Chapter 806: Chapter 806: Desert, Understanding the Essence of Superpower
Wang Linchi walked out of the space. He had no idea where he was, but that didn’t matter—at least he was out.
"The skull’s scrap." Wang Linchi looked at the crystal skull that had turned to powder in his hand. This thing was originally just made from an ordinary person. The fact that it let him pull all this off was already pretty damn good; no point asking for more.
"Hungry... it’s been a long time since I last felt this kind of sensation." Wang Linchi could feel every cell in his body clamoring for nutrients.
"Sooner or later I’m swapping all of you out..."
He griped under his breath. Of course he knew he was hungry, but look at where he was—nothing but sand everywhere, and it wasn’t like he could eat that.
After all, he was still just built like an ordinary human. If he wanted to modify himself, let alone push his Superpower to the next stage and so on, he needed enough nutrients. Sure, he’d love to just slap his head and instantly complete his own transformation, but that simply wasn’t realistic.
"Looks like... a desert???"
Wang Linchi took a closer look and his face went green. He had never once considered that he’d pop out into the middle of a desert.
His physical condition had already been bad to begin with—bad starting stats. And after escaping, it was even worse.
He lightly brushed the scorching air. His spiritual power began analyzing the Elements in the air, and a few minutes later, through his spiritual power Superpower, he quickly locked onto a faint trace of moisture.
"My Luck’s not bad, there’s an oasis." Wang Linchi couldn’t help brightening up. "And it’s not far either—guess heaven doesn’t completely shut every door on you."
"I thought I was dead for sure and would have to restart."
Wang Linchi wasn’t worried that his own death would affect the main body. As his Superpower kept Growing, he’d also noticed something: this thought-instance of his didn’t seem all that important. If it died, they could just send another one.
That said, he wasn’t about to just kill himself off. Even if they "switched saves," it would still be him.
He mobilized the residual nutrients in his body, forcing his bones and muscles to move, and started walking in the direction of the oasis.
Along the way, his spiritual power kept analyzing the distance of the water molecules in the air.
"Come to think of it, how has a Sun this big not completely evaporated it? Or is this something in my knowledge blind spot?"
Wang Linchi grumbled as he walked for nearly six hours. In his spiritual power perception, the water molecules drew closer and closer, until a small oasis finally appeared before his eyes.
He gulped down a huge mouthful of water, and only then did he feel a bit better.
Along the way, he had used his spiritual power to forcibly lock the moisture in his body from leaking out, but even so, six hours had drained him badly.
"The Sun’s going down. I can’t freeze to death out here." Wang Linchi casually yanked up a tuft of grass and shoved it into his mouth, not caring whether it tasted awful or not. Whatever it was, it still had nutrients; eating it at least wouldn’t kill him.
"Let’s check my starting assets: water, grass, sand."
"Oh, and one Sun, but it’s about to get off work." Wang Linchi mocked himself and just lay there in the little pond in the oasis.
No desert dates or anything like that, just some sparse bits of vegetation.
"For starting Talents I put points into Transcendent charm, and Skills into spiritual power."
"Now my development path’s completely locked. What the hell am I even playing anymore..."
While he was recovering, Wang Linchi took the opportunity to rail against heaven and earth. It’s not like he had anything better to do.
The main thing was that thinking consumed nutrients, but complaining didn’t—griping didn’t have to go through the brain.
He just floated there absorbing water. When a trace of chill descended, Wang Linchi finally opened his eyes. By now he was no longer skin and bones; he’d recovered to about the physique of a normal person. At the same time, the little pond in the oasis had already dried up, and all the surrounding plants had been eaten clean.
"Yellow sand everywhere, add in Transcendent charm, and the Sun’s dropped the curtain."
"Desert Emperor, huh?" Something in Wang Linchi’s brain spasmed; he felt like it fit him oddly well.
Only there was one problem: those Desert Soldiers other people had—he didn’t have anything like that at all. The reason he’d been able to activate Xu Lan’s Steel War God superpower before was because her Superpower was originally a transformation type. He had recompiled Xu Lan’s personality and thought patterns, then paired them with the Steel War God to trigger a special reaction.
It was essentially turning the Steel War God into Xu Lan’s second personality, then having it Devouring her primary personality. Add to that the fact that her Superpower was hereditary and contained some ancestral DNA information; once Wang Linchi dug that out, only then did this unique effect become possible.
