Chapter 606: Special Building War, True King Duel
"The building war is about to start. Have you all finished your pre-battle preparations?" Xu Lang asked.
"All set." Wang Yazhi replied, "I'm at my peak right now."
"We're ready too."
When the big moment arrived, the women were surprisingly reliable.
Amid that tense atmosphere, the building war began.
A sound started reverberating through heaven and earth, a sound that felt as if it was directly inside one's skull, eerily strange.
If the sound alone wasn't clear enough, it could even manifest characters on the retina.
This was the voice of the Dorm Survival Game's central core, not the voice of any single dormitory building.
[ Dorm Survival Game Broadcast—— ]
[ Dormitory Building Promotion Match begins! ]
[ Participating dormitories: Mad King Dormitory Building, Evil King Dormitory Building, Amusement Park Dormitory Building, Heaven's Judgment Dormitory Building! ]
[ This building war uses a point system, split into seven rounds. The team with the most points after seven rounds wins! ]
[ This promotion match is a "True King Duel." The winner takes the path of the True King and gains an extra promotion opportunity! ]
[ Pre-match betting shares from the four sides are as follows ]
[ Mad King Dormitory Building 10, Evil King Dormitory Building 9, Heaven's Judgment Dormitory Building 5, Amusement Park Dormitory Building 1, total points 7 ]
[ The losing dormitory and its players will have 70% of their Source Matter extracted as nourishment for the winner's promotion! ]
[ Mad King Dormitory Building 10 points, triggers maximum-stake special effect "All-In": interference permissions increase by 100% during the building war; if defeated, 100% of their Source Matter share will be extracted! ]
[ Amusement Park Dormitory Building 1 point, triggers maximum-stake special effect "Last-Resort Life Card": interference permissions are reduced by 90% during the building war; if defeated, only 10% of their Source Matter share will be extracted! ]
[ Notice: The path of the True King has no turning back. The winner may only participate in future True King Duel promotions! ]
No fluff, no encouragement, not even much explanation about what the True King Duel entailed. The Dorm Survival Game announced it, then immediately went offline.
"True King Duel, what is that?"
Xu Lang was utterly bewildered.
It sounded like a ranked match above the usual matching contest, but the rules seemed more lenient.
In ordinary building wars, losers were doomed, but in this True King Duel, losers seemed to get a breathing space.
Notably, Mad King Building had given up any chance to make a comeback and simply went all-in.
Insane!
"Xu Lang, Teacher Sherry, do you know what a True King Duel is?" Tong Qi asked, bewildered.
"There are no written records, and none of the other players have ever mentioned it," Sherry shook her head.
Xu Lang shook his head too.
No experience meant only speculation was possible.
But this was not the time for speculation, the building war had already begun!
Rumble, rumble~~~
The earth hummed and trembled, heaven and earth roaring like thunder, the mirror-world spinning, the outside world undergoing cataclysmic changes.
A trembling swept through the area around Mad King Building, as if an invisible giant hand had uprooted it from its original coordinates, though it was not being "pulled away." Rather, the entire building was being overlaid by an older, more domineering layer of space-time!
The Eye of Providence appeared thousands of meters above, overlooking everything.
In an instant, the outside scenery receded like a tide, replaced by a fixed, otherworldly sky.
The sky became a congealed milky-white light dome, like diluted jade solution; the ground was paved with vast green megabricks stretching beyond sight, their surfaces inscribed with laws too indistinct to decipher.
This did not seem like a casually created illusion; it felt more like an ancient battlefield that had endured countless wars!
At the four corners of this eerie realm, the four buildings stood like giant wedges nailed into space-time, towering and emanating a reality-warping dread!
Northeast corner · Mad King Building —
The structure itself writhed and subtly reorganized, its outer walls alternately black obsidian and boiling rivers of blood. The most primordial, violent, and insane life force danced here, logic twisted into braids, emitting frenzied howls alongside the building.
This was a place more terrifying than a black hole, a realm without rules where gods and mortals mixed, where sky and earth made no distinctions, where dust and the sacred stood on equal footing.
The supreme could be pulled down from their altar and degraded, and vice versa.
War was the vanguard of chaos, chaos the necessary condition for deification, and gods themselves could be swept up by war at any moment. These three strange phenomena flashed continuously, burrowing into people's hearts.
Southeast corner · Evil King Building —
It resembled a malformed skeleton thrust into the earth, countless twisted spikes and meat cavities attached to it. The bone surface continually bled viscous shadows within which countless eyes and mouths opened and closed. Desecrating whispers seeped into souls, and vicious gazes tore reality apart!
Southwest corner · Amusement Park Building —
This was a gigantic doll statue built from candy, glass, and rainbow steel, its surface sprouting countless bizarre, colorful bubbles. Inside those bubbles were disturbingly perfect dreamlike castles, endlessly flowing multicolored rivers, and grotesquely bright pink suns…
Even light that touched those bubbles took on a cloying tint, strangely infectious, making people involuntarily want to smile and plunge into them!
Northwest corner · Heaven's Judgment Building —
A perfect cube on the outside, with no seams revealing what's inside. It was an absolute cold white, its lines sharp as if knife-cut, a structure embodying symmetry and geometry to the extreme.
It had no superfluous decoration, like an absolute command, radiating an oppressive yet calm and powerful aura that ordered everything to its place!
[ Dorm Survival Game Broadcast—— ]
[ Space-time displacement complete, Promotion Match battlefield · Void King Court loaded! ]
Because of the space-time shift, the buildings leaked some of their original auras, but they quickly returned to normal.
Mad King Building looked the same as always, towering in crimson.
Evil King Building was pitch-black and profound, its surface drifting with evil qi.
Heaven's Judgment Building was a huge cube; it didn't have many floors, but each floor held many dorms, and dorms lined all four sides.
Amusement Park Building appeared normal, as if it were a high-end residential dormitory, utterly unremarkable.
However, Xu Lang, who had glimpsed the prior scene, felt his mind shaken, his SAN value plummeting!
Rumor had it that God had no form; all decrees had to be relayed to mortals through angels.
Mortals could not and would not see God's full appearance, because God is the real essence, while living beings are postnatal creatures who can only perceive illusions.
God is 0, angels are 1, the world is 2, living beings are 3.
Right now Xu Lang had glimpsed 0 through 2, bypassing 1, seeing God directly. Although it was only a glimmer of light and shadow from 0, it still struck him tremendously!
Crunch!
In an instant, Xu Lang's soul emitted a faint, unbearable crack as if overloaded, a fissure appeared.
"Damn, saw too much!"
Yet Xu Lang did not shut off the Eye of Providence; instead, he widened his eyes.
The Transcendence to Sainthood talent went berserk at that moment!
[ Contemplated a higher-dimensional existence, gained insight, War God +1 ]
[ War God leveled up to LV25, unlocked Exclusive Skill "Soul-Slaying: Ruthless Blade" ]
[ Soul-Slaying: Ruthless Blade: Locks the mind, ignores distance, dulls distinctions between life and death. Once the blade is drawn, it never misses. The skill's release condition is the "Ruthless State," even if the user is already dead. ]
The Ruthless State was an epiphanic understanding; Xu Lang had not fully grasped that profound principle, so it was difficult to enter.
But since this was his exclusive skill, it wouldn't be impossible to use—it's like needing to use the bathroom.
If you can go, you can go; you just don't know when the urge will come.
The four dormitory buildings had reabsorbed their auras, but Xu Lang's mood did not calm.
What the hell were these dormitory buildings?