Chapter 70: Live Broadcast (Part 2)
When Song Yuqing whipped her gaze back to the monitor, a swirling, pitch-black void roughly the size of a balloon had already coalesced in Lin Han’s palm.
Flipping his left hand over and thrusting outward with his right, Lin Han violently propelled the black hole off his palm, sending it hurtling directly into the chaotic airspace above the vanguard line.
“Oh crap!” Song Yuqing’s heart skipped a beat.
Shen She jumped slightly at her shout. Turning his head back toward the narrow window, he was just in time to see the rapidly expanding black hole begin to erode the space directly over the battlefield.
Like an inverted tornado, the intense gravitational pull violently sucked the psychics below up into the air. Friend or foe—even Lin Han’s own men—were helpless against the pull, caught like insects in the black hole’s event horizon.
Shen She abruptly stood up, his body tensing as he prepared to forcefully rewind the timeline once more.
But right at that critical second, Nanjiao reacted. Channeling his wood-type attribute to its absolute limit, he summoned massive, thick vines that aggressively coiled around the reinforced armored car parked next to Lin Han. With a furious roar, Nanjiao hoisted the heavy vehicle and swung it like a wrecking ball directly at Lin Han, aiming to physically disrupt his concentration and collapse the anomaly.
Sitting in the backseat of that very car were Wan Youzhi and Ruan Fanfan.
Catching sight of Nanjiao’s desperate maneuver from the thick of the melee, Zhang Lei immediately abandoned his flank, violently erupting his own massive vines from the soil to grapple Nanjiao’s. The two opposing wood-type forces locked in a brutal mid-air tug-of-war, the sheer tension snapping several thick tendrils into pieces.
Seeing the black hole rapidly swell to the size of a bus and feeling its gravitational pull grow exponentially stronger, Xie Hao reached into his pocket. He yanked out a small, sealed water flask and lobbed it straight at Lin Han’s head like a grenade.
The flask was completely filled with toxic black water.
Xie Hao had originally pocketed the sample as a grim souvenir of the crisis, but it proved to be incredibly useful today.
Unfortunately, halfway through its arc, Conghui lunged through the air and aggressively batted the flask away with its beak, sending the container crashing into the shoulder of a metal-type mutant from Base No. 35.
“Dammit, Xie Hao! How did you miss from that range?!” Liu Xiaona yelled, pounding her fist on the counter as she watched the livestream.
“Lin Han’s void ability is practically cheating! There’s literally no direct counter to it!”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“If Lin Han actually wins this, aren’t we completely screwed?”
A wave of panic rippled through the God’s Supermarket lobby.
Was Lin Han’s void anomaly truly invincible?
Song Yuqing refused to believe it. Her spatial storage had zero offensive utility, Shen She’s temporal ability permanently cannibalized his own lifespan, and there was absolutely no way Lin Han’s power existed without a fatal loophole.
What if I plug the void’s entrance? What if I use the delivery pigeons to physically jam the black hole?!
Even if the birds were sucked into the singularity and dumped into some parallel dimension, her unique connection to the delivery system meant she still had a way to track them down and retrieve them one by one.
“Shen She!” Song Yuqing screamed across the network.
Shen She’s face instantly popped back into the frame. He had already begun covertly gathering his temporal energy, ready to sacrifice another chunk of his life, but Song Yuqing’s shout broke his concentration.
“I have a much better plan than going back in time!”
By the time the black hole expanded to the size of a heavy transport truck, it was violently dragging every combatant on the field toward its maw, completely ignoring alliances.
Right at that exact second, a massive, unidentifiable white mass shot across the sky, throwing itself directly over the black hole’s event horizon like a plug, physically isolating the psychics below from the singularity’s devastating pull.
Freed from the extreme gravity, the psychics plummeted out of mid-air, crashing heavily onto their backs in the dirt.
Whether they were from Base 35 or Base 27, the sudden brush with absolute destruction completely killed their desire to keep fighting.
