Chapter 548: Return

As Chen Chen beheld the humanoid creature constantly extending its tentacles outward, a harsh, piercing gaze appeared in his eyes. Despite his injuries, he forced himself to form a drill-shaped Field and launched it at the enemy at full strength!

“Psst!”

The Consciousness Stealer was blown up into a fine splatter of blood and flesh that painted the hall of the castle red!

“Huff... Huff...!”

Chen Chen stood in place, beginning to feel worn out by this point. He fixed his gaze at the mash of meat splattered all over the ground. Suddenly, they turned into countless spots of green light and flew toward him...

Chen Chen quickly stumbled backward and instinctively raised a barrier of Field to stop the advance of these strange spots of light. However, these strange objects did not seem to have a physical form and managed to effortlessly slip through his Field and fuse into his body!

The moment they fused into Chen Chen, he saw countless visions. He saw the luminous night sky, a vast field on an alien planet, and a glimpse of an enormous dark figure...

The magnificent figure rose over the horizon and loomed over the sky of the planet. Due to the alignment of the sun, he could barely make out the silhouette of the figure. It was a figure with what seemed like tens of thousands of tiny strands of tentacles crawling over its body, a monster made up of massive carpets of flesh and blood!

It drowned out the light of the sun. With just a glance, Chen Chen felt overwhelmed with a sense of despair and madness!

“What... Is that...”

“The Consciousness Battlefield has come to an end!”

A bright voice shattered the darkness and snapped Chen Chen awake as he heard the same voice continue declaring. “Participant Chen Chen, you’ve successfully devoured the opponent, prepare to return.”

Chen Chen began to relax upon hearing this familiar voice. He collapsed weakly onto the ground and tried to detect the changes in his consciousness. Before he had time to properly catch his breath, he suddenly noticed cracks forming out of thin air in front of him, like reality itself shattering and crumbling away. The sharp sound of breaking glass filled his ears.

Chen Chen rubbed his eyes in confusion and yet the strange phenomenon was still occurring. With one final break, the glass in front of him had completely shattered and his world was yet again plunged into complete darkness.

Something was not right!

Chen Chen was shocked by what was happening around him. The darkness filled him with a peculiar sense of dread that he could not identify the root cause of. It felt as if his very consciousness was split into two identical halves and somehow each half was feeling different things.

What was going on?

Chen Chen was suddenly filled with an extreme sense of tiredness. The moment he tried to sit up, he banged his head hard into the metal plate above, which immediately resulted in a bloodied head.

Chen Chen tried to rub the pain away and as he opened his eyes, he found himself in a suffocating, almost claustrophobic space.

After further inspection, he realized he was sleeping inside a space that seemed like the inside of a coffin. He was surrounded by metal walls with two rows of faint red LED lights along the sides of his body.

‘Am I inside a cryogenic chamber?’

Chen Chen looked around, puzzled by what was happening. He was having a harder time focusing as his mind was invaded by another sweeping sense of drowsiness. However, he refused to submit to this sleepiness. He realized that he was seeing two separate images at a time.

It felt as if one half of his consciousness was looking at a space faintly lit by two rows of dim red light while the other half of his consciousness was staring at the pitch-black, ominous void.

What was going on, was this caused by the Consciousness Battlefield?

Chen Chen was dismayed by this thought. Before he could further study his situation, another wave of sleepiness came over him.

Before long, Chen Chen had lost consciousness...

While this was happening, in the Spire Experimental Base faraway, the USB drive suddenly emitted a blinding white glow and began to melt away like a bar of soap while basking amid the blinding light!

By the time the light faded out, the shape of the USB drive was only a faint remembrance of what it once was. It continued to evaporate into thin air and by the time Little X tapped into the camera inside the charging room, the USB drive had completely vanished!

Nobody knew where the USB drive could have gone...

...

Seemingly out of nowhere, the strange virus that could potentially devastate the entirety of mankind had disappeared.

It was as if somebody pressed the pause button. The virus that was still spreading furiously had instantly disappeared. After disposing of the final batch of corpses, the remaining infected people managed to regain their sanity. Meanwhile, the ones who were identified as at risk of infection due to exposure were out of the woods as well since there were zero signs of unnatural observation when they were put into quarantine.

