Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fusion by Hand-I, the Earth’s Only Superpowered Human(Tezcatlipoca)

Just as Yang Luo boarded the train, gradually leaving the city of Qingxia behind, several hundred kilometers away, Xi Gu was deep in thought.

“Spiritual Transfiguration...”

Xi Gu murmured quietly to himself. In his mind’s eye, scenes began to play out—Yang Luo’s actions and experiences over the past few days: destroying surveillance cameras; massacring the security staff in a villa on the outskirts; whisking Wang Changming away and plundering all his assets with just a few effortless moves...

Yet none of these were what truly occupied Xi Gu’s attention. What truly set his mind to pondering was the blue-white flame that had flared to life in Yang Luo’s palm that night.

—Azure Blaze Sweeping the Plains.

“Flames conjured from thin air...

“Humanity’s transcendence never ceases to surprise me. This fire is by no means a mere byproduct of the Blood of Evolution, nor some physical mutation. It is a true supernatural ability—just like my ‘Daily Growth by One Percent,’ it cannot be explained by the laws of matter and belongs wholly to the realm of the mind.”

Xi Gu extended his hand and closed his eyes slightly. Some clarity was dawning on him as to why this had come to pass.

“...The human mind is an unfathomably complex thing. The term ‘idealism’ was coined for humanity itself. Perhaps, those before me were not without the potential for transcendence, and the age-old pursuit of supernatural powers was not a quest after pure fantasy.

“It’s just that, before me, no human had ever truly crossed that threshold, no one had ever truly attained supernatural powers. So that potential was forever shackled within, never to be revealed.

“—Until I appeared, until I bestowed the ‘Blood of Evolution’ upon others. As if I had shattered the boundaries of life itself, the deepest desires and aspirations suppressed within the psyche began to manifest through the ‘Blood of Evolution’ as a key, transforming into a power distinct from my own...

“...So, if I continue to spread the ‘Blood of Evolution,’ and one by one, humans step across the threshold of transcendence, would this world then be filled with all manner of supernatural beings, each wielding powers as fantastical and varied as those in a fantasy novel?”

Xi Gu’s eyes shone with fervor, and in that moment, he was overwhelmed by delight.

Though he had already, by granting the “Blood of Evolution,” created the first superhuman in the history of mankind apart from himself—Yang Luo—at the fundamental level, everything Yang Luo possessed came from his own hand. Xi Gu, as the master of the “Blood of Evolution,” could bestow or revoke such power at will.

In terms of status, Yang Luo was little different from the “Gray Shade” and “Black Moon” he had created on a whim—mere playthings.

—But when Yang Luo released that blue-white flame, transforming the entire villa estate into a sea of fire, everything changed.

The power that Yang Luo himself named “Furious Flame” revealed to Xi Gu a new realm of possibility. It showed him that a vibrant and diverse era of transcendents might not be mere fantasy after all.

It was not some stage for a circus act conjured by his own hand, but a living, breathing age of limitless potential—a true age of marvels.

For the first time, Xi Gu, who had always been in complete control, felt a faint sense of unease.

And... an overwhelming joy.

“Human potential... truly is infinite.”

Xi Gu smiled from the depths of his heart.

In truth, on the night when Yang Luo went on his rampage, Xi Gu had sensed his actions. He could understand it, but was still somewhat displeased by the way Yang Luo had so brazenly crossed the line—he had even considered stripping him of his powers.

But after discovering Yang Luo had awakened “Furious Flame,” his perspective changed.

Time and again, this pioneer among superhumans surprised him, surpassing even his own expectations.

...Even if the price was paid in blood.

But so what?

Every era demands sacrifice.

Besides, whether it was Wang Ruo, Huang Cheng, or Wang Changming, they were all people who made a habit of sacrificing others for their own gain. Since that was the case, perhaps they could understand what it meant to be sacrificed themselves...

Now, Xi Gu only wanted to see how far Yang Luo could go.

“Of course... to avoid excessive destruction, it will be necessary to keep Yang Luo in check. After all, the Dragon Nation is my homeland—it would not do to throw it into chaos.

“But Yang Luo has already returned home. My senses tell me he has no intention of stirring up more trouble for now, so any measures to restrain him can wait.

“Right now, there’s something even more important...”

With that thought, Xi Gu instructed Gray Shade and Black Moon to watch the house, then stepped outside.

In the next second, his body sliced through the air.

Ten minutes later, he reached the center of the Pacific Ocean—a remote and shadowy stretch of sea.

Ten minutes, a thousand kilometers.

And that was with Xi Gu suppressing his speed as much as possible.

At full power, he could cover thousands of kilometers in a single second; the resulting sonic booms and shockwaves would pulverize everything within hundreds of meters.

But such displays would draw far too much attention, and he had to account for gravity—one careless move and he might find himself hurtling into space.

Arriving at the heart of the Pacific, Xi Gu stood atop the water, the muscles in his legs vibrating at high frequency, allowing him to tread the waves without sinking.

