The Monster’s sudden counterattack didn’t throw Zhu Shi off balance at all.

  On the contrary, she seemed to have anticipated it. With agile, lightning-fast footwork, she ducked under the shadow hammer, spun her body, and unleashed another slash.

  The sweeping arc of her blade turned into a silver crescent fan that sliced the Monster clean in half at the waist.

  Yet in the face of his incomprehensible immortality, neither decapitation nor bisection accomplished anything. Even my initial internal explosion had been useless—let alone these clean, textbook fatal wounds. Perhaps it was precisely because of this undying body that the Monster never bothered to dodge or block any attack.

  Sure enough, he restored himself in an instant. Without even glancing at Zhu Shi, he continued charging straight toward me.

  His strategy was obvious: ignore everything else and eliminate me—the one with overwhelming firepower—first. But what exactly was the principle behind his revival? If we truly couldn’t kill him, we might have no choice but to attempt capture. I wondered whether his immortality could resist the self-destruct mechanism inherent to Monsters.

  I wanted to test his revival mechanism. Did it have conditions or a cost? Did he only revive after receiving lethal damage, or could even minor injuries be undone?

  I raised my palm toward the Monster, signaling that I was about to attack—not to him, but to Zhu Shi. We had never coordinated before; I couldn’t skip these “unnecessary” gestures. Seeing my hand, Zhu Shi immediately fell back.

  In the next instant, I focused my gaze on the Monster’s legs.

  A deafening boom erupted. Both legs exploded simultaneously. He pitched forward toward the ground.

  But before his body could hit the turf, he was whole again. The restoration happened in the same eerie, frame-skip way—no visible process, no transition. Clearly, his revival wasn’t limited to fatal injuries.

  He quickly resumed his charge. This time, I no longer had a window to strike again.

  The Monster’s speed was blinding—faster than thunder. Even with Zhu Shi’s harassment, I had only managed that one earlier attack. The moment I realized it had been ineffective, he was already upon me. My field of vision suddenly lurched backward at terrifying speed.

  At first I thought I’d been blown away. But no. It felt more like my throat had been ripped open by claws, then my head torn clean off—so fast that pain hadn’t even had time to register. My headless body remained standing in place, spurting dark red blood like a fountain.

  “Z!” Zhu Shi’s voice cracked in a desperate shout from far away.

  “Hahahaha!” The Monster raised my severed head high like a victorious general, laughing wildly.

  For the first time, he spoke aloud: “What good is raw firepower? You’re nothing!”

  I let out a sigh. “You’re right.”

  He had a point. Without Zhu Shi tying him up, I might not have even managed that single attack during his charge. The gap in speed was overwhelming. If I struggled this much, any other flame user fighting him alone would meet the exact same fate.

  Seeing the severed head in his grasp suddenly speak, the Monster froze in shock. Taking advantage of the moment, I detonated my own head.

  My body was formed of mimicked flame—head included. The explosion plunged my vision into darkness. But through the scattered flames, I could still sense the surroundings. The Monster’s arm had been blown apart; he let out a reflexive cry of astonishment. If I’d wanted, I could have reduced him to ash on the spot—but I needed his head intact, so I deliberately limited the blast radius.

  The explosion lasted only an instant and brought almost no pain. Under my control, the dispersed flames returned like homing birds to my headless “corpse” and swiftly reformed my head. Vision restored.

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  The Monster’s arm had also regenerated. He stared at me in disbelief, then abruptly turned and fled.

  When confronted with an opponent who shared his immortality, his first instinct wasn’t to keep fighting—it was to run. Was he worried about being outnumbered? Or did he lack full confidence in his own undying body? Either way, I wasn’t about to let him escape.

  At the same moment, Zhu Shi appeared directly in his escape path and swung her sword from a distance.

  A dazzling streak of sword light shot forth like lightning, slicing him in half at the waist once again.

  “Z, I’ve figured out how his immortality works!” she shouted across the distance even as she attacked. “The number of times he can revive is limited! We just have to keep killing him over and over!”

  “Understood.”

  I didn’t know the exact “principle” she’d uncovered, but the logic of exhausting his regeneration reserves made perfect sense.

  I took her advice. Focusing my gaze once more, I detonated his torso.

  Before he could recover, I condensed a soccer-ball-sized fireball in my palm and launched it at his position.

