Master of the Stars

Black Beetle knew fully well that Luo Nan’s current injury was mostly due to the whiplash of his cheat-like ability; it wasn’t really related to what they were doing. However, this didn’t affect Black Beetle’s delighted mood.

Black Beetle returned back up to the viewing platform, his tight expression relaxing. He laughed a hissing laugh toward his wristband. "Snake Tongue, oh beautiful Snake Tongue. I love you to death! Keep going, keep going! Smash what looks valuable!"

The hoarse voice of a male came through the external speakers of the wristband, "Don’t worm your way close to Snake Tongue if you’re that bored. The one who’s doing all the work is me. How about I destroy the walls of the building, the outer walls next?"

"I love you too, Tank!"

Black Beetle was overly excited, so he had an extremely greasy mouth. He glanced at Luo Nan at the same time, and spoke without concealing his delight at all, "Oh, I’m sorry. I know that this move is a bit childish of me, but I can’t stand how effective it is! Especially when I see your face. I want none other than that expression!"

Luo Nan didn’t talk, but Xue Lei couldn’t hold back from cursing, "You lowlife! You scum! Do you have the guts to face us head on? I’ll smack your skull flat in three blows!"

Black Beetle’s sinister eyes swivelled over. His lips split apart to reveal a heavy darkness coming from deep behind his tongue and teeth. "Why, that’s truly unfortunate. I am not interested. I just feel that it’s such a pity...."

Soon, Black Beetle’s poisonous gaze shifted and pierced Luo Nan’s face. "It’s such a pity that the HexaEar has malfunctioned today. Otherwise, we can stream this live and watch Tank’s building demolition skills. Oh, I forget. A wristband is fine too. Cloud City Water Village has relatively stable Internet."

Luo Nan lightly spat out a mouthful of air as he reached out with his hand to hold on to Xue Lei, who was close to exploding. Luo Nan leaned back to press against the protective glass. He hoarsely said, "Stop it with the torment. What do you guys want to know?"

"Ohhhh, you finally know how to reply."

Black Beetle saw Luo Nan admit his defeat. He certainly knew that he grasped Luo Nan’s weak spot, and that success was imminent. He felt a cool breeze run down from his skull to cleanse his innermost feelings. Yet, even though he felt this way, the utterly sorry experience he had in the 141st floor with Luo Nan was still like a volcano. It rumbled from the bottom of his heart.

This wasn’t enough! Not enough!

Black Beetle stopped speaking. He just slowly smoothed down the tie he held in his hand and put it back on his neck. A flip to the left and a fold to the right. These motions were performed a few times. During all this, the loudspeaker of the wristband continued to reverberate with the muffled sound of walls being smashed.

Xue Lei was angry to the point of stomping, even with Luo Nan holding him back. "You bastard! Did you come here just to mess with people!?"

Black Beetle laughed involuntarily. "No rush. They had only just begun. The building is quite large. You won’t even see any results unless they go smashing for an hour or two... gak!"

Before the words could come out of his mouth, Black Beetle’s mouth suddenly was unable to close. His later sounds remained stuck in his throat. Not even a hiccup was able to come out.

During this process, his cheeks turned red, green, then purple, like there was a hand of an invisible demon covering his mouth and nose. The air inside and outside his body were blocked off from one another. The feeling of suffocation drowned his entire body. Then came the pain that he experienced before, a needle stabbing into his brain and stirring around. His vision turned reddish black, and his nervous response was thrown into disorder. His entire body froze and even shook.

Luo Nan’s voice was like a cold wind that swept past his ear. "So you actually didn’t make a safety line? That’s truly unfortunate."

Black Beetle struggled amidst the pain. His eyes practically bulged out from his eye sockets as he strove to spur his supernatural powers. But for some reason, this mental attack was fiercer than the last by tenfold. The aftermath of the attack came slowly, not retreating at all. Black Beetle put full effort in exerting himself, but he could only touch his gaudy necktie. He grasped it hard, but he was unable to do any further actions.

