Not far away ahead of him, Xiahou Wuxin and ‘Fist King’ Lei Zonglie, two sworn enemies half a day ago and two men who had lost everything right now, were confronting each other in silence in the middle of the sewage.
“Fist King?”
Xiahou Wuxin had just been pulled underground by Li Yao after blowing up the ground. In his dizziness, he did not know what was going on yet.
However, although the Fist King had changed into a new iron body, the release model to transform crystals into spiritual energy was almost the same as before. So, Xiahou Wuxin recognized who he was immediately.
The Fist King did not deny it at all. In a tone as cold as machinery, he asked straightforwardly, “Do you want to fight me again, or do you want to fight the ‘angels’ with me?”
Xiahou Wuxin narrowed his eyes, his face that was covered in blood cramping.
“Master!”
At this moment, Xin Xiaoqi, having been rescued by Han Te and Liu Li from the mess, ran to him in tears of joy.
Hearing the sound of his dearest disciple, Xiahou Wuxin immediately lost all his hostility. With a long sigh, his crazily expanded body withered like a balloon that had lost all its air. He turned back into the weaselly, white-haired old man. Glancing at the Fist King in suspicion, he then looked at Li Yao and asked, “May I ask who this senior is?”
Although he did not see what happened on the ground, he could easily infer that Wei Xiaotian and his teammates must have been defeated from the fact that everybody had appeared at this place safe and sound.
The Fist King’s strength was on par with his own. Perhaps, when the Fist King was maneuvering an enormous body like Great Iron City, he would have been able to display incredible combat ability, but his body that had been temporarily jumbled together was absolutely no match for Wei Xiaotian.
Then, the only possibility left was this weird-looking… senior.
Li Yao smiled. “Is it important? If I were an angel, or Immortal Cultivator, such trouble would have been necessary. I would have a hundred ways to force you to confess all your secrets.”
“Master, Han Te and Liu Li are both good guys,” Xin Xiaoqi said. “My intuitions tell me that they are trustworthy!”
After pondering for a moment, Xiahou Wuxin glanced back at the battlefield and made his decision. “Fair enough. Let’s go. I’ll lead you to a secret warehouse where we will take a brief rest!”
Having been the leader of Liberty City for decades, Xiahou Wuxin was without a doubt the boss of the region. He knew the debris and the interconnected tubes deeply buried below the ground as clearly as he knew his own fingers.
Under his guidance, everybody moved several times faster than before. In several places that appeared to be dead ends, he could even find secret doors that were covered in dust and rust.
Every now and then, he would also lead everyone to rappel several hundred meters down through the iron ropes of the forsaken lifts.
Moving for half an hour in silence, they reached a place of darkness where they could not see their own fingers or hear any sounds.
“The Land of Sins was known as Martial Meritocrats Planet several hundred years ago. It used to be a highly-developed planet. Not only was the surface of the planet full of the traces of human beings, but hundreds of enormous cities were also established in places a thousand meters into the ground. Those underground cities are like enormous ant nests and beehives. Connected to each other, they constituted an underground world that was even more prosperous than the ground.”
Xiahou Wuxin lit a fluorescent bulb, illuminating the ragged space around him into an ocean of greenness. While examining directions carefully, he spoke in a low voice between coughs. “When Judgment Day took place, all the cities on the surface were razed to the ground, and even most of the underground cities were bombarded into smithereens by the ‘earth penetrators’. However, it was impossible to dig out every part of the surface of the planet. Therefore, a lot of underground cities were retained. Or at least, they were not as badly wrecked as the cities on the surface.
“The resource supplies of the underground world were highly dependent on the surface. Since the surface had been transformed into an unpopulated land with serious pollution and radiation, it could provide no more resources for the underground world. Therefore, those who hid in the underground ruins during Judgment Day were mostly killed. But the pathways, facilities, and secret warehouses that they left behind can certainly be made of use by us who have come hundreds of years later.”
While talking, Xiahou Wuxin stopped next to a wall that was covered by a red carpet of fungi. He drew a dagger out of his boot and scratched the fungi carefully, revealing a few vertical gaps. He then stuck the blade tip into the gaps and opened a cover.
It was obviously a certain lock of a mechanical structure.
Xiahou Wuxin operated among the gears and the buttons quickly. Soon, fulminations began to echo deep inside the wall. Then, the entire wall collapsed and revealed a long, narrow pathway that spurted cold air. There was no telling where it led.
“Come on.” Xiahou Wuxin gestured for them to enter and walked in first.
Li Yao followed him. Thankfully, the channel had been built rather wide, probably for the convenience of the transportation of assets. With his enormous body size right now, it was still possible to squeeze through.
Everybody moved downward for another minute along the channel, only to be blocked by an iron gate that had been sealed by barriers.
When Xiahou Wuxin unlocked the barriers and the door glided into the rocks on two sides, Li Yao specifically scanned and discovered that the gate was one meter thick.
