25: Chapter 25 The Great General's Transformation!

Su Ming was stuck halfway through a hole in the floor, his lower body dangling in mid-air, while plaster debris from the ceiling below fell with a pattering sound.

The crumpled ball of paper rested quietly on his face.

He reached up to peel it off and stared at the single character on it for a full five seconds.

"Fast."

Mass Engine.

His brain went into a system crash for a full three seconds.

He had imagined countless outcomes.

If he had drawn [Mass Mastery], that would have been great.

1.5x kinetic energy, 30% true damage—he would go to the entrance of the Source Abyss tomorrow.

He would slap a Source Beast right on the forehead with a "heavy blow," and regardless of its defense, smash it to bits with a single punch.

S-rank Zhao Kuo wouldn't be worth a damn; he would perform a health bar disappearance trick on him right on the arena stage.

Drawing [Mass Concealment] would have been fine too.

He could disguise his one-ton weight as a hundred pounds, act as a harmless little sidekick following behind Shen Qingci, and at the critical moment, shatter the earth with a single stomp to play the hero saving the beauty—he had even thought up the script.

But it just had to be [Mass Engine].

A purely explosive dash skill.

It's not like he was going to participate in the 100-meter sprint at the Olympics!

Su Ming shoved that paper ball fiercely into a crack in the floor.

"Damn it, I shouldn't have believed in metaphysics!"

Annoyance aside, he gripped the edges of the floor crack with both hands, intending to pull himself out.

He exerted force suddenly...

"Crack."

The crack widened by another two inches.

His whole body sank down a bit further.

Fine. Very good.

Su Ming froze there.

The old lady downstairs had already started her first round of cursing.

It took him a full three minutes to drag himself out of the floor gap like pulling up a radish.

In the process, he shattered two more floorboards, and the old lady downstairs cursed for three rounds, but he treated it all like wind past his ears.

"Pop..."

Finally, he pulled himself and his pants out.

He looked down at the remains of the paper ball in the crack with the word "Fast" written on it, and fell silent for two seconds.

Forget it.

With a balance of 2277.2 mass points, he only had enough to buy one; the poor had no chance for a second draw.

While he complained with his mouth, his brain was already whirring.

Mass Engine: "Start at the peak, reach full speed instantly."

Let's look at it from the other side. F equals ma.

One ton of mass, max acceleration, the impact force of that first step...

Su Ming was stunned.

One ton today, and rushing out is like a cannonball.

What about ten tons? A hundred tons?

The greater the mass, the fiercer the engine.

This isn't a tractor fitted with a rocket thruster; this is installing an ejector on a constantly expanding meteorite.

The ejector itself hasn't changed, but the meteorite is getting bigger and bigger, and the energy is becoming more and more terrifying.

Su Ming clenched his fists, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.

"Fine."

Although it's not the optimal solution, it's not a loss either.

What was it called... I am a bullet, just with a slightly smaller caliber for now.

He opened the system shop, his gaze locked firmly onto the [Mass Engine] icon.

The feeling wasn't like redeeming a divine skill, but rather like signing a contract of indenture.

A painful sacrifice.

He pressed redeem.

[Ding! Do you wish to consume 2000 mass points to redeem Sequence · Mass Engine?]

"Yes."

The numbers on the panel plummeted instantly. 2277.2 → 277.2.

Two thousand points, gone.

Su Ming's heart gave a sharp tug.

Two thousand mass points, one point is one kilogram, that's a full two tons.

The hard-earned money saved from gnawing on iron in the Scrap Yard for two days, plus that eight-million-worth robot, all evaporated in one breath.

This feeling was even more stimulating than the old lady downstairs stabbing through the ceiling with a broom handle.

But the next second, a cold stream of information poured into his brain like a landslide or tsunami.

Not text, not images.

It was a complete set of force-generating paths, etched directly into his muscle memory.

Every muscle fiber completed extreme compression within a fraction of a second.

Every joint locked at a precise angle.

Power was conducted from the soles of his feet to his waist and hips, passed through his spine to his shoulders and back, and finally converged at the contact surface, the whole process taking no longer than a single breath.

It was not acceleration. It was detonation.

An internal combustion engine igniting—compression, combustion, power stroke, all done in one go.

The body is the cylinder, the mass is the fuel.

The heavier it is, the fiercer the explosion.

The annoyance in Su Ming's eyes faded away completely.

He clenched his fist and relaxed it, his entire body's muscles tightening and releasing involuntarily.

It felt as if an engine waiting on standby had been forcibly stuffed into his body; with just a single thought, the engine would ignite.

"It was worth it."

Two words squeezed out from between his teeth.

Poor as he was, the potential of this skill was much higher than he had imagined.

He pulled the glowing green tubular container from his pocket.

The red serial number of the Southern Military Region was printed on the tube body.

Military-grade high-tier life nutrient solution.

The one Shen Hongyuan gave him.

