Infinite Sun in the East China Sea

Chapter 278 The Netherworld
Of the ten newlyweds, three were men and seven were women—a rare occurrence where there were more women than men in the newlyweds' group.

The reincarnation world in "The Curse of the Ghost Girl" is not a team battle world. Xu Feng doesn't care about the lives of these newcomers from the East China Sea team. So, he handed over the task of guiding these newcomers to Xiangzi and Mei, while he stayed close to the transparent protective shield of the main god and carefully observed the surrounding environment. He planned to write down more details before the reincarnation world's plot officially began—these details might determine whether he could break the red-clothed female ghost's time-space reincarnation.

As the newlyweds gradually woke up, the entire hallway became much noisier.

It took Xiangzi quite a while to calm down these newcomers who had many questions, and she finally got their names, professions, and areas of expertise from them.

None of them possessed extraordinary abilities.

After everyone had finished their introductions, footsteps came from the stairs—the story of the reincarnation world officially began.

The female protagonist, Kanako, walks uphill with a smile on her face, preparing to go home.

"The story has just begun."

Shoko said, "In the story, the female lead Kanako just received a pair of earrings from her boyfriend and told her that he would marry her next month, which is why she showed that smile."

"Next, her boyfriend will call her and tell her that the man's ex-wife is planning to attack her; shortly after the call ends, the woman in red begins to attack Kanako..."

"This is bad. The first thing we'll face upon entering this world is a very dangerous attack..." Xu Feng interrupted Xiangzi's explanation.

He threw out more than a dozen huge jade talismans, each over a meter long and wide, which hung around the East Sea team. After the talismans were released, a series of subtle crackling sounds could be heard.

"No, it's not necessarily bad. The current information suggests that the red-clothed female ghost's time loop ability may not actually involve time. Considering that this reincarnation world only has a difficulty level of nineteen people... this so-called time loop is probably a misnomer."

"Captain, what happened?" Renbang asked.

He had already reached the Foundation Establishment stage and possessed strong perception abilities, but he did not find anything amiss in this area.

“The area we are in is very dangerous.” Xu Feng took some air from outside and released the negative energy within it, saying, “The air here contains a large amount of negative energy. If an ordinary person breathes here, their internal organs will be eroded by the negative energy, leading to organ failure and death.”

If he doesn't use a large jade talisman to create a purification area, the newcomers of the East Sea team will age, decay, and die within a few breaths.

Those who are experienced will be in a better situation, but their combat power will be greatly reduced under the influence of this negative energy, and they will not escape death after their extraordinary energy is exhausted.

"The air is toxic?" Park Chang-ho asked in astonishment.

He actually felt uneasy, as if there were evil spirits lurking nearby, ready to attack him at any moment, but he never expected that the evil spirits' attack method would be the familiar air!
Xu Feng said, "Not only the air, but everything in the surrounding environment is not normal. Be careful of everything around you later."

These strange objects were cleverly disguised; if he hadn't cultivated the Heavenly Eye, he would have had a hard time noticing that this ordinary environment was so dangerous.

Park Chang-ho asked, somewhat puzzled, "But why was the female lead unharmed? She's just an ordinary person."

Xu Feng shook his head slightly: "Who told you she's an ordinary person?"

"That woman is dead... She died after she hit herself, and the story is about what happened after her death."

To the naked eye, the female protagonist is still human, but under Xu Feng's Heavenly Eye, the core of that woman is a soul entity, a... very special soul entity.

It is difficult for living people to survive in such a dark and ghostly place, but the soul is unaffected.

"Are most of the things the female protagonist experiences in the movie things she experiences after death?"

Xiangzi analyzed, "So when she escaped downstairs and entered the police station, she didn't see anyone on duty there; so she encountered a group of motionless humans near her own body; so she encountered those dead people in this building... However, how do you explain the fact that the protagonist made several phone calls after returning to her apartment in the movie? Can the dead contact the living? Or, are the people on the other side already dead? Or... is the phone in her hand completely controlled by the female ghost in red?"

She felt she had grasped a very crucial detail, but couldn't figure out what that detail actually meant.

Mei suddenly pointed to her watch and said, "I don't know if everyone has noticed, but the countdown on the watch hasn't started yet... It's still thirty-five hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds!"

"We must have been talking for a minute or two, right?!"

In short survival missions, the main god will often display a countdown on the watch.

There is also a countdown on the watches of the East China Sea Team reincarnators in this cycle of reincarnation.