In the beginning, the Earth Federation was not certain that it was over. However, as time went on and they arrived at a month’s mark without any new cases of infection or deaths reported, everyone took it as a sign that the nightmare was finally over.

To ensure that the infection was truly gone, the Earth Federation made sure to check with the quantum computer, Adam. The answer Adam provided was simple and elaborate, being that mankind was currently not facing any potential world-ending crisis...

Adam’s reply was relayed to all the world leaders but most of them took the answer with a mixture of bitterness.

It seemed like Adam’s prophetic qualities were slowly degrading.

Nobody knew what the cause for this was, but what was happening here could not be any more clear. There seemed to be some sort of error with the quantum computer Adam, otherwise, it would have at least issued a warning regarding this crisis they faced instead of remaining silent until directly enquired.

With this, the terrible plague event which spanned for two and a half months, spreading all over the world and claiming more than three million lives in the process had finally come to an end.

The infectious disease went away as quickly as it came, without any forewarning.

Similarly, all of the Consciousness Stealer clones cultivated by countries all over the world from the meteorite protoplasmic liquid sample died a month prior. After that, nobody could create clones from the protoplasmic liquid anymore.

Even the protoplasmic liquid itself followed the trend of rapid deterioration and lost all of its potency.

While the world was busy celebrating the end of this plague, nobody noticed the sudden disappearance of a certain person who had been at the frontline, holding back the Consciousness Stealer all this while.

Life went on.

One month, two months, three months...

There was a beautiful girl who ritually sat next to a blue, metallic coffin and waited quietly by herself every day. She would curl herself into a ball and wait for the slightest bit of movement from within the coffin.

“Beep, beep, beep...”

The girl’s phone suddenly started to ring. She slowly opened her eyes and answered the call.

“Little Chen, it’s already so late, are you not coming home yet? Aren’t you going to at least check in with us?”

There was an aged and worn-out voice on the other end of the phone. Although the person on the phone sounded spent, her voice made her sound like she could not be anywhere older than thirty years old.

“Mom, I’ve been a bit busy recently. You take care of yourself with Dad, I’ll be back sometime soon...”

The girl answered, but the voice that came out of her lips was that of a man’s.

“Alright then, don’t stress yourself out now, child. Make sure to rest if you get tired. Your father misses you as well.”

The mother continued. “Look, we were to blame for what happened last night. We won’t force you to look for a partner anymore, please don’t be angry at us alright?”

“It’s no big deal.”

The girl smiled, her expression lucid. “Really.”

“That’s good...”

“Beep.”

The call ended.

With that, the girl gently set the phone on the ground next to her and continued waiting with her back against the coffin.

Nobody knew who or what she was waiting for...

“Thump...”

Just as she slowly closed her eyes and set herself to meditate against the chamber, she seemed to sense what could be the sound of faint knocking against the metal chamber.

“Thump, thump...,

It sounded like someone knocking against the inside of the chamber. She immediately widened her eyes and turned around to look at the chamber expectantly.

“Click, click!”

There was suddenly a light noise heard from inside the chamber as if someone had triggered a mechanism. Shortly after that, the lid of the chamber shook for a moment before it began to slide open!

“Ah!”

The girl exclaimed in surprise. She quickly went to look inside the chamber and saw a young man with his eyes squinted as he slowly lifted the cover. When the light from outside seeped into the chamber, the person inside shielded his eyes from the brightness of the sun.

“Sir Godfather!”

The girl could not be any more delighted to see this. She leaned over the chamber and became extremely emotional. “You’ve finally awakened from your slumber!”

Chen Chen was still trapped in a dizzy state. He only looked at the celebrating Little X and did not elicit any distinct response. His eyes were still colored with a palate of strangeness and confusion.

“Where am I...”

Chen Chen did not sit up. He held his hands in front of his face and inspected it as if he was looking at a never-before-seen curiosity.

“This is the teleportation hall.”

The girl froze slightly upon noting this remark and noticing Chen Chen’s foreign expression. She stumbled backward ever so slightly. “Are you Sir Godfather?”

“I am.”

