26: Chapter 26 Where are my brakes? A human cannon out of control!

The mere three-kilometer journey from the cheap rental housing on the outskirts of the city to the true no-man's-land felt to Su Ming like the Long March.

Every step required him to first test the ground with his toes before slowly pressing down with his one-ton weight.

He was terrified of leaving some supernatural footprint on the municipal road and ending up as the headline news in Jiangcheng the next day.

It wasn't until the last building in his line of sight disappeared over the horizon, and the concrete road beneath his feet turned into a bumpy dirt path, that Su Ming finally let out a long sigh of relief.

The place he chose was a long-abandoned quarry outside of Jiangcheng.

Within a radius of several kilometers, not even a ghost could be seen, and the ground was covered entirely in massive rock layers left over from past mining operations—incredibly hard.

It perfectly met the requirements for his upcoming test.

Su Ming found a relatively flat patch of open ground to stand on, summoned his system panel, and felt the unprecedented power surging within him.

His one ton of True Mass put his muscles and bones in a state of high-pressure tension.

It was like a cylinder packed to the brim with high-octane fuel.

And the [Mass Engine] he had exchanged for yesterday was the igniter.

Right now, he was a human cannonball ready to lose control at any moment.

Su Ming cracked his neck, his gaze passing over the pile of rubble dozens of meters away, finally locking onto a spot about one kilometer directly in front of him.

A solitary, massive granite rock stood there, as tall as a five-story building.

It stood there, dusty and gray, like someone had erected half a city wall.

"You're the one."

Just as he was preparing to get a feel for things, in several shadows at the edge of the quarry, a few pairs of eyes glowing with an eerie green light lit up.

Foul-smelling drool dripped down from sharp fangs. They were a few Tier 1 mutated wild dogs that had taken up residence here.

They had caught the scent of a living human and were silently flanking him from three directions, treating this seemingly thin and delicious-looking youth as breakfast delivered to their doorstep.

At this moment, all of Su Ming's focus was concentrated on the muscles in his thighs.

It was a very strange sensation; he could clearly "see" how every single muscle fiber was arranged and how it contracted.

No running start was needed, no charging up was required. Just a single thought.

"Ignite."

There was no earth-shattering roar, only a casual, silent thought.

"Boom—!"

The hard rock layer beneath Su Ming's feet didn't offer even a hint of cushioning; it collapsed downward by half a meter instantly!

A perfect circular crater appeared out of thin air, and shattered rocks of all sizes shot outward in a ring, their speed comparable to bullets!

Those few mutated wild dogs that had just bared their fangs and were preparing to pounce didn't even have time to let out a yelp before they were battered to a pulp by this sudden barrage of flying rocks.

Whimpering, they collapsed to the ground, trembling uncontrollably, completely terrified out of their wits.

This wasn't even the end. The start was the peak.

Su Ming's figure suddenly vanished from where he stood, and a visible, pale-white sonic boom cloud exploded in his place!

A terrifying shockwave swept out from him as the center, tossing those few unlucky wild dogs lying on the ground dozens of meters away like worn-out sacks.

Within 0.01 seconds of rushing out, Su Ming's vision became completely blurred.

The entire world before him was stretched into long, rapidly flowing streaks of color. He couldn't distinguish sky from ground at all.

"Holy crap, this speed... it's given me kaleidoscope eyes!?"

His mind was a blank slate, with only one thought frantically flashing across it: Too fast!

It was so fast that his neural reaction speed was left completely in the dust. He couldn't process the torrent of information brought about by this terrifying acceleration at all.

The shrill sound of the sonic boom finally arrived late, exploding back and forth over the quarry, causing gravel to tumble down.

The air was subjected to high-speed friction by his one-ton body, emitting a pungent, burnt smell.

He couldn't even feel his own limbs; he was like a human being stuffed into a cannon barrel and fired off. A humanoid, dark, solid cannonball.

The target: straight ahead, one kilometer away, that five-story-high giant granite rock!

"Stop! Stop! How do I stop!"

Su Ming screamed frantically in his heart, but his body wouldn't listen to him at all. Holy crap! This damn [Mass Engine]! It didn't come with any brakes at all!?

In the less than a second that his brain had stalled, the massive object had rapidly magnified in his field of vision. It was over. He was going to hit it.

The next second. "Boom—!!!"

A thunderous roar exploded over the quarry, with echoes rolling out, one layered over the other.

That giant granite rock, which could withstand a compressive strength of a hundred tons, was absurdly brittle in front of Su Ming. Without the slightest hesitation, he punched straight through it.

Su Ming slammed right into the lower-middle part of the giant rock and burst out from the other side, leaving behind a circular hole with a diameter of about two meters and edges as smooth as a mirror.

The terrifying kinetic energy still hadn't been exhausted; he was like a bullet still flying after piercing a target. He plunged headlong into the pile of rubble behind it, plowing a terrifying trench nearly a hundred meters long and several meters deep, before finally exhausting all his inertia amidst the flying sand and stone, barely coming to a stop.

The entire quarry was deathly silent. Only the edges of the punctured granite hole, due to the instantaneous high temperature and pressure, appeared in a glazed, scorched-red state, wisps of blue smoke rising from it.

A few seconds later, a hand trembling shakily reached out from the pile of rubble.

Su Ming crawled out, covered in dust, sat down on the ground, and gasped for air.

The cheap jacket he had been wearing had turned to ash from the high-speed friction, with only a few strips of fabric still hanging on him.

He looked up at the "tunnel" in the distance that he had punched through, then looked down at his own unscathed body. A chill ran down the back of his neck.

"This is just absurdly insane..."

The destructive power is enough! It's just ridiculously strong!

But the problem is equally fatal. Once "ignited," he becomes a cannonball that can only travel in a straight line.

He cannot change direction midway, cannot dodge, and cannot even see clearly.

If he were fighting someone, the enemy would only need to move half a meter away from his path of charge, and he would instantly become a sitting duck, slamming headfirst into a wall and dying.

"This skill... has some pretty big flaws." Su Ming frowned and fell into deep thought.

And at the other end of the quarry, unnoticed by him, those few mutated wild dogs that had luckily escaped were dragging their half-crippled bodies, tails tucked between their legs, and fleeing in all directions with looks as if they had seen a ghost...