Kaba felt choked, his heartbeat almost stopping, forgetting to breathe. "Ant-Man!" Boom! The entire S-grade metal floor seemed to cave in.

Ye Chen took a step, his demonic hair whipping wildly, an aura of savage brutality emanating from him. His muscles bulged, his arms grew immensely powerful. Gripping the Heaven-Mending Divine Sword tightly, he roared and swept a strike across the space.

Pfft, pfft... The sharp blade cut through, and the bodies of the roaring corpses lunging forward were severed at the waist without hesitation. Ye Chen’s eyes were icy cold as he watched the halved corpses still crawling toward the center of the elevator.

He took a step back, grabbed Kaba’s body, pushed off the ground, and under the 60x power amplification of Ant-Man mode, his body became as light as a swallow, leaping straight out of the encirclement. Kaba looked at Ye Chen's explosive surge in power and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He shot Ye Chen a deep glance, saying nothing.

Ye Chen tossed the Heaven-Mending Divine Sword to him, then turned and walked to the main door. He snatched up a metal leather sofa that the corpses had pushed aside and charged toward the partially crawling corpses, smashing it down with a thunderous impact. Boom!

Boom! Boom! This S-grade metal sofa smashed down.

While the seat cushion was soft and comfortable, the base was hard as iron. Each strike pulverized the corpses beneath it into pulp, making them look like bursting fuel barrels, staining the floor a vivid crimson. Even the small insects crawling on the corpses were crushed.

Ye Chen wielded the sofa, annihilating every corpse in the hall within a dozen strikes. With no time to check the bodies for any treasures, he leaped up, wielding the sofa, and smashed it violently toward the ceiling. Crash!

The entire metal ceiling was blasted open. Ye Chen vaulted up, climbing swiftly, and immediately saw the spacious and luxurious upper floor. Many ornaments were displayed on the energy counters, while the floor was littered with shattered limbs, bloodless skulls, and bones of indeterminate origin.

Furthermore, four corpses lay scattered in different locations. Without a word, Ye Chen grabbed the metal sofa and charged, smashing down on the four corpses that were slowly reviving from the ground, crushing them into wet paste. Only after confirming the floor was safe did Ye Chen finally relax.

He then walked to the breach and called down to Kaba, "Try and see if you can jump up." Kaba looked at the hole Ye Chen had smashed open and gave a wry smile. "That's at least a dozen meters high. I can only jump about a meter right now.

Can't reach it." Ye Chen glanced around, finding no ropes or anything similar, and frowned slightly. Suddenly, a spark ignited in his mind. He reached into his robes and pulled out the Little Nine Cauldrons, activating the refining function and tossing one metal sofa inside.

"Refine." Ye Chen selected refine directly and then chose the "Rope" template. The Little Black Cauldron hummed faintly, spitting out a pitch-black rope nearly twenty zhang long from its mouth. Strong and tough, Ye Chen held one end, lowered it a few meters, and once Kaba grabbed hold, he exerted strength in his arms and pulled Kaba up.

The moment Kaba landed, the power surged out of Ye Chen like a tide, leaving him feeling drained. He slumped onto a clean spot on the floor, gasping heavily. "That was close," Kaba said, still shaken.

Ye Chen let out a light breath. As his gaze casually swept around, he noticed the skin on Kaba’s ankle swelling and turning slightly red. He asked, "What happened to your foot?" Kaba started, then looked down, letting out a sharp cry of alarm.

"Bad. My ankle is numb, I've lost sensation. I must have been grabbed by that corpse just now and infected." Ye Chen startled.

"Is your soul infected?" Kaba stabilized his stance, and suddenly a shimmer of light appeared above him. A phantom figure floated out from above his head, hovering in front of Ye Chen—it was Kaba. "My soul is fine.

My soul is usually stored in the Soul Shroud in my chest core. However, this body is unusable. The virus infects slower within metal, but at this rate, this body will probably become entirely viral metal within a day," Kaba said bitterly.

Ye Chen looked at Kaba's puppet body and pondered. He scanned the hall and noticed a row of metal sofas in the lounge area. However, these sofas were bloodstained, covered in gore.

If he refined them into Kaba's new puppet body, it would likely not only be ineffective but might also infect Kaba's soul. He walked over and examined them closely. He found one sofa that was clean, untouched by any bloodstain.

He quickly reached for it; the entire sofa felt as heavy as a mountain. Gritting his teeth, the muscles in his arms trembling, he lifted the sofa and activated the Little Nine Cauldrons' refining system. "Refine." The sofa was shrunk and swallowed by the Little Nine Cauldrons.

