Forge a path to success.

Chapter 240 A Duel for the Deceased
The outer perimeter of the Corpse Demon City vanished in the blinding light; the defenses bought with the sacrifice of ten thousand corpses were breached head-on by the will that had created the world. The gravity traps lost their balance due to the widespread shifts in the terrain, allowing Chu Hengkong and Ji Huaisu to seize the opportunity to enter the city. Shax's Wheel of Judgment then roared in, soaring over the city walls like a platinum eagle, not forgetting to drop a bomb at the Limb Spider.

"That sniper is really something," Ji Huaisu exclaimed.

"After all, he was once No. 3," Chu Hengkong laughed. "Let's go for it now!"

The spider atop the city wall swatted away the explosives, gripping the wall tightly with its numerous claws to prevent itself from collapsing. Its already pale face became almost transparent from the miscalculation, but its clumsy size prevented it from keeping up with the others. Several mouths sprouted from its back, chanting rapidly, while simultaneously directing the two messengers: "Curse Lightning, hold them off. Burning Ember, take down that Boundary-Splitting Wheel! If he gains the upper hand, things will get complicated!"

"Brave ones, do not flee!" roared Zhou Lei. "Quickly fight me and prove your bravery!"

Its colossal body disintegrated into lightning, reforming into a thunder giant before Chu Hengkong. The buildings within the demon city, manipulated by the limb spiders, converged to block Chu Hengkong's path, working in conjunction with the cursed lightning. The city's structures still retained the characteristics of city walls, allowing the limb spiders to continue controlling the demon city to unleash divine magic. A new divine spell was about to be cast; it intended to trap Chu Hengkong once more.

However, the encirclement crumbled before it could even take shape. Ji Huaisu leaped into the air and slammed her staff into Zhou Lei's head. The Holy Trinity Formation formed on the ground, and the two within it simultaneously lost their supernatural powers. She unleashed a brute force punch with her bare body, crashing into the wall of flesh and blood alongside Zhou Lei.

"So you're eager for a fight, little brat?" Ji Huaisu sneered. "Then I'll give you a good beating!"

The vanguard split up, and Chu Hengkong seized the opportunity to breach the defenses and climb a crooked stone tower that resembled a withered tree. Just as he was about to unleash his power and rush straight for the castle, he suddenly turned sideways and slashed with his sword.

A dark arc of light flashed through the mist, like a dim, lonely star falling silently in the night. The starlight suddenly ignited before the murderous blade, and a chilling killing intent collided with the blade's edge. Craters, like a crater, burst open from the point where the blades met, crushing buildings within a kilometer radius into dust.

A thousand nights of fleeting stars.

Chu Heng fell back to the ground, his feet scraping against the earth and creating blinding sparks. Even with his martial arts skills, he couldn't completely neutralize the attack and had to gradually dissipate its force by moving. He retreated to a position near the city gate after the blow, where a hooded messenger emerged from the mist, his silver mask gleaming coldly beneath the hood.

"Your attitude towards me is terrible." Chu Hengkong raised his sword. "I also cultivate the Broken Heart Sword Dao."

"Unfortunately, I've never gotten along with Chongming since the beginning."

Nightwalker assumed a fighting stance, a shadowy black light flashing across his short sword, "Longyu." His spirit was fully unleashed; the Nightmare King's command caused the rusty, broken-hearted one to once more display its sharpness. The ancient blades clashed in mid-air, hundreds of fierce slashes sweeping across the city like intersecting whirlwinds.

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If it weren't for this occasion, I would really like to get closer and observe the duel between the sword demon and the snake.

Unfortunately, this is a battlefield; anyone who dares to show their face must be prepared to be hit.

Shax lowered the auxiliary sight; his newly upgraded equipment was now sufficient to track the swordsmen's movements. He loaded a special bullet, the silver figure about to align with the crosshair, but at the last second before firing, he abruptly abandoned the opportunity and increased the distance. A fiery bird streaked across the airspace where he had previously stood, scattering upon impact into walls of scorched lava. The fire magic directly cleaved the Nightmare City in two along its central axis, blocking Shax's means of observation.

Ember remained in the form of a lava giant, nocking a fire arrow the size of a building: "It's been a long time since I've hunted a bird."

"Sniper warfare, huh?" Shakes abruptly stopped in mid-air. "Not bad!"

The adjustable nozzles on one side of the Wheel of Judgment activated simultaneously, and he used the enhanced thrust to tumble and evade the arrows. Driving the Wheel of Judgment felt like riding a motorcycle in the sky, but far more agile and faster.

This machine abandoned the full-circle cockpit that was highly sought after in the Piercer Wheel, because Shax believed that it would hinder his sniping speed. In order to maximize the freedom of shooting, he didn't even have a shield at hand, only two joysticks and a projected virtual control panel. Any Piercer Wheel with common sense would go crazy upon seeing this design.