He had intended to save it for an emergency, but having just promoted to Bronze-rank, his foundation was not yet stable, and his cells hadn't fully adapted to the new density level.

He was entering the Source Abyss the day after tomorrow; there was no time to grind slowly.

He pulled the stopper and gulped it down.

The moment it hit his throat, he knew he had underestimated this thing.

It wasn't nutrient solution; it was magma.

A scalding hot current exploded from his esophagus and spread along his blood vessels to his limbs.

His bones were creaking, his joints were popping, and even his teeth were chattering.

Su Ming arched his body like a shrimp, the veins on his forehead bulging one by one, twisting like little snakes under his skin.

His bone marrow was boiling.

Wisps of viscous impurities, blacker than ink, were forcibly squeezed out from deep within his bones and instantly incinerated by the violent medicinal power.

Cells shattered, then were wrapped and reorganized by even purer energy.

A grayish-black viscous liquid seeped out from the surface of his skin.

Metabolic waste accumulated over eighteen years of a carbon-based mortal body was forcibly stripped away by the medicinal power.

The whole process lasted for nearly ten minutes.

Su Ming lay on the ground, his whole body covered in grayish-black filth, looking as if he had just crawled out of a sewer.

He gritted his teeth tightly, refusing to make a sound.

The pain slowly receded.

He stood up slowly.

Still one ton.

But before, he was walking while carrying one ton; now, he was walking while driving one ton.

The difference was like going from crossing mountains and ridges while carrying an anvil to sitting in a cockpit.

Su Ming walked to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and the cold water washed away that layer of disgusting grayish-black filth.

He raised his head and looked into the mirror.

The broken, crack-filled mirror above the sink.

He felt like a stranger for a second.

His skin had changed.

The face that was originally pale from long-term malnutrition and carried a natural "tragedy filter" now possessed an even, healthy complexion—not too deep, not too light, resilient, and lustrous.

His jawline was sharper.

His features hadn't changed, but his aura had completely transformed; previously, he was an artifact displayed on a shelf for people to appreciate, but now he was a sharpened blade.

His eyes had changed too.

That cold detachment before had been performed; it had to be maintained and managed.

Now, that coldness grew from within.

Deep, bright, and carrying a certain hard-to-describe sharpness, as if he had seen through everything but was too lazy to point it out.

Su Ming was silent for three seconds in front of the mirror.

"Holy shit."

Turn left thirty degrees. Handsome.

Turn right thirty degrees. Still handsome.

Tilt head up forty-five degrees...

"No, this angle is cheating."

For the first time, he felt a sense of crisis regarding his appearance.

It wasn't that he wasn't handsome enough; it was that he was too handsome.

The kind of handsome where people would secretly take photos of him while walking down the street.

The previous "cold scholar" persona was a good-looking but pale face.

Now?

The first reaction would probably become "This guy is so handsome I want to commit a crime."

Su Ming turned off the faucet and clenched his fist.

Under his feet, there was no movement.

The floor was intact.

He could clearly perceive the precise position of every muscle and every bone.

It was like regaining control of a precision instrument—this instrument weighed one ton, but he could handle it.

Walking would still leave marks on the floor.

But at least he wouldn't step and create a hole anymore. Probably.

Su Ming walked out of the bathroom and glanced at the devastated low-rent apartment.

The floor was cracked, the bed was gone, and a piece of plaster was still hanging precariously in the corner of the ceiling.

The whole room looked like it had been visited by a demolition crew.

He spread his mattress at the bathroom door and sat down cross-legged.

277.2 points in assets.

Adding the massive consumption in the heavy object zone tomorrow, plus the daily 1% compound interest continuing to take effect, when he set off for the Source Abyss the day after tomorrow, how much would his True Mass reach...

Su Ming did a rough calculation in his heart, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

Enough. Enough to serve as a qualified shield for Shen Qingci.

He lay down on the floor, and the floorboards under the mattress let out a terrifying creak.

His whole body froze instantly, reducing his range of motion to a minimum, maintaining an extremely awkward posture without moving.

He was afraid that if he moved a little more, the old lady downstairs would be able to crawl up through the hole in the ceiling in her pajamas to settle the score with him.

Just staying stiff like that, he gradually fell asleep.

...5:17 AM, the sky was just beginning to brighten.

The alarm hadn't rung, but Su Ming had already opened his eyes.

Tier 2 Bronze, fully recovered in three hours.

He got up, put on the only jacket that hadn't been torn to shreds, and pushed open the door.

The cold wind of early morning poured in, carrying the unique grassy scent and dewy dampness of the outskirts of Jiangcheng.

Su Ming strode toward the wasteland outside the city.

A footprint cracked open on the concrete steps under his feet.

The troubles of the strong are often just this unpretentious.

Before, he was afraid of being stepped on by others; now, he was afraid of accidentally stepping away the road under someone else's feet.

What a sin...