Chapter 577: New Era

An uninhabited island in the Bering Strait near the Pacific Ocean.

The island was a typical reef island. The range of the island was small, but there were strange rocks all over it. There were not many plants and animals, and it was completely desolate.

However, just near the southern part of the island, on a reef-filled shore, a bright red thing was slowly pulsing there.

It looked like an animal.

If one got closer, one would find that this monster was astonishingly large. It was more than 50 meters in height and one or two hundred meters in length. From a distance, it looked like a huge slug with no fixed shape.

The slug’s body was densely covered in countless human hands and feet. These hands and feet were swaying instinctively with the wriggling of the slug’s body, like flagella, which appeared spine-tingling up close...

At this time, this “slug” was quietly looking at the endless sea, and the anthropomorphic face was wearing a pensive expression.

“My psionic power has weakened.”

Chen Chen looked into the distance with a calm expression. “Five thousand people is still too few to restore my previous strength but fortunately, the power of the Field energy hasn’t diminished.”

With that, Chen Chen suddenly lifted his upper body, like a slug curling up his body and rearing up with half of his chest, and then a huge gap slowly opened in his chest.

“Hum...”

With a low and dull roar, the surface of the sea in front of Chen Chen suddenly boiled over and at the same time, all the fish and shrimps rose from the sea, and all fell into the opening in Chen Chen.

“Smack!”

As a large swathe of fish and shrimp fell into Chen Chen’s mouth, the crack in his chest and abdomen quickly sealed up and then there was a gurgling sound of swallowing.

Chen Chen silently felt the squirming of the fish and shrimp in his body and then they were quickly dissolved by the gastric juice secreted by him.

Then, he devoured more, again and again...

It was not until all the small fish and shrimps in the nearby waters were consumed that Chen Chen felt that his initial sense of weakness was gradually abating. At the same time, a special kind of aura shone from the depths of his body.

“Hmm, this feeling is... Transformation?”

Chen Chen felt a special kind of throbbing in his body as if he needed a good night’s sleep and at the same time, instinct told him that as long as he performed the following actions, his body could undergo rapid transformation.

Just when Chen Chen was sensing the throbbing from his body, suddenly, he saw a warship slowly approaching in the distance.

It was a medium-tonnage battleship with a length of only 80 meters and its volume was not even half that of Chen Chen’s. After the ship entered Chen Chen’s line of sight, the ship paused slightly, and then it seemed to reluctantly steer toward the direction of the island.

In the ship at this time, hundreds of people ran to the railing of the ship, looking at the huge creature in the distance with amazed and terrified eyes, exclaiming again and again.

“Look, what kind of monster is that?”

“What’s that growing all over his body, are they human hands and feet?”

“What a disgusting monster...”

It was not only the crew on the battleship, even the captain of this ship, when he saw the monster in the distance, felt as if he had turned to ice all over, his hands and feet shivering with chills.

“What, what the h*ll is that...”

Captain Floyd muttered in a low voice. He opened his mouth, wanting to defy the orders from above and stop moving forward, but at this moment, two Black Knights with slack expressions stood quietly on both sides, watching his every move.

The high-level officials in Blacklight City had issued an indisputable order, requiring him to stop by this island, even if it was a matter of life and death.

Before the horrified gaze of hundreds of crew members, the battleship had come to a spot that was one kilometer away from the island, but it had also completely stopped. The island was surrounded by a reef area. If the battleship continued to move forward, it was likely to hit the reef or even run aground.

Then, lifeboats carrying various materials headed toward the island and all the materials carried on the ship were transported to the monster.

“Sir Commander.”

A Black Knight jumped off the lifeboat and at the same time spoke with a woman’s voice, “We’ve checked the news. The expeditionary fleet has been wiped out completely. 33 warships were damaged and there were more than 8,000 casualties, and the Consciousness Stealer has also returned to the bottom of the sea to sleep.”

“So, what about the reality anchor?”

Chen Chen spoke, emitting a wheezing, sticking voice.

“We only had time to transport the zircon back with a drone.”

X-112 replied, “As for the other equipment, it has sunk along with that aircraft carrier.”

“It still couldn’t escape...”

