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Chapter 324: The Future Behind the Door (Part 2)

Even Chen Xuan himself was a bit surprised; his agility seemed to have climbed to a new level.

From previously struggling to keep up with the Divine Eye Technique, to barely using it to fend off enemy arrows, to now almost synchronizing his body with it... Even if it could only be maintained for a few seconds, it was an astonishing improvement.

That momentary retreat just now, to outsiders, was undoubtedly as fast as lightning.

Clearly, this was related to his change of Heart Method.

The "Celestial Mist Cloud Birth True Skill" continuously provided his body with Spiritual Qi, like supplying abundant energy to an engine.

The washing machine, realizing it missed its target, turned and lunged at Liuli.

The latter dodged and moved within inches, seemingly in constant danger, yet always managed to narrowly escape the long spinning drum.

At this time, Chen Xuan noticed the difference.

He relied on the panel for hard dodging, while Liuli relied on sheer technique.

After observing for several rounds, she finally drew her sword. Dozens of sword shadows crisscrossed in the air, turning into fierce slashes!

The table, door, bed frame... these obstacles piled together were instantly cut to pieces. Even the walls and floor had several deep gashes, but the washing machine, despite bursting with sparks, remained operational without any inclination of falling apart.

"This thing... it’s so sturdy!" Liuli showed a surprised expression.

Chen Xuan was also quite surprised. He had witnessed her skills before; in the Demon stronghold in Paris, she singlehandedly thwarted the enemy reinforcements’ armed robots. Whether it was titanium alloy armor or tungsten steel bullets, they couldn’t withstand the sword shadows she swung.

She could even slice through a floor’s reinforced concrete pillars in one breath, causing the entire ceiling to collapse.

This was simply beyond what cold weapons could accomplish.

So even though she wielded a sword, Chen Xuan essentially regarded her as dealing with a conceptual weapon.

But now he discovered, Liuli’s sword had its limits.

Since the enemy looked like a machine, trying a spell wouldn’t hurt. Chen Xuan’s thought shifted, and two Thousand Thoughts Swords appeared at his sides, their tips flickering with lightning—imbued with the Celestial Thunder Order, these Qi Swords were not only a nemesis to Demon Fiends but also great for hacking conductive robots.

However, Liuli wasn’t pleased.

She quickly sheathed her sword before him, then lowered her stance into a perfect sword-drawing posture.

"How about this move?"

As she spoke, Liuli’s body turned into a stream of light, piercing directly through the body of the washing machine!

Even Chen Xuan, observing with the Divine Eye Technique, found it difficult to see her movement trajectory— in an instant, N21 seemed to merge with the sword she slashed; she was the sword, and the sword was she! Chen Xuan realized that the blue-white light was no illusion; it was the ionization phenomenon caused by the sword’s high-speed impact with the air. The dust and metal debris kicked up by the gas waves evaporated into wisps of smoke when passing through the glow!

The momentum of the sword light didn’t diminish; it penetrated the washing machine and continued forward, blasting a hole half a meter wide in the wall.

The corridor was filled with the smell of burning chaff.

It was the scent of dust singeing to embers.

The washing machine was no longer intact. Its core was completely melted, and the long linked drum that emerged had fallen to the ground, losing the strength to bite.

What was eerie was that even when severed, it didn’t stop moving like a regular machine. The "iron neck" composed of drums continued to wriggle on the ground, resembling a dying iron centipede.

"Hmph, I knew it, how could my sword not even handle a washing machine?" Liuli turned around satisfied, closely examining the writhing remains of the enemy, "But what is this thing anyway? Has a machine become a demon?"

"... It’s not AI, it is alive, possessing a kind of self-awareness, more like a life-form made up of microscopic machines. We call it a nano-living body."

Lin Qing’s words surfaced in Chen Xuan’s mind.

"This is... a nano-living body?"

"What is that?" Liuli asked, puzzled.

"A catastrophe caused by nanobot technology; it ultimately led to the extinction of human civilization," Chen Xuan murmured quietly. There was no mistake... this must be the source of disaster Lin Qing mentioned; they appear to be mechanical creations, yet possess life-like qualities. For example, this ’household washing machine’ before our eyes...

Its severed parts were still slowly squirming, as if trying to recombine. The nanobots that should be in a microscopic state had formed into a macroscopic entity; its internal components like drums, motors, and shafts weren’t real metal components but were instead agglomerated by billions of nanobots. As the saying goes, a centipede dies but does not stiffen; conventional means find it hard to utterly destroy them.

"To deal with a nano-living body, either melt it with high heat or divide it into pieces smaller than five centimeters square." As Chen Xuan recalled Lin Qing’s explanation, he spoke, "Its strength typically scales with volume; in complete form, it’s extremely difficult to eliminate, but once damaged, its strength plummets."

