Weapon System 65: At Last, The Mythical Creature (2)

“Even though it’s already so fierce, you’re telling me to hold back and reduce the force of my hammer by thirty percent? Why?”

“If it looks down on you all this much, why not let it grow even more arrogant? Besides, this way you save your strength for the crucial blow.”

“Oh! Playing hard to get… You already have a plan, don’t you? Hurry and tell me.”

“If I tell you now, it won’t be any fun. You’ll know once we bring it down.”

“But if you don’t say anything, how do I know your plan will work?”

“That’s why I said you’ll know once it’s defeated. If we fail, I can at least save a bit of face, can’t I? I never said anything, so just treat it as me improvising.”

“Oh, come on! What kind of strategist are you? That’s so lame.”

“What’s the point of all this chatter? Just follow my lead.”

“Alright! I hope you really do have a clever trick up your sleeve.”

At that moment, the monster actually stopped flying and landed on the ground.

The Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model grumbled, “Damn! That space-time beast’s code really is getting cleverer—it’s not chasing you anymore.”

“What’s it up to now?”

“It knows it can’t catch you in the air, so it figures this cat-and-mouse game is a waste of effort. It also knows you’ll have to find it eventually, so it’s simply waiting for you to come to it.”

“So to beat it, we really need to think outside the box!”

“Exactly.”

“Alright, I’ll keep hammering it,” Zhang Mingjing said, continuing to direct his hammer at the creature. This time, he reduced the force by thirty percent and the speed by twenty percent as instructed.

Just then, the monster’s head—knocked unconscious moments ago—regained consciousness, and Zhang Mingjing couldn’t help but complain inwardly.

The creature wasn’t entirely defenseless against the hammer, which explained its lack of fear. It often tried to slice at the hammer with its wings; before, the hammer moved so fast that it always missed, but now, with its speed dropped below the speed of sound, it managed to hit the hammer three times out of ten. Each time the hammer was struck by those wings, it would instantly disperse into energy and had to be re-formed before it could attack again.

“What are those wings made of? How can they be so tough?” Zhang Mingjing asked.

“There’s a huge amount of energy loaded onto those wings, which is what makes them so powerful. It seems the space-time beast’s code put a lot of effort into them.”

By this point, the monster was slicing through the hammer with ease, and its success rate had climbed to five out of ten. It was now sprinting wildly toward the small southern city, completely disregarding Zhang Mingjing.

Zhang Mingjing felt pretty miserable about this fight, but he had to follow the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model’s plan.

Ten minutes later, Jamie’s voice sounded in Zhang Mingjing’s mind, “Master, we’re here!”

At the same time, the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model sent him the battle plan, which required Jamie and Catherine to attack the monster with their hammers at full strength.

Zhang Mingjing relayed the orders as instructed, but he was confused, so he asked, “Why do they get to use full strength, but not me?”

The model explained, “If they don’t go all out, won’t the space-time beast’s code get suspicious? We need them to go at full power, so the code thinks we’re out of options. That gives us a chance to finish it off.”

“Oh… so you know how to set a trap too.”

“Well, I can’t help it. After watching so many palace intrigue dramas, my mind can’t help but work that way!”

---

“Damn!” Catherine and Jamie were much weaker than Zhang Mingjing, and the space-time beast’s code knew this well. So when they attacked with their hammers, even at full strength, the monster barely reacted, continuing to charge forward through their combined assault as if it were nothing.

At this moment, Yuhua and Chengxian had also recovered and caught up.

The Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model said to Zhang Mingjing, “You know, each of your battle armors has the same energy reserve. If you pooled all that energy into a single hammer and you swung it with every ounce of strength you have at one of the beast’s heads—guess what would happen?”

“I’d smash it to death!”

“No. But the head you hit would explode, and the monster would be in excruciating pain. For about five seconds, the other two heads would lose consciousness and wouldn’t be able to use their shifting ability. That’s just long enough for the Defenders to blast them with high-energy lasers.”

“Got it!” Zhang Mingjing beamed.

…

After Catherine and Jamie delivered their final strikes, their energy instantly transferred into Zhang Mingjing’s hammer. At the same moment, Yuhua and Chengxian’s armor also sent their energy over. Zhang Mingjing mustered every bit of strength and swung the supercharged hammer at the monster, which was still oblivious—until…

Everything happened just as the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model predicted. In the five seconds the monster lost consciousness, the Defenders shot through the remaining two heads. The beast was slain.

