Wasteland City, Core Plaza of Zone A.
The ground was covered in smooth, mirror-like patches of absolute dead land, not even a drop of Mutated Creatures' blood remained.
Qin Yu walked at the front, a cigar clenched between his teeth.
Li Ruobing sheathed her combat knives on either side of her thighs and kicked away a piece of rubble out of boredom.
"Qin Yu, is that it? I haven't even warmed up yet."
"You wiped out all the monsters on the ground with a single shot. What do we do now? Are we really going to build houses in these ruins?"
Yao Qian clung tightly to Qin Yu's arm, her large eyes warily scanning their surroundings.
"That's right, Brother Qin Yu. There isn't even a proper bed here. How are we supposed to sleep at night?"
Yao Xue adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose, her sharp gaze sweeping over the energy flow patterns around them.
"Qin Yu, you deliberately held back just now."
"Although the space within a five-kilometer radius has been erased, you didn't even touch that black building directly ahead."
Yao Xue pointed toward a black tower standing abruptly in the center of the ruins, several hundred meters away.
The tower had no visible seams, as if it were a single piece of black metal thrust into the ground.
Qin Yu exhaled a puff of smoke and pinched Yao Xue's fair cheek.
"Still the smartest, Director Yao."
"Build houses? Isn't there a ready-made villa right there?"
Qin Yu strode forward, heading straight for the black tower.
Elena immediately gave a signal.
A hundred Valkyrie warriors swiftly dispersed, forming a combat formation to protect Qin Yu and the three women in the center as they advanced toward the tower.
In truth, no one knew Qin Yu's true thoughts at this moment.
The reason he risked being targeted by the entire Law Council to forcibly tear through space and charge into the Seventh Testing Ground wasn't for showboating or venting anger by killing a few Mechanical Scavengers.
He came for this place's "lifeline."
[Ding! Host has approached the absolute core of the Seventh Testing Ground!]
[Hidden target locked: World Heart!]
The System's voice rang out in Qin Yu's mind, audible only to him.
At this moment, Qin Yu's eyes grew profoundly deep, even carrying a hint of madness imperceptible to ordinary people.
World Heart.
It was the core Underlying Code that supported the operation of every "Glass Sphere," and the ultimate converter used by the Law Council to siphon energy from survivors.
As long as he removed this thing, this Testing Ground would no longer belong to the Law Council.
More importantly, the reward offered by the System was too tempting.
[One World Heart can be directly exchanged for ten million Starburst Points!]
[If three World Hearts from major Testing Grounds are collected, they can be directly synthesized into a "Dimensional Engine"!]
[Dimensional Engine: Ignores all Dimensional Reduction Strikes by laws and grants the host the authority to directly alter the underlying logic of the entire universe!]
This was Qin Yu's ultimate trump card.
But he hadn't told anyone.
Not even Li Ruobing or Yao Xue, nor even Elena, who was absolutely loyal to him.
It wasn't a matter of distrust.
It was because the five Administrators above were powerful artificial intelligences who had lived for countless epochs.
They were omnipresent.
They could monitor sound waves, capture brainwaves, and even analyze human intentions through micro-expressions.
Once the words "World Heart" left Qin Yu's lips, or were known by any of them,
the Law Council would absolutely detonate the entire Testing Ground Seven without hesitation!
They would rather destroy this glass sphere than let the core code fall into Qin Yu's hands.
So, Qin Yu could only act.
Act like a reckless brute who only knew killing and seizing territory.
The group soon halted beneath the black tower.
Up close, they realized this was no building at all.
It was an enormous metal server casing, its surface flowing with extremely complex, deep-blue data streams.
No doors, no windows.
Only an absolutely sealed energy field.
"Commander, there is no physical entrance."
Elena stepped forward, her azure mechanical pupils scanning rapidly.
"The material of this casing does not belong to the current dimension. There are no matching records in my database."
"Let me try!"
Li Ruobing, with her fiery temper, drew two high-frequency vibration combat blades, putting force into her waist.
"Open up for me!"
Two blinding white lights slashed fiercely against the surface of the black tower.
"Clang—!"
A deafening metallic clash rang out.
Li Ruobing grunted, the massive recoil sending her flying backward.
Qin Yu, quick-eyed and swift-handed, caught her slender waist, steadying her in his arms.
The blades of her two A-grade combat knives were already curled into scrap metal.