Chen Chen nodded and said helplessly, “Forget it, as long as the zircon isn’t lost, it’s not a failure, but it seems that the task of eliminating the Consciousness Stealer will be temporarily put on hold. When Blacklight Biotechnology has the ability to seal the entire plane, then we might pick up where we left off with this opponent.”

“Yes.”

X-112 lowered her head slightly.

“My current image isn’t suitable to be known publicly for the time being.”

Chen Chen continued to order, “Leave these supplies here and allow the warship to leave. Erase the memories of everyone on the ship and the zircon should be teleported back to the other side of the time machine. That’s it.”

X-112 nodded. She left a few Black Knights on the island to maintain communication with Chen Chen and then ordered the warship to return.

Seeing this, Chen Chen slowly turned around and devoured all the supplies that had been transported from the battleship.

After doing all this, Chen Chen returned his bloated body to the depths of the island, made a hole in a mountain, and wormed his way in.

This was what his body’s instinct told him to do.

Then, Chen Chen curled up into a ball in the cave and at the same time, began to secrete clumps of bloody mucus around his body. The mucus slowly dried up and gradually turned into layers of a hard cocoon, which tightly encased Chen Chen’s body.

“It feels like it’ll take a very long time.”

Curled up in the cocoon, Chen Chen could feel his body begin to change little by little. He gradually developed a kind of awareness that the next time he broke out of this shell, perhaps his body would have undergone a transformation.

Thinking of this, Chen Chen suddenly felt a strong wave of sleepiness, so he closed his eyes slightly and began to fall into a long deep sleep.

...

When Chen Chen opened his eyes again, he had returned to reality.

“To think that after preparing so adequately, I still lost.”

As soon as Chen Chen sat up, he frowned slightly.

“Did you lose after all?”

Little X, who was watching over him by his side, raised her head in shock when she heard these words. “When I saw that the zircon was shipped back, I knew that the operation had probably failed, but I didn’t expect that even the nano bomb couldn’t deal with the opponent?”

Chen Chen chuckled. “Forget about the nano bomb, I only had time to activate the reality anchor before I was killed by the opponent...”

Originally, Chen Chen’s plan was to first use the reality anchor to seal the Consciousness Stealer’s psionic powers, then fire and launch nanomite bombs so that the nano bombs could completely devour his opponent.

In the face of those micro-robots that were only nanometers in size, even Chen Chen might lose his life under the boundless sea of nanomites unless he used his Field.

He just did not expect that he would lose the game completely before he could even use the nano bomb.

“One reality anchor isn’t enough.”

Chen Chen added again. “If I want to seal the Consciousness Stealer, I’m afraid I’d have to use more than twenty reality anchors to pin down the entire planet like in Doom’s dimension.”

“What about your avatar?”

Little X looked worried. “You didn’t lose your avatar, right? It would be a shame!”

“I’ve been reborn.”

Chen Chen shook his head. “Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve and was able to resurrect myself through 5,000 felons. So, my avatar didn’t die. This is the only good news.”

As he said, Chen Chen turned his head to look at Little X. “Next, the plan to eliminate Consciousness Stealer will be temporarily put on hold, but the research on the reality anchor will continue. When we can produce element 126, that’s when we strike again.”

“Understood!”

Little X clapped her hands and eagerly said, “Although element 126 is difficult to synthesize, we have time, if nothing else. Sooner or later we’ll reach a level of mass-producing element 126. By dominating this reality’s dimension, we would be invincible!”

A few days later, Chen Chen had readjusted his condition and came to the zircon that had been transported back.

Now that the plan to eliminate the Consciousness Stealer had failed, this huge zircon had temporarily lost its purpose, so Chen Chen had a new idea.

Several androids placed the zircon in front of a machine tool, after which a cutter head, which was half the height of a person, was lowered from above the machine tool. The cutter head rotated at a high speed and approached the zircon gradually.

After that, as bursts of water trickled out, the cutter head also completely cut through the zircon.

Finally, it had been cut more than a dozen times, and soon, the entire zircon the size of a washbasin was cut into thirty fist-sized crystal blocks of equal mass.

Then, an android pushed over a metal shape about three meters high and about half a meter in diameter.