…

After this battle, Zhang Mingjing became obsessed with the idea of creating an energy-absorbing technique.

But the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model told him that would require computational power beyond that of the space-time beast’s code—beyond even the five-dimensional model itself!

“How is that even possible?” Zhang Mingjing exclaimed, then questioned, “Why can the lightsaber absorb the monster’s energy? Does it have more processing power than the space-time beast’s code?”

“Because I created the lightsaber. When it absorbs the monster’s energy, my processing power is augmenting it. Most importantly, it disrupts the beast’s thick hide while rapidly draining energy.”

The model continued, “But now, with the space-time beast’s code stacking its computational power, there’s no way to drain its energy while it’s alive.”

“So if I want to invent a weapon like the energy-absorbing technique, I either need more computational power than the beast’s code, or I have to disrupt its code’s processing?”

“Right. Do you think you can manage that?”

“No… Do you have any ideas?”

“I already said, these space-time beast codes are stacking their power, and without a physical form, I can’t out-compute them. Stop pestering me.”

Zhang Mingjing was still unwilling to give up. He mulled it over: “Hmm… How could I achieve more computational power than the beast’s code in a short time? Could a quantum computer do the job?”

“Come on! Don’t kid me—that’s three-dimensional tech. It’s nothing compared to what five-dimensional processing can do,” the model scoffed, then advised, “Just forget about this for now and focus on optimizing your current weapons.”

Although the model had shot down his idea, Zhang Mingjing couldn’t let go of it. His intuition told him the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model knew of a shortcut to boost his own power, so he kept pressing.

At last, unable to withstand his persistence, the model gave in.

“Fine, I’ll tell you. There is a shortcut, though it’s hardly that, and it’s very risky.”

“What shortcut?”

“Try to sense your source projection—your true self. Its computational power is infinite. If you can connect with it, you could borrow a fragment of its processing power and surpass the space-time beast’s code. But…”

“I knew there’d be a catch. I’m ready for it—go ahead.”

“While borrowing from your source projection, your consciousness will traverse many higher-dimensional spaces, experiencing countless illusions. Many of these aren’t your true source. You must discern which is real. If you choose wrong, you’ll be ensnared by terrifying illusions. If you can’t resist their temptations, you’ll be corrupted—what you call losing yourself to madness. At best, you’ll go insane; at worst, you’ll die.”

---

“Ah!” Zhang Mingjing was genuinely frightened by this. “With all that risk, maybe taking the shortcut isn’t worth it after all!”

“Exactly. That’s why I didn’t tell you about this path at first.”

“So, I’d better think twice before I act?!”

“Yes, absolutely.”

…

Though Zhang Mingjing said he was scared, in his heart he still wanted to try sensing his source projection. He was torn.

Clearly, he was no longer the same Zhang Mingjing who once drifted through life.

The Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model watched him in silence, feeling proud.

Meanwhile, the elders of the five-dimensional space were filled with confusion and worry.

One elder said, “Sensing the source projection isn’t easy for any of us. Does the model really believe someone from three-dimensional space like Zhang Mingjing can do it?”

Another elder scoffed, “It’s madness—utterly reckless. The model should never have tempted Zhang Mingjing.”

Elder A added, “He’s courting disaster. Getting trapped by illusions is the likeliest outcome, which will ruin our plan to decode the Solar Seal.”

“Yes! The Celestial System must send a mandatory order to the Five-Dimensional Cognitive Model to stop Zhang Mingjing’s reckless actions.”

So, one elder submitted a request to the Celestial System—but then something strange happened: the system didn’t respond.

“What? Could it be that the Celestial System believes he might succeed in sensing his source projection?” The elders were astonished.

“That’s impossible!”

“Absolutely!”

“But the Celestial System never makes mistakes…”

…

True to form, Zhang Mingjing began to meditate.

Following his usual routine, he quickly entered his first meditative state, then went even deeper into another, and then deeper still.

He didn’t linger in these states, but kept pressing further…

At last, he entered a state of complete selflessness, where time no longer had meaning and all that remained were countless vignettes from his life.

The child Zhang Mingjing appeared again, and with him came the vast, labyrinthine maze.

“You never learn, do you? Back here again, trying to return to your source projection?” the boy taunted.

From his previous experience, Zhang Mingjing knew what lay before him was not a single maze, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold overlay of mazes—one leading endlessly into another, impossible to escape. And each maze was its own illusion.