057. Sequence Seventy-Seven • [Calamity]
The child didn't do their homework, so I gave them a beating.
The child, feeling upset, went and beat up the cat.
The cat yowled and knocked a flowerpot off the balcony.
The flowerpot hit me as I was heading to work.
After I died, the child was left unattended and unprotected, eventually losing their kidney and retina, dying tragically.
In this chain of events, some people attribute it to a build-up of negative emotions, which ultimately comes back to harm the originator of these negative sources.
In reality, it's just pure bad luck.
Being able to gather all these elements and have them explode simultaneously is rare in itself.
It's like how most of the universe is empty, yet some insist that the presence of civilizations is the norm.
Any error that has the potential to occur will eventually happen if repeated often enough.
All luck is a matter of probability; if probabilistic events exist, they can be tackled mathematically.
But Omega Energy is different.
Omega Energy, especially Sequence Omega Energy, is the authority left by the Creator, like the source code of programming, altering the fundamental rules and laws.
Li Aozi raised his hand, slicing through the air, revealing an entirely different world before him.
Unlike manipulating gravity, where a hemispherical field forms, or controlling fire, where combustible materials ignite and explode due to molecular heat motion.
Through [Calamity], he saw everything interconnected by countless threads.
[This Omega Energy… the difficulty level is so high!]
Energy consumption spiked, and Li Aozi's mental strength plummeted rapidly. If he had a head right now, his face would be pale as a ghost.
In mere seconds, [Calamity] drained 40% of his mana. Fortunately, the passive abilities of [Mage] and [Armor of the Mountains] allowed him to recover in space, or he would have collapsed on the spot.
But the effect was evident.
He raised his hand, pointed at Liuer's body in the void, and the accumulated misfortunes exploded.
Liuer was flying when suddenly a hypervelocity particle from the distant sun hit her left radius bone.
Upon impact, her arm necrotized instantly. Proton radiation damaged her double-strand DNA, preventing old cells from replicating while the new bio-cells turned cancerous. Several of her auxiliary Omega Energies failed due to extraordinary gene mismatch.
"Damn!"
Liuer quickly amputated her arm, pulling out a spare prosthetic arm from a space ripple.
But just as she activated her private space, an unimaginable event occurred.
Poison mist.
Green poison mist began seeping from her personal spatial layer. As Liuer's arm made contact, a green hue spread, cutting off the prosthetic connection.
"Damn, the high-pressure liquid tank is leaking!"
Boom!
Liuer, attempting to reboot her prosthetic, was suddenly struck by a meteor, sending her tumbling hundreds of kilometers. After reconfiguring her prosthetic programming, the alert finally lit up.
Liuer clicked her tongue, flipping herself over.
As she rose, the ominous sensation around her instantly dissipated.
By this point, the distance between her and Li Aozi was far beyond visual range, so they communicated via gravitational waves. Liuer asked bluntly:
"Do you wield a probability-based Omega Energy?"
"Perhaps it's fate," Li Aozi replied calmly.
"The Creator rolls the dice; destiny isn't fixed."
Liuer raised her hands, her wrists glowing with echoing light blades.
"I underestimated you, child. You may try to wield these powers… but I don't believe that burden should rest on the young."
"So?"
Li Aozi lifted his hand, drawing Jenia from the ripples of space.
[Soul-Imbued Sword Saint]
The fearsome phantom of a ghost expanded to fifty meters, its samurai armor and violet flame katana looking lifelike, every scar and gap on the armor clearly visible.
The increase in primary attributes and the tier upgrade also strengthened Li Aozi's control over Omega Energy.
Liuer raised her weapon.
"I don't want the young to endure more suffering and torment."
Li Aozi raised his weapon as well.
"Don't be so arrogant, Liuer. You have no right to define the choices of the young."
The next moment, they simultaneously initiated a space-time jump.
Liuer struck first, emerging from the ripple with both blades pressing down, but they met empty space.
"Huh? I know I predicted the position correctly—"
Liuer suddenly realized something. She turned sharply, and Li Aozi's sword was already slicing toward her shoulder.
Clang—
Liuer raised her left light blade to block the sword, then thrust her right hand forward.
Wham!
Li Aozi stomped on her hand, pinning her wrist as he twisted and drove his knee hard into Liuer's chest.
Thud!
Liuer staggered from the impact, retreating slightly. Li Aozi raised his sword, burning with an eerie purple flame, and thrust it straight forward.
Just as the blade was about to pierce, Liuer vanished.
Without hesitation, Li Aozi turned his sword with one hand, confidently catching the slicing light blade.
Ding!
"Is this also probability?"
Liuer's voice echoed from behind him.
"No, this is muscle memory."
Li Aozi swung his blade, slicing through the space-time ripple. This time, Liuer had learned from experience, timing her movement.
They both completed their jumps almost simultaneously, landing on a small asteroid 40,000 kilometers away.
Li Aozi wiped his sword, striding forward.
Liuer activated her light blades, advancing as well.
No words were needed.
In this pure clash of ideologies, fists and blades were more powerful than any reasoning.
Dragging his sword along the ground, Li Aozi generated a storm from the asteroid's crevices, hurling it directly toward Liuer.
Liuer deftly sliced through the fragments, precisely cleaving each gravity-accelerated rock.
Their battleground had no gunpowder, yet the explosions from their clash were more intense than any artillery, and the destruction from pure melee weapons was more terrifying than any technological weapon.
"I really look down on those literary works that still feature close combat in the interstellar era."
Liuer swung her twin blades in a feint, stepped forward with her left foot, and rammed her shoulder into Li Aozi's guard, thrusting her blades repeatedly into his chest, evaporating his flesh with searing light, looking gruesome and terrifying.
"Yeah."
Li Aozi tilted his head, the ripple of space around his neck glowing purple.
[Blood of Immortality]
"Sci-fi works should at least use guns."
"Ha, as if using laser guns makes it any more sci-fi."
"I mean—up in space, it should be a musket."
Li Aozi answered coolly:
"Using swords in space shows a lack of imagination, but muskets—now that elevates it."
"Why?"
"Because the audience hasn't experienced muskets."
"So, that kind of sci-fi, huh?"
The two headless [Echoers] bantered intermittently as their blades clashed, Omega Energies colliding, and gravitational waves intertwining to relay information.
Liuer's intelligence was terrifying; at the start, she was a scholarly elder with no fighting prowess, but the longer they fought, the more she learned. Constantly optimizing her tactics, she studied Li Aozi's combat habits and analyzed his weaknesses.
For Li Aozi, it had been a long time since he'd fought this freely.
With the advantage of his "Blood Demon" build, he had no worries about endurance. Liuer's tier was higher, so for her, his attacks were merely a scratch.
Both were consciously conserving their mana, preventing an Omega Energy depletion that would leave them stranded as space debris.
Eventually, they both instinctively chose the most primitive method.
Close combat.