoth!”
Niuceus was appalled by the sheer mention of this and seemed to have realized something. He took a closer look at the Asian man and saw that he was an incredibly young man.
Chen Chen’s depthless eyes always had a knack for deceiving others and gave off an impression that he was older than his actual age…
Furthermore, Niuceus felt a strange sense of familiarity. The longer he looked at Chen Chen, he felt like he should know who this person was.
“Seems to me that you noticed something?”
Chen Chen asked when he saw the awestruck expression Niuceus put on.
“You…”
Niuceus opened his mouth and tried to say something but ultimately decided against it, he shook his head and uttered, “No, I must’ve been mistaken. My Lord, your will is my command! As long as you’d spare my life!”
“Of course, I make sure that all who serve me are well rewarded.”
Chen Chen suddenly smiled ominously. A trace of Field spread from his mind as he did so and pried into Niuceus’ head. Niuceus suddenly felt a bulging sensation inside his mind. He sensed the presence of something cold and foreign prying deep inside!
“Ah!”
Niuceus was immediately assaulted by an indescribable pain and he held his arms to his head to try to muffle this pain and wring it out of his head. He screamed agonizingly but no matter how loud he screamed, the guards posted outside would not come to investigate. It was as if they were dead.
However, this pain only lasted a brief moment. Just as Niuceus thought he could not hold on much longer and was about to die, the pain suddenly subsided. For someone like Niuceus who had been pampered all his life, this amount of pain was more than enough to leave a lasting impression on him.
After the pain had left him, he found himself sprawled lifelessly against the floor. His attire was a horrible mess and he was gasping heavily.
“Hm?”
Chen Chen looked at Niuceus with morbid curiosity and muttered, “So, you managed to survive, I suppose this is one of the uses of psionic power…”
Niuceus, whose head was still throbbing in pain, could barely process what Chen Chen said. It took him a while before he managed to recollect his focus and could sit up straight again. Another strange thing that he noticed after the matter was that there was now a strange and cold foreign presence inside his mind.
Niuceus could not tell what this foreign presence was, but it declared itself with an icy presence that somehow made him feel relaxed like he was sitting atop clouds.
“You can get up now.”
Chen Chen went to where Niuceus had previously sat and made himself comfortable on the seat as its new owner. “Judging by the scars on your face, you’ve been trying to attain psionic powers for a while. I’ve granted your desires and planted a seed in your mind.
“From here on, this seed will become a gateway. If you regularly spend time meditating and focus your mind on the seed, you’ll attain psionic power eventually.”
“What?”
Niuceus was shocked by the sudden proposition. His worn-out body trembled all over again. “I received psionic powers? Impossible…”
“Feel free to give it a try.”
Chen Chen smirked and took a spoon on the table and flung it at Niuceus. Niuceus instinctively held up his arms to try to block it but before his body reacted, a strange power suddenly emitted from within his mind and surged outward from the region at the center of his forehead!
“Clank!”
The spoon was knocked away by an invisible force and clattered against the ground.
Niuceus was once again baffled by what he experienced. He looked at his hands like he saw a ghost, then he slowly turned to Chen Chen again.
At this moment, he was overwhelmed by what was happening. It felt like everything he knew of the world to this point had been flipped completely upside down.
According to the scriptures, the Divine Fusion Scripture, it was only God Almighty, Alosorthoth that was able to grant psionic powers to his people.
“This is only the appetizer.”
Chen Chen lowered his head. The shade in the room hid the look in his eyes. “Alosorthoth won’t know of this since it’s only a small token of psionic power. If your work pleases me, I’ll reward you with more.
“Carry out your assigned task. Next time when we meet again, I hope you’ll provide me with answers that may satisfy me.”
Chen Chen’s final statement resounded in the room continuously and by the time Niuceus came back to his senses, he realized that Chen Chen had disappeared without a trace.
“How, how’s that possible…”
Niuceus stood with his mouth agape. He suddenly recalled something and rummaged through his bookshelf like a madman in search of a particular book. After some effort, he managed to find a book titled The Legendary Tales of the Divine Fusion Empire. He frantically flipped through the pages until he arrived at a certain portrait.
Inside the portrait, two magnificent figures were battling each other on the skies above. One of them was the God of the Divine Fusion Vatican, Alosorthoth, while the one facing off against Alosorthoth was a man.
The man’s appearance was a blur but it could be made out that he had a strange short hairstyle. His facial structure and temperament greatly resembled the mysterious man Niuceus just saw…
There was a tiny passage underneath the portrait that labeled it as “the battle between God and Devil”.
Niuceus’ hands would not stop trembling. He felt as if his body had been electrocuted. That man, that man was…
…
Chen Chen left the city of Laman.
While soaring across the skies, he recalled the events that happened earlier.
