The world boss closest to them was a super mutant, which was originally an unknown aquatic creature that had undergone an extreme radiation mutation. After constantly devouring other monsters, it eventually turned into a super mutant asserting its dominance in what was once a city but had now been transformed by its immense strength into a swampy water region.
When Lin Xiao and his group arrived, they could still vaguely make out the remnants of buildings in the swamp, and even see a statue in the center of the city that had not completely submerged, as well as a colossal creature not far away with an indescribable appearance, sporting six heads and countless tentacles, some a kilometer long, some several kilometers, writhing and coiling in the center of the city.
The creature’s main body alone was seven to eight hundred meters in size, covered in a thick layer of keratin. Its six heads were positioned on different sides of its body, with tentacles of varying lengths—some bristled with spines, some covered with suckers, some opened like chrysanthemum blooms revealing a row of fierce teeth, and some grew a giant eyeball with a faint aura of energy emanating from it.
A tangible green, twisted halo covered the entire city ruins. According to Reese, this halo had a powerful effect of distorting both flesh and mind, and anyone with insufficient strength would be twisted into a monster and controlled upon approaching it.
Lin Xiao and Zhuo Jing stood quietly at the outermost coverage range of the halo, observing from a distance. Occasionally, a dull sound and imperceptible psychic fluctuations would travel from afar.
They made no attempt to disguise their presence, as the super mutant had already detected them.
He asked Zhuo Jing beside him,
"Do you have confidence in taking down this fellow?"
She answered confidently,
"I can kill it!"
Lin Xiao nodded with a smile,
"I also think you can. Want to give it a try?"
She nodded, turned to look at the man beside her, and reached out her hand. Lin Xiao called with a gesture, and a dazzling golden shield and sword appeared in his hand, which he then passed to her:
"Waiting for your good news!"
She took the weapons with her hand, silver light suddenly appeared on her body, and a set of exquisitely detailed silver armor materialized as she vanished in a flash.
The next second, the distant super mutant suddenly let out a roar like rolling thunder but was abruptly silenced, followed by a blinding flash of golden light as one of the mutant heads was suddenly severed from its body and fell.
The enraged super mutant’s body was half still while tentacles from the other half flailed and slapped around wildly.
In Lin Xiao’s view, Zhuo Jing used Time Roaming to appear right on the super mutant’s face, decapitating one of its heads with a swift move, using Time Lock to immobilize part of its body. However, with its six heads and six different consciousness cores, locking one part in time didn’t affect the other parts that continued their attacks.
But this was no match for Zhuo Jing’s extreme agility. A golden light darted nimbly through the forest of writhing tentacles, and with each flash, a tentacle or head was sliced off.
In less than twenty seconds, seventeen or eighteen tentacles and three heads were chopped off.
However, the severed tentacles quickly began to regrow, with the flesh at the cut sites visibly regenerating at a rapid pace, giving the impression they would soon be fully re-formed.
But no matter how fast they regrew, it was not as fast as her cutting speed. Under the effect of Time Acceleration, Zhuo Jing’s thought processes and own speed were enhanced by 500%, making her as quick as lightning. From a distance, one could only see a golden streak circling the super mutant, cutting off tentacles and heads. In less than a minute, she had reduced the creature to a giant meatball.
Yet, the final blow that killed it came from Lin Xiao, who took a golden lance from the Libra Golden Armor and threw it with all his might, piercing a huge hole through it and also destroying the core hidden inside its body.
By killing this world boss, they obtained the desired pass, along with several pieces of high-level equipment.
At their current level of strength, ordinary equipment was no longer of much use to them. He checked and then outfitted Zhuo Jing with it.
```
The pass was actually a one-time, one-way transportation item to a higher-level map, capable of transporting a maximum of five people at once. It could only be used once, and after that, it would break and there was no returning.
Lin Xiao crushed the item without hesitation, and a beam of white light wrapped around them as they shot up into the sky.
After an unknown amount of time, Lin Xiao felt the speed of the shuttle slowing down and knew they were about to arrive. His heart was filled with anticipation.
At the Ancient Altar, a massive floating platform suspended in the Void like a city, hundreds of men and women adorned in gorgeous gear exuded a mighty presence. They simultaneously looked up at the Vault of Heaven, where a huge transparent sphere displayed an independent space within. A human clad in exquisite red leather armor and a towering werewolf covered in shiny silver fur were locked in fierce combat.
Both were extremely formidable warriors, their speed lightning fast as they shuttled back and forth across the battlefield, with sword qi that stretched for tens of meters, stirring up clouds of dust and rock, leaving gorges ten meters long and nearly a meter deep all over the terrain.