Staring up in awe at the white mass blocking the anomaly, they realized it was a colossal, densely packed flock of pure white pigeons.
Down on the ground, Lin Han’s face twisted in sheer agony. Veins bulged across his forehead as he violently exerted every ounce of his internal energy, desperately trying to manually tear the black hole’s entrance wider to swallow the obstruction.
He was rapidly reaching his absolute limit.
“Ahhhhh!!!”
A fierce, high-pitched scream cut across the battlefield. A young girl sprinted out of the stronghold gates, hauling a thick bamboo staff over her shoulder and gripping a heavy kitchen knife in her other hand. It was Xiaoyi, having shattered a window to break out of her locked room.
Song Yuqing instantly recognized the weapons on the feed: The tactical bamboo and the cleaver. That’s my ordinary civilian customer!
Weaving gracefully through the chaotic, dazed crowd, Xiaoyi sprinted in a straight line directly toward Ruan Fanfan and Lin Han.
“Master Bamboo, strike him down!” Xiaoyi screamed. Stopping three meters away, she violently slammed the base of the bamboo staff into the soil.
The magically enhanced bamboo burrowed deep into the dirt the second it made contact. Moving with terrifying, subterranean speed, it instantly ruptured out of the ground directly beneath Lin Han’s feet, violently sweeping his legs out from under him and delivering a devastatingly precise, upward strike to his groin.
Lin Han instantly crumpled to the dirt, clutching his lower body as he wailed in absolute agony.
The moment his concentration broke, the massive black hole hovering in the sky instantly collapsed and vanished, completely severing the flock. Only half the pigeons remained in the physical world.
Seizing the opening, Xie Zetian magnetically ripped massive chunks of torn metal from the destroyed vehicles and hurled them directly at the downed Lin Han. Screaming, Lin Han was forced to execute an emergency slip into his pocket dimension to avoid being crushed into a bloody paste.
“Dammit, just missed him!” Xie Zetian growled.
Refusing to accept defeat, Lin Han popped back into reality seconds later, drawing a heavy handgun from his spatial storage. But the exact microsecond he rematerialized, Xiaoyi spun on her heel and hurled her kitchen knife.
The blade buried itself cleanly into Lin Han’s forearm.
“Hmph! Eat my Flying Xiaoyi Dagger!”
Blood spurted from Lin Han’s arm, and the gun clattered uselessly to the dirt. He never could have imagined in his wildest nightmares that a powerless little girl would be the one to humiliate him so utterly.
Locked in a grueling, dead-even stalemate with Nanjiao, Zhang Lei was entirely unable to break off and save Lin Han. Panicking under Wan Youzhi’s frantic orders from the backseat, Ruan Fanfan had no choice but to throw the car door open, leap out, and physically drag a weeping Lin Han into the vehicle.
Looking up, she briefly caught Xiaoyi’s furious, deeply betrayed glare. Unable to formulate an excuse, Ruan Fanfan looked away in shame.
“Retreat!” Ruan Fanfan screamed over the noise.
The surviving attackers from Base No. 27 frantically scrambled into their transports and peeled out, executing a sloppy, desperate retreat.
Seeing the enemy route, Xie Hao and Xie Zetian moved to pursue and secure a total victory, but Nanjiao threw out an arm to stop them. Their primary objective was simply to defend Base 35. As for Lin Han and his lackeys, karma would catch up to them eventually.
Watching the live broadcast, Song Yuqing let out a massive sigh of relief, slumping heavily back into her chair, completely drained. She had genuinely been terrified that she was about to lose both her entire delivery fleet and her biggest corporate client in one fell swoop.
Next time I pass through a spatial tear, I’ll just track down whichever parallel dimension swallowed the rest of the pigeons!
“Man, what a shame. They actually managed to get away!” Liu Xiaona grumbled.
“Wait, look over there! Some of them stayed behind. They didn’t retreat with Lin Han!”