If it had been Song Jing or Changsun Shi instead, Wang Linchi wouldn’t have been able to pull it off at all—chalk it up to a one-off stroke of Luck.
"Shame I didn’t bring it along. Otherwise I could’ve played a round of Investiture of the Gods and activated every Superpower inside each Metahuman into a god." Wang Linchi felt a bit regretful.
Back then they could barely protect themselves, much less take Xu Lan with them.
"No immediate threat to my life for now. Next I’ve got to think about how to get back at that bunch."
"I haven’t even made a move yet and you people jumped me first. Ever heard of ’in dubio pro reo’?" Wang Linchi was a bit indignant. He was aware of his own double standard—sure, he wanted to screw over the world, but he had to be the one to make the first move. Instead, before he could do anything, the other side had already got him in a chokehold.
That was just way too disrespectful.
"The sand in this desert should be good for something, right."
All sorts of ideas surfaced in Wang Linchi’s mind.
The tangled thoughts gradually condensed into a workable plan.
...
The steel was dismantled into large amounts of rust, and Changsun Zhong finally let out a breath of relief. He realized this wasn’t the Investiture of the Gods of Superpower aberration, the so‑called list of deification. The result might look similar, but in essence it was completely different.
"It’s a completely new kind of thought-virus. Luckily we stamped it out in time, or once it spread, this thought-virus would propagate through every transformation‑type Metahuman, activating them into actual beings."
"Xu Lan’s personality has already been completely replaced by the new personality called the Iron War God. No wonder Divinity appeared. After that, the other side really might have achieved deification." Changsun Zhong still felt lingering fear.
Because of his fight with the Iron War God, the entire Strategy Bureau had been razed to the ground.
Song Jing, on the other hand, was a bit dazed. He had never imagined that Xu Lan’s Iron War God could be that powerful.
"So this kind of thought-virus can strengthen a Superpower?" Song Jing had fought shoulder to shoulder with Xu Lan before. The Iron War God’s power had completely blown past his expectations.
As for Changsun Zhong, his Superpower possessed both time and space attributes. It was only right that he had such overwhelming force.
That much was common knowledge among Metahumans.
"No. The essence of a Superpower is cognition. The deeper your cognition, the stronger the Superpower. There has never been a trash Superpower, only Superpowers with insufficient cognition." Changsun Zhong stated what would become the foundation of future Superpower theory.
"The Iron War God was just the personality formed by the Steel War God superpower itself, so its cognition of itself was naturally extremely profound. That’s why it had such terrifying power."
"And that was only the beginning. Going forward, the Iron War God could use science to further excavate its cognition of itself and turn itself into a true god. That’s the process of deification."
Drawing on his cognition of time within his Spacetime Adaptors Superpower, Changsun Zhong began to restore the Strategy Bureau, which had been reduced to ruins, by reversing time.
"Unfortunately, my cognition of time is limited. I can only do simple rewinds; resurrection is still beyond me." Changsun Zhong knew his rewind ability had limits. Once a living being died, he could not bring it back.
If Song Jing had been killed by Wang Linchi earlier, or hadn’t held on until he could help rewind his death, Changsun Zhong wouldn’t have been able to rewind him into being alive again.
Those words from Changsun Zhong left Song Jing with an expression of disbelief. "Aren’t Superpowers fixed from the moment they awaken? What’s there not to ’cognize’?"
At the current point in time, Superpower awakenings were divided into clear tiers from the very start. Cognition sounded simple enough—just look at what you’ve got and you’d "know," right?
Take Song Jing himself: he was really fast, so his ability was nicknamed Godspeed. And because even instruments couldn’t track him, and he could slow everything around him when he activated, this miraculous effect made him SSS‑class.
Obviously there were other grades and variants of Godspeed as well.
"That kind of cognition is only skin‑deep. It doesn’t touch the true essence of Superpowers at all." Changsun Zhong sighed. By now these things had already become common sense to him.
Even Superpowers with the same "Godspeed" label all had different underlying principles. To truly understand them, you had to study different disciplines to refine that cognition. This process was called dimensional ascension: while deepening your understanding of your own Superpower, you allowed it to undergo higher‑dimensional enhancement.
Without enough knowledge to properly apply a Superpower, back in the timeline world Changsun Zhong came from, you wouldn’t even survive three days.