The control panel is directly controlled by mental energy, and the images of the selected materials switch continuously on it. The dust of the Calamity Species - Foolish Demon, the skin of the Willow Man, and the water of the Shadow River are all copied by injecting mental energy.

Selected bullets: dust bombs. Quantity: 4000.

All missiles launched.

On either side of the Boundary-Breaking Wheel, armored wheels resembling auxiliary wings simultaneously opened their armor, releasing four thousand bullets in batches, neutralizing the flames into blue dust. The bullets were launched in circular bursts, and the dust spread behind the trajectory of the Boundary-Breaking Wheel, like a cluster of destructive flowers blooming in the sky above the city.

The arrow rain failed under the missile barrage; the magical interference of the dust bombs disrupted heat perception, and flames stumbled and fell to the ground like headless flies. Burning Ember grabbed an unexploded bullet and examined it closely. He had seen such bullets before in encounters with snipers, but back then they were rare weapons, never used outside of crucial moments. Now, dust bombs had become a mass-produced, routine method; the enemy clearly didn't have that many resources.

"Information replication... It's completely different from the past."

This is a common technique possessed by all Boundary-Breaking Wheels: replicating previously acquired information and using mental power to recreate past creations. While a typical Boundary-Breaking Wheel can only replicate the previous stage's Strange Blade as a weapon, Shax's information replication range covers all the bullets he has ever made. As long as the materials used to synthesize the bullets are below their current particle size, he can replicate them without limit.

The missile barrage had broken through the rain of arrows and was heading straight for the molten giant's body. The molten giant allowed the bullets to pierce his body, his elemental form creating openings to evade the fire. He pulled back his fists, then unleashed a burning storm. Two fiery tornadoes shot into the sky, attacking the Wheel of Judgment from both sides.

Shax spun ninety degrees to dodge, accelerating forward through the gaps in the fire tornado. The enemy was attempting to block his movement, so he needed to leave first to seize the opportunity. But his previously agile movements suddenly became sluggish, and the adjusting nozzle of the Dimensional Wheel lost its light. The acceleration device had malfunctioned; the heat was being drawn away by magic and sent into the giant's drawn bow.

The longbow in Burning's hand expanded to three times its original size, drawing heat from the battlefield to form a giant orange arrow. Shax decisively pulled the lever, channeling a massive amount of mental energy into the gun, transforming it into a high-energy beam and firing first. Burning faced the barrage head-on without flinching; his giant arrow swelled as it charged, like a horizontal storm.

"The arrow that splits the earth from the dead clouds."

The moment the giant arrow left the bowstring, the city was engulfed in intense light and heat. The arrow, cleaving through the artillery barrage head-on, pierced the sky with the force of a storm, striking the Wheel of Judgment nestled within the gap! Circulations of wind swept outwards, thick clouds rose, then contracted due to pressure, triggering a second explosion. Burning Ember carefully observed behind the clouds; he saw two armed rings flying off erratically, one of them crashing to the ground after losing power. The Destruction Wheel, controlled by Shax, rose above the clouds, its platinum armor riddled with scorching cracks. The sniper's forehead bled from the impact; he attempted to fire, but the violent jolts caused him to lose aim, and the bullet embedded itself in the ruins.

Burning Ember twitched the corner of his mouth: "The heavy firepower type of the Boundary-Breaking Wheel is indeed ingenious. However, a specialization is bound to bring weaknesses. Your Boundary-Breaking Wheel structure lacks stability and will easily disintegrate once it is directly hit."

“That’s a very accurate assessment,” Shakespeare said. “That’s exactly how I designed it.”

Burning Flame was stunned, then suddenly clutched his chest. His left chest had become a hollow void, a gray bullet had pierced his body, bringing an irresistible death.

He was hit by a deadly bullet. A sniper shot that appeared without a trace, like a ghost. But why? When was the shot fired, where was the trajectory, and what was the sniping point...?
The two armored wheels that had been shot down were slowly rising into the air, with ripples of energy emanating from the center of the rings. Burning Ember immediately understood: it wasn't a shot down; the enemy had deliberately disintegrated the Boundary-Breaking Wheel to evade the attack. He had intentionally thrown out those two armored wheels to use their position to deflect the incoming fire for a sniper shot.

The Wheel of Judgment, the adjudication system. Originating from a dust-free, integrated structure, it defines components of the Boundary-Clearing Wheel, sharing the same origin, as "the same coordinates," thus achieving spatial continuity between the Destruction Wheel and the Armed Wheel. The two heavily armed components are also "gun muzzles"—the entire Wheel of Judgment is a sniping device by Shax!