On the screen, Shen She grabbed his phone and jogged out of the base gates to investigate. Through the lens, Song Yuqing watched as the psychics from Base 35 formed a tight perimeter around a dozen stranded combatants.
“What’s the situation over there?” she asked.
“They threw their weapons down and surrendered,” Shen She reported. “They’re asking to defect and join Base 35.” These individuals had deliberately ignored the evacuation order and stayed behind when the convoy fled.
Shen She panned the camera around, giving Song Yuqing a clear view of the heavy casualties among the Base 35 defenders. The skirmish had been short, but incredibly brutal.
Quietly minimizing the video window, Song Yuqing pulled up the e-commerce backend and officially listed her premium, energy-restoring tomatoes and cucumbers—the ones she had previously been too stingy to sell in bulk.
“Well, look at you! Finally deciding to be generous for once,” Master Fu chimed in, sounding highly amused.
Song Yuqing pointedly ignored the spirit. What is he even yapping about?
“Hey, Shen She! I just listed high-tier energy-restoring cucumbers and tomatoes on the platform! Hurry up and place a bulk order so you guys can distribute them to the wounded!” Song Yuqing shouted into the mic.
“Got it! But check this out first!” Shen She flipped the camera toward Nanjiao, who was currently manifesting raw peanuts from his palms and feeding them directly to the wounded psychics. The moment the casualties chewed the peanuts, their color began to visibly return.
With the battle officially concluded, the massive crowd of refugees in the God’s Supermarket lobby finally dispersed next door, leaving only the original staff behind. Little Meat Bun took a massive, exaggerated whiff of the air, immensely relieved that the room no longer smelled like a packed subway car.
“I’m just incredibly glad you guys are safe,” Song Yuqing said softly, finally ending the video call.
Her nerves had been wound impossibly tight for hours, and the adrenaline crash hit her like a freight train. Letting out a massive yawn, her heavy eyelids fluttered shut, and her head drooped forward until she collapsed face-first onto the checkout desk, fast asleep.
A second later, Liu Xiaona, Little Meat Bun, and Gaha heard Song Yuqing letting out soft, rhythmic snores that sounded remarkably like a purring kitten.
“Man… has she really been this sleep-deprived lately?” Liu Xiaona asked, scratching her head.
“Gaha~” She must be completely exhausted.
Meanwhile, inside the retreating convoy, the atmosphere was thick and utterly oppressive. Wan Youzhi, Lin Han, and the remaining elite were making the humiliating drive back to Base No. 27 in dead silence.
“How could this happen?” Wan Youzhi muttered, his eyes bloodshot and unblinking.
“Maybe your so-called prophecies are just flat-out wrong,” Lin Han hissed, finally beginning to openly doubt Wan Youzhi’s abilities. “We shouldn’t have ever tried to hit Base 35 in the first place.”
Perhaps what Wan Youzhi kept seeing wasn’t the actual future at all, but merely his own delusions. If he really possessed perfect foresight, why hadn’t he foreseen that bombing the base wouldn’t break them? Why hadn’t he known that poisoning the water tower would be completely useless?
“That is impossible!” Wan Youzhi snarled, glaring viciously at Lin Han.
“Regardless, we suffered massive losses today,” Zhang Lei said coldly, using a tissue to wipe the dried blood from his knuckles. During his brutal exchange with Nanjiao, the spiked wood vines had lacerated his skin. “We severely underestimated the collective combat synergy of Base 35.”
Wan Youzhi scowled, turning away to stare blankly out the window. The reflection of his twitching, furious face glared back at him from the dark glass.
The battered, heavily damaged convoy crawled slowly through the pitch-black night, looking pathetic and ragged.
As they approached a major fork in the road, their headlights illuminated another vehicular column blocking the intersection. Unlike Lin Han’s convoy, these vehicles were pristine, heavily reinforced, and outfitted with top-tier military modifications that made Base 27’s transports look like absolute scrap metal in comparison.
“Hey,” a voice called out from the dark. “Who the hell are you people?”