With his current strength, this required almost no conscious effort at all.

Standing on the sea, he focused his mind.

Through the “Blood of Evolution,” Xi Gu sensed everything within Yang Luo’s distant body: the rhythm of his blood, the beating of his heart, the pulsing of his neurons, the shifting of his bones, the frequency of his breaths...

And, most importantly, the blazing potential within him.

At this moment, the “Blood of Evolution” became Xi Gu’s eyes, silently relaying every detail of Yang Luo’s body back to him.

A strange fluctuation.

He attuned himself to it.

Xi Gu immersed himself entirely, his mind endlessly simulating Yang Luo’s neural activity, his body aligning with the same frequency. His spirit sank entirely into that world.

—He was attempting to see whether he could awaken the same power that Yang Luo had gained.

According to Xi Gu’s hypothesis, since the “Blood of Evolution” served as the key to Yang Luo’s “Furious Flame,” and since he could sense everything that Yang Luo sensed, he should be able to achieve the same thing.

After all, he held the key as well—so why shouldn’t he be able to open the same door?

Xi Gu closed his eyes, immersing himself in that simulated world.

A ripple...

The resonance of “Furious Flame” echoed through the “Blood of Evolution” into Xi Gu’s soul.

Just as if a lamp were being gradually lit.

—Until, at last.

A long time passed.

Xi Gu opened his eyes.

Almost simultaneously, a spark flickered before him.

Three seconds later, the orange-red spark spread into a ring of fire, swirling around him—a sign of temperatures below three thousand degrees.

Ten seconds later, the orange flame turned blue, becoming an indigo sea of fire, burning eerily atop the Pacific’s surface—a temperature of five or even six thousand degrees, the temperature found on the surface of the sun.

Twenty seconds later, the indigo sea of flame shifted to violet; the water around Xi Gu boiled and even vaporized rapidly, vast clouds of steam billowing from the ocean.

Thirty seconds later, the flames vanished, but the evaporation did not slow; on the contrary, it intensified, dense steam engulfing everything for hundreds of meters. The flames had grown so hot they now manifested only as invisible ultraviolet rays.

Within a minute, this anomaly at the Pacific’s center had already been detected by weather satellites around the world, and alarms blared simultaneously in meteorological centers of every nation.

Within just a few meters of Xi Gu, atoms and molecules were transformed into plasma by temperatures exceeding a hundred million degrees, radiation pouring out in torrents. High-energy interactions among particles turned the surrounding area into a hell of constant explosions.

More crucially, the temperature around Xi Gu’s body had reached one hundred million degrees.

—Even the core of the sun is only fifteen million degrees. In Earth’s low-pressure environment, a hundred million degrees is the threshold for nuclear fusion!

Around Xi Gu, atomic nuclei began to undergo chain reactions of fusion, immense bursts of gamma rays about to be unleashed. If the temperature continued, in ten minutes the entire Pacific would be vaporized; in thirty minutes, global temperatures would soar above boiling point; in an hour, the Earth’s surface would become a miniature sun—a world of molten rock.

But in the very next instant, within a hundredth of a second of reaching that hundred-million-degree temperature, the reaction ceased.

As command centers worldwide anxiously monitored the Pacific anomaly via satellite, Xi Gu dove beneath the waves, gliding through the water like a fish, and returned to land.

Glancing back at the sky, Xi Gu could see the effects of his earlier outburst: the climate had already gone awry.

The clouds were lopsided—thick on one side, thin on the other—creating the strange sight of sunshine in the east and rain in the west.

As for how much water vapor had been boiled away from the Pacific, or how many fish and shrimp had perished—it was all too easy to imagine.

“Whew...”

A faint wry smile appeared on Xi Gu’s face.

“I never thought that, in my obsession with exploring the ‘new power’ I gleaned from Yang Luo, I would carelessly wreak such havoc on the real world.

“...But what I’ve gained truly astounds me.”

Standing by the shore, Xi Gu looked at his palm.

There, a tiny spark hovered.

“Simply by willing it, I can raise the temperature of my surroundings and conjure fire, with no need for speed, friction, or molecular movement—once again, this is another ‘idealistic’ phenomenon.

“And I can sense that this power seems to be tied to the user’s physical strength. Right now, Yang Luo’s evolutionary level—having completed ‘Body Transmutation’—is about level 60, and with the boost from ‘Spiritual Transfiguration,’ perhaps level 63. So the highest temperature his fire can reach is six thousand degrees, the blue-white flame.

“But my own evolutionary level has already surpassed 380, allowing me to produce ‘flames’ with temperatures in excess of a hundred million degrees—the very threshold needed for nuclear fusion on Earth!

“...So, perhaps, maybe, I can now perform controlled nuclear fusion with my bare hands?”

At this thought, Xi Gu couldn’t help but laugh.

“It seems... with my power, I can not only usher in an age of superhumans, but also give rise to an age of black technology.”