Chapter 322 - Eighteen Layers of Defenses, An Injury-free Tribulation!
Chapter 322: Eighteen Layers of Defenses, An Injury-free Tribulation!
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
With just one step, two worlds were reversed.
After undergoing the first two experiences, the moment Su Mo entered into the door of light, he focused and summoned the system as he gazed at the figure hidden in the darkness.
The first time Su Mo saw the creature sitting in the darkness, it looked like a humanoid creature. It was not very tall and was around 170cm in height based on how it sat.
The second time he saw it, Su Mo was prepared, so he was able to make out what the humanoid creature was wearing.
It looked a little rugged, a little fierce and, at the same time, had hair like… the scene kids from the youth subculture from the mid-2000s.
The way it dressed certainly looked like nothing from Earth. Instead, it dressed like it had come out of a science fiction movie.
This time, Su Mo began his observation as soon as he entered. It was true that under the glowing light of the system, Su Mo was able to see more things.
‘A pocket watch?’
‘Does it actually have a watch on its shoe?’
He was at an angle where he could only see the side of the shoe. On the humanoid figure’s ankle, he could see a vintage-looking pocketwatch bolted onto the shoe, gently swinging along with the figure as it moved.
“Dang. I guess the upper-class wear their watches on their feet. Does that make me a plebeian?”
At that moment, Su Mo wished the system’s green light was stronger so it could fully illuminate the entire space. He wished he could see more of what was on the spiritual being.
While he was struggling to stay conscious in that plane, Su Mo suddenly realized that his sense of smell seemed to have returned!
Before that, Su Mo could only use his ears to hear the sound of the waves within this mysterious world and use his consciousness to see how that world looked like with the help of the system.
However, at that moment, when Su Mo really wanted to see more of the details, a fishy and salty sea breeze suddenly entered his nostrils.
He could hear the sound of the sea and smell it too!
It seemed that it was not because his senses were gone, but that they had been forcibly stripped away by something.
Just as Su Mo was having that thought, the mysterious figure on the other side also seemed to have recognized Su Mo. As Su Mo struggled to stay conscious and tried to see if he could gain more control over his body…
In an instant, a bright light lit up before his eyes once again.
He was once again in Hope One’s bridge and, from the porthole, Su Mo could once again see the red moon hanging high in the sky.
“Aww, man. If only I could struggle harder, then perhaps I could’ve regained more control.”
“If I can get up, I’ll be able to finally make proper contact with the mysterious figure…”
After sitting on the captain’s seat and trying to ingrain the memory of how the vintage-looking pocket watch that he had just glimpsed looked like, Su Mo smacked his lips and stood up.
Compared to how nervous he felt when he had entered the first two times, Su Mo, who was already familiar with the disaster, was completely relaxed this time.
After opening the mechanism and going down the stairs to the engine room, where a cooling chimney had now been added, Su Mo poured in a liter of psychic energy water to start the engine. After powering up the entire ship, Su Mo went back to the bow and slowly lowered the large anchor that held the ship in place.
After doing everything, Su Mo looked up at the sky that seemed to be brewing with rage. He returned to the bridge and began to operatel the OS.
Twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds.
That was the time left after Su Mo had completed all of the preparatory work.
The first time, it was new. The second time, he was starting to get the hang of things. By the third time, he had mastered everything.
After many hands-on sessions, Su Mo’s knowledge and mastery of the ship’s operations that he learned in his dreams from the memory transmission had finally been transformed into actual ability.
If someone was to judge Su Mo’s skills back on Earth now, his skills would qualify him for at least the second mate position!
After he softly tapped on the left button on the bridge and instructed the robot worker to bring up the three bottles of Maotais stored in the storage compartment, Su Mo remained calm and composed as he put his feet up on the bridge and opened up the game panel.
The three most important features of chat, trading, and creation, were still locked.
There were still no changes in the introductions for all three of the disaster predictions either.
After he tapped into the vehicle interface, the legendary Hope One was still as dazzling as before and, on the new skill bar at the bottom, the progress bar was already at 30%, signaling that it could be used at any time.
Ten minutes and twenty-two seconds.