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The crowd watched the battle intently, occasionally commenting:
"It seems that the Linglong has the upper hand, his speed is just too fast, even faster than the werewolf."
"Yes, the only thing that can affect the battle now is the mentality, as long as Linglong maintains his composure, victory is certain."
"Then it’s settled!"
As they had predicted, the human warrior remained composed, continuously suppressing the werewolf, pressing on relentlessly, ignoring the occasional openings exposed by the werewolf, maintaining this pressure until the werewolf was completely overwhelmed and decapitated with a sword.
Suddenly, subtitles appeared on the surface of the sphere:
"Human. Victory! The next battle in 24 hours."
A beam of white light appeared in the center of the square, drawing everyone’s gaze. As the light faded, it revealed the unfamiliar figures of a man and a woman.
Everyone was taken aback, but quickly registered surprise on their faces.
"Newcomers at this time? Are they here to seek death?"
"No idea where these unlucky kids came from, probably no one told them that it’s the endgame of the Evolution Journey, there’s no chance for them now."
"What a rare sight!"
"To think that there are still people joining the fight in the forty-ninth year, it’s truly miraculous...."
The white light flashed again, and Lin Xiao turned to see a man in red leather armor appearing out of thin air, also looking at him in surprise. He looked back at the man, and the two of them stared at each other for several seconds before the man asked:
"A newcomer?"
He nodded.
"Then you’re doomed."
Lin Xiao...
He quickly realized that the people here were not friendly; not only did the man walk away after asking a single question, but others also just looked at them from a distance, with no one coming forward to interact. This made Lin Xiao somewhat uncomfortable.
After observing for a while, he took the initiative to ask around, but after approaching many, none seemed interested in him, until finally Zhuo Jing made a move and got a couple who looked like lovers to pay attention to them.
At the edge of the gigantic floating city-like platform, there was a small table with some snacks on it, where two men and two women were sitting.
```
"You really couldn’t have come at a worse time."
The man nicknamed Linglong took a swig of his drink and said with some regret.
Though he had already guessed as much, Lin Xiao still asked seriously:
"Can you explain why it’s such a bad time?"
"Simple, we’re now in the final stage of Evolution Journey, the last cycle of deathmatches has already begun. Ten battles every day, tearing apart adversaries from different races, the victor survives to wait for the next round, the loser dies without question."
...
"If you had come earlier, you could have taken advantage of the high-level copies here to enhance your strength, but not anymore. Selection is random, it doesn’t mean that if you fought yesterday, you won’t fight today; if luck is not on your side, you could be chosen every day. If you’re called and absent, you’re directly deemed a loser and erased!"
Linglong glanced at Lin Xiao and Zhuo Jing and said:
"Rank 6 strength might be top-notch outside, but here, it’s at the bottom of the pile. I reckon everyone’s stronger than you two, it’s tough going!"
After eating and drinking his fill, Linglong left with his girlfriend. He didn’t spell it out, but the look Linglong gave them before he left clearly told them they were doomed.
Once the two had left, Lin Xiao chuckled lightly, and Zhuo Jing also didn’t show a discouraged expression.
The Evolution Journey having reached this point was indeed beyond his expectations. He had thought there was more time to improve, but on arrival, he found it was directly entering the final elimination stage—it was too cruel. It was like joining the Nationalist army in ’49, absolutely ridiculous.
If it wasn’t for his other sources of strength, relying solely on normal evolution, he would certainly have died this time.
Afterward, Lin Xiao and Zhuo Jing wandered around the huge platform for a while, speaking to people to understand the situation. Although it was already the final period, it would still take some time for the battles to the death to conclude.
Perhaps because it was already the final stage and there was little hope left, or maybe due to competition or other reasons, people were very indifferent to them. After hitting wall after wall, he couldn’t be bothered to ask any more.
24 hours passed quickly, and after resting a bit in their rented room, Lin Xiao received a prompt in his mind—it was his turn to fight.
Leaving the living area for the plaza, many had already been waiting eagerly. When they saw Lin Xiao walk onto the central teleportation platform of the square, they all showed surprised and schadenfreude-filled expressions.
"Poor kid, arrived yesterday and got picked today, that’s just tragic!"
"He must be regretting it now, if he hadn’t come over, he’d have continued living, even if the Evolution Journey ended, it wouldn’t have affected them. Coming here is different; if you can’t beat the opponent, you’re bound to die."
