Chapter 155: Chapter 154: A Well-Behaved Entrance
The struggle for control over the Gray Tide was, in fact, all about permissions—about modifying its fundamental protocols.
Shen Feng and Jingwei understood from the very beginning. The reason Arthur Seldon could act so leisurely and unscrupulously was because, as the Gray Tide’s creator, he possessed the highest level of permissions.
It was like a software developer having the power to modify an entire program; the same applied to the whole of the Gray Tide.
All the initial monologues, feigned weaknesses, battles, and even allowing Shen Feng to "succeed"—it was all just a sick game born from his twisted personality.
After all, the closer the hero Shen Feng got to victory, the higher he flew, the more painful the fall would be when he ultimately failed.
What’s more, the Salvation Army Warriors were there as an audience.
Their tormented, twisted expressions were the finest entertainment for Arthur Seldon, bringing him immense pleasure and satisfaction.
To him, if he had suffered, then the world should suffer just the same!
No, it had to suffer even more than he did!
Quickly killing an opponent was boring; repeated, slow torment was far more flavorful.
So, when Shen Feng thoroughly enraged Arthur Seldon, Seldon was bound to choose to have the Nanomechanical Cluster devour Shen Feng’s body.
And at that very moment, Shen Feng finally had his chance. Through the countless links of the Nanomechanical Cluster on the surface of his body, he could transmit his and Jingwei’s consciousnesses to the maximum extent, entering the Gray Tide to find a vulnerability in Arthur Seldon’s control!
At that instant, Shen Feng and Jingwei’s consciousnesses tore through the Gray Tide at the speed of light. Their time was measured in microseconds.
From the moment the Nanomechanical Cluster began to devour him until he would suffer a fatal injury was only a few short seconds. They had to accomplish everything within that extreme time limit!
Looking outward through the Nanomechanical Cluster, everything around them seemed to slow down, almost coming to a standstill.
Arthur Seldon’s metal face was laughing maniacally. The Salvation Army Warriors’ faces were filled with grief and rage. The Gray Tide continued its slow crawl.
But Shen Feng had no time to observe any of this. In almost an instant, he and Jingwei had pinpointed Arthur Seldon’s location.
He was in an inconspicuous patch of the Gray Tide hundreds of kilometers away!
This was proof enough that Seldon was a truly mad, twisted, and viciously cunning individual.
The importance he placed on the safety of his own body far exceeded Shen Feng’s expectations.
This was also a key reason he had been able to control the Gray Tide to devour the entire world and end human civilization.
’Still, now that I’ve found him, things will be much easier...’
Without the slightest hesitation, the two super-consciousnesses plunged into the source of the Gray Tide’s control signals and began to steal Seldon’s permissions and source code.
"Rest assured, I will make a hundred-meter-tall metal statue of your Savior and place it right around your Hibernation Pods, so you can see him at all times," Arthur Seldon’s metal face said with a maniacal laugh.
Admiring the grieving and furious expressions of the Salvation Army Warriors around him was the best stimulant he could ask for.
The protagonist he had chosen this time was far more interesting than the previous ones, and because of that, this story was all the more thrilling and full of twists and turns.
’From an audience’s perspective, I’m almost moved to tears by the boy’s valiant struggle...’
’After I’ve completely devoured him, I can erect a monument for the boy, write a detailed epitaph, so that future generations can see his great achievements... and how pathetically laughable he was.’
’Hee hee, it’s settled...’
Just as Arthur Seldon was sipping the sweet wine of victory, the entire Gray Tide suddenly trembled slightly.
He frowned, letting out a soft "Huh?"
Then, the metal face under his control abruptly contorted with shock and fury.
In that one instant, he suddenly felt that he had lost control of the Gray Tide within a several-kilometer radius, and this loss of control was rapidly spreading outward!
The Gray Tide that had just enveloped Shen Feng instantly stopped writhing, then dispersed, revealing the boy it had encased.
The boy’s clothes were now in tatters, and all his hair was gone. Only the backpack on his back remained intact.
But his face wore a calm and composed smile.
"Commander!"
"You... Commander, you won?"
"Hahaha, I knew it! I knew it!"
The Salvation Army Warriors cheered, the restraints of the Nanomechanical Cluster on their bodies having been released as well.
Although they didn’t understand what had happened, it was clear that Shen Feng had once again turned the tables!
Shen Feng smiled and muttered to himself, "I’m bald..."
"Shut up! Let someone else say that!" Jingwei snapped. "Our control isn’t stable enough! Help me seize more of the Gray Tide!"
"Okay, okay!" Shen Feng’s Consciousness Antennae, along with Jingwei’s, once again rampaged through the Gray Tide. Like two tornadoes, they conquered territory, seizing control of vast swathes of the nanite sea.
In the blink of an eye, the range of Gray Tide under his control expanded rapidly, from tens of kilometers to hundreds, at one point even breaching to within ten kilometers of Arthur Seldon’s physical body!
"You... you thieves! Robbers!" Arthur Seldon’s metal face roared. He finally understood what had happened and began to fight Shen Feng for control.
Where before he could have easily suppressed Shen Feng with his superior permissions, they were now evenly matched, locked in a stalemate.
