The group left the community area and rushed into the alley.
"Demons are coming!" Cheng Jinyang issued a warning.
"Where, where?" Yang Wangshu instinctively stood on tiptoe and saw Chu Qingqing already manipulating metal to wrap herself into a ball.
Cheng Jinyang pressed the ball with one hand and directly activated the Iron Shooting algorithm.
The ball shot forward like a cannonball, smashing straight into the demon that had entered the alley. Only then did Xiao Wangshu get a clear look at the appearance of the weird-level demon.
Wearing a shirt, tie, skirt, and pantyhose, it looked like a fashionable woman you'd see anywhere in Xinjiekou, except its arms had been replaced by heavy bone war hammers, making it look like a formidable killing machine.
When the iron ball was two meters away, it suddenly transformed into a dazzling blade.
Miss Qingqing stopped behind the demon in a flash, the metal covering her body turning into a giant blade pointing skyward from behind.
The demon's body was cleanly sliced from its right abdomen to its left shoulder, and under the powerful pressure of its pumping heart, blood sprayed out like a waterfall.
Chu Qingqing, drenched in the demon's foul blood, remained expressionless. She reversed her grip and made a motion as if sheathing the sword, and the long blade once again became flowing iron-blue liquid metal, undulating gently at her feet, taking away all the blood on her body and revealing her pretty face again.
"So cool!" Yang Wangshu's eyes lit up, clapping her hands in admiration.
The group then proceeded to absorb the blood energy on-site, feeling the power within them continuously growing.
"I have a feeling I'm about to level up," Yang Wangshu solemnly said.
"Wake up, one weird-level demon only gives about 0.05 Ma," Cheng Jinyang shook his head.
"Just grind two thousand of them overnight, and you'll get 1000 Ma, right?" Yang Wangshu casually uttered a line that made people feel exhausted just thinking about it.
"Respawning takes time too," Cheng Jinyang said. "The difficulty of the levels doubles each time. If we can't beat the later ones, we'll have to return to the safe house to reset the spawns, which takes another 15-20 minutes. Gaining around 2 Ma overnight is already pretty good."
"What a rip-off," Yang Wangshu commented. "If this were a game, such unreasonable difficulty settings and tedious process would have had it shut down long ago."
"So don't treat this nightmare like a game!" Cheng Jinyang retorted.
Not long after absorbing the blood energy, the screams of demons echoed again.
The group's luck was quite bad this time. In the second round, the two demons appeared on either side of the alley, so they had to split up to deal with them.
As usual, Chu Qingqing transformed into a bowling ball for Cheng Jinyang to shoot.
When she approached the demon, she turned the metal into long blades, using the impact's kinetic energy to deliver a fatal blow.
One had to admit that this girl had a high aptitude for combat. It's worth remembering that when she first entered the nightmare, she perished together with a demon. Now, she could accurately manipulate the metal to dodge or block the demon's dying counterattack while killing it at high speed.
The demon on the other side was left for Cheng Jinyang to handle. He calmly stood in place, facing the pouncing demon, and raised his arm leisurely.
After reaching the eighth grade, he had learned a new gravitational algorithm called "Trapping Void," which extended the radius of his power to about 20 meters.
When the demon entered the range of his ability, its body suddenly "fell" upward uncontrollably—Cheng Jinyang had set up a gravitational singularity above, causing all mass within a 5-meter radius spherical space to be pulled toward the central singularity.
This was the eighth-grade algorithm "Trapping Void," a super-powerful group binding skill.
As the demon fell into the gravitational singularity, surrounded only by air with no solid surface to gain leverage from, it could only struggle futilely in mid-air.
Cheng Jinyang snapped his fingers again. As he released the "Trapping Void," his "Iron Shooting" algorithm precisely hit the demon, which had no way to dodge. Its body began to "fall" upward again, accelerating to nearly 120 meters high before the set time function abruptly ended and gravity returned to normal.
Thus, the demon, still ascending, began to decelerate gradually, then under the pull of gravity, climbed slowly to about 250 meters, and finally started to fall naturally again.
250 meters, roughly equivalent to a 70-story building (assuming each floor is 3.6 meters high), would be enough to shatter even a tortoise, let alone a demon without a protective shell.
So, everyone heard a low "thud" as the demon collapsed at the landing point, its bones almost entirely shattered, dying instantly.
"Wow! That was also..." Yang Wangshu watched him effortlessly raise his hand and snap his fingers, toying with the demon like it was nothing. Her eyes almost sparkled with admiration as she instinctively typed, "That was also super cool."
But suddenly, the phrase "assault the breasts" popped into her head. With a flick of her wrist, she contemptuously typed:
"That's it? Just average."
Cheng Jinyang: ???
On the other side, Chu Qingqing, who had just slain the demon, pierced its corpse with an iron spear and dragged it over, allowing the team to once again enjoy double the blood energy absorption.
"It would be great if the increase in blood energy could be displayed," Yang Wangshu complained while stretching, "Otherwise, the positive feedback isn't obvious at all."
As I said, don't treat this like a game!
Cheng Jinyang thought helplessly.
"How about this," Miss Wang, who was on his back, said calmly.
Everyone then saw a few lines of text suddenly appear above their heads:
+0.01 MA
+0.01 MA
...
"Awesome!" Yang Wangshu exclaimed excitedly, "Now it feels like a game! Sister Wanrou, I am willing to call you the chief designer!"
Cheng Jinyang: ...
This title gave him a subtle feeling, as if courting death.
But it was indeed impressive. So after Miss Wang analyzed and seized the dream interface, she could actually digitize, secure, and visualize this place?
Tsk, seems like you're not completely useless after all.
Just as he was thinking this, Cheng Jinyang's head was smacked by Wang Wanrou.
"Don't move randomly," she said lightly, "It distracts me from thinking."
Cheng Jinyang remained silent, thinking to himself: I was just trying to be helpful, why do I feel like she's riding on me?
After absorbing all the blood energy, the calculation revealed it was worth about 0.1 Ma.
After a short rest for everyone, more roars of demons and monsters echoed moments later.
This round consisted of four demons, the biggest challenge before the ghost-level checkpoint, with a recent failure rate of 30%.
The reason being, sometimes multiple demons don't appear simultaneously, causing a situation where when the iron cannonball shot by Chu Qingqing kills the first demon and is then swiftly aimed at the second demon, another demon arrives...
Without the gravitational force provided by Cheng Jinyang, Miss Qingqing, even if she kills the demon, is easily injured by the dying counterattack.
Therefore, after Cheng Jinyang and Xing Yuanzhi both reached the eighth grade, Miss Wang devised a new tactic.
Cheng Jinyang set up a pitfall to completely block one end of the alley, while Chu Qingqing, carrying Xing Yuanzhi, was shot by the iron shooting algorithm toward the other end, directly smashing into the demons rushing from that direction.
Just as the demons were about to approach, Xing Yuanzhi stomped her foot on the ground, activating the newly learned eighth-grade algorithm:
Mass Effect - Quicksand Field!