The metal column was shaped like an hourglass, wide at the top and bottom, and narrow in the middle. At the same time, the bottom of the metal column was pointed and there were three mechanical arms around the body to support it so that it could stand upright on the ground.

Then, another android stuffed one of the cut zircons into the center of the metal column and the entire zircon chunk fitted in tightly.

This was a scaled-down reality anchor made with a high-offset armor shell.

“Start testing!”

“Activation ready...”

“Three, two, one!”

There was a cold metallic voice from the broadcast, then there was only a sudden “click”. A cover popped out of position from the side of the metal pillar, revealing a row of numeric keypads beneath.

As an android walked up and keyed in the code on the metal pillar, they suddenly heard a “boom” and the entire metal pillar slammed into the floor and fixed itself in place!

At the same time, a wave of invisible fluctuations spread to the surroundings and Chen Chen only felt the air congeal all over his body.

His psionic energy was suppressed again!

“Very good, the strength of the suppression hasn’t been reduced.”

Chen Chen silently evaluated the pressure in the air and then said, “The next step is to test the suppression distance.”

With that, Chen Chen teleported back to the ground again and began to measure the suppression area of this reality anchor according to the previous method. This time, he only flew fifty kilometers before feeling the suppression force disappear abruptly.

“Only fifty kilometers now?”

Chen Chen frowned and returned.

“Fifty-kilometer-suppression radius.”

After Chen Chen came back, he reported this figure. “That’s to say, after the splitting of the zircon, the area of the psionic suppression is less than 8,000 square kilometers, less than one-thousandth of the original block.

“An entire block of zircon can seal off 7 million square kilometers, but if it’s divided into 30 blocks, each block can only block less than 10,000 square kilometers?”

Little X on the side suddenly said ruefully, “It’s not cost-effective. It seems that the blockage area will decrease exponentially. That’s to say, a small reality anchor can only block an area the size of an international city so that everyone in this area will become unable to use psionic powers.”

“The smaller the zircon chunk, the weaker its radiation ability, and vice versa.”

Chen Chen waved his hand, and said, “Forget it, it’s good enough anyway. The reason we split it up is to suppress those common psionicists, isn’t it? Thirty small reality anchors are at least more useful than one large anchor. I still want to continue selecting a few zircons to break them down into ultra-small reality anchors that can be carried around.”

“This is also a good choice.”

Little X’s eyes lit up when she heard these words. “In this way, the reality anchor will change from a strategic weapon to a tactical weapon and its flexibility and maneuverability will be greatly enhanced!”

Therefore, following this, Little X continued to divide the zircon and split ten fist-sized zircons into strips as thick as a finger. In this manner, the resulting reality anchor would also be reduced proportionally, finally being only half a meter tall, 20 centimeters long, and weighing no more than 15 kilograms.

As for the suppression distance, naturally, it had been further reduced to a five-kilometer-radius and an 80-square-kilometer-suppression area.

This ultra-small reality anchor would also become one of the trump cards of the Black Knights and the B.S.S. rapid reaction force against psionicists.

At the same time, the Hadron Collider in the Spire Experimental Base on the other side also began to operate at full capacity, beginning to research element 126 on the periodic table.

Just as Chen Chen began to shape reality itself, the psionicists who gained superpowers were also silently changing the structure of the real world.

On 1 October 2029, Blacklight Biotechnology suddenly announced some news that shocked the world. Due to the previous fusion virus disaster, superpower users had begun to appear among humans and all these superpower users were survivors who had once been infected by the fusion virus!

Blacklight Biotechnology was the first force in the Earth Federation to recognize the existence of these superpowers. With this announcement, the rumors that had been going viral on the Internet were fully confirmed and countless people were so stunned their eyeballs popped out.

In the beginning, many people did not want to believe the news announced by Blacklight Biotechnology. After all, Blacklight Biotechnology was only a company, not an authoritative government agency, but then, due to social pressure, the Earth Federation and all the continents were forced to corroborate the authenticity of this news.

Suddenly, the news of the emergence of superpowers in human society was completely a solid part of reality, and countless people felt sad or overjoyed or descended into fanaticism...

Still, no matter what attitude these people had, they could not change the fact that human society was imperceptibly slipping into a new era.