The Ultimate Evolution

There were two ways to integrate multiple personalities, and there were usually no exceptions:

(A) If the two personalities loved one another, they could joyfully merge together like white milk merging into black coffee, finally becoming a lovely cone of Cornetto, sold for a retail price of $2.60.

(B) If each personality refused to bow down to the other, they would have a fierce fight and the weak would finally be swallowed by the powerful, perfectly confirming to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The so-called exception referred to cases where the integration was unsuccessful. The two sides would then continue to maintain the status quo. This situation was extremely rare. The chances of this happening were as slim as winning the lottery.

In actual clinical practice, case A usually existed more in theory. The situation would more often than not turn out to be case B. There’s a saying which explained this well: If you can’t get something on the battlefield, don’t expect to get it on the negotiation table. This was especially so in personality integration, which was about life and death.

So now that Freddy had taken the initiative and severely damaged the Dark Phoenix personality, everyone understood that this was a great chance. Why negotiate? They’d eliminate her while she’s injured!

The Dark Phoenix personality was known as a terrifying Class 5 mutant. It was a height that even sly old foxes like Professor X and Magneto did not reach! However, that was her strength in her prime after she had completely taken control of Jean’s body!

The Dark Phoenix personality had just been freed from Professor X’s mental cage, so she was still weak. She was at most only as strong as a Class 4 mutant right now. At the same time, Jean’s main personality was also wrestling for control over the body.

Even if Jean only had the strength of a Class 2 mutant, the competition between the two was a typical internal conflict. Thus, the strength of the Dark Phoenix personality was further reduced by half a class.

In addition, Professor X and Jasper, two rivals of similar powers, were watching her closely from the side, so how could she not be distracted? Therefore, strictly speaking, the strength of the Dark Phoenix personality was fluctuating between a Class 3 mutant and a Class 4 mutant.

With only this level of strength, coupled with her ignorance of Freddy’s attacking method and power, it was no wonder that she was heavily injured with one strike!

The Dark Phoenix’s counterattack was also unbelievably fierce. She instantly hurt Freddy back just as severely.

Sheyan could clearly sense the violent air exuded by Old Charlie diminish by half. The shadow behind him was originally Freddy’s bizarre and distorted figure, but it had now turned back into Old Charlie’s silhouette again.

But an undead monster like Freddy would only be sent back to hell if he was attacked with something like a cross or holy light. Other attacks would just injure him at most. The Dark Phoenix clearly had nothing to do with things like holy light or justice, which meant that Freddy’s recovery was only a matter of time.

It only took an instant for them to launch a full scale assault on the Dark Phoenix!

Professor X, Jasper and Jean’s main personality entered Jean’s mental world. With that, they had an overwhelming advantage.

The following process was not something Sheyan could witness from the outside. However, he could see that Professor X was calm and relaxed. Instead, Jasper, who should merely be an afterthought in this fight, was pale and sweating profusely. He must have been exploited by the sly old fox.

But if the delighted look on Jasper’s face was anything to go by, Professor X’s instructions had likely benefited him greatly, helping him make a great leap in the use of mental power. If that’s the case, then both sides must have made some kind of agreement beforehand. Jasper was doing this willingly.

The final result was not 100% perfect. The very core fragment of the Dark Phoenix alternate personality sank into the depth of Jean’s consciousness. They could not completely eradicate the alternate personality, because doing so would only result in one consequence: Jean’s brain would be damaged so badly that she would end up in a vegetative state. She would basically spend the rest of her life on a bed like the aftermath of a severe stroke.

Therefore, Jean had only absorbed a large portion of the shattered Dark Phoenix personality and raised the authority over her body from the previous 20:80 distribution (after the professor released the mental cage) to the current 99:1. As long as Jean did not fall into a deep coma, it was virtually impossible for Dark Phoenix to turn the tables.

Jean’s power had greatly improved after that, barely meeting the standard of a Class 4 mutant. She could now also be considered a legendary figure like Professor X, Magneto, Dracula and Dr. Octopus, the first among the younger generation.

***

Sheyan checked the time. The other contestants would “descend” in less than 3 hours. There was still time to do something, such as returning to the radio station again with Jean to develop more “believers” for Freddy.

But Old Charlie told Sheyan that it was not necessary.

