Jie Ming stepped out from behind the stone pillar.

He maintained the Great Void Step but deliberately lowered its power output, revealing his appearance.

He looked at the professor with a calm expression and a trace of curiosity in his eyes.

“It seems you’re not surprised by my appearance,” Jie Ming said. “Do you have information about me?”

A mouth-like shape moved slightly on the professor’s blood-red face, forming an expression akin to self-mockery.

“Not at all,” his voice was much deeper than before, carrying a metallic resonance. “But there is a familiar feeling about you. That person… although their aura is completely different from yours, the feeling you both give me is very similar.”

Jie Ming’s eyes brightened slightly.

He naturally knew who the professor meant by “that person.”

It was the wizard who had cooperated with the black-robed organization in this plane and provided the Strange fusion technology.

He had been tracking that individual’s traces all along but had never found any direct clues.

“May I ask for information about that other person?” Jie Ming asked unhurriedly.

The professor fell silent.

Jie Ming could sense that this silence was not refusal, but an effort to recall.

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to tell you,” the professor finally spoke. His speech was much slower than usual, as if every word required effort. “But it was only after fusing with this Strange that I realized there had been such a person by my side all along.”

Jie Ming’s eyebrows rose slightly.

The professor meant that he had been completely unaware of the wizard’s existence until after fusing with the Blood Net, when his soul essence changed, allowing him to notice someone operating in the shadows around him.

To achieve such concealment, that wizard must also be skilled in soul-type sorcery, capable of shielding perception at the level of consciousness.

Jie Ming nodded and did not press further. He knew the professor had already said everything he could.

“It seems that even after fusing with the Strange, your will hasn’t been greatly affected,” Jie Ming changed the subject.

The professor lowered his head and looked at his own blood-red hands.

“This technology is not yet perfected,” his voice grew even lower. “My consciousness is rapidly fading. I can feel it… I’m forgetting. Forgetting their names, forgetting their faces, forgetting why I’m doing all this.”

He raised his gaze again, fixing it on Jie Ming.

“Why did you keep me here? What do you want?” Jie Ming asked.

The professor’s blood-red humanoid form took a step forward.

The transparent net threads extended with his movement, maintaining full coverage of the surrounding space.

He took out a black-covered notebook from within his body.

The notebook’s surface had no text, but its edges were worn white and the spine showed obvious creases, as if it had been read countless times.

“I once made a deal with that person,” the professor held the notebook up without handing it over, simply letting it float above his palm. “He provided me with the foundational Strange fusion technology. I have continuously refined the structures, methods, and underlying logic of the seals… However, with my abilities, I cannot advance it any further.”

Jie Ming’s gaze fell on the notebook.

A light sweep of his spiritual perception revealed the vast amount of information contained within.

It was not just text and diagrams, but something deeper—something akin to soul imprints.

During his research, he had engraved his thoughts, deductions, and even the emotions of failure into the fibers of the paper.

“This is all the data from my research,” the professor’s voice carried an emotion Jie Ming had never heard from him before. “You beings like knowledge, don’t you? I’m giving it to you now. I only hope that once you perfect this technology, you will pass it on to the humans of this world, so they can truly escape the threat of the Stranges.”

The notebook floated up from his palm and slowly flew toward Jie Ming.

Jie Ming reached out and caught it.

The moment his spiritual perception touched the notebook, it delved inside. In less than a second, he had scanned all its contents.

The notebook recorded not only the technical data for Strange fusion, but also the professor’s comprehensive analysis of this world’s Strange ecosystem, detailed dissection records of every Strange he had encountered, and his ultimate reflections on the proposition of “humanity coexisting with Stranges.”

This content would be of enormous help to his research.

But what concerned Jie Ming more was another aspect.

“I originally thought that as the leader of a cult, you would have some brainwashing methods or the like,” Jie Ming’s tone carried an indescribable mix of mockery and emotion. “But it seems that isn’t the case.”

A trace of expression suddenly appeared on the professor’s originally indifferent and empty blood-red face.

It was pride.

A pride that came from the heart.

“We operate by our own will.”

His voice was no longer low. It even carried the confident, composed tone he used only during lectures.

Jie Ming looked at him and remained silent for a moment.

“Even if it means sacrificing many innocent lives?”

The professor’s pride did not fade.

He looked into Jie Ming’s eyes. That gaze was not the rebuttal of a cult leader toward a dissenter, but the answer of a martyr to a questioner.

“To free humanity from the threat of the Stranges, these are necessary sacrifices.”

Jie Ming gave him a deep look.

If another cult leader had said this, it would have been nothing but deception to send people to their deaths.

Those people shouted noble slogans while holding knives that always stabbed someone else’s chest.

But this person was different.

He had truly staked his own life as well.

