129: Chapter 129 An Unexpected Ending

Lin Mo stood within the gravity field, looking up at that beam of light.

The radiance was too brilliant, as if someone had dragged the sun down with their bare hands and suspended it a thousand meters in the air, burning fiercely.

Before the beam of light even descended, the air had already begun to scorch, as if someone had set a fire on his skin.

The heat waves surging from the cracks in the ground collided with the heat from the sky, sweeping across the entire basin, stiflingly hot enough to make one unable to breathe, like a boiling pot.

He lowered his head, looked at the locator in his hand, and then at the heavily injured Chu Tianye behind him.

"Am I going to die?"

This thought rose from the bottom of his heart, bringing with it a bone-chilling coldness.

But Lin Mo did not give up.

He pulled the spatial beacon from his chest; this was his final trump card.

This thumb-sized jade tablet was covered in dense runes. As long as he activated it, he could teleport directly to the pre-set coordinates and instantly escape the danger.

However, Lin Mo's movements froze.

The spatial beacon could only guarantee his own teleportation; it could not carry others—it could not take Chu Tianye, it could not take Old Liu, and it could not take Zhang Feng and He Tie.

He looked up, watching the light drawing closer, then looked down at the locator.

Time seemed to freeze in this moment.

"What should I do?"

He asked himself in his heart, but could find no answer.

If he left, the others would undoubtedly die; if he did not leave, he would also die here.

Just within this abyss of despair, Lin Mo's hand touched something else.

The Causality Die.

It was an ancient wooden die, its surface covered in the marks of time.

The moment Lin Mo gripped it, an ancient power surged from the die, spreading along his arm throughout his entire body.

That was a power that transcended common sense and stood above the laws of physics—the power of rules.

Lin Mo closed his eyes, gambling his hope on this final trump card.

He threw the die into the air.

The die spun rapidly, finally falling to the ground and rolling to Lin Mo's feet.

Lin Mo lowered his head; the side facing up clearly displayed a 6.

In an instant, the world changed color.

A terrifying power descended from the sky, enveloping Lin Mo completely.

That power was violent and vast, crushing everything while simultaneously encompassing everything.

Lin Mo felt every inch of his muscles, every bone, and every drop of blood being reshaped, transformed, and strengthened by this power.

A roll of six could double all his attributes.

But even more terrifying was that a roll of six had another rule-based effect.

Absolute Immortality.

Lin Mo opened his eyes, a radiance burning in his pupils like never before.

He jerked his head up, staring fixedly at the beam of light descending from the sky, his expression somewhat manic.

He wanted to see. Could humanity's highest technological weapon truly kill someone protected by the power of rules?

Was technology stronger, or were rules stronger?

Time passed second by second, Lin Mo staring intently at the beam of light high in the sky, and finally, the corners of his mouth curled slightly upward.

"As expected, rules are stronger!"

The beam of light did not shoot toward him.

It began to deviate in mid-air, as if an invisible hand had gently nudged its trajectory.

That world-destroying beam of light had actually, at the critical moment, forcibly turned and plummeted toward the area behind the valley.

Lin Mo's heart skipped a beat.

Behind the valley was the very habitat of the million-strong beast tide!

"How could there be so many coincidences in the world!"

Therefore, this was not a miss; it was intentional.

His brain raced, and a thought rose from the bottom of his heart.

Someone was manipulating the Heavenly Pivot, forcibly changing its trajectory the moment before that light descended.

"Who is it?"

"Why?"

...

In the control center, Zhao Heng sat before the console.

The screen displayed real-time footage of the underground in Jiangcheng.

Five red dots represented the five locators; four were lit, and while the last one was missing, it was enough to pinpoint the approximate coordinates of Earth Roar.

The voice of his direct superior came through the communicator, cold and without a trace of emotion:

"Do not wait. The target is not Earth Roar anyway! Four coordinates are enough! Launch."

Zhao Heng did not move.

His finger hovered above the launch button, yet he hesitated to press it.

The beam of light on the screen was still gathering power, the ready-to-fire command like a knife hanging over his head, ready to fall at any moment.

In his mind, that face kept echoing: Lin Mo, nineteen years old, a Tier 3 who killed a Tier 5, the greatest genius of Great Xia.

His direct superior's words still echoed in his ears: "Press it, and your son can come back."

Indeed. As long as he pressed it, his son could return from the hands of those people.

As long as he pressed it, his family could be reunited.

As long as a few people were sacrificed, his family could be whole.

He placed his hand on the button.

Then, he thought of another face.

His son, three years old, stout and sturdy, his eyes curving like crescent moons when he laughed.

That was a scene from a long time ago.

When his son was small, he would sit on his shoulders, his chubby little finger pointing at the stars in the sky, saying in a milky voice: "Dad, when I grow up, I want to be a hero too."

Zhao Heng closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, something had shattered in the depths of his eyes, and something else had re-condensed.

"Child, Dad is sorry."

He closed his eyes, then opened them.

And then—

As his right hand pressed the button, his left hand quickly entered a string of codes.

...

Jiangcheng, Command Headquarters.

Wang Qiao stood before the window, looking at the gray, misty mountain forest in the distance.

The corners of his mouth slowly curled, outlining a cold, sinister arc. "It's done! The plan succeeded. So-called 'Great Xia's greatest genius,' so-called 'Tier 3 killing Tier 5'—in the face of absolute firepower, it's all a joke."

He turned around, the smile on his face not yet retracted, only to see everyone in the Command Headquarters staring at him.

Old Liu's roar came from the communicator: "What is the situation?! The positioning isn't finished yet, why has the Heavenly Pivot launched now?!"

"What about the three-minute evacuation time?!"

"Damn it! This is trying to blow us up too!"

Li Chengxi stared fixedly at Wang Qiao, his eyes red. "It was you... it was you, wasn't it?"

Wang Qiao shook his head and stepped back, the smile on his face finally unable to hold: "It wasn't... it wasn't me... I didn't do it..."

Before he could finish, an officer rushed up and smashed a fist hard into his face.

Wang Qiao fell to the ground, blood gushing from his nose and staining the floor. More people rushed up; fists, feet, chairs, tables—everything was smashed onto him.

No one pulled them off, no one tried to persuade them. The entire Command Headquarters was beating him.

...

Lin Mo stood at the edge of the crack, staring fixedly at that light.

It landed in the valley five kilometers away.

There was no sound. There was no vibration. There was only blindingly white light.

Lin Mo watched all of this, his pupils contracting violently, his heart feeling as if it were being tightly gripped by someone's hand.

The moment the beam of light descended, the air was directly ignited, the temperature instantly soaring to a degree humans could not imagine.

Thousands of degrees? Tens of thousands? He did not know.

He only knew that the valley had evaporated from the world in an instant, along with everything inside it.

A million vicious beasts. An overwhelming beast tide. Not even ash remained.

The smoke and dust kicked up by the shockwave rose hundreds of meters high, like a grayish-white mushroom cloud, slowly ascending and blotting out the sky.

That was the flower of death, the totem of destruction.

The earth was trembling, the vibrations traveling from kilometers away, causing loose stones to jump about and making Lin Mo almost unable to stand steady.

Heat waves rushed toward him, so hot that one could not open their eyes, so hot that his skin burned.

Lin Mo felt as if his eyebrows were burning.

In the distance, that valley no longer existed.

In its place was a massive crater, the rocks at the bottom of the pit fused into glass by the high temperature, like a giant mirror, reflecting blinding light under the sun.

A million vicious beasts had once coiled there. Now, only a crater with a diameter of several kilometers remained.