When the faithful robot worker brought over the three bottles of Maotais and two small bags of peanuts, Su Mo opened up a bottle and placed the top of the bottle onto his lips.
In reality, these three bottles of Maotai were only found by the villagers of Hope Village after scavenging for a long time.
Before a brewing production line was restored, such good liquor would rarely be found in treasure chests, and it was almost as if every bottle drank would result in one bottle being lost forever.
He had two sips of liquor and a few peanuts.
After he chugged down a bottle, Su Mo was already twenty percent drunk, but that did not stop him from opening up the next two bottles.
No one would ever understand the excruciating pain of having half of your body fractured in an instant, or how horrifying it was to have the lower half of your body destroyed by a explosion.
Su Mo was afraid, but his stubbornness would never allow him to ever admit that he was afraid.
That was why he would rather down these three bottles of good stuff that people would have usually saved to brace himself for tonight!
“After drinking this liquor, I guess I’ll also be like Wu Song fighting the tiger. Let me have a good fight with these foreign races.”
Walking out the door and watching the countdown timer signal that there were three minutes left, after taking the last sip of Maotai, Su Mo was 50% drunk and staggered back into the bridge and closed the watertight door.
In the OS, thanks to the secondary design upgrade, a disaster alert had popped up displaying a timer accurate down to the millisecond.
The fire-control radar was also on full scanning mode as it quickly transmitted all the environmental data within a one kilometer radius of Hope One.
As Su Mo looked at the radar map and saw how much Iron Rock Mountain had transformed, Su Mo smiled and used his last moments to look at it with curiosity.
“It seems that the talisman actually simulated it realistically. Chen Shen, you’re not bad at all.”
“But compared to the second test session, there are some subtle differences. I guess the future is never set in stone!”
The future was ever-changing and was always going to be interesting.
As he looked at the last ten seconds remaining, Su Mo gradually looked away and his smile also gradually turned into a small, unnoticeable smirk.
3…
2…
1…
The familiar countdown announcement began to echo continuously through the game panel. Finally, the last sound ended at t-minus 1.
The familiar darkness was back!
In the next second, under Su Mo’s control, the eight spotlights on the ship switched on in sync, illuminating the deck once again.
An invisible breeze began to pick up in strength around the perimeter of Hope One as time slowly passed by.
Pitter-patter…
Whoosh…
The familiar drizzle fell but, as Su Mo sat within the bridge, his eyes never left the screen displaying the cameras’ video feed of the ground.
At one minute and 23 seconds, the moment water began to seep out from the ground, Su Mo’s expression instantly froze and the breeze surrounding Hope One suddenly intensified.
If the wind speed had been around 10km/h before, the moment the sea of water appeared, it shot up to…
50km/h!
Living up to its name, it was a moderate gale; a level seven on the Beaufort scale!
The blessing of the Ocean Wind seemed to shroud Hope One in an air of mystery.
Su Mo had experimented with the blessing previously and it had lasted 22 minutes and 40 seconds under the assault of the level seven moderate gale before its power was exhausted!
Although the range was only within a hundred-meter radius of Hope One, compared to the blessing of his shelter, it was undoubtedly much stronger.
Moreover, as Su Mo controlled it using his consciousness, this gale did not blow at random.
Rather, it began to swirl in a clockwise motion around Hope One and, in just a few breaths, a sizable high-pressure area was formed.
All the raindrops falling from the sky were sucked inward due to the high atmospheric pressure and flew toward Hope One like bullets, making crackling noises.
Looking at the already blurry porthole, Su Mo was not anxious and moved both hands animatedly.
While his left hand continued to rotate clockwise, his right hand moved slowly in the opposite direction; in the counterclockwise direction.
He was doing two things at once!
Those were not just simple hand movements, but movements that drove his thoughts to manipulate the extraordinary ability of the Ocean Wind.
The wind did not think, but as the one who controlled it, Su Mo provided it a sense of direction!
Compared to the second test, this time, his use of the magic of the outside world came more quickly and naturally.
In just four breaths, the sound of the rain that had sounded like popcorn when hitting the porthole began to slow, and had completely been brought to a halt in ten breaths of time.
If someone had been sitting alongside him in the bridge at that moment, they would have seen a scene on the fire-control radar scan that matched the weather forecast on television for…
A typhoon!
