The pair of blood-red eyeballs suddenly rolled, the Gluttony Behemoth that devoured "concepts" instantly locked its killing intent onto Lin Xiyue, who dared to interrupt its all-you-can-eat buffet.
"Su Wan, control the field and evacuate! Xia Lian, fire harassment, find a weakness!" Lin Qingyue commanded calmly, her words rapid.
"Leave it to me." Su Wan's robes flapped without wind, her hands held flat as immense Magic Power surged forth.
The next second, mirror-smooth Ice Walls rose from the ground, forcefully partitioning several safe corridors outside the chaotic crowd, guiding the screaming Pandaren to evacuate in an orderly fashion and preventing a stampede tragedy.
Xia Lian, meanwhile, pulled out afterimages like a ghost at the edge of the battlefield, her shortbow [Dark Night Starwhisper] becoming a phantom as she fired a volley of arrows at that all-devouring "Conceptual Torrent."
However, those silently fired arrows plunged straight into the torrent without even leaving a bubble, being instantly decomposed and devoured as if they had never existed.
"It's no use!" Xia Lian's voice rang out, "Physical attacks are useless against that energy stream!"
Before her words finished, the Gluttony Behemoth's attack had already arrived!
It didn't even bother to use its claws and fangs, simply opening its star-devouring maw toward Lin Xiyue!
An invisible, conceptual strangling force instantly enveloped Lin Xiyue!
She felt no physical pull, yet she could clearly sense her very definition as a "shield" being torn from her soul by an unreasonable power!
The Holy Light Runes on her shield flashed wildly, flickering as if they would be extinguished in the next second.
This wasn't a battle at all; it was a one-sided "meal"!
And all of them, along with their equipment, skills, and even their very conviction of existence, had become appetizers on its menu!
"Sis!"
Lin Xiyue gritted her silver teeth, her legs digging into the ground like nails, desperately channeling Holy Light into her shield to barely withstand this bizarrely powerful devouring.
"The crowd is mostly evacuated, but Xiyue is about to break!"
Su Wan's voice betrayed a hint of urgency, her gaze locked onto the knight girl's teetering figure.
"Don't panic!"
Lin Qingyue's voice remained calm, but beneath that calm lay a madness ignited by being driven into a corner!
What was the enemy? Gluttony.
What was its ability? Devouring all things, including concepts.
What was its weakness?
Weakness...
A monster composed purely of "appetite," its weakness would be... something that tastes bad?
No, that's not right!
For this ultimate gourmet, there was no such option as "tastes bad," only "edible" and "temporarily inedible"!
Whether it was a concept, energy, or a physical object, it could devour it all!
So, the way to break the deadlock wasn't "tasting bad."
But rather... fundamentally and completely denying the very concept of "food"!
Something... that was absolutely opposite to "edible" in its definition, something that could even trigger a logical paradox!
A wild thought, so absurd that even she found it utterly ridiculous, exploded in her mind like a thunderclap!
Lin Qingyue's eyes instantly changed.
It was the unique glow of a "troll," the kind a veteran gamer shows when facing an unsolvable BUG and decides to forcibly counter it with an even more absurd BUG!
"Holy shit!"
She couldn't help but curse under her breath, and then a desperate, all-or-nothing fervor surfaced on her face.
"Genshin Impact, launch!"
This low growl of incomprehensible meaning made Su Wan and Xia Lian beside her simultaneously shoot her with "See, she's finally gone mad" looks.
But they also knew that every time Lin Qingyue started talking nonsense, it was the ultimate announcement that she was about to pull out some world-destroying trump card!
Lin Qingyue had no time to explain.
Her consciousness sank into the System Inventory like lightning, swiftly sweeping past those legendary items that glowed with a golden light.
[Echoes of the Celestial God Set]? No, sending that over would just be a set of top-tier snacks.
The staff [Beloved]? Stabbing it would not even be enough to get stuck in its teeth.
The greatsword [Epic of Love and Flowers]? Even the name sounded like a French dessert!
Her gaze frantically scanned the depths of her inventory, finally locking onto a corner she had labeled "Biohazard, Do Not Touch"!
There, an icon lay quietly.
An... icon of a dish... that was flashing with an ominous, bizarre purple light that caused one's Sanity to plummet just by looking at it!
It was that special "reward" that had dropped out when she was tricked out of all her assets by a fake gacha effect in the Greed Illusion!
Her fingertips, trembling yet excited, tapped on it.
[Time of Judgment (Special Dish)]
[Quality: ???]
[Type: Large-scale Conceptual Weapon of Mass Destruction]
[Description: An ultimate creation personally crafted by the God of Thunder from another world, who, while pursuing the Path of "Eternity," casually applied philosophical speculation to the realm of "culinary arts." Due to its unique cooking philosophy and subversive deconstruction of ingredients, the finished product oscillates between the definitions of "food" and an "Annihilation Reactor," forming an absolute paradox in its logical loop.]
[Effect: Unknown. Most likely "Erasure."]
[Note 1: This item is not recognized by the "Food" Laws of any known universe.]
[Note 2: Do not eat, do not approach, do not stare. Try it, and you'll be gone.]
This is it!
In Lin Qingyue's eyes, a brilliant light comparable to a supernova explosion instantly erupted!
Found it!
The only solution to deal with the ultimate glutton is to punish it with the Ultimate Dark Cuisine, a dish so terrible that even the very concept of "eating" itself would tremble in its presence!
This wasn't even a question of whether it tasted good or bad anymore!
This thing, on an existential level, constituted the ultimate insult to the word "food"!
"Haha... Hahahaha!"
Lin Qingyue couldn't help but burst out laughing, her laughter filled with the sudden enlightenment of a breakthrough, and a kind of liberation that said, "Come on, let's all be ruined together!"
The next second, she abruptly pulled that "doomsday weapon" out of her backpack.
Omm—
The instant that so-called "dish" appeared in the physical world, the surrounding light, air, and even the Laws seemed to twist.
It was a mass... a thing that simply could not be described by the language of any known civilization.
It was served on an incredibly exquisite plate, but the contents of the plate looked like the product of a frenzied artist, high on something, who had forcibly kneaded together industrial waste, unknown biological tissue, and solidified nightmares.
Its ominous purple aura even caused the laws of space to glitch, emitting a bizarre stench that could make Cthulhu lose his appetite.
The main body was a mass of viscous material, charred black yet shimmering with an eerie purple light, its surface covered in mysterious, circuit-board-like patterns that pulsed with an ominous glow.
A few appendages, resembling both plant roots and the legs of some arthropod, were twistedly embedded within it at reverse-jointed angles.
At the very top, it was garnished with a bird's egg? One that looked as if it had been struck by lightning ten thousand times, completely carbonized, yet still crackling with purple sparks.