But the countdown seemed to be broken; it stopped counting down from the beginning of the story.

The others quickly raised their arms to confirm the fact.

Xiangzi frowned, her small face full of confusion: "Why is that? Could the red-clothed female ghost even distort the power of the main god?"

Xu Feng reminded him, "The God's thirty-six hours are calculated based on the thirty-six hours of the real world. Obviously, the place we are in is not the real world. It is not surprising that the flow of time in the Netherworld is faster than in reality. However, the flow of time in this Netherworld is a bit too fast."

"Should we leave this dark and gloomy place first?" Renbang asked. "But how can we leave this environment?"

He now understood that the Supreme God had sent the East Sea team to the most dangerous place from the very beginning. To run away from the female ghost like headless flies? That would only cause them to lose all clues and be trapped to death in this ghostly realm.

The fact that the East China Sea team was able to quietly discuss strategies here was entirely due to the protective barrier created by Xu Feng's Thunder Talisman.

Once the energy in the thunder talisman is exhausted, most people will be eroded by the negative energy in the ghost realm, aging, decaying, and dying.

Renbang believed that Xu Feng's Thunder Talisman Array could last for a long time, and Xu Feng must have a larger protective array with stronger protection and longer duration, but 'a long time' does not mean forever.

Leaving this area is the key to passing the level!

The sooner you leave, the greater your chances of survival—the Lord God gave you thirty-six hours. "Kala Kara" is just one of the three chapters of "The Curse of the Ghost Woman".

If too much damage is suffered in this scenario, the mortality rate in the subsequent two chapters will increase significantly.

"There are two methods," Xu Feng said calmly. "One is to find the real reason for the time loop, find the loophole in this Netherworld, break this loop, and leave this place while we're at it."

Xiangzi said, "The female lead is the core of the time loop. If we want to understand the truth about the time loop, we probably have to follow her closely! In that case, we'll have to take the initiative to fight the red-clothed female ghost!"

Thinking of her experience in the world of "The Ring," she exclaimed, "That's right! The Supreme God always encourages us to actively confront monsters. The sooner we face a monster, the weaker it will be in the end... Conversely, the more we try to avoid and procrastinate, the stronger the monster we will eventually face."

Mei suddenly spoke up: "Captain, what is the second method?"

"The second method..."

Xu Feng hesitated for a moment, looking at his palm: "If I were to unleash the full power of the Tathagata Palm, I should be able to completely destroy this Netherworld. However, the commotion would be immense, and the monsters' counterattacks might be fierce." His intuition told him that breaking through this ghostly realm wouldn't be difficult; his forty years of cultivation in the world of Akame ga Kill! gave him ample confidence.

But breaking through the demon realm is only the beginning...

The root of time loops may be revealed at that moment, striking suddenly the instant his strength is exhausted; such a bizarre attack could inflict a fatal wound on him.

Xiangzi opened her mouth, but suddenly realized that all her previous analyses had been meaningless.

She had no doubt that Hsu Feng could do it.

"Next, let's monitor the female lead and uncover the truth behind the time loop," Xu Feng said. "Let's try to break the deadlock with cleverness first... If we can't find a way to break the deadlock within three loops, then we'll stop worrying about anything else."

Just then, a series of 'clattering' sounds came from behind.

A red figure passed by not far away, following in Kanako's footsteps.

She glanced at the East Sea team members within the lightning talisman array, then continued walking upwards as if no one else was there.

That single glance contained immense resentment. Xiangzi felt a pang of fear just from meeting her eyes. If a veteran like her could feel this way, then the newcomers must be even more vulnerable.

Three of the female newcomers collapsed to the ground, as if witnessing a terrible reality.

"An interesting ability... This must involve the source of the red-clad female ghost's power." Xu Feng gazed thoughtfully at the departing red-clad female ghost.

He controlled the Imperial Arms Hundred-Armed Giant to follow, while he led the East Blue Team downstairs, preparing to leave the apartment building first.

Three limp and powerless female newcomers followed in the middle, led by a greatsword warrior.

There are many details about time loops in "The Cursed Woman". Xu Feng believes that the two most important points are: one is the room that the female protagonist enters in her "dream"; the other is the location where the female protagonist is crushed to death.

In the story, the female protagonist encounters a group of motionless figures surrounding her body in the area where she was crushed to death.

If she is a spirit, this phenomenon is easy to explain.

Because time flows so fast in the area where the soul resides, those watching in reality appear to be frozen in comparison.

soon.

The group went downstairs and found a very obvious corpse there.

