Infinite Nightmares

"It's cavalry! Qianxi's cavalry!" Zhang Wenda watched the behemoths approach in the distance, their advance accompanied by a trembling sound. His heart pounded in his chest, especially when he noticed the giant computer on the cavalry's back was gone.

Clearly, Qianxi's main body had already left. Whatever Tan Yougen's plan was, Qianxi was definitely making a real move this time. The two of them were most likely together now.

'My priority now is to find them.'

Just as Zhang Wenda was lost in thought, a whistling sound cut through the air. The character for "knife" plummeted from the sky, grazing his black armor with a spray of sparks as it slid past.

The sudden attack snapped Zhang Wenda back to reality. 'I'm still on a dangerous battlefield. More than anything, I need to break out of this encirclement of characters first.'

"Maomao, where are all these characters in the sky coming from? Whose ability is this?" Zhang Wenda asked, glancing up at the words that blotted out the sky as he quickly retreated to the side.

As Zhang Wenda sidestepped the sharpened edge of the character for "sword," he heard Hu Maomao's voice in his ear. "It's not an ability. The thought-tides collided, making Thought-Tide 13 extremely unstable. There's a BUG in its rules! It's spewing out all the characters from the input method's library."

The entire area was almost completely covered in characters. They were everywhere—in the sky and on the ground.

"Are you sure? I feel like someone's controlling these characters," Zhang Wenda said, dodging sideways again.

Seeing another dozen characters hurtling toward him, Zhang Wenda's temper finally flared. He threw his arms wide without hesitation, and ten sharp scythes materialized, gleaming with a cold light.

"Hold on tight!" The words seemed directed at Hu Maomao, and perhaps at Song Jianguo as well, just as a massive character several stories tall came crashing toward him.

Zhang Wenda's reverse-jointed legs kicked off the ground with tremendous force, leaving two deep craters as his body blurred into an afterimage and shot forward.

He swept through the nearest characters like a hurricane. In his wake, the characters froze in place, motionless.

A few seconds later, green 01010 data sprayed out of the characters as they were all sliced into small pieces.

And this was only the beginning. Zhang Wenda moved faster and faster, so fast the characters could barely keep up with him.

Facing the forest-like swarm of characters rushing at him from the distance, Zhang Wenda charged straight into them without a moment's hesitation.

A gale swept through, and all the characters in his path were sliced into garbled code. No matter how many characters rained down on him from above, it was useless.

Just as the number of characters in the sky began to multiply, he suddenly heard a clear female voice from behind him. "Tissue Entanglement Technique!"

Seeing Hu Maomao on his back raise her hands to the sky, Zhang Wenda quickly looked up. He finally saw him: a nearly translucent bald man in the air who looked as if he'd been shoved, awkwardly revealing his form.

Zhang Wenda finally understood. 'So I was right,' he thought. 'Someone has been using these characters to attack me all along.'

"Jianguo!" The moment Zhang Wenda shouted, the Black Cat entity wrapped around him detached, forming a massive slingshot on the ground angled at the sky.

Zhang Wenda shot into the slingshot's pouch. The band pulled taut, and in the next second, he was launched into the sky.

At the apex of his flight, just as gravity began to pull him down, Zhang Wenda swung his right arm. The Black Cat transformed into a long whip that hooked onto a black character, leaving him suspended in midair.

Seeing that Zhang Wenda had managed to get up there too, the man grew tense and his body quickly faded into the air.

But Zhang Wenda flicked his left wrist, and the Black Cat there transformed into another long whip. Now he was swinging through the air like a gibbon, moving with incredible speed.

No matter where the invisible man fled, Zhang Wenda stuck to him, impossible to shake off.

Landing on the character for "Hu," Zhang Wenda kicked off with explosive force. He shot forward like a cannonball and slammed the man into the character for "Sun," sending him sliding limply down one of its hooked strokes.

The impact from Zhang Wenda's three-meter frame—compounded by the weight of the two others he carried—was enough to make the man nearly cough up blood. The moment Zhang Wenda's scythe hooked around his neck, the brief clash was over. The man had lost utterly.

"You... How did you find me?" the man asked, staring at Zhang Wenda in disbelief.

"Duh. There's a big red blob jumping all over the sky. I'm not blind," Zhang Wenda said, pointing to the red color in the man's abdomen.

The man's body could turn invisible, but Zhang Wenda could see the red within him as clear as day.

The power granted to him by the color red made him exceptionally sensitive to the red within others. No concealment, be it invisibility or anything else, could hide them from his sight.

Sizing up the man's robotic-looking bald head, Zhang Wenda asked, "Looks like you're a cut above those guys down below. That means you should know more about what the Big Circle is up to, right?"

'This guy should have some useful information for me.'

"Hmph." The man turned his head away contemptuously. "You think I'll talk just because you ask? Dream on."

"Oh? Is that so?" Then, with a sharp RIIIP, the man watched in astonishment as Zhang Wenda drew the sharp scythe across his own wrist, opening a bloody gash.

Zhang Wenda then reached out and gently patted the man's shoulder. The gash instantly transferred from his wrist to the man's face.

Under his control, the gash slithered across the man's body like a dragon. A single wound, delivering the effect of a dozen. Extremely cost-effective.

As the gash began to slide toward a more sensitive part of his body, the man's face went pale. "Stop, stop, stop! I'll talk! I'll talk!!"

Zhang Wenda transferred the gash back to his own wrist and watched the man with amusement.

"You'd better not lie to me. The young lady on my back has Mind Reading."

"No, no, I won't! I'll tell you everything! At noon today, the boss suddenly told us to get ready and gather at the fractured Tower of Babel. He said a big shot from the Third Line had arrived."

"The Tower of Babel? Tan Yougen went there to act as a lure?" Zhang Wenda and Hu Maomao exchanged a surprised glance.

The Tower of Babel. Zhang Wenda remembered the place. It was said that in the old Internet World, there was a Heaven-Reaching Tower where anyone could communicate freely and share information at no cost.

He had come here once before, back when he had a dagger stuck in his chest, in order to find Ahavana. He just never expected Tan Yougen would actually choose it as the main battlefield.