Above Heavenly Ocean Lake, Puppeteer exploded with a shout, "Mr. Luo Nan, let’s not do anything excessive! We can properly talk this over!"

The shout left his throat, and Puppeteer saw Luo Nan turn his head to look at him. As soon as the the pair of bloody eyes made contact with Puppeteer’s, a cold tremble ran through his heart.

Luo Nan spoke softly, "Who’s being excessive? Me, or him?"

Puppeteer calmed himself down and forced a smile. "We don’t need to go at things this intensely. This is just a routine investigation, nothing more. Look. I haven’t harmed a hair on the beautiful girl from start to finish. I was just joking around. Just a scare. Okay?"

"Then you’re smashing my mother’s representative work."

"That’s...."

Luo Nan looked slightly downcast. The motions of his body were filled with a feeling of weariness, and it seemed like he was organizing his words. "Black Beetle doesn’t have the attitude to properly communicate with me. Actually, I still don’t know what in the world you all want. All that’s happened is fighting, insulting, and hurting."

Puppeteer cursed inwardly in his mind. He cursed both Luo Nan and Black Beetle. He saw the series of clashes from beginning to end. Luo Nan was certainly speaking nonsense when he said that he still didn’t know. However, Black Beetle made revenge a priority over gaining intelligence. This was an incontestable fact.

In truth, Puppeteer quite admired Black Beetle’s way of doing things. The two shared a common language in this point. Ultimately, they didn’t consider Luo Nan a threat in the beginning. They just did some safeguards against mental attacks, believing the task of grabbing a half-crippled teenager to be very easy. Their behavior was excessively wanton because of this.

Ill actions bore fruit to ill consequences—consequences that one must swallow.

One thing that Puppeteer was stronger than Black Beetle in was flexibility. He knew that he had to change strategies. He talked it over with his people in the background, then exposed a sunny smile.

"Mr. Luo Nan, we are both members of the Society. I believe that we can engage in a calm and peaceful exchange. I already had my companions stop their activity at Gear. If our exchange goes smoothly, my companions will withdraw from there immediately. After everything is done, I will even arrange to have the best engineering team to restore all damaged areas to be like new again. Plus, I will give a million in compensation. Will you be satisfied with this sincerity?"

Luo Nan didn’t respond, but he didn’t refuse.

Puppeteer felt that the trajectory change was a success. His smile grew more splendid. "Mr. Luo Nan, our two sides have to display good faith to one another. Look at Black Beetle...."

Luo Nan’s lips moved a bit. "Will he affect our exchange?"

Puppeteer was a bit startled, but the smile remained on his face. "No, he won’t affect us."

"H-Hey!"

Although Black Beetle’s entire body was frozen, his mind was still awake. His eyes and ears were still working, and Puppeteer’s words sifted into his ears. Black Beetle felt like his heart was about to explode. He strove to gather all the energy in his body to turn around, but he was still under the effects of Luo Nan’s mental attack. His sense of balance was lost, and instead of turning, he fell, and his face planted on the ground.

Puppeteer already made up his mind. He didn’t even glance over and just muttered to himself, wondering if the safety line he held would be useful or not.

And at this time, Luo Nan opened his mouth. "Speak, then. What do you guys want to know?"

Puppeteer composed himself and calculated the time. A pretext was tossed out from his smiling mouth. "On the night of October 7th at Frost River Reality, Fudong Main Street, City Center, a conflict occurred between the Society’s Xia City Branch and the Order of Justice. Branch President Ouyang Chen intervened during the later stages of the conflict, erecting the so-called Logic World. Many matters are unclear from that point onward. Headquarters seeks to reconstruct the truth of the matter, and being unable to has been harmful for administering justice for all."

Luo Nan laughed. "You guys should be asking President Ouyang."