"It was their own choice, there’s nothing to regret."
"What a pity!"
Lin Xiao could hear all these comments and couldn’t help but smile wryly. To be selected as soon as he arrived, his luck really was appalling.
The teleportation soon finished, and he appeared in a vast independent space. Across the space, a beam of light descended, and the screen before his eyes displayed a prompt:
"The duel to the death has no restrictions, no time limit, in the end, only one person is allowed to leave alive."
"Well, isn’t that bloody brutal!"
He looked toward the opposite side where the light slowly faded, revealing an exquisitely beautiful elf woman wearing delicate openwork light armor, holding a crystal staff in one hand and a light shield in the other.
They were both at Rank 6, but his evolution degree was much higher than Lin Xiao’s.
Lin Xiao’s evolution degree was at 6 percent of Rank 6, while his opponent was at least above 70 percent of Rank 6, a significant gap.
The crucial difference was that his opponent seemed to have taken the magic-based path. With a stamp of her crystal staff on the ground, a burst of crystalline light exploded like lightning. Lin Xiao felt an invisible force field solidify around him, rendering him immobile, while the Elf woman bestowed layer upon layer of shield buffs and various BUFFs on herself. Then, in front of him, lines of light traced out a huge summoning array, and the phantom of a Giant Beast slowly emerged.
But in the next second, both the array’s Giant Beast phantom and the Elf woman froze.
The powerhouses of various races watching from outside the battlefield hadn’t had the chance to comment when a flash of Gold light occurred. Dazzling crystal light burst from the body of the Elf woman, and an immense goddess phantom slowly emerged.
Or rather, this was in fact the True Body of the Elf woman. Before embarking on her Evolution Journey, she was a True God Level Powerhouse.
Lin Xiao materialized out of thin air behind the Elf woman protected by the goddess phantom, with his Gold trident touching the crystal barrier behind her, and he chanted,
"Time Fracture!"
A ring of invisible ripples surged from the Gold trident, spreading outward. A look of fear appeared on the goddess phantom’s exquisitely beautiful face:
"No!"
The next second, the goddess phantom shattered into a sky full of crystal light that disappeared, and the life force around the Elf woman plummeted down to the bottom of the valley, turning her into an ordinary person.
Talent Time Fracture LV1: Upon hitting the target, it makes the target enter a random one of the three most recent and most vulnerable states from their life, with the duration depending on the power comparison between both sides, with a minimum of three seconds.
This strike sent the Elf woman into the Rank 1 state she had been in when she first entered the Evolution Journey World and all her True Body’s powers were sealed.
Without moving a hand, the mere natural dissipation of power when Lin Xiao activated his strength turned the Elf woman into countless pieces of flesh scattered in the sky.
"You have defeated your opponent once, the next battle will be in 24 hours!"
Specks of starlight flew out from the scattered remains, merging into a torrent of starlight that flowed into Lin Xiao’s body. To his surprise, he found the torrent to be incredibly strong, many hundreds of times more than what he had gained from defeating that world boss before.
He checked his evolution degree: previously at 6.39 percent of Rank 6, it suddenly jumped to 15.51 percent of Rank 6. Just six or seven more kills, and he could advance to Rank 7.
Obviously, killing other races’ Evolvers in a final life-and-death battle would yield an extremely substantial amount of Evolution Points.
This was the last chance for lower-level Evolvers. As long as they could keep winning, there was a potential for a comeback.
Although the difficulty was unimaginable, almost impossible, because the life-and-death battle was completely random, and if you were unlucky, a Rank 6 might face an opponent of Rank 7 or even Rank 8, leading directly to defeat. But after all, it was a chance.
After the battle ended, Lin Xiao exited from the Fighting Space. The Human players on the platform were still gathering, with some eating and some chatting. Only about a dozen or so on the square were mostly chattering, and only two witnessed this scene. They looked at each other in shock, speechless for the moment.
At the same Rank 6, it was no match at all.
In the following days, there was no opponent for Lin Xiao on the third day, nor on the fourth, until on the fifth day he was assigned another opponent, while Zhuo Jing had not been assigned one up till now.
This time, the opponent was another Rank 6 Evolver, whose evolution degree was even higher than the previous Elf woman’s and who appeared stronger, but the result was the same. He crushed her with one strike.
It’s worth mentioning that this life-and-death battle wasn’t necessarily to the death. Anyone who won ten times in a row could choose to safely exit with all the powers they had acquired. They could also choose to stay within a space in the Chaos Territory, return to the world of their birth, or go to a specified world, as long as such a world existed.