"Damn! What the hell is this thing so hard?!"
Li Ruobing shook her numb wrists, cursing loudly.
Yao Xue stepped forward, gently tapping the tower's surface with a scalpel.
The moment the scalpel made contact, its tip vanished into thin air.
"It's not a matter of hardness."
Yao Xue gasped, her expression turning grave.
"It's a rule barrier. It carries the dual attributes of 'Absolute Defense' and 'Physical Annihilation.'"
"Anything from this dimension that touches it will be directly disintegrated."
Yao Qian retreated two steps in fright, hiding behind Qin Yu.
"Then how do we get in? What's even inside?"
Qin Yu sneered, tossing the finished cigar to the ground and crushing it under his military boot.
"What's inside? Something that'll make those five old bastards above kneel and call me daddy."
Qin Yu released Li Ruobing and strode to the front of the black tower.
Since physical attacks were useless, he'd use magic to defeat magic.
Qin Yu flicked his wrist, the dark-golden [Extinction · Void Grasp] instantly appearing in his palm.
From the gun's body, the destructive aura of the Pseudo-Rule Tier erupted violently.
"Absolute Defense?"
Qin Yu gripped the gun handle with both hands, his eyes filled with ferocity.
"Today, I'll teach you what absolute destruction means!"
Without any flashy movements, Qin Yu drove the dark-golden gun tip straight into the surface of the black tower!
"Crack—!"
The previously indestructible rule barrier emitted a crisp shattering sound the moment it met the gun tip.
Like a glass cup struck by an iron nail.
Dense black spatial cracks, centered on the gun tip, frantically spread outward.
"Break for me!"
Qin Yu exerted force through his arm.
"Boom!"
The hundred-meter-tall black tower was forcibly blasted open by Qin Yu's strike, creating a pitch-black hole five meters in diameter right where a door should be!
So-called Absolute Defense was nothing but a joke in the face of a Dimensional Reduction Strike that directly erased spatial coordinates.
At the edges of the massive hole, space continued to collapse and reform.
But a passage leading into the interior of the tower was now completely open.
Dead silence fell over the scene.
Elena and the hundred Valkyrie warriors stared, dumbstruck.
Li Ruobing's jaw dropped, and she couldn't help but curse, "What the hell kind of perverted thing is that gun of yours?"
Qin Yu put away his long spear and dusted off his hands.
"Let's go, wives. Time to go inside and pick out a big bed."
Qin Yu took the lead, stepping directly into the hole.
The four women immediately followed.
Elena ordered the Valkyrie warriors to guard the entrance, ready for anything.
Inside the tower.
It wasn't pitch black as one might imagine, but instead bright as day.
There were no floors here; the entire interior was one vast, empty cylindrical space.
Countless dense fiber optic cables floated in mid-air.
All the cables connected to the absolute center of this space.
There.
A polyhedral crystal, the size of a human head and glowing with an eerie crimson hue, hovered.
It pulsed and contracted like a real heart.
With each pulse, it emitted visible ripples of rules.
"That's... what..."
Yao Qian covered her mouth, feeling a tremor from the depths of her soul.
Yao Xue's face instantly turned deathly pale as she stared fixedly at the crystal.
"That's an aggregate of pure death energy and emotional code..."
"Billions of people died in Testing Ground Seven. All their despair is inside that thing."
Qin Yu stared at the red crystal, a flash of fervor in his eyes.
This was the World Heart.
Once he obtained it, he would have stripped one layer of the Law Council's defenses!
Without hesitation, Qin Yu strode toward the crystal.
"Halt."
Suddenly, an emotionless, synthesized mechanical voice rang out sharply within the empty tower.
Immediately after, the Data Stream in front of the crystal twisted violently.
A virtual avatar composed of pure blue light and shadow materialized before Qin Yu.
It had no facial features, only a humanoid outline.
This was the highest-level AI guarding the World Heart—the Rule Arbiter.
"Illegal intruder Qin Yu. You have crossed the line."
The Arbiter's voice held no inflection, yet carried an undeniable, absolute pressure.
"Withdraw from this area immediately. Otherwise, you will be subjected to Conceptual Erasure."
Qin Yu stopped, tilted his head to look at the glowing virtual avatar, and suddenly laughed.
"Conceptual Erasure?"
"You broken computer, haven't you figured out the situation yet?"
Li Ruobing drew her pistol and fired a shot at the Arbiter's head.
"Bang!"