Before knowing of Jie Ming’s existence, if he had wanted to escape, with his control over this sub-space, the three from the association could never have caught him.

Yet he did not run!

In order to personally obtain the final data, he stood here, in this sub-space he had created himself.

His soul had begun fusing with the Strange, and his consciousness was irreversibly fading.

His goal was not power or wealth, nor any worldly “benefit.”

He genuinely believed that everything he did was to free the human species from the shadow cast by the Stranges.

Jie Ming lowered his head, looked at the black notebook in his hands, and stored it into his inner cave heaven.

“You’ve taken it?” the professor asked.

“I’ve taken it,” Jie Ming nodded.

On the professor’s blood-red face, the expression of pride gradually faded, replaced by a mix of relief and regret. “The technology is still not perfect,” his voice began to grow low again. “My consciousness can’t hold on much longer. You should be able to deal with me, right?”

He asked very calmly, as if inquiring about the weather or asking whether the audience of a lecture had understood his explanation.

Jie Ming nodded.

But he did not act immediately.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking at the professor, and began speaking about other matters.

“Why did the foundational structure of your fusion technology include a diversion at the third layer’s energy circuit nodes? Wouldn’t routing directly through the main trunk be more efficient?”

The professor was stunned for a moment.

Then he smiled.

It was a heartfelt smile—the kind of delighted smile a researcher shows when recognized by a peer.

“You think I didn’t try that?” His voice regained vitality. “I tried it at least two hundred times. Routing directly through the main trunk causes the Strange’s power to shatter the human host’s conscious defenses within three seconds. Diversion allows the impact force to spread across seven different nodes, with each node bearing a portion. This raises the human will’s pressure resistance limit by at least four times.”

“What about the reflux after the seventh node? How is the energy reintegrated after diversion?”

“That is the key point. Reflux is the greatest difficulty. I used layered reflux. Strong-willed individuals use high-layer reflux, while weak-willed ones use low-layer reflux. But the energy loss in low-layer reflux is too high—over forty percent—which directly affects the fused entity’s combat power. I’ve been searching for optimization solutions, but time ran out…”

The two stood like this in the core hall of the sub-space. Above them floated the remnants of the light sphere that had merged with most of the professor’s power. Beneath their feet were cracks and fragments on the gray ground.

They were like two colleagues in a university laboratory, standing before a blackboard discussing a technical problem. Their tones were serious, focused, and even carried the sharp, excited clash typical of academic debate.

Jie Ming knew what he was doing.

He was stalling for time because he wanted the professor to exist a little longer as a “human.”

As Victor Raine—a researcher, a scholar, a person who had reached the forefront of Strange research in this plane—to exist a little longer.

In the distance, the sounds of explosions were getting closer.

The President and the two reinforcements were rapidly returning from the direction they had been teleported to.

When Disaster Grade Spirit Mediums fought without restraint, the Hazard Grade Step Strange could not stop them at all.

They moved at extreme speed and were now less than a kilometer from the core hall.

The professor raised his head and looked in that direction.

His expression remained indifferent, but something in his blood-red eyes was rapidly fading.

“Time’s up,” he said.

His voice had already begun to distort, carrying a resonance that did not belong to humans.

The blood-red humanoid figure suddenly exploded.

The Blood Net threads that formed his body spread outward from the core, covering every corner of the entire hall within milliseconds.

Ceiling, walls, ground, air…

Dense blood-colored threads surged from the void, wrapping Jie Ming at the very center.

The “Blood Net” launched its attack.

Countless threads tightened simultaneously, like a garrote made of innumerable tiny blades, strangling toward Jie Ming.

The cutting power of those threads was enough to reduce steel to powder and tear ordinary Stranges into fragments.

Jie Ming’s body was wrapped in thick layers of the Blood Net. The threads embedded into his clothes, producing ear-piercing metallic scraping sounds.

Yet Jie Ming seemed completely unaffected.

He lowered his head and glanced at the threads wrapped around his right hand, then casually pulled. The threads snapped like ordinary spider silk.

“So this is the limit…”

Jie Ming raised his head and looked at the Blood Net gathering around the hall. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

“Since we’re in another space…” Jie Ming’s voice was not loud, but every word was as clear as if etched on glass, “I can use a bit more strength.”

He clenched his right fist like an ordinary person.

Then he took a step forward.

The surrounding Blood Net tried to obstruct his movement but could not.

The moment his foot landed, the gray ground exploded.

Centered on his foothold, the entire floor rippled outward in layer after layer of wave-like cracks.

The cracks spread in all directions at terrifying speed, tearing the entire hall’s floor into countless fragments.

“Consider this… your send-off.”

Jie Ming threw a punch toward the professor, who had already dispersed into a sky full of Blood Net.

The motion was plain and unremarkable.

