404: Chapter 404 Stripped of High-Dimensional Authority and Power, Slammed into the Mortal World

Zhou Wannian slowly lifted his right foot from the metal skull. His spotless blue cloth shoe traced a leisurely arc in the air before landing steadily on The Angler's broad, dark-gold metal chest, which was as wide as a plaza.

The moment the sole made contact with the heavy armor, a dull, tooth-aching boom rang out.

The sound certainly didn't seem like stepping on a dead object; it was more like an ancient meteorite from the Nine Heavens crashing deep into the earth. The Angler's massive mechanical body sank abruptly under the weight of this step, crushing the glass-like crystals that had just cooled and solidified beneath him. Web-like black cracks spread frantically from his back into the surrounding bedrock, embedding this steel body deep into the deathly silent soil of the lowest layer of the Immortal-Demon Great World.

The strong smell of machine oil and scorched plastic, mixed with the metallic scent of hot soil, rolled up in waves from the heat at the bottom of the deep pit.

The Angler's mechanical head twisted around eerily. Within his pale-white vertical pupil, which revealed its nature as an optical sensor, a piercing red light flashed frantically, while countless severed neural wires sputtered faint blue electrical sparks at the edge of the eye socket.

"Variable..."

From the broken vocal module came the harsh, grinding sound of metal gears crushing against each other. This sound had long since lost the divine majesty that once looked down upon all living beings, leaving only the chaotic decay of a machine on the brink of being scrapped.

"Do you think that by breaking my Biomimetic Camouflage, you can touch the core of truth?"

A thunderous engine roar came from inside The Angler's chest. Beneath his dark-gold robe, which had been torn into countless strips, thousands of pale-white data streams lit up like a reverse waterfall.

This was the instinctive counterattack of a high-dimensional mechanical lifeform.

As an Agent of the Truth Realm, The Angler's body was itself a miniature, massive energy matrix. He attempted to forcibly mobilize the remaining dimensional foundations of the Immortal-Demon Great World, restart the Anti-Gravity Engine, tear through the surrounding spatial barriers, and float back to that unreachable high-dimensional throne to escape this humiliating physical oppression.

Violent energy gathered on the surface of his metal shell, transforming into a faint blue Plasma Shield capable of melting stars. His mechanical limb joints creaked and groaned as massive hydraulic thrust attempted to throw off the man in the blue robe stepping on his chest.

Zhou Wannian's hands remained leisurely folded behind his back. Not even a corner of his blue cloth robe fluttered within the faint blue energy storm.

He lowered his head, his deep eyes looking at the massive, struggling entity beneath his foot.

"Still thinking of flying back?"

A lazy sneer curled the corners of Zhou Wannian's mouth.

He did not perform any hand seals, nor did any True Qi or spiritual power common to cultivators flow within his body.

He simply stood there, pouring the Absolute Mass granted to this flesh-and-blood body by the Great Perfection Space Law downward through the sole of his right foot without reservation.

This was not the suppression of a Spell, but the most fundamental and unreasonable physical rule dimensional reduction strike in the Universe.

When mass reaches a Peak that defies common sense, what it distorts is no longer just space, but all the Law constants within this world.

"Crack!"

A crisp sound of shattering exploded inside The Angler's chest.

The faint blue Plasma Shield that had just surfaced instantly dissolved like snow under a scorching sun upon contact with the mass ripples emanating from Zhou Wannian's sole, dissipating into the heat waves as circles of dim blue halos.

But this was only the beginning.

Using pure mass, Zhou Wannian death-locked all space within ten feet of The Angler's body.

Within this narrow range, the gravitational constant was crudely altered and amplified.

Heaviness.

A despairing sense of heaviness pressed down hard on every inch of The Angler's metal skeleton and every one of his energy circuits. This gravity was no longer just pulling downward; it was squeezing this mechanical shell inward from all directions.

"Warning... gravity anomaly... Anti-Gravity Engine output power insufficient..."

"Warning... spatial coordinates locked... jump module physically damaged..."

Rows of crimson error codes flashed frantically across The Angler's visual sensors. He discovered in horror that his connection to high-dimensional space had been crudely severed by a domineering force.

Those high-dimensional authorities that allowed him to hover in the Void Realm and ignore the gravitational constraints of the lower-dimensional world.

Those Truth Laws that allowed him to extract Immortal and Demon Qi at will and convert energy.

In this moment, they all failed.

The sole of Zhou Wannian's foot was like an insurmountable physical black hole, cruelly stripping away all the privileges belonging to a high-dimensional lifeform layer by layer.

"Bang! Bang bang!"

Several hidden thrusters on The Angler's back exploded directly under the terrifying gravitational pressure, blasting out large clouds of black smoke and twisted alloy fragments.

His massive metal body could no longer maintain even a sliver of its floating posture and was pressed firmly into the mud and gravel at the bottom of the pit by this invisible pressure.

Scalding glass shards pierced into the gaps of his broken armor.

Mud mixed with the dark-gold machine oil flowing from his body, smearing into a mess on his pale, broken mechanical face, making him look incredibly pathetic.

For billions of years, The Angler had sat high above on his dark-gold throne, manipulating that transparent thread of Karma, treating the living beings of the Major Thousand Worlds like fish and shrimp in a pond. He was used to the lightness of weightlessness, used to taking energy as he pleased, and used to using a god's-eye view to look down on the ants struggling under gravity.

And now, the high-and-mighty god had been snatched down from his altar and slammed hard into this filthy, heavy mud filled with the scent of the Mortal world.

He finally experienced firsthand what those low-dimensional beings he viewed as ants had to face every day.

Gravity.

Mud.

Inescapable physical constraints.

