My Invincible Defense: Traversing the Endless Worlds

Jimmy clutched his chest and gasped for breath. This was the first time he had ever come under live fire. If Finn hadn’t been beside him, he would already be a corpse.

“That little fucker.”

Jimmy ground his teeth, but there was nothing he could do. The man had already fled on his motorcycle, putting nearly two kilometers between them. All they could see was a distant trail of dust racing away.

Finn pulled a thick, matte-black tube from his storage space, hoisted it onto one shoulder, and activated its fire-control system.

“Bro, what the hell is that?”

The cold, brutal-looking weapon filled Jimmy with dread.

“A nuclear rocket launcher,” Finn replied calmly.

He narrowed his eyes and took aim at the motorcycle speeding into the distance.

“If you set off a nuke this close, won’t we get caught in the blast?” Jimmy asked nervously.

“Of course we will. It just won’t kill me.” Finn replied patiently as he pulled the trigger.

A streak of flame shot out, tearing across the sky like a meteor before striking the fleeing motorcycle with perfect accuracy.

BOOM!

It was as if the sun itself had erupted.

The flash of the nuclear explosion burst outward, swallowing everything around it. A terrifying shock wave swept across the wasteland and hurled Jimmy through the air.

The foul-mouthed wastelander and his prized motorcycle were both erased in the nuclear blast.

Finn tossed aside the spent launcher, then turned and saw Jimmy lying in the distance with his limbs splayed out, motionless.

He hurried over.

Jimmy was blind and barely breathing. His skin and flesh were breaking down under the intense nuclear radiation.

Fortunately, they were far enough from the center of the blast that his body had not been completely destroyed.

Finn had plenty of experience dealing with friendly fire. He pulled a Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill from his storage space and immediately shoved it into Jimmy’s mouth.

Finn had obtained the pill while cultivating in a xianxia world. It could bring the dead back to life, regrow flesh over bare bones, and rebuild shattered meridians.

Since Finn rarely needed healing medicine, pills like this were little more than candy to him.

The Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill melted the moment it entered Jimmy’s mouth. Warm, abundant medicinal power coursed through his body.

His wounds rapidly closed. His heart began beating again. His muscles and bones returned to normal, his ruined eyes regenerated, and his vision returned. A moment later, he regained consciousness.

“Bro.” Jimmy climbed to his feet. Once he was certain he hadn’t died, he said miserably, “Could we maybe show people a little mercy from now on? He only shot at us. Did you really have to drop an atomic bomb on him?”

“I didn’t drop a bomb. I fired a tactical nuclear warhead,” Finn corrected him.

“That’s not the point...” Jimmy muttered, not daring to say anything more.

Finn hadn’t wanted to hit his own teammate either. The problem was that the nuclear rocket launcher was the only long-range weapon in his storage space. He had no other choice.

When he got the chance, he planned to visit a more technologically advanced world and pick up a few shoulder-fired homing missiles—or perhaps a swarm of explosive drones.

Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pills and nuclear rocket launchers were both extremely valuable. Using them so casually might have seemed wasteful.

Finn didn’t care.

He still had 168 nuclear rocket launchers and sixty Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pills in his storage space. On top of that, he cultivated the Profound Fire Divine Art, so he was rarely injured and had little need to conserve medicine.

Finn swept his gaze across the dust-covered ground and spotted a deformed brass bullet gleaming conspicuously. It was one of the bullets the wastelander had fired from his handgun.

“Interesting.”

Finn picked it up and examined it closely. It was the kind of bullet normally loaded into a rifle cartridge, yet the wastelander had somehow fired it from a handgun. A crystalline blue, diamond-shaped stone was embedded in its tip, with a faint azure light flickering inside.

He studied it for a while but could not identify the material, so he placed the bullet in his storage space.

Jimmy retrieved his bulging backpack, carefully dusted it off, and slung it over his shoulders again.

While the lingering effects of the Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill could still protect him from radiation damage, he and Finn continued toward Refuge City.

From the limited Pioneer records he had, Finn learned that objects known as “gifts from the sky” frequently fell onto this wasteland planet, bringing mysterious powers to its inhabitants. This had given rise to a system known as the Radiant Path.

At the same time, nuclear radiation had caused some people to mutate and develop supernatural abilities. They were known as mutants.