Under his command, a Thousand Thoughts Sword stabbed into the writhing chain of drums, directly piercing through it.

The drums struggled violently.

Witnessing this bizarre scene, Liuli couldn’t help but curse, "Disgusting things."

The destructive power of the Thousand Thoughts Sword fell short of Liuli’s Dimension Slash, yet now he could easily obliterate the remains of the nano-living body, proving Lin Qing’s intelligence was reliable.

However, mentally controlling the Thousand Thoughts Sword to chop meat was a mentally taxing job, so Chen Xuan decided to leave it to the expert.

"I’ll leave it to you."

"No problem." Liuli made Chen Xuan retreat ten paces, and then with a single Dimension Slash, the washing machine was reduced back to components. The dismembered nano-living body ceased its movement, as if it had transformed from a living entity into cold metal.

"Is this all it is?" She bent down to pick up a thumb-sized fragment, playing with it in her palm, "You said this thing destroyed human civilization? Is there some kind of mistake?"

Chen Xuan was also somewhat puzzled.

Liuli’s sword was very powerful, but not to the extent of destroying heaven and earth. She could cut through buildings with a single strike, but large bombs could do the same. Besides, this was the future, and the destructiveness of weapons should far exceed the last century. Humanity couldn’t possibly have been obliterated by a nano-living body like a tumble dryer, could they?

Suddenly, the ground shook.

Thud.

Dust rained down from the ceiling.

Then there was another thud.

This time, the sound was much louder, as if the source was quickly approaching them.

Chen Xuan and Liuli exchanged glances and both immediately realized what these thudding sounds represented—a gigantic and heavy object was now moving in this direction.

Its weight was so astonishing that every step made the floor tremble, almost like a minor earthquake.

Was it upstairs or downstairs?

Their eyes simultaneously looked at the hole in the wall...

The sound was coming from outside the building!

Chen Xuan gave Liuli a look, cautiously approaching the edge of the hole and peering outside.

Thud!

He saw a "leg," a "leg" composed of a metal frame, high-voltage power tower, steel beams, and other miscellaneous parts. It extended upwards from the ground, so high that he couldn’t see its end, the upper half obscured by the yellow dust storm, making it seem like it stretched down from the sky.

All the surrounding tall buildings were not even half its height!

And it wasn’t just one—it was a full six! With each step, these legs could conservatively move five to six hundred meters, roughly the distance of four football fields, no wonder the thudding sounds went from far to close in an instant!

Chen Xuan twitched his lips, "Hey, hey... this is unreasonable, isn’t it?"

The "leg" shot straight into the clouds, but its diameter was only a hundred meters, this slender proportion was like a bamboo pole, with such exaggerated dimensions, there’s no way it should be able to support the weight above, it should have collapsed under its own weight already!

Additionally, he noticed many "cocoons" hanging from the leg closest to him.

But upon closer inspection, he quickly realized those things weren’t cocoons, but human corpses, their hands tied behind their backs, nooses looped around their necks, swaying with the movement of the steel leg, like some kind of evil ritual.

The more he looked, the more eerie it felt.

Could a nano-living body do such meticulous things?

The nooses woven with hemp ropes seemed as if another group of humans had personally hung them!

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Six legs landed one after another, shaking the building violently, if they collided, Chen Xuan had no doubt the skyscraper would topple like a sandcastle. But they did not advance further, instead, they suddenly came to a halt.

Then, from the winds and sands swirling in the sky, an eyeball descended.

It was about the size of a truck, dragged by countless cables at one end, yet the body was covered in blood vessels, no different from a living person’s eye.

More frighteningly, after rotating twice, its gaze met Chen Xuan’s.

A chill surged directly from his feet to his entire spine.

"Run!"

The moment Chen Xuan shouted the word "run," Liuli had already made the same judgment. She grabbed Chen Xuan and sprinted towards the apartment at top speed.

Meanwhile, a gigantic leg also swept over like a guillotine, slicing the building in half in an instant! The hallway behind them turned into an open-air passageway, with layers of the building collapsing one after the other, the rumbling of debris falling was incessant.

"Don’t look back, keep running!"

Chen Xuan used the Thousand Thoughts Sword to send flying the falling debris, clearing a safe passage for Liuli, as she carried him with leaps and bounds, faster than the floor was breaking apart.

A hundred-meter-long corridor only took them three seconds to cross.

The two burst into a room, slipping through the back door, and closed it in one fluid motion!

The moment the door shut, all disturbances ceased abruptly, as if the scene they just witnessed was nothing more than a nightmare.

After locking the back door, Chen Xuan was still in disbelief.

Is this the future after being saved?

.

End of Volume Two