The enemy’s sudden counterattack didn’t throw Zhu Shi into disarray.

On the contrary, it was as if she had foreseen it.

With agile and lightning-fast movements, she ducked low to evade the shadow warhammer and spun her body around to unleash another slashing strike.

The sweeping sword light formed an arc of silver, cleanly slicing the enemy in half at the waist.

However, against this Oddities’s inexplicable immortality, neither decapitation nor bisection was of any use.

Even my initial attempt to detonate him from within had proven ineffective, let alone these straightforward lethal wounds.

Perhaps it was precisely because of this immortality that the Oddities made no effort to dodge or block any attacks.

Sure enough, the Oddities mysteriously regenerated once again.

He didn’t even glance at Zhu Shi, his focus locked entirely on charging toward me.

His intentions were crystal clear—eliminate the high-firepower threat that I posed, no matter the cost.

But the real question remained: What was the nature of his resurrection? If he couldn’t be killed, our only option might be to capture him alive.

Would his immortality withstand his own self-destruct mechanism as a Oddities?

I wanted to test the mechanics of his revival.

Did his immortality have conditions or limitations? Could he only regenerate from fatal damage, or did it apply to lesser injuries as well?

Raising my palm and aiming at the Oddities, I signaled that I was about to unleash an attack.

The signal wasn’t meant for the Oddities—it was for Zhu Shi.

Having never fought side-by-side before, we couldn’t afford to skip such “unnecessary gestures.”

Seeing this, Zhu Shi immediately retreated.

Without delay, my gaze locked onto the Oddities’s legs.

With a resounding explosion, his legs detonated into shards, sending him tumbling toward the ground.

But before his body even collided with the earth, he regenerated again.

That same seamless, frame-skipping recovery—instantaneous and without any observable process.

Clearly, his resurrection wasn’t limited to fatal damage alone.

He swiftly resumed his charging posture, and this time, I no longer had the time to strike again.

The Oddities’s speed was blindingly fast, like a thunderbolt striking before one could react.

Even with Zhu Shi’s interference, I had only managed to launch one attack.

And by the time I realized that my efforts were futile, the Oddities had already closed the distance—and my vision suddenly rushed backward at an alarming speed.

At first, I thought I had been knocked flying, but that wasn’t the case.

It felt like my throat had been ripped open by sharp claws, and then my head had been torn clean off.

The process was so swift that there wasn’t even time for pain to register.

My headless body remained standing, blood gushing forth like a dark crimson fountain.

“Zhuang Cheng!” Zhu Shi’s panicked, cracked voice rang out from the distance.

“Hahahaha!” The Oddities let out a triumphant, maniacal laugh, raising my severed head high like a victorious general displaying his trophy.

For the first time, he spoke:

“What’s the use of overwhelming firepower if you can’t even take a hit? Pathetic!”

Hearing that, I let out a sigh of amusement and said:

“You’re absolutely right.”

As the enemy had said, if it weren’t for Zhu Shi’s interference, I might not have had time to unleash even a single attack during his charge.

The difference in speed between us was simply too vast.

If this was the case for me, other fire ability users fighting him one-on-one would face the same fate.

When the Oddities saw my severed head suddenly speak, a look of shock crossed his face.

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Seizing the moment, I detonated my own head.

My body was formed from flame mimicry, and naturally, my head was no exception.

After the explosion, my vision plunged into darkness.

However, through the scattered flames, I could still sense my surroundings.

The Oddities’s arm had been blown apart, and he let out an instinctive cry of shock.

If I had wanted to, I could have obliterated him completely, but I needed to keep his head intact, so I had to limit the explosion's range.

The explosion lasted only an instant, bringing me little pain.

Under my control, the scattered flames gathered like birds returning to their nests, reforming into my head atop my headless body.

My vision was restored.

The Oddities’s arm regenerated as well.

He stared at me in utter disbelief before—unexpectedly—turning around and running away.

When confronted with an opponent who also possessed immortality, his first instinct wasn’t to continue fighting but to flee.

Was it because he thought fighting two enemies was disadvantageous? Or was he not entirely confident in his immortality? Either way, I couldn’t let him escape so easily.

At the same time, Zhu Shi appeared in his path and swung her sword from a distance.

A brilliant arc of silver light, sharp as lightning, cleaved the Oddities in half once more.

“Zhuang Cheng! I’ve figured out how his immortality works!” Zhu Shi called out to me while attacking.

“He only has a limited number of resurrections! We just need to keep killing him over and over!”

“Understood.”

I didn’t know the exact principle Zhu Shi was referring to, but the idea of exhausting his regeneration capacity made sense intuitively.

Taking her advice to heart, I focused my gaze on the Oddities’s torso and detonated it again.

