Life Game In Other World
Chapter 501: This is the Transcendence You Seek (Large - for Monthly Tickets)

Chapter 501: Chapter 501: This is the Transcendence You Seek (Large Chapter for Monthly Tickets)

The bullet tore through the air and instantly struck the Black Shadow in the left shoulder.

Accompanied by a muffled sound, the yellow bullet flattened into a clump and fell to the ground.

The Black Shadow’s coat was torn open, but its body was completely unharmed.

He Ao took another look at the Black Shadow with his Divine Sense.

The state of this Black Shadow was very peculiar. The energy intensity of its body was not strong, probably equivalent to a D-level Transcendent, but its physical quality, agility and defense displayed seemed like that of a C-level.

It felt as if a D-level had undergone some kind of unique enhancement, giving birth to a pseudo-C-level.

And this was different from the Strengthening Potions developed by Stars Pharma in the Copy World.

The Strengthening Potion directly raised a person’s energy intensity to C-level, thereby forcibly enhancing their physical quality, from the inside out, while the Black Shadow’s performance seemed more outside in.

In terms of stability, the Black Shadow’s enhancement was obviously more stable. Those who took Strengthening Potions couldn’t live nearly as long.

But whether it was one of these two, both were obviously enhancements with an external force, not a normal progression of the person themselves.

He Ao’s hand rested on the Pirate Treasure Box fastened behind his waist.

All external enhancements inevitably had a source, and the main world didn’t have a technological conglomerate as powerful as Stars Pharma.

At the same time, he prepared to activate his Super Memory.

Just then, the Black Shadow who failed to hit his target and was blocked by several gang youths once again turned and fled forward.

He didn’t actually know why he was fleeing, but he sensed an extremely terrifying danger from the young man behind him, and instinct drove him to keep escaping.

In front of him was Elfia, pushing her street vendor cart.

The alley wasn’t large, and with Elfia’s cart placed at the entrance, it blocked most of the road.

At this moment, any action would definitely affect the speed of escape.

The Black Shadow glanced at Elfia and directly leapt up with his feet lifted, ’flying’ over the top of the cart.

His body was extraordinarily light, floating in the air like a bird.

Soon, he arrived right above Elfia,

At that moment, he suddenly stretched out his hand, reaching for Elfia’s head.

Simultaneously, Elfia felt her body ’boil’ in an instant, as if all the blood in her body wanted to burst through her skin and splatter out.

And in that instant, a white flash of cold light passed before her eyes, abruptly severing the hand reaching towards her at the wrist.

Green-glowing blood spattered out, landing on her somewhat stupefied cheeks.

At the same time, she felt an immense force grab her shoulder and fling her away.

Through the misty and dark moonlight, she saw a young man of about her age holding a white bone sword, standing in front of her.

After leaving the side of the Black Shadow, her boiling blood also gradually calmed down. She adjusted her posture in the air and landed gracefully on the ground not far away, albeit in a rather peculiar pose.

"He..."

She opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but at that moment, the Black Shadow whose wrist had been severed let out a roar, interrupting her words.

The Black Shadow, like a hyena, pounced out, grabbed the still flying hand, and fitted it back onto his own wrist, then turned to look at He Ao.

With an entirely black wriggling motion, his hand and wrist rejoined together.

It was then that He Ao finally saw the complete look of the Black Shadow.

The Black Shadow appeared to be a middle-aged man with a square face, his cheeks split into two halves, one side still maintaining the shape of a human, while the other side turned into a wriggling shadow that barely resembled a human face.

He had a pair of brown eyes, but the pupils deep within were covered by inky-black shadows.

He Ao, holding the bone sword, stood in front of Elfia’s street vendor cart, the tip of the sword pointing to the ground.

At this point, he was close enough to the Black Shadow. The Black Shadow’s escape had lost its meaning. Instead, by showing his back to He Ao, he gave He Ao a better opportunity to attack.

The Black Shadow seemed to understand this too.

It opened its mouth and let out a roar, the shadows on its face rippling like water.

The sound it made was somewhat like a hyena’s whine, but even deeper in tone.

Just hearing this sound gave Elfia, who stood behind He Ao, a pounding headache.

The Black Shadow glanced at Elfia, leaped forward with a bound, raising its hands to claw at He Ao.

By now its hands had writhed into pitch-black claws, the sharpest points of which were like shadows that devour everything, aimed straight for He Ao’s neck.

He Ao raised his sword and blocked the strike.

In that moment, he and the Black Shadow were brought extremely close together.

He activated Super Memory, placing a mark on the Black Shadow in an attempt to perceive its thoughts.

However, what flooded his mind was only an instinctive, bloodthirsty desire to kill.

This Black Shadow had lost most of its rationality, acting solely on instinct and a small remnant of thought to guide it towards fortune and away from disaster.