“Bro, are we seriously going to walk the whole way?” Jimmy asked with a pained expression. After two straight hours of walking, his legs were exhausted.

“You just reminded me! After three hundred years of secluded cultivation, I forgot I even had half this stuff. We don’t have to walk.” Finn smiled. “We’ll ride the Phoenix.”

“The Phoenix!” Jimmy’s eyes widened in amazement.

A thrill ran through him. He had hit the jackpot!

Sure, he had somehow ended up traveling through the Endless Worlds, somehow awakened a supernatural ability, somehow joined the Spacetime Destruction Bureau, and somehow gotten paired with a bizarre senior who launched nukes at the slightest provocation.

But a phoenix was an ancient divine beast!

How cool would it be to ride one? How badass?

Jimmy was already imagining himself soaring across the wasteland on a phoenix’s back.

Finn held out one arm and sent his consciousness into his storage space.

The next instant, an alloy creation dropped onto the sand. It had a clean, elegant design and a cold metallic sheen, along with two sturdy wheels, handlebars, and pedals.

“It’s a Phoenix-brand bicycle! And it’s a mountain bike!”

Jimmy looked as though he had been struck by lightning. He almost coughed up a mouthful of blood from the sheer shock.

Finn was long accustomed to reactions like this. He swung onto the mountain bike and looked back at Jimmy.

“Are you getting on or not? We don’t have all day.”

His mountain bike was rather special. Its carbon-fiber frame had been personally modified with a titanium-alloy rear seat and an aluminum basket.

Jimmy reluctantly sat on the back, unsure where to put his hands.

“Don’t wrap your arms around my waist. That’s way too gay.”

Finn’s voice was ice-cold.

Jimmy quickly pulled his hands back and gripped the small handles beside the rear seat.

“Bro... can this bicycle fly?” Jimmy asked cautiously, still clinging to a sliver of hope.

“Try sitting in the basket. Maybe it’ll take off,” Finn teased.

“Isn’t this a little... pathetic?” Jimmy suggested from the back seat. “Why don’t we find a motorcycle instead? I’m killer on one of those flashy modified street scooters.”

“What do you know about it? This bicycle violates the law of conservation of energy. One turn of the pedals makes the rear wheel spin fifty times,” Finn explained.

“Holy shit. It can really do that?”

Jimmy looked down and realized Finn barely pedaled, yet the bicycle was speeding across the desert. Once again, his understanding of reality was shattered.

Finn had obtained the mountain bike while traveling through an ever-expanding world.

That world’s laws of physics did not include the conservation of energy.

A great expert there had been grateful for Finn’s help, so he had anchored the law of non-conservation of energy onto the bicycle.

As a result, even in worlds where energy was conserved, this miraculous bicycle continued to follow its own rules.

...

The bicycle raced across the wasteland, rolling over the sand and leaving a long trail of dust behind it. Finn had inscribed a Steady Speed talisman onto its axle, so even over rough ground, the ride remained perfectly smooth.

Before long, the ruins of a city appeared ahead.

Blackened, rusted car wrecks lay scattered across the wasteland. A cracked strip of asphalt ran through the city, its surface riddled with shell craters and potholes.

A rusted metal road sign swayed in the wind. Two large words had been painted across it in peeling red paint:

BLACK MOUNTAIN.

Seven or eight barricades made of barbed wire and thick logs had been erected across the road, completely blocking the main route out of Black Mountain toward Refuge City. Finn had no choice but to dismount and push the bicycle around them.

“Stop! You two smugglers! Drop your packs, or we’ll open fire!”

A clear female voice suddenly rang out.

Four heavily armed gunmen emerged from behind the wrecked cars.

Their leader was a woman with short blond hair. She had a sharp, heroic bearing and striking features.

She held a long black firearm in both hands. Its angular body resembled a submachine gun, but its magazine was unusually large and thick.

Finn noticed that all four gunmen wore matching combat uniforms but mismatched bulletproof vests—green-and-brown woodland camouflage, blue-and-black naval camouflage, and several other patterns.

Their weapons were different models as well. One man’s assault rifle even had rust on the barrel.

Four black muzzles pointed directly at Finn’s face.

Finn merely shrugged and asked calmly,

“Is there a problem?”