I Am Also An Extraordinary Creature-Chapter 1664 - 1173: The Role of Numbers

"Boss, the ’time’ in this environment is being affected." Lilith warned Zheng Yichen, as they had encountered Time Series powers before.

The experience for Zheng Yichen felt like playing a game with severe delay, and when affected, he mostly could only take hits.

"Can you seize this power?" Zheng Yichen was intrigued, even though the time power they encountered might be fake, if it was strong enough, he had ideas.

"We can give it a try." Lilith did not provide a definite answer.

Zheng Yichen looked at the giant mechanical eye in the sky and raised his hand to grab it fiercely.

The large hand that appeared did not touch the eye, disappearing with the reversing sound of a clock.

As if nothing had happened.

Zheng Yichen raised an eyebrow slightly, thinking about a possibility: "Could we be experiencing a situation where one second here equals ten minutes outside?"

"We can’t rule out that possibility; the time axis comparison has started, the time inside and outside is currently synchronized."

"That works." Scarlet aura erupted from Zheng Yichen’s body; the previous probing made him realize that long-range attacks would be nullified, so he would dismantle this thing with close combat!

The gears covering the sky began to turn again, and the surrounding ’time’ became chaotic. Zheng Yichen clearly felt the tearing pressure caused by imbalance.

If one’s physical strength isn’t sufficient, even a slight move could lead to their body being torn apart under this pressure.

However, Zheng Yichen indicated that it’s not a big issue, as he also possessed the Vajra Body. Even if not as strong as Du Gang, his physical foundation was strong enough, and the Vajra Body combined with Burst Mode’s aura protection was enough to resist this pressure.

If there’s a real issue, it’s when he foolishly uses the Metamorphosed Body.

Spatial distortion formed around Zheng Yichen, accelerating his speed further. However, the surroundings played like a rewind, and no matter how he tried breaking through conventionally, the result was always a return to the original path.

"Boss, there’s a deviation in the time axis; the current ratio is 1:70!" Lilith immediately reported to Zheng Yichen upon capturing the time discrepancy.

Zheng Yichen exhaled, deciding not to challenge the Mechanical Realm’s clock with forceful breakthroughs.

A rapid numeric ratio appeared at the corner of his eye, starting from 1:70 and quickly turning into 1:150, continuing to increase.

Staying here for one second wouldn’t seem as exaggerated as passing ten minutes, but with the speed of this ratio increasing, achieving one second as ten minutes was possible.

As long as he didn’t resist.

Zheng Yichen was waiting for changes in the City of Machines to make an attack, but since it already started delaying time through this method, he wouldn’t wait any longer.

Willpower interference directly impacted the surrounding environment, freezing the time affected by the Mechanical Realm for a moment, causing the rotating gears in the sky to slow down.

Like a hardened wrench thrown into a delicate machine.

With the range of Zheng Yichen’s willpower interference growing, the gears within the Mechanical Realm turned from sluggish to breaking apart.

A hand covered in scarlet aura pierced into the mechanical eye, causing numerous gears to crumble from the eye, akin to blood pouring from a living organism.

Zheng Yichen held a massive ’clock’ over ten meters in his hand; it spun wildly, while his hand quickly aged and decayed before returning to normal in the next instant.

This wasn’t a true Time Power, able to create effects akin to time passing, but couldn’t damage Zheng Yichen.

Accelerated aging? He acknowledged the clock’s merit, but in the Great World’s environment, time passing was insignificant for Zheng Yichen.

Forget tens of thousands of years; he could be left in the Great World for hundreds of thousands of years, covered with a thick layer of stone, and wouldn’t truly age.

As long as his body was inactive, his expenditure was even less than a stone, which would weather, while he wouldn’t.

Yet, this giant clock could accelerate his arm to the point of aging and decay—quite impressive—but it didn’t affect his lifespan limit.

Without affecting that, severe aging was equivalent to a Life type expert’s common injury.

If it doesn’t damage fundamentally, even if his head were cut off, it wouldn’t be considered losing blood.

Crack—

The wildly spinning giant clock had its hands ripped off by Zheng Yichen, and in the blink of an eye, this clock was completely dismantled by him, with all scattered components being thrown into the internal space.

To be reassembled and analyzed by Lilith.

"Boss, this thing is just for show."

Zheng Yichen glanced at the time axis comparison ratio, which started to slow down after rising to 1:300.

The Great Clock is truly the core, then after being dismantled by him, the discrepancy in the time axis should have disappeared, yet this thing is still slowly rising.

This Great Clock is more like a trap, even this eye might be too...?