A mysterious power enveloped the cauldron, causing it to hum softly before spitting out a body outwardly identical to a human—a handsome, dashing young man. Kaba's eyes lit up. His spirit form darted over and merged into the metal body from above.

After a moment, the body opened its eyes, emitting two beams of golden light, a look of pleasant surprise on his face. "So sturdy!" Ye Chen put away the Little Nine Cauldrons. "How does it feel?" Kaba inspected his new body, clicking his tongue in admiration.

"Excellent, completely S-grade, with power reaching the ten-million level! Although the internal cooling system, sensory system, and storage system aren't as good as the self-created puppet golden body I had before, the power output is greatly increased." Ye Chen nodded. "Search around, see if there's any metal that hasn't been infected by blood." Kaba was ecstatic and nodded repeatedly, scouring the second-floor hall.

Just then, on the advertising screen at the top of the hall, an image suddenly appeared, flickering like a black-and-white television with poor reception, static running across the screen. After a moment, the picture cleared. "Xiao Chen Chen," the old, green-talisman-wearing man's face appeared on the screen, beaming proudly.

"That little brat has been dealt with by me. The entire store is under my control." Ye Chen glanced at him and nodded. "Hack into the store's intelligent system memory core, give me the city map and a summary of the events happening around here, and also compile everything in the entire store into a table and send it to me." The old man with the green talisman chuckled.

"Already done. I'll just display the data on this screen for you to see." As he spoke, the screen flashed black, replaced by lines of white text slowly scrolling by. Ye Chen read carefully and immediately realized that the information on the screen was identical to what the previous intelligent system had stated.

It seemed the intelligent system was quite cautious, preventing them from learning the full story in other stores, thus not lying on this one. "Are the various systems of this store all intact?" Ye Chen asked. The text on the screen vanished, replaced by the old man's face again.

He chuckled. "This store truly lives up to its name. It has a complete set of systems: defense, alarm, energy, storage, surveillance, repair, and other major systems.

The entire store is seamlessly constructed of metal, practically a mobile fortress." "It's a shame though..." "Among the store's major systems, only the energy system and the surveillance system are intact. The rest of the major systems have lost function and require repair." The old man sounded regretful. Ye Chen nodded.

"How much energy and time will it take to repair the repair system?" The old man pondered. "This requires a massive amount of energy. The transmission pipeline between the repair system and the energy system is broken, so energy cannot flow through.

We must supply the energy ourselves to activate the repair system. Given the damage level of the repair system, it will cost at least one hundred thousand Pseudo-God Stones to fix it. Once the repair system is fixed, the rest of the major systems can be handled by it." Ye Chen made a swift decision.

"That's too slow. Give me the store blueprints, and tell me where the energy input point for the repair system is?" The screen flashed, displaying a detailed overall map of the store with every location clearly labeled. Ye Chen memorized it instantly, then opened the Fire Civilization Space.

He called out to Bailan through the opening no bigger than a ping-pong ball. Not long after, Bailan responded to his summons. Ye Chen instructed her to move 100,000 Pseudo-God Stones from the storage room and pile them near the opening.

Although Bailan found it strange, she didn't ask further and carried out the instructions. Ye Chen walked to the nearby energy counter, scraped all the various ornaments into his hands, and simultaneously activated the Little Nine Cauldrons, tossing in ten white-gold, diamond-like necklaces. Soon after, they were refined into an energy absorption rod.

Ye Chen called Kaba over, installed the energy rod into his palm, and then led Kaba directly to the energy input point for the repair system, located on the east wall. The metal wall was recessed like a socket, revealing a black conduit inside. Ye Chen briefly explained the situation to Kaba, then instructed him to use one hand to absorb the Pseudo-God Stones from the Fire Civilization Space while using the other hand to transmit the energy into the repair system.

Kaba acted like a transmission conduit, wryly channeling the energy into the connection point on the wall. Time passed. After about six hours, all 100,000 Pseudo-God Stones at the entrance to the Fire Civilization Space had been absorbed.

On the opposite metal wall, a light suddenly flashed, followed by the entire wall erupting in brilliant luminescence. Inside the wall, purple light lines spread out like a spiderweb. This was the internal circuit diagram of the wall.

As the light flowed through, the store's various systems seemed to awaken. Gears that had stopped turning began to move, and the other systems rapidly began their own repairs under the guidance of the repair system.