  Then another. And another. Fireballs rained down like continuous artillery shells. Explosions chained together; the soccer field’s turf churned and erupted like a pond struck by falling boulders. Amid the dirt and smoke, the Monster’s terrified screams echoed faintly. The ground trembled nonstop.

  My naked eyes couldn’t see through the dust cloud, but my heat-based perception tracked everything clearly. I could also steer each fireball to avoid damaging his head.

  From here it was simple repetition: kill him again and again, just as Zhu Shi said, until he could no longer come back.

  But what exactly was the “principle” behind his immortality that Zhu Shi had discovered? I couldn’t help being curious. At the very least, it wasn’t time reversal. While his wounds were indeed restored perfectly, the residual heat from my attacks still lingered on his body. If it were true time reversal, that lingering heat should have been undone too, right?

  As I pondered, a voice like a curse rose from inside the swirling dust and smoke.

  “This is all your fault…” He sounded desperate, almost deranged. “You’re both going in!”

  For a split second I thought he was about to do what Agent Kong once did—use shadow power to banish us into the shadow world. I’d been on guard against that move from the beginning, constantly monitoring shadow movements. Even if Zhu Shi didn’t know how to counter it, I was confident I could protect her.

  But what he unleashed exceeded my expectations.

  Among the scattered fragments of his exploded body inside the dust cloud, one piece suddenly released an enormous swell of black mist. In the blink of an eye the mist broke through the smoke and engulfed me completely.

  My vision plunged into pure darkness. A wave of inexplicable dizziness and nausea surged through me.

  Poison gas? I immediately held my breath. Toxins had no effect on me, but if this was anomalous in nature, I couldn’t afford to be careless. More importantly, I had to worry about Zhu Shi. Had she inhaled the black mist?

  Contrary to my fears, the mist dissipated after barely a second. The dizziness and nausea vanished just as quickly.

  What I hadn’t anticipated at all was that the entire scene around me had flipped upside down.

  Just moments ago I’d been standing on the sports park field. Now I was in a dull gray indoor corridor that looked like it belonged in some old office building—except there were no doors or windows on either side, only bleak, featureless walls.

  I wasn’t the only one transported here. Zhu Shi had been pulled in too.

  She stood about twenty meters away—the exact distance we’d had before being shifted. She seemed momentarily disoriented, clutching her head for several seconds before finally looking up, spotting me, and rushing over.

  I decided to ask her directly: “What the hell is this?”

  “This is a space that doesn’t belong to reality. We’ve been trapped in an alternate dimension.” She frowned, scanning the surroundings. “That black mist earlier wasn’t poison—it was the power he used to transfer us here. I never expected him to have a trick like this…”

  “A space outside reality?” I immediately tried to sense the flames I’d left behind in the real world.

  The connection was still there.

  My “fireflies” scattered across Xianshui City remained active. I could still feel the heat I’d spread during the continuous bombardment. Images of the real-world soccer field surfaced in my mind. Our bodies were no longer there, of course—but neither was the Monster’s.

  Had he used the opportunity to escape after reviving? No—I couldn’t feel the residual heat I’d left on him anywhere in the real world.

  In fact, my sense of him was… here, in this so-called alternate space… but the sensation was extremely vague. I could confirm his existence, but not his position. He felt like he could be ahead, behind—anywhere at once.

  At that moment, a grating, monstrous laugh echoed from every direction.

  It was the Monster’s voice.

  He didn’t seem to be physically present; it was as though he were speaking through some remote broadcast system. Yet looking around, there was clearly no speaker anywhere.

  “I’ll give you a little credit—you actually forced out my last card,” he said, sounding utterly convinced of his victory.

  “Is this your power too?” I asked. “Trapping enemies in this kind of alternate space?”

  “Exactly. This is my true ability.” His tone dripped with confidence. “And once you’re locked inside, you’ll never get out.”

  Zhu Shi let out a scornful laugh.

  This wasn’t the gentle sound she made around me—it was the sharp, aggressive edge she reserved only for enemies.

  Sword in hand, head held high, she stared fearlessly into the empty corridor.

  The Monster’s voice turned icy. “What are you laughing at?”

  “You’re lying,” Zhu Shi said, as though she had already seen through everything. “Leaving your immortality aside for now—that phenomenon of transferring enemies into an alternate space isn’t your own power at all.”