He Ao exerted his strength fiercely and repelled the Black Shadow.

The lack of rationality meant the Black Shadow could no longer communicate, leaving He Ao with no way to extract useful information directly from it.

But the absence of rationality itself was indicative of certain information.

He Ao could sense that this ’expense-account trip’ might not go as smoothly as planned.

The ’mysteries’ wrought by the Advent of this relic might be stronger than any before.

At that moment, the Black Shadow, seeing that He Ao easily blocked its attack, let out a low, rumbling roar as the flesh beneath its coat began to wriggle.

The dim street lights from beyond the hazy street cast upon its body were like light spilling into an abyss without end, swallowed up completely.

Simultaneously, its body began to lighten, slowly floating up like a piece of thin paper in the air.

Its body seemed to become pure black, absorbing all light as it merged with the night sky.

From a distance, it was impossible to distinguish him from the night.

Indeed, this creature could fly to some extent.

He Ao, holding his bone sword, confirmed his thought; flying in the air naturally wouldn’t leave any traces on the ground.

By now the Black Shadow had completely twisted into a monster as flat as a sheet of paper, this monster still maintaining a strained human shape, its ’head’ seeming to have cheeks which had been ’flattened’ into a plane, with a devout yet mad smile spreading across at the moment.

Limb-like extensions, shadowy in nature, grew out from its body, gently swaying in the air, then retracting back together.

A deep, terrifying murmur echoed in He Ao’s ears, as if to admonish him to return to the embrace of the night.

Elfia stood behind He Ao and instinctively stepped back half a pace, looking at the grotesque spectacle of a man twisting into a monster.

She felt as if a certain concept she had built up from birth had shattered in that instant.

Just then, the monster’s body suddenly curled up and merged into the pitch-black night.

In that instant, within Elfia’s perception, the monster disappeared from the world.

And the next second, her body tensed suddenly.

She saw nothing and felt no flowing wind, but the instincts honed by long practice of Martial Techniques flashed a lethal warning in her mind, compelling her to crouch slightly and prepare to leap backward forcefully.

But by this time, it was already too late.

A writhing, pitch-black ’curtain’ suddenly fell in front of her, with a face that was half flesh, half shadow, so close to her.

That devout yet mad smile filled her entire field of vision.

In that moment, she suddenly felt that the night was humankind’s eternal destiny, and this monstrous, terrifying spectacle before her eyes the perfect form, while those bipedal humans who walked naturally were the twisted ones, the aberrant monsters that defied rules.

Her blood began to boil inside her.

She was about to bloom red flowers, to become a sacrifice to the endless night.

Just then, a pure white radiance cut through from below, slashing across the pitch-black night sky, tearing apart the sheer darkness, as the light of the stars spilled through the fissure.

Elfia seemed as if all her strength had been drained, collapsing to the ground, her cheeks splattered with blood that glowed with a faint green light.

The monster, split in two, howled and tried to converge on Elfia again, but He Ao calmly walked in front of her, with the light of the stars reflecting a cold luminescence on his bone sword.

He glanced down at Elfia with a look of superiority, then turned around and with a single stroke of his sword, the pure white light once again violently cleaved through the black shadow.

Countless twisted energies exploded within the fragments of the shadow, eventually falling to the ground and turning into a bright red dust that emitted a nauseating odor.

He Ao turned back to look at Elfia, whose face was still stricken with shock, and calmly said, "This is the Transcendence that you seek."

Then he sheathed his bone sword and disappeared into the depths of the night.

Elfia blankly watched He Ao’s retreating figure, the indescribable murmurs as if still echoing in her mind.

Fear permeated her soul as she lowered her head to look at her trembling hands.

The world of Transcendence beyond human limits, it wasn’t quite like what she had imagined.

——

Standing atop a high-rise building, He Ao gazed at the silent night sky.

Moonlight spread over the patchy lights of the city below.

The murmurs that Elfia had heard, he had heard them too.

Indeed, He Ao had anticipated that the Black Shadow would ultimately choose to attack Elfia.

Although the Black Shadow had gained some sort of enhancement, it was still essentially a pseudo-C-level creature, standing no chance against C-level Martial Artist He Ao; therefore, it would prioritize completing its ’mission’.

And its ’mission’ was most likely ’sacrifice’.

To find a suitable offering in the main world, then sacrifice it to the unnamed being.

The Transcendent dog he had slain met the criteria for a sacrifice, and Elfia, who had honed her Martial Techniques to the human limit, also met the requirements of an offering.

From He Ao’s experience in Copy Worlds, such sacrifices often related to some type of ritual.

It seems that certain things within the ruins were not content to remain still.

And the praise of ’night’ seemed yet another entity he had yet to encounter.

He left the rooftop, heading down the stairs.