The gray aura of death extinguished the flames, and the lava giant was turning to ashes. Seeing his inevitable death approaching, Ember roared and severed most of his own body with one hand. He sacrificed nearly half his power to avoid death, the price being that his body shrank to half its original size. But after abandoning his torso, Ember continued to shrink, and in the blink of an eye, he returned to normal human size, even the flames on his body gradually extinguishing.

The extra flames, isolated from the flames, rose, with dust and sand transforming into grotesque features, and water vapor forming a magic circle behind them. Dust, water, and fire—originally incompatible forces—were brought together by the Rainbow Mage's magic, and the unconscious elements transformed into a frenzied monster. It became a demon, a fusion of the three demons of greed, anger, and ignorance!

"Great Burning!" Embers tossed his longbow, "Three Demonic Flames!"

The Eternal Flame Bow flew into the body of the Three Fiends, imbuing it with frenzy, rage, and fighting spirit. Emotion is the most fundamental power of the elements, and with this aid, the Three Fiends transformed, spewing forth monstrous demonic flames. It wildly unleashed its power, completely disregarding whether its attacks would hit. Its body swelled with a roar—a self-destructing magic of scorching embers—the Three Fiends would perish together with their enemy.

"Trying to stage a terrorist attack, huh?" the sniper sneered. "I'm sick of seeing that!"

Two armed rings flew in one after the other, while the main destructive wheel detached at the same moment, forming three rings in a row in front of the sniper rifle's muzzle. Shax was now completely detached from the Boundary-Clearing Wheel, floating in the air only thanks to his jetpack. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and a bullet of pure mental energy whistled out, flying past the three rings in succession. Each ring acted as an accelerator, giving him immense power.

Upon leaving the triple rings, the bullet's destructive power was comparable to the piercing strike of a hawk. However, the bullet vanished the instant it left the destructive rings, returning to its fixed starting point on the two armored rings. Spatial continuity came into play, and the bullet returned to its acceleration trajectory. Thus, the ritual of granting speed was repeated, and the extremely fast bullet accelerated with far greater efficiency than before.

Ten times. One hundred times. One thousand times. The Judgment System became a particle collider driven by mental power, and the bullets turned into high-energy particle beams in the hyper-accelerated cycle. In the 3,512th cycle, the Judgment System reached its theoretical load limit, Shaks released the spatial lock, and the pure white high-energy particle beam was released, completely annihilating the three demonic flames in the instant before self-destruction.

This was the very blow that pierced through the City of Corpses, the "Judgment" named after the Wheel of Renewal!
The overflowing light nearly destroyed vision, turning the world into a pure white expanse. The energy-depleted triple ring flew back to his surroundings, reassembling into the complete Wheel of Judgment. Shaks reached into his robes, seemingly wanting a cigarette.

A strange shadow flashed at the edge of his vision, and a terrifying monster sprang out from the bright light, its hands remarkably large purple claws. It was the Ember, the Ember that had turned into shadow! He had transformed his life form when the Three Demon Flames self-destructed, using the intense light of the Judgment eruption as a medium to shift his coordinates.

He was not merely a reckless brute who only knew how to use fire; he was a disciple of the archmage Vansalal, the very child who had his limbs transformed into demonic creatures. He was never short of courage, and he was always willing to stand at the forefront of a deathmatch.

The Shadow Claw slammed directly into the Wheel of Judgment, the frenzied elemental energy leaving deep gashes on its surface. However, Ember's movements froze at that moment; the side armor of the Wheel of Judgment cracked, and the concealed folding mechanical arm popped out simultaneously. The mechanical arm held a platinum-colored javelin—the Blood Holy Lance, transformed into a melee weapon!

No one would waste precious internal space to house a mere robotic arm; there are countless weapons that could achieve a wider range of applications. But Shakes did exactly that. He always kept a means of dealing with close combat, and even if his fragile body was approached by an enemy, he would fight to the death with his gun.

Shax turned and raised his hand. He didn't pick up a cigarette; he gripped a pistol. The muzzle was pressed against Burning's forehead, and the Rainbow Mage's brow relaxed as he stood upright.

“A magnificent warrior, Shaks Ibn Urd,” said Ember. “It is an honor to fight you in the final battle.”

"A beautiful battle, burn to the ground."

Shakes pulled the trigger.

"You are not weak."

The Death Shot pierced his skull, and the Rainbow Mage turned to ashes. The ancient soul, bound by the Heavenly Prison, finally got the duel he had longed for.

The wheel of judgment fell back to earth, and Shax leaned back in his chair, gazing at the sky where the dust had settled.

This new equipment is proving to be more difficult than I expected...

His depleted mental energy caused his brain to throb. He closed his eyes to rest for a while, and the scalding hot muzzle slowly cooled, with a wisp of white smoke rising into the air.

The first battle of Operation Dawn: Shax vs. Ember.

The winner is Shakespeare.

(End of this chapter)