Inside the gate was an enormous warehouse.
Boxes of crystals and high-energy food, tons of firearms and magical equipment, crystal bombs that filled every corner of the room… All the items that would have driven the bandits on the ground mad and raised a storm of bloody fights were piled as high as hills and emitting lackluster brilliance in silence.
Han Te, Liu Li, and Xin Xiaoqi all exclaimed in shock. Even the Fist King’s man-made eyes were glittering in interest.
“Stop looking. They are just camouflage,” Xiahou Wuxin said expressionlessly. “When the time for a desperate escape comes, one cannot carry too many heavy goods.”
He walked straightforwardly to a corner that was occupied by crystal bombs and asked Li Yao and the Fist King to help him move all the crystal bombs away. Then, he kneeled on the ground like a dog and groped for a long time. Finally determining the location, he stuck his hands against the floor and pressed softly.
Dazzling brilliance flashed between his palm and the floor before hundreds of silver threads suddenly popped out of the floor and spread out in all directions. As if alive, they weaved and connected with each other, forming an enormous rune array.
“A teleportation array?” Li Yao beamed with interest. Speaking of which, he had never seen facilities similar to ‘teleportation arrays’ in the Land of Sins.
Xiahou Wuxin was not in a hurry to enter the teleportation arrays but deployed the crystal bombs that had been moved aside just now.
The hundred crystal bombs all had a small hole on the top. Crimson rays shot out and aimed at the entrance of the warehouse.
The rays were so dense that they constituted an impenetrable dragnet. Whoever entered the warehouse would certainly be scanned by one of the rays.
Li Yao knew the trigger pattern of such crystal bombs very well. As long as one of the rays was blocked by intruders, a serial explosion would immediately be raised. Not only would they blow up the teleportation array, even the entire warehouse might completely collapse.
Xiahou Wuxin was indeed a brutal and cunning old dog!
“Come on.” It was not until all the arrangements were completely that Xiahou Wuxin finally put on a gloomy smile. “Be careful and do not stand before those crystal bombs. This is a present that I have specially prepared for Wei Xiaotian and the ‘angels’. Do not open it for them.”
Shua! Shua! Shua!
Through the teleportation array, everybody was teleported to another secret warehouse that was not far away.
It was the first time that Han Te, Liu Li, and Xin Xiaoqi had ever used a teleportation array. Naturally, they all exclaimed in amazement.
Li Yao secretly complimented on Xiahou Wuxin’s thorough planning. He had hidden the real secret warehouse below a ‘false secret warehouse’ that was on the surface. With such a trick within the trick, he would be able to delay the Immortal Cultivators from finding the place for as long as possible.
Compared to the ‘false secret warehouse’, the real secret warehouse was not large in scale, but as far as one’s eyes could see, the marrow crystals that were sealed in the refrigerators nearby were the best of the best. Emitting glamorous, colorful brilliance, they illuminated the underground secret warehouse as if it were a paradise in the human world.
The quality of the marrow crystals that could only have been collected through arduous efforts alone was indicative enough of Xiahou Wuxin’s years of preparations for his desperate struggle in case his value was fully exploited someday.
“Fist King, and senior, since you showed up at the most critical moment in the end, you must’ve heard most of the conversation between me and Wei Xiaotian, right?” Xiahou Wuxin asked. “So, you all know the truth of the Land of Sins and Manjusaka.”
“Yes,” the Fist King said coldly. “We know more than you do, and earlier than you did.”
Xiahou Wuxin was slightly dazed. He nodded and said, “In that case, you should know that the so-called Battle of Liberty City was merely a play directed by Manjusaka. Both of us were chess pieces on somebody else’s board. We were just toys with breath and a heartbeat.”
“I have neither breath nor heartbeat,” the Fist King said with his mechanical voice. “However, I am not willing to be anybody’s toy.”
Xiahou Wuxin frowned again. He felt that the Fist King before his eyes was somewhat different from the Fist King whom he had fought before. But it was not the time to be concerned with the details. “If so, I believe that we share a common goal right now, which is to break the siege of the angels and escape Liberty City, right?”
“No.” The Fist King vetoed his opinion again. “We are not going to just break out of Liberty City. We will also march to Manjusaka and bring down the City in the Sky.”
“Well…” Xiahou Wuxin did not expect that the Fist King would have such a wild dream. He was lost for words for a moment.
“Fabulous!” Xin Xiaoqi, however, screamed and even cried in excitement. She was almost moving forward to hug the Fist King’s iron body. In a shivering voice, she asked, “Master Fist King, you want to destroy ‘Manjusaka, the City in the Sky’, too?”
“Us too!” Han Te and Liu Li both held their chests high proudly and declared at the same time. “Although we are weak, we have summoned our courage to challenge Manjusaka! Right, there’s also Grandpa Yao!”
