Atlas of Heaven and Man

On the small hill, the two-story building was engulfed in a raging fire, thick black smoke billowing into the sky, and sparks flying around.

Following Wu Laoshi's instructions, Chen Chuan burned both his corpse and his house with algae oil.

To completely erase any trace, he even gathered the shattered pieces of wood from their fight and threw them into the fire.

Just then, something in the grass was stirred by the air current and flew over. He reached out and grabbed it, seeing it was the Molan Corporation advertisement. He glanced at it and casually tossed it into the bonfire.

After checking everything again and finding nothing else left behind, he contacted Wu Bei using the Realm Device, "Brother Wu, did anyone observe the fight just now?"

Wu Bei's voice came through: "Brother Chen, don't worry. While you were fighting, I shielded the bio-field of this area. Anyway, there's hardly anyone here, so there's no need to worry about anyone reporting it."

Chen Chuan hummed in agreement. Central City was different from other places. Because of the existence of Realm Devices and Realm Points, events that occurred in some places could be reported and viewed through other means, so someone had to be responsible for intercepting messages.

Moreover, it wasn't just about doing that. If necessary, he could also have Wu Bei cause some minor malfunctions in Wu Laoshi's Realm Device, momentarily distracting him.

Wu Bei was also extremely excited. In fact, during that fight just now, except for when the two of them stopped, he didn't see anything clearly. He only saw bricks and wooden boards shattering, and large pits appearing on the ground. This kind of power was simply inhuman.

The previous time Chen Chuan fought the Golden Shrimp Commission, he thought that was already impressive enough, but this time he truly witnessed the level of a powerful fighter. It was completely on another level.

Just then, he thought of something and said, "Brother Chen, this Wu Laoshi, his condition, um, it seems like he has 'St怔 Disease'."

"'St怔 Disease'?"

"Yes, the current term used by the government and various companies is 'Functional Disorder Syndrome'.

The theory is that under the long-term influence of the bio-field, as well as the prolonged use of Realm Devices and the multiple stimulating effects of drugs and implants, a person's cognition will swing back and forth between illusion and reality.

They can't distinguish which is the real self and which is the real world. In a state of cognitive confusion, they often do things that normal people would find difficult to do.

Oh, this is just a theory, the situation is very complicated, so I only know this much."

Chen Chuan nodded slightly. He had felt before that when he came to Central City, the surrounding environment had a slight intrusion on his Second Self, which was actually caused by the exchange of bio-fields.

Being in this kind of environment for a long time might have a slight impact on ordinary people, but for fighters, it's not really a problem. Wu Laoshi's situation might have more complex reasons behind it.

Moreover, he looked down at the base of the hill. The area where he was standing at this moment also had problems…

However, he didn't have time to explore it. After all, Central City was full of vitality, with all things competing to grow. He didn't have the energy or the possibility to figure out everything.

Now, there was something more worthy of his attention.

This time fighting Wu Laoshi, even without deliberately distinguishing it, he could be sure that the overlap time with his Second Self must have exceeded twenty-four hours.

He had a premonition that his Second Self might undergo some kind of change at that time. Now, it was very close to twelve o'clock, and he would soon know the answer.

He greeted Wu Bei, turned off the Realm Device, and took out his watch from his pocket.

Time passed second by second.

Finally, it was twelve o'clock.

Chen Chuan put down his watch, intending to see if there was anything different from usual, when he suddenly felt an abnormality.

But the problem was, he hadn't chosen to overlap.

He clenched his fist, feeling the strong and abundant power.

So that's how it is. After twenty-four hours of overlap, the Second Self was completely integrated into his body. Then… has the "Second Self" disappeared?

No.

He looked to the side. The "Second Self" was still standing there properly, and there were faint signs of virtualization on its body, still bearing the external intrusions for him.

He turned his thoughts, and with a thought, overlapped it back in. However, this time, it seemed that besides still being able to replace injuries, there was no additional overlapping effect.

No, it's not like that.

It's not that there's no improvement, but the improvement is very weak.

It's like… um, it's like only overlapping in the strength of an ordinary person.

His mind raced, and he released the Second Self again. After looking at it a few more times, he suddenly understood. The physical qualities that this Second Self possessed now should be the earliest, that is, the way he looked when he first crossed over.

He had judged before that the Second Self was likely another version of himself from another world, also himself, but because of his arrival, he broke the boundaries of the world.

