116: What are the unlocking conditions for Chapter 116, the level 2 map?!

The Ghost Fortress cruised at a low altitude through the streets of the abandoned city, heading toward the Central Plaza.

Jiang Yanxue was in the driver's seat, one hand resting on the control stick.

She turned her head and glanced at Chen Chen.

"That White Robe—Zhijin—do you think what it said was true?"

"Which part?"

"That a seed of the Lord of Flesh is buried under every region."

Chen Chen leaned back against the passenger seat.

"True or false, it doesn't matter." He flipped through the reactor icons in his storage ring.

"The Void Annihilation Matrix must be built before the second map opens."

This was his only S-grade weapon blueprint.

He had the reactor.

The key materials were basically all gathered.

All that was left now was the assembly.

Jiang Yanxue gave a hum of acknowledgement and didn't ask further.

Central Plaza.

The Ghost Fortress stopped in front of the Council Building.

Chen Chen pushed open the car door, his military boots stepping onto the concrete ground.

The void-rending ship-slaying blade hung at his waist, its purple patterns dark and unlit.

The four guards at the entrance saw him return and simultaneously stepped aside to make a path.

The scarred guard's Adam's apple bobbed. He wanted to ask something, but in the end, he just lowered his head and stood to the side.

Chen Chen pushed open the wooden door at the end of the hallway.

Yi Chang was coiled behind the office desk.

This time, her posture was different from this morning.

She had been sitting then, but now her entire snake tail was unfurled. Her three-meter-long silver-gray body was coiled two and a half times around the iron chair, and the tip of her tail rested on the desk, tapping incessantly.

She was waiting.

The moment her vertical pupils met Chen Chen's, they suddenly constricted.

"You're back." There was a layer of urgency in her airy voice that Chen Chen hadn't heard before.

"Alive."

"And the quasi-Tier 3 Centipede King?"

"Cleaved."

"The underground factory?"

"Cleared."

The tip of Yi Chang's snake tail tapped the desk three times in rapid succession.

"The sealed warehouse—"

Chen Chen took the silver-gray inheritance pebble from his storage ring and placed it on the desk.

The spiral patterns emitted a soft luster under the dim light, and a faint hum resonated from within the pebble.

Yi Chang's vertical pupils suddenly dilated.

Her silver-gray snake tail snapped up from the desk, and her entire upper body almost lunged over the table.

The moment her fingers touched the pebble's surface, the scales on her fingertips shimmered with a very faint golden light—some kind of bloodline resonance.

She clutched the pebble to her chest, the collar of her white shirt crumpling under the pressure.

Five seconds, ten seconds.

Yi Chang slowly raised her head.

In her ice-blue vertical pupils, that strange light that Chen Chen couldn't identify appeared once more.

"...Your intelligence."

Her airy voice became exceptionally soft, each word trailing off.

"The entry method for the second map is not teleportation."

Chen Chen raised an eyebrow.

"It's elimination." Yi Chang gently placed the pebble into a drawer and locked it.

"When the remaining survivors on the first Level 1 map drop below ten percent of the total population, the second map automatically opens. The method of opening is—the death black mist accelerates its contraction, swallowing all valid areas of the first map within forty-eight hours. After all survivors are swallowed by the black mist, they won't die, but will instead be forcibly teleported to a random spawn point on the second map."

"No choice in the matter?"

"None. To be swallowed is to enter."

Yi Chang's snake tail slowly coiled once behind the chair.

"But that's not the valuable piece of intelligence I mentioned."

Chen Chen waited.

"The truly valuable part is—"

Yi Chang leaned forward, silver-gray scales extending from her neck to her collarbone, faintly visible under her thin shirt.

"When the second map opens, a large number of original inhabitants already exist on the map. Not aberrations, not monsters spawned by the system. But—"

She raised a slender fingernail and tapped her own chest.

"Things like me. Otherkin."

"What's the scale of their numbers?"

Yi Chang's vertical pupils narrowed slightly.

"My intelligence sources are limited. But a conservative estimate—tens of thousands."

A sharp intake of breath from Shen Wanbing came through the communicator.

Tens of thousands of Otherkin inhabitants.

Plus the human survivors after the merger of multiple warzones.

Plus the Lord of Flesh's seed network spread across every region.

The second map—was an Asura Field.

