103: Chapter 103 The Model's Last Stand

A wave of scorching air exploded from the point of impact, sending Luo Xi and Wang Laowu, who were closest, flying back several meters.

The Mannequin let out a shrill, miserable scream.

It wasn't the low growl from before, but a true scream, sharp enough to tear a person's eardrums.

Its body trembled violently in the red light, and the skin on its chest cracked open.

Blinding light shone through the cracks, as if something were about to explode from within.

The red light lasted for a full two seconds.

After two seconds, the light dissipated.

The Mannequin on the left was still standing.

But it was no longer in human form.

The skin on its chest had shattered completely, revealing a grayish-white skeleton inside.

The skeleton was not human bone, but a twisted, pieced-together thing whose original shape was impossible to discern.

Its left arm was broken in half, and only two fingers remained on its right arm.

Its head was split in two, hanging from its neck, with black smoke still rising from the split.

It was swaying, but it hadn't fallen.

Zhou Che propped himself up with his scepter, kneeling on one knee, gasping for air.

His face was as pale as paper, his forehead covered in cold sweat, and his lips were split in several places, seeping blood.

That last shot had drained all the transcendent power from his body; he didn't even have the strength to stand up now.

"Mr. Zhou!"

Captain Liu Ruyan wanted to go over to help him, but before she could turn around, the half-crippled Mannequin suddenly raised its head.

On the half of its face that remained, a dark red light lit up within the cracks.

It wasn't the cold light from before, but a kind of crazy, desperate, suicidal light.

"It's going for a suicidal attack!" Wang Zhiming roared.

The Mannequin let out a roar so hoarse it reached the limit, its body expanding rapidly, and the light in the cracks grew brighter and brighter.

It was going to self-destruct, or rather, it was going to detonate all the power in the field and take everyone present down with it.

Luo Xi scrambled up from the ground and blocked the way in front of Zhou Che.

Wang Laowu also got up, his machete held horizontally across his chest.

Captain Liu Ruyan's long whip pulled taut, the tip pointed at the Mannequin.

Ruan Xiaoxiao's slingshot was pulled to its maximum, her hands shaking, but her eyes were locked firmly on the target.

They all knew that they likely wouldn't be able to block this attack.

But no one retreated.

Zhou Che looked at the few people blocking the way in front of him.

His lips moved; he wanted to call them idiots and tell them to get lost, but he couldn't squeeze a sound out of his throat.

He didn't have the strength to curse anymore.

He reached out and pulled the book of rules from his embrace.

He kept this book close to his body at all times; he hadn't parted with it since the day he got it.

The cover was dark brown, with no words on it, only a shallow indentation that looked like a palm print.

He didn't take it out often, as every use came with a price; the last time he wrote "Breath Concealment", he dropped two levels in the Pugilist Sequence.

But this time was different.

He flipped open the pages and pressed his finger onto a blank page.

"Shield."

The two words were spat out from Zhou Che's mouth, the sound not loud, raspy like sandpaper grinding against stone.

Where his finger traced, ink appeared on its own. The strokes were coarse and rough, as if carved into bone with a knife.

The moment he finished writing, the entire book vibrated.

An indescribable power surged out from the pages, spreading outwards with Zhou Che as the center.

A translucent barrier appeared out of thin air before everyone.

The barrier was not smooth; dark gold patterns flowed across its surface.

They looked like some kind of ancient script, or perhaps the veins of blood vessels, slowly pulsing in the air.

Just as the barrier formed, the Mannequin's final attack arrived.

A wave of energy, black to the extreme, exploded from the Mannequin's shattered body.

Everywhere it passed, display stands turned to dust, and the tiles on the walls peeled off one by one.

The floor tiles were ripped up, shattering into powder in mid-air.

Then, this energy wave crashed into the Shield.

"Boom!"

The sound of the impact was so loud that the entire Hongfan Plaza shook.

The clothing store's glass windows shattered simultaneously, fragments flying outward like raindrops.

Ripples exploded across the surface of the Shield, the dark gold patterns flashing rapidly.

Zhou Che felt a part of his body being hollowed out.

Not just his transcendent power, but the Sequence itself.

He could clearly feel that there was a Sequence within his body.

It was being extracted and peeled away, bit by bit, by this book of rules.

The feeling wasn't exactly painful, but it was worse than pain.

It felt like someone had reached into the cracks of his bones and was squeezing the marrow out, bit by bit.

The Qi Controller Sequence, its level was dropping.

Sequence 3.

Sequence 2.

Sequence 1.

Zhou Che gritted his teeth, holding on stubbornly.

The book of rules tore at the Sequence within him, and he let it tear.

He didn't move; his finger remained pressed on the page, holding the Shield firmly in place.

The dark gold patterns flashed three times; after the last flash, the Mannequin's attack was exhausted.

The black light dissipated, the shockwave stopped, and the debris on the ground, once it landed, did not fly up again.

The Shield was still glowing with a faint layer of golden light.

Then it slowly faded, thinned out, and finally turned into a shower of light points, dissipating into the air.

The Mannequin opposite stood in place, maintaining that same posture, motionless.

Then, its body began to collapse.

Starting from its split head, it began to fall off piece by piece.

The falling fragments turned into black ash in mid-air before they even hit the ground.

First the head, then the shoulders, then the chest.

Finally, the entire humanoid outline shattered completely, piling up on the ground and turning into a mound of black ash.

The toad Mannequin on the right hadn't moved from start to finish.

Once the Mannequin on the left turned to ash, it collapsed too.

First, the small holes on its back sealed up completely.

Then its body shriveled rapidly, as if all the moisture had been drained away.

Finally, it sprawled on the ground, turning into a puddle of black sewage that seeped into the floor cracks.

Both Mannequins were dead.

The clothing store began to tremble.

The walls shook, the ceiling shook, and the space that had been stretched began to shrink back.

The distance of several tens of meters shrank back to its original state within seconds.

The glass door reappeared in its original position; it was covered in cracks, but it was still there.

"Is... is it over?" Wang Laowu sat down on the ground with a thud, his machete clattering to the side.

No one answered him.

Everyone was sprawled on the ground, completely drained, gasping for air.

Someone among the ordinary people began to cry, not wailing, but the uncontrollable sobbing of someone who had survived a disaster.

Zhou Che was still kneeling on the ground, clutching the book of rules tightly in his hand.

He looked down at it.

On the page, the two words "Shield" remained; the ink had dried, its color dark, like congealed blood.

Next to these two words was the "Breath Concealment" he had written earlier, the handwriting much faded, but still legible.

Both of these rules had been exchanged for his Sequence levels.

His heart ached terribly.

The Qi Controller Sequence dropped from three to one, which meant this Sequence was more than half ruined.

The Pugilist Sequence had dropped two levels during the Devourer of Calamity incident and hadn't been trained back yet.

Both Sequences were crippled; what had he exchanged them for? He'd exchanged them for a Shield, and for the lives of the group behind him.

"Damn it," Zhou Che cursed, his voice raspy beyond recognition.

"My life is really becoming less and less valuable."

He cursed like that, but his hands didn't put the book down; instead, he gripped it even tighter.

Just at this moment, a surge of power welled up from the place where the Mannequin had turned to ash.