Now it seems that when a certain limit or a certain condition is reached, the other version of himself will achieve a perfect fusion with him, but the Second Self will not disappear. Only after this, the Second Self will return to the origin, that is, back to the way he looked when he first arrived.

At this moment, there was no need to test. When overlapping with it, he could clearly know that the overlapping time was one day and four hours. This seemed to have broken the 24-hour limit and was moving towards a more distant other side.

He could feel that the strength of this second self would gradually grow with the accumulation of time. Saying 'grow' was not accurate; it should be said that its strength would constantly approach his current self, but this process might require him to push it forward.

Whether it would approach his current strength or the strength before the overlap was unclear, but even the latter would be a significant improvement.

During the overlap, he discovered that he seemed to have gained another option.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he found that his physical state had returned to its previous appearance once more.

When he chose to overlap with the second self, he could suppress his physical expression to before the fusion, which was equivalent to separating the previously fused second self once again in a disguised way.

This was quite interesting.

This was not a useless ability, but a very useful one, because the stronger an individual is, the more matter and energy are required to support its existence and maintain its activity.

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For example, the nutrition he needed to ingest during training now was much more than before. Assuming he reached a higher limit, the consumption of just maintaining his own existence would probably be considerable. But if he could maintain a low-limit state for a long time under the overlap, then this situation could be weakened or avoided.

Moreover, there might be other uses in this. He had already thought of one and felt he could go back and try it out.

He looked at the raging fire in front of him and remembered what He Xiaoxing had once told him: the so-called 'limit' means that a person's strength has its limit. As long as they are still human, no matter how powerful the alienated organization is, there must be an upper limit within a certain stage, and only theoretically perfect individuals can reach it.

At the time of the test, even with the overlap of the second self, he had not been able to reach the theoretical upper limit, but only approached it. Now that he had fused with the second self, he wondered if his current self had reached this upper limit in the second limit? Or was there still a distance?

He felt that there might still be some distance, but with the second self, he felt that one day he might be able to reach or surpass this limit.

He stood there quietly, standing in front of the red-hot fire, with the silent night behind him. Xue Jun Dao was inserted to the side. A distant wind blew, and his scarf and windbreaker swayed.

After waiting for another hour or so, the fire finally went out. The entire house had been completely burned down. He confirmed that there was nothing special left behind, and then opened Jie Ping and, with Wu Bei's help, cleaned up some of the remaining traces. Only then did he pick up Xue Jun Dao and leave here.

By the time he arrived at the train station, it was almost two o'clock, but when he got on the elevator to return, at least half of the car was occupied by people, mostly company employees.

These employees maintained longer working hours through drugs and implants. At this time, it was only one or two hours later than the normal off-work time, and many employees were used to it.

On the train, Chen Chuan used Jie Ping to check the two people that Teacher Wu had mentioned last.

Yuan Binshu might not be a person from the academy. There didn't seem to be this person among the teachers and senior management of the academy, and he didn't seem like a student either. He could pay attention to him later.

As for the other person, Teacher Wu didn't finish his words, but he noticed that there were only two people in the academy's teachers and senior management with the surname Ling: one was an eighty-year-old academy consultant who didn't even have courses, and the other was the vice president's assistant, Ling Jianxing.

He felt that the person Teacher Wu was talking about was likely the latter.

Teacher Wu's matter might have some kind of relationship with these two people. If so, would these two people and the people behind them involved in this matter give up because of the former's death?

He felt that if this matter had a deeper purpose, it was likely that they would not.

While he was thinking, the train returned to the school all the way. When he came out of the station and walked towards the Xuan Gong Building, it was already past three in the morning.

As he was about to step into the hall, he looked up and saw Hong Fu standing above, and nodded to her.

After Hong Fu saw him, her agile eyes above the veil looked over and also nodded to him.

From the moment Chen Chuan came down from that small hill, he overlapped with his second self, maintaining himself in his previous state.

His biological field expression was almost the same as when he left the academy.

Walking into the hall and entering the elevator, he looked at the constantly rising signs above and thought to himself that although the overlapping time with the second self had already exceeded twenty-four hours, the use of reducing his own state like this, as well as the choice of transferring damage and invasion, would undoubtedly reduce this time.

And to allow the second self to return to a state close to his own strength, he still needed to find ways to extend the upper limit next.

The elevator doors slid open. He walked out, pushed the door and returned to his dormitory. After putting down Xue Jun Dao, he looked at the brilliant night view outside, then pulled the curtains, first took a shower, and then went to rest.

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