With the Hope One at its center, the wind was spinning clockwise just fifty meters away, creating a strong high-pressure system that was pushing the outside water pressure toward the center.
However, within those fifty meters, just past the guardrails of Hope One, the invisible winds were also rotating at an equally high speed in a counter-clockwise direction, creating a low-pressure system.
The two different directions of rotation caused the air in the 50-meter zone to rotate and generate centrifugal force, which was counterbalanced by the centripetal force of the wind blowing in toward the center.
Combined with the lowered air pressure and increased temperature, the typhoon became the first line of defense for Hope One, isolating it from all the rain.
Was that all?
Nope!
Based on his previous experience, the eye of the typhoon defense could only keep the rain out for 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
It was the remaining 20 seconds that were crucial to see if Hope One would survive the disaster and emerge victorious!
After the fourteenth minute had passed, he formed another wall of wind with his mind, as well as a wall of water alongside it.
From controlling two things at once to four things at once, it wasn’t Su Mo’s strong mental capacity that allowed him to achieve such inhuman levels of control, but rather the glowing thing on his finger…
The Mind Ring!
Even though he could not use the game or the system, he had no problems using the ring as it was his own item with its own properties.
After using the magical ring to maintain his control over the two winds blowing in different directions, he controlled a third gust of wind along and formed a wall of water as a defense measure above the fire-control radar.
The wall of water was not that large. It was only two square meters in size but it was sufficient to cover the fire-control radar underneath and ensure that it would not be destroyed by the torrential rain.
As for the rest of Hope One, since he had the Genesis ability ready, Su Mo did not have to worry too much and just did his best to maintain the wall of water.
During the second test round, he ran out of power after creating the twelfth wall of water.
However, this time, the tipsiness brought on by the Maotai had gone to his head and, without realizing it, Su Mo realized he had formed the fifteenth wall of water.
However, by now the clock had reached 52 seconds, and there was no room for Su Mo to continue being distracted.
More and more water was breaking through the typhoon barrier, hitting the deck with pitter and patter noises.
Under the command of the ship’s OS, the drainage system throughout the ship started pumping, channeling all the water on deck off the ship.
A familiar feeling of buoyancy arose and Hope One started to sway just like how it did previously.
Su Mo knew that this was the final prelude before the fifteenth minute, as well as the moment when the final wave was going to come at him.
Sixteen layers!
Seventeen layers!
…
Eighteen layers!
Large beads of sweat formed on Su Mo’s forehead, rolling down and hitting the bridge’s instrument panel, making dripping noises.
Human potential was endless and, in these final moments, Su Mo had completely squeezed out every bit of his mental capacity and created the eighteen walls of water to protect the fire-control radar.
The moment the eighteenth layer took shape, the fifteenth minute was up!
It was no longer just regular rain anymore! It poured down like a waterfall!
From thousands of meters high in the sky, it poured down, drowning everything with terrifying force.
The typhoon barrier was completely destroyed by the waterfall-like torrent of rain, coming to an end.
It was like the roar of Zeus, raging to break through the barriers he had set up.
In just one second, the frenzied waterfall-like torrent of rain had inflicted damage on Hope One that surpassed that of the previous fifteen minutes!
At 15 minutes and 2 seconds, the wall of water defense was down to…
17 layers!
At 15 minutes and 5 seconds, the wall of water defense was down to 12 layers!
At 15 minutes and 7 seconds, the wall of water defense was down to 5 layers!
…
At 15 minutes and 9 seconds, the wall of water defense was down to… 3 layers!
The spectacular wall of water was down to three layers at the last second, but that also marked the end of the waterfall-like torrent of rain.
As the last three layers remained, the rainstorm was just like any other ordinary rainstorm, sprinkling raindrops all over the radar with a slight whirring sound.
As he listened to the celebratory whirring sound and looked at the game panel to see that Hope One had only suffered a mere 24% durability loss…
Standing in the bridge, Su Mo’s face was ablaze and he started laughing uncontrollably.
I guess that was what they meant when they said that all sufferings had their reward, and Su Mo had finally passed through the level with just a nick to show for it!
This wave of destruction turned out to be two blessings for him instead!