It was then that his phone vibrated with a new message.

It was from Yang De.

A document about the Rodan Republic.

Previously, the Research Institute didn’t pay much attention to the Rodan Republic, a small nation in the Western Lands, possessing only basic information. However, due to some suggestions from He Ao, Yang De had utilized some intelligence resources and gathered a more complete set of documents, sending them over in their entirety.

At first, the Research Institute did not think the information about the Rodan Republic would be of much use.

Because there were no strong Transcendent organizations in Rodan, just some scattered Transcendents, and the entire nation was within the sphere of influence of Moonlight.

He Ao’s main threat when capturing the Space-Time Anchor was from two organizations: Moonlight of the Tia Empire and World Tree of the Western Lands.

With no local threats, understanding the local data did not seem very helpful.

But to be on the safe side, Yang De had still collected detailed information for He Ao initially, containing some current data on the Rodan Republic and the city of Eren.

He Ao had finished reviewing that information on the plane; afterwards, he indicated that he needed to know about the Era of Kingdoms, especially information on the last King of Rodan.

Because the information on the Rodan Republic described the last King of Rodan as a ’tyrant’ who oppressed the populace, dissolved the parliament, and sought exorbitant wealth by selling out national interests.

Of course, that was not what precipitated his downfall. The catalyst for his ousting was his attempt to break away from the Tia Empire and integrate into the trade circle of the Western Lands.

Then he was overthrown by the opposition, supported by the Tia Empire, and the King was burned alive in the luxurious palace he had built with a heavy purse.

What was strange, though, was that the vast wealth in gold, silver, jewels, and other treasures the King had plundered over decades also vanished in that ’great fire’.

Regarding this, the people of the Rodan Republic also had many speculations. Some believed that it was the Tia Empire that had transported these items away, while others thought the opposition had secretly taken them for themselves.

Of course, besides these valuable items, it was highly likely that the last King of Rodan had a significant amount of foreign bank deposits.

Theoretically, this was just a simple change of power, but the timing of its occurrence was intriguing.

Five years ago.

That was a very recent time point. By then, relics had already appeared for over a decade, and the main world already had a large number of Transcendents.

The wealth plundered by the King of Rodan could fully support his own Transcendent organization.

Therefore, there might also be another hidden Transcendent force within Rodan itself.

He Ao shared his speculations with Yang De, who thought they made sense. So, he used his intelligence resources to gather more detailed information about the Era of Kingdoms in Rodan and the last King for He Ao.

Which was the material that Yang De had just sent him.

At the same time, Yang De sent him a new message.

Yang De: [Li Le has already made contact with me, and we’ve roughly identified the range of traitors. However, it’s not easy for us to dispatch people to Rodan now, so we might need your help when the time comes.]

He Ao: [Okay.]

After exchanging a few more words with Yang De, He Ao opened the translator and found a bookstore nearby, where he bought a Rodan-language to Tia-language translation dictionary.

Sometimes the translator is not very accurate, so it’s still best to learn a bit on your own.

By the time he bought the dictionary, it was already around eight or nine in the evening. He Ao hailed a ride back to the Martial Arts gym and read the information Yang De had sent him during the drive.

By the time the taxi stopped, He Ao’s gaze was fixed on a group photo of the last King’s family.

He studied the pairs of brown-red pupils, his gaze narrowing slightly.

Then he put away his phone and got out of the car.

Having been there before, he found the courtyard where the Martial Arts gym was located with practiced ease.

This time, the courtyard seemed normal; there was no challenge to the gym, nor any eerie occurrences.

He Ao bid farewell to the disciple he had left with, closed the courtyard gate, and returned to his room.

He carefully reviewed the information Yang De had given him, then used Super Memory to commit most of the dictionary to memory until around one or two in the morning. Only then did he lay down on the bed, yawned, and closed his eyes.

He was somewhat fond of his bed and didn’t sleep soundly on his first night in a strange place.

The sounds of insects chirping and birds calling came from outside the window.

······

After an unknown period, he felt that the chirping and calling had all disappeared, and silence enveloped the area.

He rolled out of bed, the room’s light was still on, casting a dim glow.

He opened the door and walked out of the room, making his way to the courtyard.

The entire sky was shrouded in a dusky world, and the quiet was as if death itself had descended.

He looked up, but there was not a single figure around.

Pushing open the courtyard’s iron gate, the road outside was just as silent.

With a premonition, he looked ahead.

At the entrance of the courtyard, a pitch-black figure was leaning against a wall.

The figure was extremely slender, as if someone’s shadow had risen to stand, looming beneath the murky sky.

The shadow seemed to be walking forward, taking steps, but its body made no movements, as if fixed in place like a statue.

At that moment, He Ao finally understood the meaning of that phrase.

It had arrived.