Just as the group walked toward the corpse, a battle broke out at the door of the female protagonist's apartment in the apartment building.

When the Imperial Arms Hundred-Armed Giant arrived at the heroine's residence, the red-clad female demon was slowly approaching her with a knife in her hand. Her appearance was not frightening, and her knife-wielding movements were full of flaws, but she still managed to terrify the heroine so much that she kept panting heavily.

As the red-clad female ghost grew increasingly ferocious, the protagonist, Kanako, rushed out of the door.

The hundred-armed giant under Xu Feng's control did not interfere with the chase; it simply disguised itself as a doll and lay near the door, quietly watching the red-clad female ghost perform.

— Xu Feng sent it to follow not to save the ghost, but to pursue the truth about the cycle of time and space.

But the tree may wish to be still, but the wind will not cease.

After the woman in red stepped out of the room, her gaze locked onto the Hundred-Armed Giant, the Imperial Arm. With just that one glance, the Hundred-Armed Giant emitted a golden light—the supernatural protective device inside the little guy had already taken effect.

Xu Feng prepared a great deal of supernatural protective gear for this Imperial Arm, with various talismans and scriptures filling almost 30% of its internal storage space.

The sheer number of them made the rest of the Donghai team incredibly envious.

After realizing that she couldn't destroy this strange life form with her aura alone, the woman in red revealed a sinister smile. Arms crawled out from the ground, grabbing the Hundred-Armed Giant, preparing to take this Imperial Arm to an unknown realm. If it weren't for the golden light on the little guy's body desperately blocking those strange arms, the little guy would have already been 'taken away'.

Faced with this situation, the Hundred-Handed Giant could no longer continue to feign innocence.

Its body suddenly swelled to more than two meters tall, with a ferocious face, and its whole body was covered with a layer of crimson armor, on which a large number of runes were written.

The core of biological Imperial Arms is the Philosopher's Stone. This special item grants biological Imperial Arms super regenerative abilities, but their regeneration is not without cost. For example, Susanoo needs to absorb the soul power of its master. Once it unleashes its power three times, the master of the Imperial Arm will be exhausted. The Hundred-Armed Giant needs to devour the corpses of living beings. In the original story of "Akame ga Kill!", the original master of this Imperial Arm, Seryu, often fed it corpses and even living people.

Xu Feng inscribed Murasame's runes on the armor that this Imperial Armor was made of. These simple replicas of the runes could not make it store necromantic energy to strengthen itself like Murasame, but they could allow the Hundred-Armed Giant to absorb the souls of those it killed to repair itself.

On a battlefield with enough weaklings, the Hundred-Handed Giant's endurance would be incredibly strong.

Unfortunately, there were no weaklings on this battlefield, only the red-clad female ghost as an enemy.

Different weapons appeared on the chest, mouth, and arms of the hundred-armed giant. First, it spat out a beam of light from its mouth and shot it at the red-clothed female ghost. Then, it condensed a lightning ball about half a meter in diameter on its chest. Finally, it shot out densely packed runic electromagnetic bullets from its arms. These bullets were all infused with Buddhist energy and had the ability to ward off evil comparable to an enchanted +3 arrow.

After being modified by Xu Feng, the Hundred-Armed Giant became exceptionally powerful.

This is just a normal attack; if the killer move were used, there would be enough time to completely destroy a city.

But when the attacks subsided slightly... the woman in red was completely unharmed!
It wasn't just the female ghost, but the entire apartment building! It was as if those bullets, those beams of light, and those lightning balls were all illusions!
However, the number of arms attacking the Hundred-Handed Giant kept increasing.

Numerous arms vanished under the protective golden light and the counterattack of the Hundred-Armed Giant's exorcising lightning, but new arms kept growing, seemingly endless.

In this battle of energy, the protective devices inside the Hundred-Armed Giant shattered one after another, and the golden protective layer on its body became increasingly faint.

soon.

This Imperial Arm was enveloped by countless arms, and its protective golden light completely dimmed.

Once those arms firmly embraced the Hundred-Armed Giant, the Imperial Arm quickly turned black and turned into ashes in just a few seconds.

"The woman in red didn't dodge the hundred-armed giant's attack. She could have avoided it, but the residential building couldn't. The reason it's intact is probably because... she reset herself to the state she was in before the attack!"

Downstairs, Xu Feng pondered the battle that had lasted only a few seconds.

"Although the time loop is a bit far-fetched... she seems to really possess time-related abilities!"

(End of this chapter)