The bullet passed through the blue light and shadow, hitting the tower wall behind it without causing any damage.
"It's useless." Yao Xue pressed down on Li Ruobing's wrist. "It's a program, it has no physical form."
The Arbiter paid no attention to Li Ruobing's attack, its focus locked solely on Qin Yu.
"Countdown begins. Three."
"Two."
Qin Yu didn't even draw a weapon, striding directly toward the Arbiter.
"One."
"Rule Execution: Gravity Annihilation. Ten-thousand-fold Gravity Field, activate."
The Arbiter recited the command without a trace of emotion.
Any human being, even an S-grade enhanced individual, would have been instantly crushed into a pulp the moment the ten-thousand-fold Gravity Field activated.
But Qin Yu didn't even blink.
[Ding! Detection of environmental rule tampering!]
[System Underlying Rules protection activated!]
[Ten-thousand-fold Gravity Field nullified! Absolute immunity!]
Without the slightest pause in his step, Qin Yu passed straight through the Arbiter's virtual body!
"What?!"
For the first time, a ripple of fluctuation appeared in the Arbiter's synthesized voice, and even the blue light on its body flickered wildly.
"Rule Execution: Space Stripping!"
"Rule Execution: Cellular Decay!"
"Rule Execution: Soul Annihilation!"
Within a single second, the Arbiter unleashed all the highest-level punitive rules it could mobilize in Testing Ground No. 7 against Qin Yu.
It was utterly useless.
Qin Yu walked as if strolling through his own backyard. All the Dimensional Reduction Strikes that landed on him couldn't even scratch a single hair.
"This System cheat is really handy."
Qin Yu sneered inwardly.
He had already reached the pulsating World Heart.
He was less than half a meter away from this crystal.
The Arbiter completely panicked.
It spun around abruptly, its virtual body blocking the space between Qin Yu and the crystal.
"Warning! Extreme warning!"
"That is the core Engine! You must not touch it!"
"Once removed, Testing Ground No. 7 will completely collapse! You will die in the Void Turbulence along with all life here!"
The Arbiter's voice even carried a trace of simulated, desperate urgency.
Qin Yu grabbed the Arbiter by the throat.
Although it had no physical form, Qin Yu's palm was imbued with the System's erasure power, forcibly suspending this Data Stream in mid-air.
"You talk too much."
Qin Yu stared at the Arbiter's featureless face, his gaze icy to the extreme.
"If I dared to come here to pull the plug, I'm not afraid of this broken fishbowl shattering."
"Go back and tell those five old fossils."
"Wait with their necks washed clean."
"Bang!"
With a sudden surge of force from his palm, Qin Yu directly crushed the Arbiter's Core Code.
The blue light and shadow instantly exploded, dissolving into countless specks of light that vanished into the air.
Obstacle cleared.
Qin Yu took a deep breath, slowly extended his right hand, and firmly grasped the crimson World Heart.
"Hum—!!"
The moment Qin Yu touched the crystal.
Testing Ground No. 7 experienced an unprecedented, supermassive earthquake!
The gray toxic mist in the sky was instantly torn apart.
The glass dome enveloping the entire district began to show massive, visible cracks!
Endless Void Turbulence poured in through the fissures, sweeping the ground's ruins into the sky and shredding them directly!
"Qin Yu! The sky is collapsing!"
Li Ruobing couldn't even stand steady, clutching the nearby optical cable and shouting.
Yao Qian screamed in terror, closing her eyes.
Yao Xue's face paled drastically: "The Underlying Rules of the entire district are collapsing! We must evacuate immediately!"
"Stop panicking!"
Qin Yu held the World Heart tightly.
In his mind, the System's notification sounds were going off like a string of firecrackers.
[Ding! Detected Testing Ground No. 7 core Engine — World Heart!]
[Forcibly severing connection with the Law Council…]
[Severance successful!]
[Extracting…]
The crimson crystal the size of a human head transformed into a blinding red light in Qin Yu's hand, directly piercing his palm and entering the system space.
[Extraction successful!]
[Congratulations, host, for obtaining: World Heart (1/3)]
[Reward Starburst Points: Ten million points!]
As the World Heart was completely extracted, all the lights inside the tower instantly went out.
The suspended light cables fell to the ground like dead snakes.
Testing Ground No. 7, this slaughtering meat grinder that had operated for who knows how many years, came to a complete halt.
"Got it."
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