It looked like an ordinary person clenching their fist and swinging at the air directly above them.

Then, the Blood Net vanished.

Under Jie Ming’s absurdly exaggerated power, the sky full of Blood Net was like a sheet of paper set ablaze. Starting from the center, it spread outward and was completely “annihilated” in less than an instant.

The fine red threads that formed the Blood Net lost all structure and properties the moment the fist force passed through, turning into the most basic energy particles.

Those energy particles were then crushed by the fist force into even more fundamental existence, until nothing remained.

The existence of the “Blood Net” was completely erased by this single punch.

Yet even after easily destroying the Blood Net, the power of Jie Ming’s punch was not exhausted.

The now-dispersing force triggered a massive, visible shockwave.

A tsunami-like shockwave swept through the hall, through the floating steps and rooms.

Finally, this absolutely overwhelming power easily pierced the boundary of the sub-space created by the “Step” Strange.

Then it struck the bottom of the Mist Capital Psychiatric Hospital.

Boom!!!

The building’s foundation shattered like a biscuit under the shockwave. The reinforced concrete structure offered no resistance before the fist force. The entire building began collapsing upward from the base and was lifted into the air.

Shattered glass, broken bricks, twisted rebar, fractured concrete slabs… everything was swept up by the shockwave and hurled into the sky, gradually twisting into debris under the force.

The shockwave burst out from the ground, shot into the sky above Mist Capital, and flew straight toward the heavens themselves.

As it rose in altitude, the power rapidly dispersed.

The thick black clouds that perpetually shrouded the city, so dense they almost blocked out the sun, were torn apart like thin paper before the shockwave. A massive circular hole appeared in the center of the cloud layer, its edges as smooth as if drawn with a compass.

Behind the hole was a clear azure sky.

It was a blue the people of Mist Capital had never seen—pure as a gem.

The remaining dispersed shockwave transformed into fierce winds that swept outward in all directions from the center of the hole.

It blew across the harbor, parting the thick sea fog like a giant hand; it blew across the old city district, drying the perpetually damp stone roads; it blew across the factory district, instantly scattering the black smoke from the chimneys.

The thick fog over the entire city was blown away by the aftershocks of this single punch.

In that moment, the sky of “Mist Capital” became clear.

The Spirit Medium Association President was carried out of the ground by the shockwave.

He stood at the edge of the psychiatric hospital ruins, covered by a thin storm barrier that blocked the falling debris and dust from the sky. His eyes were wide open, reflecting the massive circular hole in the clouds and the pure azure sky behind it that he had never seen before.

The male and female reinforcements sent from headquarters leaped out of the ground behind him.

The female reinforcement’s mouth hung open, speechless.

The male reinforcement clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly.

Not far away, Harding and Dirk ran over from outside the blockade line, stumbling over the rubble.

Harding’s face was pale, and Dirk’s lips were trembling.

They looked at the sky, at the massive hole, at the scattered fog, and could not utter a single word.

The crowds evacuating around the psychiatric hospital also stopped in their tracks.

A nurse holding a child stood by the roadside, looking up at the sky.

The blue was reflected in her eyes as tears silently slid down her cheeks.

Even the nurse herself did not know whether those tears came from fear or some other reason.

The child in her arms reached out, pointing at the sky and babbling incoherently.

At the factory workshop entrance, Eric heard his coworkers’ cries of alarm and ran out.

He stood in the open space outside, shading his eyes as he looked toward the sky.

Then he froze.

The sky of Mist Capital had turned blue.

In his twenty-six years of life, he had never seen such a sky.

It was a color he had seen in picture books, fantasized about in dreams, but had never witnessed in reality.

A fierce wind blew over, messing up his hair.

He did not dodge. He simply stood in the wind, head raised and mouth open, like a blade of grass bent by the gale.

After the thick fog was blown away, the view became exceptionally clear. Everyone present saw that figure.

It was a faint, blurry silhouette, like a mark erased by an eraser in the air.

It stood at the center of the psychiatric hospital ruins, directly beneath the massive hole in the sky.

The surroundings were filled with collapsed buildings and swirling dust, yet the figure’s presence was strong enough to draw everyone’s attention.

No one could clearly see what it looked like.

The Great Void Step blurred Jie Ming’s form into an unfocusable shadow.

But the fact of his existence was unmistakable.

Everyone saw him. Everyone subconsciously knew: he was the one who had thrown that punch.

The President unconsciously took a step forward.

Jie Ming turned his head. His gaze pierced through the ruins and dust, landing on the President.

Thus the President’s steps halted, and the words he wanted to ask caught in his throat.

In that instant, Jie Ming’s figure became completely transparent.

The Great Void Step activated at full power. His existence vanished entirely from all perception, like a drop of water merging into the sea, leaving only the dazed and terrified crowd behind.