"A lone man serves himself. Two men serve the public. It is hard to place faith in a one-sided testimony. Through a special channel, we came to find out that you, Mr. Luo Nan, had the fortune of entering the Logic World through an out-of-body state. You are an extremely important eyewitness, so we want to ask—"

"What special channel?" Luo Nan was very curious.

Puppeteer’s expression finally went cold. "Mr. Luo Nan, no matter what you ask, this is an investigation by Headquarters. I hope everyone will maintain a proper attitude, not digress into side topics, and avoid unwanted consequences!"

Luo Nan nodded, no longer interrupting him. "Ask."

Puppeteer stared at Luo Nan’s face and spoke with a heavy voice, "We want to know what you saw in the Logic World. Let’s narrow the scope a bit. What did Ouyang Chen do? What did An Weng of the Order of Justice do? And why? Not a trace of him could be seen after the incident. Where did he go?"

"There are a lot of things that I don’t know."

"Spit out everything that you do know!"

"This will take some time."

"Mr. Luo Nan!" Puppeteer took a deep breath and vented by increasing the pressure of his fingers upon Tian Si’s slender neck. He used her painful struggling to express his own feelings. "Since we all know that this will be very time-consuming, why won’t you be a bit more swift about it?"

Actually, Xue Lei was itching to fight by now, but he was stopped once again.

Luo Nan leaned against the protective glass. He pondered for a moment, before saying, "If you want to know why An Weng acted the way he did back then, you must understand just what the Logic World created by President Ouyang really is."

Puppeteer raised the volume of his voice. "Mr. Luo, our time is precious!"

Rear instructions came before he could finish speaking, "Let him talk. This information is valuable."

Puppeteer’s cheeks twitched, and he instantly switched to a smile. "So please, be brief yet comprehensive."

Luo Nan disregarded the changes in expression over yonder. He just attended to organizing his own words. A few seconds later, he said, "If you look at the mental plane as countless layers of floating curtains...."

Puppeteer muttered "F***" to himself. He had no choice but to interrupt Luo Nan, "The world recognizes the division of the mental plane into three zones, one region, and one realm. Where did your countless layers come from?"

Luo Nan didn’t speak. His eyelids lifted, and blood red eyes faced Puppeteer. Although Luo Nan might not be able to see clearly, he still maintained his stance. This lasted until Puppeteer felt himself to be an incurable stupid c*nt.

Puppeteer’s eyelids twitched. "Mr. Luo?"

Luo Nan had opened his eyes for too long. The burning pain in his eyes caused him to simply close them. He leveled his breathing, and spoke a handful of seconds later, "Through the Formatting Theory created by my grandfather, I observed that the mental world was like this. Do you need me to explain what Formatting Theory is?"

"Huh...?"

"The self, society, and heaven and earth. The relationship between three different formats should be relatively easy to understand for an ability user. I recall that President Ouyang made some remarks on self-logic and the logic of the normal world. You all can’t be so complacent as to be ignorant of these concepts, right?"

Four or five new concepts jumped out consecutively, making Puppeteer a bit dazed. Luckily, he soon received instructions from the rear, and adjusted the topic to the right direction. "We can postpone the class on theory. Right now, can you describe: one, what the Logic World is like; and two, what sort of outcome did An Weng have in the Logic World."

"In this case, I don’t need to use curtains to describe it."

Luo Nan raised his head slightly, adopting a posture of recollection. "Logic World? Thinking about it now, it is basically a portion of a structure that is torn and forcefully dismantled from within the Heaven and Earth Format, then pieced together to form a temporary production line. It then becomes part of the Heaven and Earth Format, but its rules follow the criterion served by the Self-Format. It takes the Heaven and Earth Format, and temporarily channels it into the scope of the Self-Format. Small gears are used to drive large gears. It is truly quite the exquisite structure."

"...."

Screw your formats! Screw your gears!

Puppeteer felt that his comprehension ability had been insulted. He wanted to immediately snap Tian Si’s neck, but Luo Nan’s voice drifted leisurely over just as he processed the thought.

"It looks like you don’t understand?"