It just suddenly came to him that he should plant a seed inside Niuceus, one may call it a whimsical idea or an experiment.
Ever since the Field inside his mind had fused with the psionic power he had acquired from devouring the Consciousness Stealer, he had been thinking about how he could utilize the psionic power.
Based on what he knew so far, a part of these psionic powers overlapped with Field. For instance, both powers granted abilities similar to telekinesis, but there seemed to be another facet to these psionic powers.
Which was why he decided to inject a tiny trace of psionic power into Niuceus to see what would happen.
Just as he expected, Niuceus was not killed by this injection. The moment he planted the seed, he had a faint sensation that Niuceus’ life had become his appendage.
Chen Chen held Niuceus’ life in his hands and could wish his death upon him at any time.
With that said, the psionic power obtained by these common people and the psionic power Chen Chen obtained directly from the Consciousness Stealer were different matters entirely. The psionic power granted to them by the Consciousness Stealer was a simplified version of these powers but the one Chen Chen possessed was authentic.
“This means that the Consciousness Stealer’s ability to consume human consciousness and trigger the fusion death phenomenon we observed should stem from these psionic powers as well…”
Chen Chen ruminated on the fact. If his deduction was correct, then he should be able to achieve the same effect as well. If something were to happen to him that caused his body to perish, he should be able to resurrect on a conscience level by using Laman as a vessel.
Of course, only using Laman himself was not going to suffice. He would need tens of thousands or even more vessels to accumulate enough power for himself to be resurrected.
Chen Chen was intrigued by the prospect of such powers.
Although these psionic powers could not compare to Field in terms of raw strength, the advantage of granting himself the ability to resurrect made it an exemplar ability.
Chen Chen continued heading toward his destination with this in mind and this time, he was heading toward the west. He was curious to see what the Eco Science City and the Spire Experimental Base would look like in this alternate dimension.
Furthermore, while Chen Chen was relaying his instructions to Laman, a bold idea suddenly occurred to him. He wondered, what would happen if he managed to bring the other half of himself to this world as well?
The Consciousness Stealer in this world had so much time to let its strength fester that Chen Chen was not confident in his chances against it. In this case, he could borrow the strength from the other world to combat it.
This world was a lost cause and its surviving civilization was nowhere better, but there were still enough assets here to strive for…
The task of traversing from one dimension to another would be considered nigh impossible for most people, but this was because they were not Chen Chen.
The reasoning for this was simple. It was because Chen Chen had a logic-defying tool in the USB drive.
With this in mind, Chen Chen continued accelerating, doubling, tripling, even quadrupling the speed of sound itself!
Chen Chen maintained his speed at three times the speed of sound. Although he could go faster than this, the Field consumption from this point on would soar to a point that it would be counterproductive to do so. This was due to the difference in atmospheric concentration between Earth and Mars whereas it was a lot more difficult to accelerate on Earth.
Even so, it would only take an hour and a half for Chen Chen to travel from Niger to Namibia. The two regions were separated by a 4650 kilometers stretch and if Chen Chen went another approximately 500 kilometers further, he would arrive at the Eco Science City.
Chen Chen spent the next hour and a half flying across many regions, disregarding whatever was unimportant to him at the moment. In usual circumstances, it would take someone several months to travel such a great distance.
Across the horizon, the endless stretch of ocean was beginning to come into view. Even the air itself began to dampen.
Chen Chen could smell the salt of the sea even at great altitudes.
When Chen Chen finally arrived at his destination, the look on his face was not a pleasant one.
There was nothing but collapsed ruins where the Eco Science City once was. Piles on top of piles of rubbles and wreckage were lined up along the coast. Most of the foundation of the buildings along the coast had given away to the beating of the waves over the years. Meanwhile, most of the metallic materials had been salvaged.
The Eco Science City had been abandoned for several centuries at this point.
Despite the desolate outlook of the city, Chen Chen did not give up and continued searching for the underground entrances to the Spire Experimental Base. After sweeping through the area, he managed to find several such entrances. However, most of these entrances had caved in as well, completely burying the tram and its platform underneath.
Left without a choice, Chen Chen went for the ocean and dove in.
Using Field, he created a three-meter-wide bubble around himself to allow himself to breathe. After that, he dove for the bottom of the ocean and soon found the entrance that was now hidden underneath a large coral reef population.
Chen Chen paved through the coral reef without hesitation and soon discovered that even the tunnel leading to the Spire Experimental Base was now overflowing with water.
Chen Chen had a bad feeling about this but pressed forward nonetheless. After passing through three large gates that were all left open and arriving at the end of the tunnel, there was a gigantic collection of boulders blocking his path.
With that, Chen Chen decided it was time to give up. It seemed like the Spire Experimental Base had collapsed entirely.
