Sun Hang kicked away a kneeling soldier statue that was somewhat in the way and walked straight towards the throne.

"Soldiers! Kill him!" The voice rang out again, laced with seventy percent rage, twenty percent shock, and... ten percent fear.

No statue moved, and by the time Sun Hang reached the center of the formation, all the statues were kneeling — facing Sun Hang's direction.

Sun Hang walked up the steps made of white bones, all the way to the front of the throne.

"Don't you think I'm more suitable to sit here than you are?" Sun Hang asked seriously.

The skeleton opened its eyes, staring intently at Sun Hang with pupils that also emitted a dark red glow... In the next second, it suddenly sprang up, drawing a short sword from under the throne and slashing at Sun Hang.

But just as the short sword swung into the air, its movement froze — because Sun Hang had already reached into its chest cavity and grabbed the glowing object.

With the sound of brittle tissue being torn, Sun Hang retrieved the object from the skeleton's chest cavity.

The dark red glow in the skeleton's eyes instantly dissipated, and it toppled over, rolling down the steps below the bone throne until it was stopped by a kneeling statue in the formation.

"You have... regicidal designs..." Its final voice echoed in the hall.

"You're no king at all," Sun Hang casually replied, playing with the object he had pulled from the corpse while turning around to sit on the bone throne with a thud.

Though made of bones, the surface of the bone throne was polished smooth — surprisingly comfortable to sit on.

The object hidden within the skeleton's chest cavity was also a crystal, but unlike the heart-shaped crystal earlier, this one was a sharply-angled cube, covered with dense, intricate lines — all these lines were straight, and the intersections were uniformly right angles; there wasn't a single place on the entire crystal that could be described as "smooth."

For some reason, Sun Hang couldn't shake the feeling that the thing, in both form and size, resembled a Rubik's Cube... He tried to twist it, but the crystal remained motionless — those lines were merely surface designs, and the precise construction left only minimal gaps.

"Sun Hang... did you finish off that guy?" Wang Xiyi ran up to the throne, looking up at Sun Hang sitting atop it.

"Yeah... I thought that guy was tough, but once I dug this thing out, it just croaked," Sun Hang raised the crystal in his hand, "Earlier, I sensed that the strong aura didn't come from the show-off, but from this instead."

"Its mimetic strength... seems to surpass even mine..." Wang Xiyi stepped closer, staring intently at the crystal... Yet she failed to notice that the coverage of scales over her body's surface was spreading rapidly. In mere seconds, apart from the area around her facial features, her entire face was covered in iron-black dragon scales.

"Mr. Wang... something seems off with you," Sun Hang noticed Wang Xiyi's change and immediately reminded her.

"Me?" Wang Xiyi was startled and then realized the transformation, instantly leaping back several meters, flapping her wings vigorously, creating a distance from Sun Hang.

The scales covering nearly her entire body slowly receded, as she took a deep breath, touched her cheek, and muttered, "Strange... Why didn't I feel anything?"

"Could it be because of this?" Sun Hang pondered the red crystal in his hand for a long while and recalled how the 'Phoenix Factory's' replicated antiques all turned into cursed objects... An audacious idea formed in his mind.

Could this thing, like me, have the ability to "mass-produce cursed objects"?

Mass-producing cursed objects and mimetic contagion are not the same. The latter infects beings or objects in normal states with its own memes, transforming them... into skeletons or cursed items.

In this method, the memes in the infected target and the meme source are "homologous," existing many similar fragments even if mutations occur later.

Whereas mass-producing cursed objects is entirely different.

It utilizes a special ability to spontaneously generate cursed memes in a person or object, thus creating an "entirely new cursed item" — for instance, the 'J2796' and the liquid metal weapons that Sun Hang is now carrying. These things were initially just the most ordinary scrap metal, but under Sun Hang's "wishful thinking" ability, they all transformed into cursed objects carrying memes...

Song Yarong had long analyzed the meme fragments of 'J2796' in detail, resulting in the knowledge that its memes don't align at all with Sun Hang's, meaning no infection or being infected relationship had existed between the two.

"Mr. Wang," Sun Hang called out.

"Huh? What is it?" Wang Xiyi was momentarily dazed, "By the way, aren't you affected by this thing?"

"I haven't noticed any effect yet." Sun Hang replied, "Do you have any unwanted knick-knacks on you? Give me a few random items."

"Knick-knacks?" Wang Xiyi fumbled around her waist and thighs, suddenly remembering she was still wearing nano armor combat gear carried out from the testing ground, and there were no extra items on her aside from the functional devices hidden within the suit.

This also had to do with her usual combat habits — after all, once entering a beastification state, clothes and carry-on items mostly ended up ruined, so she rarely carried phones or such things during missions... In Wang Xiyi's own words, "If the monitor bracelet breaks, the institute will replace it for free, but if the phone breaks, I'd have to buy a new one myself."

"Doesn't the logistics department cover those costs?"

"At first, they did, but later... they were only willing to provide those $20-30 cheap phones."

...

"You're planning to test this crystal's function, right?" Candle Dragon immediately guessed Sun Hang's intention, "Just happen to have something useless here."

Candle Dragon pulled something out from the enormous pocket of his jacket, tossing it to Sun Hang.

Sun Hang caught it and discovered it was a stainless steel dining fork.

"Why are you carrying this around?" Sun Hang asked puzzled.

"I got the message just as I was having breakfast," Candle Dragon replied with a slightly embarrassed laugh, "I realized I was still holding this fork when I reached the parking lot, so I casually stuffed it into my pocket."

"Alright then."

However, as Sun Hang looked at the crystal in his left hand and the fork in his right, he couldn't help but have doubts.

If the 'Phoenix Factory' used this thing to turn replica antiques into cursed objects, how exactly did they achieve it?

Is it merely by bringing them close together?

Sun Hang gradually brought the items in his hands together... but even as the stainless steel fork and the crystal touched, there was still no change.

"Could it be a matter of time?" Candle Dragon suggested, "Back then, those replicas only transformed into cursed items a year after the Phoenix Factory disappeared... No, that's not right."

As Candle Dragon spoke, he shook his head to himself.

These replica antiques were clearly not produced all at once, yet their transformation into cursed items happened in a very concentrated period... This clearly wasn't because the transformation needed time to "ferment" slowly.

It was more akin to a "bomb" set with an "explosion time" or one which could be "remotely controlled."

So in that case, wanting these "bombs" to immediately explode upon creation should theoretically be possible too.

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