However, once he collected himself, he immediately restored his control over large areas of the Gray Tide, even reclaiming some lost ground from Shen Feng and Jingwei.
After all, as the Gray Tide’s creator, his understanding of this mechanical creation far surpassed that of Shen Feng and Jingwei.
For a time, their consciousnesses were deadlocked within the Gray Tide, neither able to snatch any more territory from the other.
But just a few seconds later, Arthur Seldon and Shen Feng had already taken control of thousands of kilometers of the Gray Tide, sinking it deep into the ground like lichen and moss, and began to permeate the super-massive structure composed of the Nanomechanical Cluster below.
Arcs of electricity flickered from the Gray Tide on Earth’s surface, surging into the super-massive structure below.
Meanwhile, the surface Gray Tide continuously generated energy through solar and thermal absorption, channeling it into the super-massive structure below.
Based on their understanding of the Gray Tide, their objective was now the same: to activate the older, dormant models of the Nanomechanical Cluster, control them, and then control even more!
Whichever side controlled the larger mass of the Gray Tide would be the victor in this vicious battle!
In the blink of an eye, they had permeated downward through a thousand layers. The entire surface of Earth began to writhe slowly, like a slumbering monster awakening!
Both sides had become part of this super-massive structure, continuing to penetrate deeper while simultaneously attacking each other!
Metallic tsunamis thousands, even tens of thousands of meters high, surged and crashed against one another. Countless dense metal spines, dozens of kilometers long, pierced through each other. Myriad Construction Machines detached from the Gray Tide, morphed into various forms, and charged forward to slaughter each other across a battlefield spanning thousands, even tens of thousands of kilometers.
The gales generated by the Gray Tide’s writhing were strong enough to shred any former buildings and hurl them into the sky!
At this point, Shen Feng’s Consciousness Antennae had also been greatly extended along with the Gray Tide, allowing him to finally see many places he had never been able to reach before.
The oceans still existed, but they now looked more like waves in a metal bathtub.
Within the part of the super-massive structure he controlled, there were still many people living their lives.
He could even see, through the Nanomechanical Cluster that formed the structure, the city within the Gray Tide Graveyard, or some of the hibernation prisons that were still dormant—a panorama of life in all its forms.
This God’s-eye view was truly a wondrous thing.
Although he and Arthur Seldon were engaged in a world-shaking battle on the surface of the super-massive structure, the people living within it only felt the ground tremble slightly.
Clusters of nanomachines once again enveloped the hundred-plus Salvation Army Warriors, granting them sufficient permissions.
This time, the range of Gray Tide they could control extended for up to a hundred kilometers!
"Find Arthur Seldon’s physical body! Find that son of a bitch!" Shen Feng shouted.
Masses of the Gray Tide immediately swarmed in Arthur Seldon’s direction, while Shen Feng himself was also searching for any sign of Seldon’s movements.
The battle between the tides of gray was like two oceans colliding, or like mountains warring against each other—magnificent and overwhelming, an earth-shattering spectacle.
But it was difficult to inflict any real damage on the other.
After all, with a single person hidden within an ocean of Gray Tide, finding his physical body was basically like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The Salvation Army Warriors repeatedly charged the Gray Tide controlled by Arthur Seldon, but they still couldn’t find the slightest trace of him.
A mountain of Gray Tide several thousand meters high rapidly amassed, and Arthur Seldon’s metal face coalesced once more. With a calm expression, he said:
"Not bad. I admit, you’re the most interesting character I’ve ever met, and my most powerful opponent. But this is as far as you go."
"Now that you have my permissions, you should also understand just how powerful the Gray Tide is. At this point, the entire Gray Tide is essentially the entire Earth. If we continue to fight, it will never end."
"For me, that’s actually a good thing. At least I’ll never be bored again... Besides, I’ll just slowly kill all the living people, grind them into paste, tear them to shreds, and make you feel the pain of powerlessness."
His face was utterly expressionless now, but his words were steeped in deep malice, a viciousness so profound it was chilling to the bone.
Shen Feng, controlling the Gray Tide, looked at the incomparably enormous face before him and gave a grim smile. He said:
"No, I’ve already found your real body. You’ve forgotten one thing: the Gray Tide doesn’t move very fast. It takes time to move your body."
Arthur Seldon sneered, "So what? Unless you have the ability to paralyze a massive amount of the Gray Tide all at once, like with a high-yield nuclear bomb... But there are no nukes left in this world. All nuclear weapons have already been devoured and assimilated by the Gray Tide under my control."
"This world doesn’t have any, it’s true..." Shen Feng said from within the Gray Tide, simultaneously raising his hand and issuing a quiet order to his "True Apocalypse Game" bracelet:
"Requesting to claim the reward for the deposit mission. Summoning an entity from the original world!"
At the same time, in the small courtyard of Shen Feng’s house on the outskirts of Tai City, inside the basement that had been welded shut, a spatial passage large enough for two trucks to pass through appeared.
The engine of a military-green intercontinental ballistic missile launcher, which had been in hibernation, instantly roared to life. Its headlights shot out two brilliant beams of light.
Its onboard control computer had already been remotely connected by Jingwei!
Then, the deceptively docile-looking strategic intercontinental ballistic missile launcher thundered forward and drove through the spatial passage!
