The low-flying Edge Fighter braked hard to a stop. Li Cheng and Gray Rain jumped out of the cabin, and from a distance they immediately saw White Horse Tombstone and the coffin she was leaning on.

"You two are here."

White Horse Tombstone raised her hand and pointed ahead, asking in confusion, "What’s going on with this place?"

This was a pretty standard United States middle‑class suburban villa cluster: green lawns on both sides of the street, two‑and‑a‑half‑story houses with garages, trees and swimming pools behind the houses.

Everything looked perfectly normal, except for...

More than a dozen high‑temperature burn marks, clean and straight like pen strokes, crisscrossing the street and melting the asphalt.

At the end of the burn marks lay the wreckage of two helicopters that looked a lot like Chinooks. They had been downed and burning for a long time; the flames were long gone.

Because they were armed transports, the interior space was fairly large. The integrated‑query glasses scanned thirty‑seven fully armed soldiers burned to cinders, plus a mass of footprints.

"Judging from the residual heat of the wreckage, the engagement happened at least six hours ago."

Li Cheng estimated the time based on the sun’s altitude and latitude. "The battle took place at night. Two transports carrying more than sixty JSOC (United States Joint Special Operations Command) Special Forces soldiers made a low‑altitude raid into the neighborhood,

trying to reenact the classic operation of capturing former Venezuela president Maduro,

and snatch or kill the target inside the subdivision.

But before they could fully land, a high‑energy laser fired from high altitude and detonated the transports midair.

Aside from the twenty‑odd spec‑ops soldiers who fast‑roped early and got lucky, the rest were wiped in the first instant."

The survivors pressed on with the mission, but during their charge, a laser with reduced power started shooting at their limbs, forcing them into a panicked retreat."

He stepped forward. The ground was covered in dried bloodstains and the prints of tactical boots smeared with blood.

For some reason, there was also a lot of fresh vomit scattered around.

"Whoever carried out the laser strike didn’t go for total annihilation. Or rather, he deliberately let a few of them go back as a warning to the other forces."

Gray Rain thought for a moment at that, then raised her hand. "Dumb question: these JOSC spec‑ops guys should’ve been sent by the U.S. military, right? Why not just fire missiles, or use field artillery to shell the neighborhood into paste?"

"Because they can’t."

Li Cheng pointed at a scorch mark on the ground that was even smaller than a coin. "The Script World’s near‑Earth orbital, space‑based laser strike system is absurdly unscientific. Its accuracy, power, endurance, and computation rate are outright bug‑tier.

Missiles and shells would get melted mid‑flight by the laser.

Armed helicopters and JSOC operators are more like a last‑resort, hopeless move. And even then they were detected early, intentionally let into the neighborhood and then trapped and beaten like dogs, as a warning."

In just a few words, he shared intel with White Horse Tombstone. "Putting it all together, this neighborhood’s state has been frozen at roughly eighteen hours after the previous Otherworld traveler finished their business.

And the focal point of the clash is that house."

White Horse Tombstone and Gray Rain followed his finger. In the distance was a nondescript blue‑green house. Its roof tiles and wooden walls were pierced by more than a dozen micro‑laser burn‑through marks.

Some of the holes had been roughly patched over with nailed‑on wooden boards, to keep out rain and wind.

"Hmm..."

White Horse Tombstone dug into her meager knowledge of political economy. "The United Government’s legitimacy comes from overthrowing AI rule.

They wouldn’t—shouldn’t—rebuild an iconic scene symbolizing the advent of the AI era as some kind of memorial. They don’t have time to denounce it, let alone glorify it.

And there’s no reason to broadcast it to tens of billions of people worldwide during the championship stage.

After all, the United Government has never dared to disclose the existence of Otherworld travelers to the public."

Gray Rain rubbed her chin and narrowed her eyes. "So this scene here... was generated by the Home game itself?"

"We’ll know once we check."

Li Cheng made a big jump and landed in front of the house’s door, grabbing the doorknob.

"Hm?"

With his level of strength, he actually couldn’t twist it at all. The knob, the door, and the frame felt like they were welded to space itself.

Not only that, the narrow gap of the door and the tiny holes burned through by the micro‑lasers were all covered by a layer of invisible barrier, like aerogel, solid and unbreakable, impossible to pass.

Through the holes, he could just barely make out what looked like a consciousness‑networking device in the shape of a folding surgical bed set up in the corner of the living room.

The frame around the folding bed was packed with flexible screens, draped in data cables of varying color and thickness. A large server stack in the corner hummed, giving off a faint glow.

Because of the angle, even lying at the hole and straining his neck, he couldn’t tell whether anyone was inside.

Every other attempt to get in—White Horse Tombstone’s Monster Power punches, Gray Rain’s Skull Shattering Hammer, Li Cheng’s Demon Exchange—failed across the board.

Li Cheng even resorted to his Light Speed Elbow Strike, slamming the door at point‑blank range, but all he managed to knock loose was a bit of dust.

"WTF."

Panting, White Horse Tombstone shook her throbbing fist. "This is at least two orders of magnitude harder than killing‑field materials."

"Air wall. We’ll come back and explore this area later."