The recording provided by Professor X had caused the fear of Freddy to reach a saturation level. Freddy had already evolved!

The current Freddy could no longer enhance his power through gathering the fear of ordinary people like before. He must now hunt powerful souls of high quality. Fear from ordinary people was useless to him now, even if there were millions or billions of them.

Sheyan had actually been worried that the sharp decline in human population during the apocalypse would lead to a sharp decline in Freddy’s power, but now it seemed like this guy had broken through a barrier of some sort, so that would not be a problem any more.

Sheyan looked up only to see a dark, starless, moonless sky. The humans living on this planet was constantly subject to the invisible gravity of the Earth and the sun, while the Earth and the sun were also constantly under the control of the energy from the core of the galaxy.

How amazing that power was.

How desirable that power was!

Sheyan’s thought once again drifted to the mastermind behind the scenes, who was surely inching closer to them right now, step by step.

Sheyan still could not figure out the opponent’s motives. If it really were Stockholm Party’s retaliation, wasn’t the cost a bit too high?

This was what puzzled Sheyan. However, he had now somewhat understood how the power of the mastermind worked.

His power could be understood as the power of “destiny”. This power was strong because it was abrupt and delicate. The victim might not even perceive that the power was at work after being ambushed. They often had to trace back many steps in the events that had unfolded in order to find the anomaly effected by the power.

It was like pressing the button to launch a nuclear bomb. Would pressing the button require a lot of strength? No. And yet, the devastation it caused was shocking.

But Sheyan also saw a weakness in this power. The power could be performed anytime, anywhere and under any circumstances, but the force that it could exert should be pretty small. Otherwise, the mastermind could just drop a grenade or stab a nail into the victim’s heart. Why would he go through so much trouble?

Besides that, Sheyan deduced that the more times this power “refracted”, the stronger it would get, the more difficult it would be to guard against, and the more difficult it would be to avoid!

“Refraction” was just what Sheyan called it. For example, if this power simply made a nail inside Sheyan’s body, then it only refracted once. If the power pulled the trigger of a gun and the muzzle of the gun was aiming at Sheyan, there was a medium in between, so it refracted twice.

When Sheyan was attacked back in the mudslide, the power was acting on a rock. The rock flew at a strange angle into the mud, splashing mud into the exhaust of the Ford Raptor, which led to the Raptor’s engine dying. Because of that, the Raptor stopped in the path of a giant boulder tumbling down from the mountain. The giant boulder became the main weapon which struck the fatal blow.

In summary, the power refracted from the stone to the mud, from the mud to the Ford Raptor, and from the Ford Raptor to the boulder, which was four refractions.

This kind of attack method obviously had a very high requirement on the user’s ability to lay out schemes.

The user would have to make the best use of the weather, the geography and every aspect of the natural environment! Sheyan had previously killed a man named Fate on the bloody invitation battlefield, who actually looked a little like Steve Jobs in his forties. He had a very troublesome ability to curse his opponent with bad luck. Fate’s power was somewhat similar to that of the mastermind behind the scenes.

However, though Fate’s power was strong, it was nothing compared to the mastermind.

Fate’s power contained obvious traces and loopholes; that was why Sheyan could find him and kill him. However, Sheyan could not find any flaws in the mastermind’s power!

***

What will be will be, just as young virgins would always turn into old ladies. Therefore, Party Ace was calm when the rest of the contestants stepped into the world. Or rather, they were prepared.

Those contestants who had just stepped into this world were not gathered in one place. Instead, they were scattered all around the world. Their numbers were even higher than what Sheyan imagined, and they all had their own motives….

***

The city of Chengdu, Sichuan province, China.

Three people with large bags, seemingly travel buddies, were gathered together at a tea garden by the river. From afar, they appeared to be nonchalantly resting, but their conversation was shocking if overheard.

“So the 2012 apocalypse is starting. Hopefully, our intelligence isn’t wrong. There are often many great opportunities before a world is destroyed.”

“Our party will rise again, stronger than ever!”

“Only four Arks have been successfully manufactured in the whole world, but how can China, with their powerful pirating capability, tolerate this situation? If that man is to be believed, China has actually built thousands of pirated versions of the Arks. These pirated Arks only retained 75% of the original’s functions and performance and have lost the ability to resist high temperature, but the fact is, the cunning Chinese have made the right bet!”