Gamers Are Fierce

Li Ang logged out of Game Square, just as before, disguising and lurking, leaving Yin City, and taking a nest submarine to the Pacific.

It was late at night, the vast sea surface was turbulent with waves, the salty sea breeze howled, and the sky was thick with clouds, obscuring the starlight.

Li Ang, wearing a sealed raincoat, sat on a drifting wooden plank and snapped his fingers,

and the units disguised as fish around the wooden plank immediately scattered, diving below the water surface, cooperating with the circling birds in the sky, scanning and probing.

After a moment, the units of the nest transmitted their results back; there were no ships or human detection devices in the surrounding sea area.

In that case, let's begin.

Li Ang opened the backpack column, focusing his thoughts on the last column, an "item" named the Portal.

Star light.

Brilliant starlight emerged from his palm, rotating slowly, surrounded by a circle of colorful, blurred flares.

Li Ang lifted the weightless Portal, faintly sensing an intuition about its true usage.

He extended his arm, gently pushing the Portal forward.

Starlight detached from his palm, suspended in mid-air, the slow rotation speed gradually accelerating.

Whoosh—

Accompanied by a low-frequency hum, the diameter of the Star Gate expanded continuously, from half a meter to one meter, two meters...

Stop.

With a thought, Li Ang halted the expansion trend of the Star Gate instantly, letting it hover quietly above the turbulent sea, maintaining a stable distance from him.

Light.

Warm, peaceful sunlight penetrated through the Star Gate; on the other side, it seemed to face the sky.

On the blue sky overhead, a few candy-floss-like soft white clouds floated, under which a few black dots flew across, apparently birds flying at high altitude.

Li Ang felt a strong sense of déjà vu, yet did not directly cross through the Star Gate following the usage guide dictated by it,

but rather observed quietly for a while.

The Star Gate lasted for ten minutes; during the entire process, Li Ang's Spirit Energy Value slightly decreased, but the decrease was very slight and recovered naturally faster,

if not for his ascent to Demigod status, with an acute awareness of his body's condition, he might not have noticed it.

"Through testing, I can choose for the Portal to expand or shrink; the minimum size for the Star Gate to display images is 1.5 meters, smaller than that it reverts to the starlight of the Star Gate itself."

"Under mental influence, the Star Gate can expand uniformly to both sides at a speed of 0.71m/s. Before expanding to 10 meters, it doesn't consume Spirit Energy; after reaching 10 meters, the consumption of Spirit Energy gradually increases as it continues to expand. Maintaining the Star Gate also requires more Spirit Energy Value."

"The Star Gate seems to be unaffected by gravity, always staying at the position where it was first summoned. After summoning, the user cannot change the orientation or angle of the Star Gate nor can they detect the precise location on the other side of the Star Gate."

"A user can freely close the Star Gate with their mind. This ability remains effective up to a distance of one thousand two hundred meters, and likely beyond that as well. After closing the Star Gate, the Portal will reappear in the backpack column, personally bound, and cannot be plundered by others."

"From the other side of the Star Gate, light penetrates through, but there's no detectable air movement; energies like Spirit Energy, Divine Power, Spiritual Energy, Ripples are lost after crossing the Star Gate's threshold."

"So, physical detection is a must..."

Li Ang murmured, taking out the most inexpensive smartphone (without a SIM card, with networking functions turned off), activating the camera,

and using Alchemy to casually craft a selfie stick, a balloon filled with sea surface gas, an open-mouthed glass bottle, and a thermometer.

He mounted the smartphone on the selfie stick, then fixed the balloon, open glass bottle, and thermometer on the sides of the stick body,

and extended the selfie stick towards the Star Gate.

This process was much easier than Li Ang imagined, as the selfie stick, upon contacting the Star Gate, gave a gelatinous, adhesive sensation of piercing low-density gel, before easily passing through.

The stick body appeared slightly bent, similar to chopsticks placed in a water glass, creating a refraction effect of light.

The Spirit Energy Value decreased very slightly...

Li Ang held his breath, grasped the selfie stick with his arms, and steadily rotated it in a circle, a process that lasted thirty seconds.

After thirty seconds, upon extracting the selfie stick, Li Ang's Spirit Energy Value decreased again slightly.

He immediately closed the Star Gate, and from his palm surged a massive amount of plant fibers, fine as silk, covering the surface of the phone, balloon, and open glass bottle.

Indeed, the other side of the Star Gate was a Different World.

Although the thermometer showed 21°C, the balloon didn't burst due to a sudden change in air pressure on the Star Gate's head, nor did it explode spontaneously,

Yet, the gas content collected in the open glass bottle was indeed different from Earth.

Normal Earth's air composition, calculated by volume, is 72% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.939% rare gases like helium, neon, and argon, and 0.031% nitrogen dioxide,

But the gas collected in the open glass bottle,

Nitrogen content decreased to 51%, oxygen was more concentrated, and the air contained much more methane, chlorine, and hydrogen cyanide than Earth—in other words, the air on the other side of the Star Gate was toxic to ordinary humans.

The most crucial thing is,

amidst the analysis by swamp vines and the Origin of Life, the microorganisms' DNA sequence adhering to the glass bottle was utterly different from Earth's life forms,

and the sky footage captured by the circling phone also showed two stars, as well as a massive brown gas giant planet.

"Alright, two stars, definitely isn't modern or ancient Earth."

Li Ang replayed the mobile video back and forth, his eyes slightly narrowed, "The shooting angle, or the Star Gate's location in the Different World, seems to be above an island,

the island surrounded by azure ocean, its surface brimming with green vegetation entirely different from Earth's, without traces of civilization similar to Earth's humans, and has yet to spot any large creatures.

There's a chance that the Different World has a setting akin to the 'Wood Spirits living in harmony with forests' from fantasy works..."

Li Ang's mind spun rapidly, deliberating one possibility after another.

As the ultimate reward of the Portal's scramble game, the Star Gate seemingly doesn't provide a substantial, instantaneous enhancement to an individual's combat power,

but the whole world behind the Star Gate is an unimaginably vast fortune.

Soil, mineral resources, living space for civilization, the biological gene pool accumulated by the Different World over ten thousand years, and even the extraordinary knowledge developed by civilization...

The only thing to be wary of is the threat inherent in the Different World itself to the owner of the Star Gate.

"If it really is an entire colonizable ecological planet, the nest cannot possibly give it up."

Li Ang promptly made up his mind, snapped his fingers, and dozens of units disguised as birds in the sky swooped down, accepting Li Ang's adjustments, adding respiratory self-circulation systems and toxin-filtering organs,

Then, these nest units were all dispatched by Li Ang into the Star Gate.