Zheng Yichen watched the blood flow from the mechanical eye, his eyes narrowed slightly. He was extremely sensitive to blood, this was human blood, and it was from thousands of people.

The power of Life Creation manifested from Zheng Yichen, and with the opening of the Cycle Tidal, the aura of Life Creation rapidly descended.

After the cyclical tides reached the extreme of Destruction, Zheng Yichen held a black spear, which tore open the sky of the Mechanical Realm.

The moment the full power of this strike was unleashed, a plane appeared in the torn sky. Under the influence of the Fake Time Power of the Mechanical Realm, an identical attack greeted Zheng Yichen head-on.

Two attacks of the same level touched, a silent black impact spread out, disintegrating everything it touched.

Before a second plane could appear, the attack replicated by the Mechanical Realm was completely disintegrated. He acknowledged the strength of this plane replication.

Even this replication could be instantly altered, but after Zheng Yichen used Parallel Unification to enhance himself, the plane replication’s counterattack also received an enhancement.

However, such a counterattack had an unavoidable delay; though small, it was sufficient for Zheng Yichen to completely shatter the plane in the brief moment of engagement.

The power of Destruction completely tore apart the entire Mechanical Realm. Amidst the gears scattered across the sky, Zheng Yichen saw many decayed corpses and an incomplete mechanical body, only one-fifth formed.

As that mechanical body’s arm began to move, it was grasped by Zheng Yichen, the mercury-like outer layer emitted a cracking under strain, shattering into fine dust that scattered out.

This dust had a highly invasive nature, collected by Zheng Yichen using willpower interference, rolled into a ball, and thrown into a built-in space.

The entire Mechanical Realm began to collapse, along with the collapse of the maintaining special domain.

The sound of collapse resounded, as the vast City of Machines, after the collapse of the Mechanical Realm, like the changes of ages, was covered with rust. Every second, buildings succumbed to rot and fell apart.

In these collapses, Zheng Yichen saw no survivors.

"Boss, the cause of death for these dead is aging." Lilith reached out to pick up a fragile bone from the ground; this bone seemed to have been left in a sterile environment for thousands of years. Untouched, it remained intact, but with a light touch, it turned to dust.

She used a force field to constrain the shape of the bone, then began analyzing the environment. Along with the information provided by the incomplete ’replication’ that Zheng Yichen destroyed, part of the truth was uncovered quickly.

That replication body was of Zheng Yichen’s, the Mechanical Realm was evidently using some method to carry out a special replication of Zheng Yichen, like plane replication of his attack.

Only Zheng Yichen’s strength was standing there, before he dismantled the Mechanical Realm, the replication was less than one-fifth complete, with only a small portion of the head and an arm connected to part of the torso.

And these dead were drained of ’time,’ the special kind of Fake Time Power of the Mechanical Realm was achieved by burning the ’time’ of living beings.

It was a way of coercively influencing Zheng Yichen using the lifeforms of the entire city, a method of converting collective power into an effective influence on a stronger entity.

Lilith found this technology very reasonable; before technology reached a certain level in low environment conditions, many wars were a numbers game.

Even though strategic influence exists, the number of troops remains a crucial factor.

In an environment where individual power can destroy a nation, the influence of numbers decreases sharply.

When a strong individual faces several slightly weaker ones, numbers have their use, but for an ordinary strong person facing such a strong entity, the function of numbers diminishes further, not to mention ordinary soldiers.

In such an environment, to make numbers sufficiently advantageous requires better technology to integrate the power of countless individuals. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

A special military array formation is the most typical example, but participation in such a formation requires active cooperation from the participants.

There are also formations that are more convenient and do not require participant cooperation.

When facing such ultra-strong opponents, the number of one’s own side is a consumable ’resource’. Though describing it this way sounds cold-blooded, Lilith is not human.

In this respect, she wouldn’t be substantially affected. Think about it, facing those strong adversaries full of hostility.

Either let them wipe out all humans on our side or sacrifice most of our life’s forces to get one chance to take down this strong entity.

How should one choose?

To expect those strong individuals to show mercy, it’s better to decisively kill them instead.

Deterrence needs to be shown; after having used it once, even if the enemy still has such strong individuals, they won’t recklessly gamble with death. Even if they want to continue the war, they’ll choose a more ’peaceful’ method.

Strong entities are used only for deterrence, whereas the war is waged with ordinary military power.

In Lilith’s view, with such technology, in high environment conditions, armies can truly play their role and maintain sufficient deterrence.

Without such technology and without enough strong members on one’s own side, they’d be trampled by opposing strong individuals like ants.