The massive mechanical skeleton emitted a shrill wail as it was crushed by the distorted gravitational field, and fiber-optic nerves used to transmit commands snapped one by one. The feedback signals generated by this destruction of physical structure directly impacted his logic core, bringing a simulated sensation similar to biological agony, causing his frame to shudder uncontrollably.

"Ah—"

A distorted scream escaped The Angler's broken vocalizer. His only remaining intact arm beat the ground frantically, trying to push himself up from the mire. That giant metal hand, usually capable of crushing stars, now scratched wildly in the mud, yet even moving an inch became a luxury, only managing to gouge several deep furrows in the earth.

Zhou Wannian stood on his chest, his figure rising and falling slightly with the heavy breathing of The Angler's frame. As the surrounding dust slowly settled, this cold scene of looking down from above was revealed.

"How does it feel?"

Zhou Wannian's voice was calm, carrying a coldness that pierced straight to the core, echoing in the deep pit.

"Doesn't the taste of this mud feel much more grounded than that cold bench of yours hanging in mid-air?"

He looked down at this once-insufferable high-dimensional Dominator. His spotless blue robe formed a sharp contrast with the mechanical wreckage covered in mud and oil beneath his feet, the mockery in his eyes completely unhidden.

"Stripped of that truth shell you used to play god, and with your energy tubes pulled out," Zhou Wannian shook his head, his tone like he was evaluating a piece of junk antique, "how are you any different now from the Mortals you threw into the furnace to drain of their flesh and blood? Under the hammer of physics, the sound of iron plating and flesh is actually quite similar."

Zhou Wannian applied a slight bit of force with his foot.

"Crack."

A thick armor plate on The Angler's chest, engraved with core code, directly caved in and shattered. Dark-gold coolant shot out like a pressurized fountain, splashing onto the surrounding charred soil and emitting pungent white smoke.

The Angler's pale-white vertical pupil flashed frantically, his optical sensors death-locked onto Zhou Wannian's emotionless face.

He had lost.

Lost completely, lost with no dignity remaining. He had been reduced to a stray dog trampled underfoot.

This variable from the Lower Realm didn't play by the rules at all. He didn't try to crack the complex and profound logic codes of the Truth Realm, nor did he compete in the refinement of divine abilities or Spells; instead, he used the simplest, crudest weight to smash the physical carrier containing the code into scrap metal.

The evaluation module deep within his logic core gave the final countdown.

Frame structural damage: 93%.

Energy reserves: Zero.

Total system failure countdown: Ten breaths.

He was going to die. This Agent, who had once dominated countless epochs and viewed low-dimensional life as grass, was about to become a pile of rusting junk in this pit, sleeping forever in this filthy mud.

Despairing data streams flooded all his computing units. It was the final struggle of the code before entering a dead loop.

But before total destruction descended, a hidden, highest-priority forced command deep within the core was automatically activated.

That was an insurance policy 'That One' had personally written into his source program before his departure.

The Angler's giant metal hand, which had been twitching in the mud, suddenly stopped its meaningless scratching and fell stiffly to the ground.

In his broken pale-white vertical pupil, all red light and chaotic data cleared instantly, turning into an absolute, deathly silent pure black, as if it could even swallow light.

An extremely hidden, singular fluctuation that transcended existing three-dimensional spatial structures and even bypassed the time flow of the Immortal-Demon Great World quietly condensed deep within his mechanical chest.

It was an Ultra-Dimensional Distress Signal.

This signal had no sound, no light or shadow, and no spiritual power fluctuations in any conventional sense. It discarded all energy shells, carrying only an infinitely encrypted information packet.

The information packet contained the total destruction of the Immortal-Demon Great World and the absolute coordinates of this Major Thousand Worlds.

As well as a segment of preliminary evaluation data regarding the uncapped Absolute Mass of the blue-robed man stepping on his chest.

"Beep."

With the total exhaustion of the last bit of backup energy within The Angler, a final faint beep came from the vocalizer.

That ultra-dimensional signal, undetectable to the naked eye, was like a transparent poison needle piercing through the dark void. It ignored the Absolute Mass lock Zhou Wannian had imposed and the remaining Heavenly Dao barrier of the Immortal-Demon Great World, shooting directly toward the ultimate source hidden behind all machinery and truth in the depths of endless dimensions.

The moment the signal launched, The Angler's body twitched violently once, then became completely still. The pale-white vertical pupil lost all luster, and the dark-gold machine oil stopped flowing, turning into a cold, dead object in this mire.

Zhou Wannian stood on The Angler's chest.

He didn't look down at the scrapped piece of iron junk beneath his feet, but instead slightly tilted his head.

His deep eyes looked thoughtfully toward the extreme depths of the sky, at the coordinate point where the signal had vanished into the void.

This signal was extremely hidden; any Soul Transformation Stage powerhouse, or even a so-called True Immortal of the Immortal Realm, would have found it impossible to detect such dimensional communication that bypassed conventional Laws.

But how vast was Zhou Wannian's Divine Soul? The sensitivity of his Great Perfection Law to spatial fluctuations allowed him to clearly capture that unusual ripple the instant the signal was sent.

He didn't move to intercept the data stream that had already escaped into the ultra-dimension.

He simply gazed at the horizon for a moment, then slowly withdrew his gaze, looking back at the messy ruins of the deep pit beneath him.

The wind kicked up dust from the bottom of the pit, brushing against his blue robes.

"Calling for your parents?"

Zhou Wannian dusted off his faded sleeves. No look of worry appeared on his handsome face; instead, it carried a hint of bored calm as he murmured to himself in a level tone only he could hear.

He lifted his foot, stepped off The Angler's broad metal chest, and onto a nearby glass crystal that still held some residual heat.

With his hands behind his back, Zhou Wannian walked unhurriedly along the edge of the pit toward the top, leaving behind a high-dimensional wreck forever mired in the mud.