Chen Chen stored this information in his mind and turned to walk out.

"Your name."

Yi Chang's voice chased after him from behind.

Chen Chen pushed open the wooden door.

"Chen Chen."

He left immediately after saying it.

The wooden door closed.

Inside the office, Yi Chang's snake tail tapped the floor rapidly over a dozen times, at a frequency faster than ever before.

She held the inheritance pebble from the drawer, her vertical pupils staring at the closed wooden door, her lips pursing and then relaxing.

—

By the time the Ghost Fortress rushed out of the abandoned city's east gate, the sky had turned completely dark.

Chen Chen sat in the driver's seat, pulling the engine power to seventy percent.

The direction of the Proprietress's tavern was a straight-line distance of thirty kilometers.

At the current speed, they would arrive in about ten minutes.

Shen Wanbing was organizing data in the passenger seat.

She compiled all the intelligence gathered today into a report, with the holographic projection spread across the panel.

"Let's summarize."

"Go ahead."

"One, the commissioned materials for the Proprietress are complete and can be delivered. Two, Yi Chang's inheritance pebble has been delivered, and we've obtained core intelligence on the second map. Three, the manufacturing materials for the S-grade weapon, the Void Annihilation Matrix, are basically complete—nuclear reactor, memory damping alloy, magic-conducting red copper, refined high-carbon steel... the only gap is the high-level industrial environment needed for assembly. We got the refinery today, but we still need a large enough assembly workshop."

She looked up.

"Four, the seed network intelligence provided by Zhijin needs cross-verification, but combined with Park Jae-hyun's warzone merger information and Yi Chang's Otherkin inhabitant intelligence—the threat level of the second map far exceeds the first."

Chen Chen nodded.

That was enough information.

The priority for the next move was clear—first, complete the delivery to get the tavern's intelligence, then find a place to assemble the Void Annihilation Matrix.

Before the black mist swallowed the entire region.

"There's one more thing."

Shen Wanbing's finger swiped across the panel, pulling up a communication record.

"Just now, while the underground signal was cut off, the regional public channel updated with a region-wide announcement."

She clicked play.

The system's scarlet font popped up on the holographic panel—

[Region-wide Announcement: death black mist Acceleration Warning]

[The current valid survival area diameter has been compressed to 380 kilometers. The daytime advancement speed of the black mist has increased from 10 kilometers per hour to 15 kilometers per hour. It is estimated that the first map will be completely covered within 48 hours.]

[All survivors, please be prepared.]

Forty-eight hours.

It was exactly as Yi Chang had said.

Chen Chen's fingers tightened slightly on the control stick.

Two days.

"Bing-jie, change the navigation. Go to the tavern first to complete the delivery, and then—"

The communicator suddenly exploded with a piercing buzz.

The regional public channel.

An unfamiliar male voice, heavily distorted by static, squeezed out from the buzzing.

"Everyone in Region 069... hello."

The voice was raspy, carrying the slow rhythm characteristic of a preacher.

"I am the Bishop of Ashes of Region 068."

The cabin fell silent instantly.

"The cross-region communication barrier will completely disappear in forty-two hours. Before that—I want to say hello to the one ranked first on Region 069's combat power list in advance."

There was a two-second pause.

"Mr. Chen Chen. I've looked through your list of deeds. Hunting leaderboard powerhouses, crushing military convoys, instakilling a Crimson Hive, shattering a projection of a god, causing a nuclear reactor meltdown. Very impressive."

Another two-second pause.

"But in my region—these are only enough to be an appetizer."

"I'll see you in forty-two hours."

The communication cut off.

The air in the cabin turned several degrees colder.

Su Xiaoqi's hand holding a meat rib froze mid-air, and she forgot to chew the meat in her mouth.

Shen Wanxing shrank into the corner of the sofa, her nails digging into the cushion.

Qin Hongye leaned halfway down from the second floor, a complex layer of emotion appearing in her dark brown eyes.

Blood Rose cursed softly under her breath.

Jiang Yanxue turned to look at Chen Chen.

Chen Chen leaned against the driver's seat, his thumb tracing a circle on the top of the control stick.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

"Appetizer?"

He pushed the engine power from seventy percent to full load.

The Ghost Fortress shot out into the night, the chassis arcs trailing two streaks of blue-white lightning.

"Then I'd like to taste what his main course is like."