Before he could regenerate this time, I formed a fireball the size of a soccer ball in my palm and fired it toward his position.

One fireball after another followed, raining down like artillery shells.

Explosions erupted in quick succession, and the grass on the field churned and scattered like water rippling under heavy stones.

The ground shook violently, and faint screams of terror could be heard from within the billowing dust and smoke.

The chaotic dust cloud obscured my view, but my heat-based perception allowed me to track him clearly.

I was also able to adjust the fireball strikes to ensure his head remained unharmed.

The rest was just repetition.

As Zhu Shi suggested, we just had to keep killing him until he could no longer regenerate.

However, I couldn’t help but remain curious about the true nature of his immortality.

At the very least, it wasn’t time reversal.

Although his injuries completely healed, the residual heat from my flames still lingered on his body.

If it had been time reversal, even the residual heat should have been reversed.

As I pondered this, a cursed voice echoed from within the swirling dust and earth.

"This is all your fault…" The Oddities's voice rose to a frantic pitch, filled with madness.

"You’re coming with me!"

For a moment, I thought he was going to use shadow powers to banish us into the shadow realm, just like Agent Kong had done in the past.

I had been on guard against such a move from the start, always keeping an eye on the shadows' behavior.

Even if Zhu Shi didn’t know how to deal with it, I was confident I could protect her.

But the technique he used far exceeded my expectations.

From within the swirling dust cloud, one of his shattered body fragments suddenly released a massive, expanding black fog.

In an instant, the black mist surged past the dust cloud, engulfing me entirely.

My vision was immediately plunged into darkness, and an overwhelming sense of dizziness and nausea surged through me.

Was this poison gas? I held my breath at once.

While toxins had no effect on me, if it was a supernatural poison, I couldn’t take any chances.

More importantly, I was far more concerned about Zhu Shi.

Had she inhaled the black fog?

But contrary to my expectations, the black mist faded away almost instantly after just a second, and the sensation of dizziness and nausea vanished just as quickly.

What shocked me even more was that the entire scene around me had changed drastically.

Moments ago, I had been standing on the sports field in the park, but now I was in a dim, gray, and decaying indoor corridor.

It vaguely resembled a hallway inside an old office building, but there were no doors or windows on either side—just barren walls stretching into the distance.

Not only had I been transported to this place, but Zhu Shi had been brought here as well.

She was standing about twenty meters away, the exact same distance we had been apart before being transferred.

She seemed a bit dizzy, holding her head for several seconds before finally looking up, spotting me, and running over quickly.

I decided to ask her directly, "What’s going on here?"

"This place… is a space outside of reality. We’ve been trapped in an alternate dimension."

She furrowed her brows, carefully observing our surroundings.

"That black fog wasn’t poison gas—it was a force designed to transport us into this alternate space. I never expected him to have a trick like this…"

"A space outside of reality?"

I immediately tried to sense the flames I had left behind in the other location.

Before long, I could feel the connection with my scattered flames.

The "fireflies" I had dispersed throughout Xianshui City still existed, and the residual heat I had spread earlier during my barrage against the Oddities was still clearly perceptible.

The image of the sports field in the real world surfaced in my consciousness.

Of course, Zhu Shi and I were no longer there—but neither was the Oddities.

Did he escape immediately after trapping us in this alternate dimension? No, that didn’t make sense.

I couldn’t feel any residual heat from him in the real world.

If anything, it felt like he was still here in this alternate space… but the sensation was vague and distorted.

I could confirm his presence, but not his exact location.

It felt as though he was in every direction at once—ahead, behind, above, below.

At that moment, an ear-piercing, monstrous laugh echoed from all directions.

It was his voice.

It didn’t seem like he was physically here.

Instead, it felt like he was speaking through some kind of broadcast system.

Yet, looking around, it was clear that there were no speakers or devices in this place.

"I’ll give you some credit," he said smugly, his voice dripping with arrogance.

"You actually managed to force me to use my final trump card."

"Is this your power?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "Dragging your enemies into a place like this?"

"That's right!" he replied confidently. "**This is my true ability. And once you're trapped in here, there’s no way out."

At those words, Zhu Shi let out a scornful laugh.

This wasn’t the composed, reserved Zhu Shi I had grown familiar with.

This was the aggressive, fearless Zhu Shi who emerged only when facing an enemy.

She stood tall, sword in hand, fearlessly surveying her surroundings.

The Oddities’s voice turned cold. "What are you laughing at?"

"You're lying," Zhu Shi said sharply, her eyes gleaming with certainty.

"Putting aside your so-called immortality, this phenomenon—this ability to drag us into an alternate dimension—isn’t your power at all."