Gray Rain asked, "So what now?"

The invisible barrier wrapped around the whole house, including the underground part, so they couldn’t tunnel their way in.

Li Cheng thought for a moment, then asked White Horse Tombstone, "Got any items with burn or destruction Attribute over there?"

A Killing Field Player’s Backpack is even more private than a bank card PIN.

But Tombstone Sister had always been straightforward and chill. Since Li Cheng asked, she simply dumped out all the odds and ends from her Backpack.

Besides the basic Weapon, Armor, and mounts, there was also a 25-cubic-meter storage ring,

which held some food, medicine, Consumables, plus old stuff she couldn’t bear to throw away, and gifts fans from different guilds had mailed her.

Clothes, accessories, flowers, luxury cars, property deeds...

"Why are there confession chocolates too."

Gray Rain was dumbfounded. The number and variety of chocolates in the storage ring was enough to open a dessert shop:

gold-foil chocolate balls, heart-shaped chocolates, chocolates engraved with the star map from the night White Horse Tombstone was born.

"I don’t even know why, everyone just loves sending me chocolate."

White Horse Tombstone scratched her head in confusion. She’d long known her death date, so she’d never considered romance, yet weirdly her fan count was higher than those insanely good-looking Charm-build Players,

and they were spread across every guild and every social class. She even had more female fans than male, and some people had specifically opened a Tombstone super-topic and Tombstone anti-black group on the forum to collect all related content.

She herself found this pretty troublesome, and had come out to clarify that she wasn’t as amazing as everyone thought,

that those campaign photos for Romanian official parliament were all staged—she’d dropped out in high school, and only ever read the title page of books.

But this still didn’t affect her standing in her fans’ hearts; instead they took her as very pure, with a kind of unpolluted clarity in her eyes.

"This will do, put the rest away. Once we’re out, I’ll pay you back with items of equal value."

Li Cheng picked up a half-dried shriveled pepper: Perfect-Quality Consumable [Death Reaper Pepper], effect was overdrawing your expected lifespan to rapidly restore a large amount of Energy in a short time, and letting you spew high-temperature flames from your mouth.

Maybe her expected lifespan wasn’t enough anymore, because two-thirds of the pepper had been gnawed off, leaving only a short stub.

The good news was, the Furnace of Eight Trigrams mainly used item Quality, not quantity, to generate different Quality shells.

He tossed the Death Reaper Pepper into the furnace core. As the cauldron rotated, the furnace mouth instantly spewed flames red on the outside and golden within, the heat like a mini sun.

Chi——

The wooden door of the house, scorched by the flames, finally showed blackened burn marks. Still slow, but better than brute-forcing it.

"You hold the Furnace of Eight Trigrams." Li Cheng handed the Alchemy Magic Cannon to Gray Rain, then turned around himself.

The sound of air being split drew closer from afar as more than twenty figures descended from the sky—it was Yu Meiqin of Yu and the others, plus the projections of the pro teams following them.

"Looks like you’ve already cleared an encounter."

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow. The fine, dense wounds on them were probably caused by Wanli Sealed Blade—Brother Blade, this won’t do; how’d you end up getting mobbed to death by native NPCs.

"..."

At this point, Yu Meiqin of Yu didn’t bother with any more pointless persuasion. She glanced at that seemingly ordinary little house and gave the Iron Sand Giant Sword a shake in her hand.

"Wait,"

Li Cheng suddenly raised his hand to cut her off. "The cameras should be trained on this area, right?"

The main stage of the finals would be locked onto hotspots. With Lulina fighting and fleeing, Wanli Sealed Blade turned to stone, and Sunset Melting Gold’s fate unknown, it seemed the only place left to focus on was this suburban villa.

"In that case,"

Li Cheng took a deep breath, rubbed his face hard, and revealed a vicious, evil expression. "Kekekeke, how could mere Earth people possibly stop me, an Outer Heaven Demon;

Is this really all you’ve got?

No way you can beat me with just a few of you;

Wipe your necks clean and wait to be refined into my Ten Thousand Souls Banner!"

White Horse Tombstone, who was hugging a coffin, trembled a bit. Bro, these lines are way too mob-villain, like some third-rate xianxia villain’s death speech.

Gray Rain, who was using the Furnace of Eight Trigrams cutter to slice the door panel, did know what kind of bit Li Cheng was running—

The High Light Moment Skill required doing specific actions or lines that fit the world’s definition of "cool factor."

Given that tens of billions of viewers were watching right now, and Li Cheng had been widely promoted as a Hacker challenging Skytop Company, it actually didn’t matter what he said,

even something as random as "I highly recommend Hecheng Tianxia" could trigger a High Light Moment...

Sure enough, multicolored lights flashed briefly under Li Cheng’s feet, stacking a series of buffs. Faster Energy regen, higher Spiritual Power cap, enhanced defensive power, and so on.

He nodded in satisfaction and grinned. "Kekekeke, Wanli Sealed Blade is the weakest among us, and I’m only the second-strongest among the Otherworld travelers.

Even if you take me down, there’s no way you’re beating White Horse Tombstone!"

?

Don’t drag me into your death flag ahhhhhh!!!