Chen Chen finally set down his palm and looked at the slightly tense and unsettled Little X as his lips finally broke into a light smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve already devoured the Consciousness Stealer, you can rest easy.”

Little X nodded firmly, it was true. There were no longer any infected people in the world. This person she was facing could not be the Consciousness Stealer either.

Still, there was a strange look that lingered in Chen Chen’s eyes. He kept trying to blink away this occult feeling in his mind.

From his perspective, he seemed to be looking at two separate images.

One image was of himself opening the cover of the cryogenic chamber. He saw Little X beside himself and he saw the familiar ceiling of the teleportation hall.

Inside another image was nothing but the all-consuming darkness.

Chen Chen felt as if his consciousness was split into two clean halves. One half had fully awakened but the other half was still slumbering.

It was an extremely bizarre, unnatural feeling. It made him feel like he was losing grip of what was real and what was not, like the strands of reality and illusion were intertwined in an unexplainable manner.

“Sir Godfather, are you feeling any discomfort?”

Little X asked concerningly.

“No, it’s just...”

Chen Chen tried to elaborate but realized he did not know how to put what he was feeling into words. He decided it was better to not try to explain his predicament. Instead, he reached out to hold the edges of the cryogenic chamber and pulled himself up.

The moment he got up, he felt the touch of a foreign object on his left hand. He held it up and saw that it was none other than a pitch-black USB drive, one without any sparkling spots on it.

“The USB drive disappeared three months ago.”

Little X immediately noted. “At the time, I also wondered if the USB drive had returned to your hands again.”

“Three months? I’ve been sleeping for so long...”

Chen Chen frowned upon hearing this. This was not the first time the USB drive had disappeared suddenly so he was not notably fazed by the news. He stepped out of the cryogenic chamber, still feeling rather weak and tired.

After that, a host of Black Knights entered and escorted Chen Chen out of the teleportation hall and into the Spire Experimental Base.

After conducting a full body checkup on Chen Chen, it was quickly concluded that there were no notable changes in his body apart from a mild case of malnutrition.

Chen Chen was also informed that Hannibal, who was infected at the same time as he was, had awakened three months before him.

At the time, Hannibal was struggling holding himself together since his willpower was not anywhere close to Chen Chen’s. It was Little X who made the sound judgment of freezing him and waited to thaw him until after Chen Chen had completely devoured the Consciousness Stealer.

At this point, Hannibal had returned to operating at his usual post.

After being supplemented with nutrients, Chen Chen went to a sanatorium in the Spire Experimental Base. The three-month-long slumber had put his body into a state of hiatus and burnt out a significant amount of nutrients. His primary objective now was to regain these nutrients.

Lying on the soft bed, Chen Chen felt another wave of sleepiness sweeping over him. He closed his eyes and submitted himself to sleep...

Something strange happened to Chen Chen again. As soon as he fell asleep, another part of his consciousness jolted awake. He opened his eyes in a state of confusion and found himself back inside the cryogenic chamber instead of lying on top of a soft bed cover.

What was going on?

Chen Chen’s mind suddenly snapped awake with a grand realization.

“What’s going on? This is something that only occurs after a cryogenic sleep. Have I been sleeping for up to a century?”

Chen Chen was filled with uncertainty as he felt his mind plunged into a web. He could recall himself waking up earlier and stepping out of the cryogenic chamber. In that case, how did this explain his current situation?

Was it a dream?

Was what happened earlier a dream and was he back in reality now?

Chen Chen felt like he had lost the ability to form clear, concise thoughts in his mind. Just as he prepared to tap a button next to him to open the chamber, he heard rough rumbling coming from outside the chamber.

It sounded like someone was trying to forcefully tear open the cryogenic chamber...

Chen Chen frowned. The high-offset armor was the toughest known matter in the solar system. Unless directly hit by a nuclear bomb, it was impossible for it to be destroyed by any other destructive force, whether from the natural world or man-made. The only way it could be opened was from the inside. There was no chance that Little X did not know about this.

In other words, it was not Little X who was currently trying to open the cryogenic chamber from outside...

If it was not Little X, who could it be?

With this in mind, Chen Chen’s eyes began to fill with madness and craze...