Chapter 232: Finally Back
In the dark, cold dungeon.
Bai Kai, Huaiyuan Jun, and Nanling Peak discussed for a while but couldn’t come to a conclusion about the origin of the painting that was sealed in the iron box.
The information deduced from that painting was really too little.
The only thing they could tell was that there were faint fluctuations of spirit energy left on it, the author was most likely a spiritual ability user, and there was a woman whose appearance was highly similar to Luxianbei, who left a good impression on that spiritual ability user, prompting him to leave this painting. Aside from that, there was no more information.
Just as the three were about to give up on the discussion, Gu Qiqi, who had been unconscious for a long time, woke up.
A dull pain lingered where she had been struck on the head, feeling fuzzy as if the entire world was slowly spinning. The cold iron chains wrapped around her body, perhaps too tightly, causing her bl**d flow to be impeded, and her hands and feet felt a bit numb and cold.
As she opened her eyes, she saw darkness, and after a few seconds of daze, as her eyes gradually adapted to the dark, she discovered that three human silhouettes were surrounding her. Through her limited spiritual perception, she vaguely sensed spirit energy fluctuations coming from them.
Are… are they enemies? This is bad! Gu Qiqi’s heart skipped a beat, as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water over her, instantly awakening her groggy consciousness.
“System… uh!”
She instinctively opened her mouth to shout, but before she could get the words out, a sticky fish tail covered her mouth tightly.
Then, the voice of the system resonated in Gu Qiqi’s mind via their unique communication method.
“Don’t speak yet, there’s a special situation!”
The system quickly briefed Gu Qiqi on her current situation and who their fellow inmates were.
That trio combined could easily be considered as having a calamity-grade combat capability of 3.329!
Hmm! Nanling Peak counts as one, Huaiyuan Jun in a rampage counts as one and a half, maybe even more, while Bai Kai only counts as around 0.8.
In short, if Gu Qiqi accidentally lets something slip and breaks the lie it just told, the consequences would be unimaginable.
After listening to the system’s explanation, although Gu Qiqi didn’t understand why it used Ji Yunpei as a pseudonym, she still introduced herself to the three present as it instructed, “Hello, seniors, I am Ji Yunpei…”
“Hello.” Huaiyuan Jun responded coldly, seemingly trying to maintain a distance from Gu Qiqi.
In the darkness, Nanling Peak opened his mouth, ready to say something when he heard the voice of his beloved “foolish disciple.”
“Hehe, little girl, you’re finally awake! I am Bai Kai, you can call me Brother Bai or Water Brother.”
“By the way, your voice is really nice. Have you studied singing or voice acting? It sounds so familiar! Have we met somewhere?”
“Could it be in Shancheng? Ji girl, to be honest, I used to go on business trips to Shancheng often when I was younger. Maybe we met many years ago!”
“……” Nanling Peak looked in Bai Kai’s direction, hesitating several times, and ultimately chose to remain silent.
Although he knew Bai Kai had used similar rhetoric over the years, combined with his quite attractive appearance, to mesmerize many women and obtain various intelligence from them, sabotaging many urban legends and spirit energy attack incidents, seeing him apply his charms to extract information made Nanling Peak reluctant to acknowledge this disciple, even wanting to issue a statement saying he wasn’t familiar with Bai Kai.
So embarrassing, it is a disgrace to the sect!
If others mistakenly think that the Yumen Sands Sea Branch is all like Bai Kai, wouldn’t the millennia-long reputation of Yumen Sands Sea be ruined in an instant?
“……” After hearing Bai Kai’s words, Gu Qiqi fell silent for a few seconds and weakly asked the system in her mind, “System, is the calamity’s godfather trying to flirt with me?”
Can’t you see something so obvious? Truly, you are Gu Qiqi! The system inwardly scoffed but calmly responded, “No, just ignore him.”
“Oh, oh!” Gu Qiqi obediently nodded, her gaze inadvertently sweeping over the system’s fish fin holding a notebook page. With the light from the glow organ on the system’s head, she could see the painting clearly, and her pupils trembled slightly as she exclaimed.
“Eh? My goodness! How is there a painting of Calamity here?!”
As soon as this was said, everyone’s hearts in the room trembled violently.
Bai Kai, “…”
Oh no! This girl knows Luxianbei? If she accidentally says something, causing Huaiyuan Jun and her master to associate Luxianbei with Calamity, wouldn’t that ruin everything?
Huaiyuan Jun, “…”
Calamity… the urban legend on the red wanted list? Wasn’t it said that the painting depicted the wife of Yunshen Machine? Why is it now related to Calamity? Is there some secret behind this?
Nanling Peak, the system, “…”
Why shout so loudly? Do you want to attract that weirdo over?
Sensing the intense emotional fluctuations of everyone and the slightly tense atmosphere, Gu Qiqi frowned slightly and said weakly, “Why are you all not speaking? Did I say something wrong? Are… are you all afraid of Calamity too?”
As her words fell, an unknown source of dim yellow firelight illuminated the faces of the three.
The firelight painted their faces a waxy yellow, and their pupils widened, with hints of panic deep within their gaze.
Gu Qiqi glanced over the three faces, pondering, and nodded slightly, “It seems you really are quite afraid…”
Just as she muttered to herself, the system’s voice echoed in her mind, “Behind, Gu Qiqi, behind!”
As it spoke, the system deliberately lowered its voice, as if worried about being overheard.
“Huh?” Gu Qiqi paused and turned her body to look behind her, only to see a dirty pale face covered with a gray beard, obscuring most of the aged visage.
It’s that weirdo, right behind her!
He had appeared behind Gu Qiqi at some point, one hand gripping a rusted Fengchi Spear and the other holding a torch supported by some unknown creature’s bone. The torch’s tip wrapped in a dark substance burned with a faint yellow flame, emitting a pungent odor.
Seeing this, the system trembled, and subsequently disappeared with a “swish,” leaving behind a page of the notebook that drifted to the ground.
He, he’s not going to hit me on the head again, is he? Gu Qiqi thought as she looked at the weirdo.
Instinctively, she wanted to raise her hands to cover her head, but the iron chains wrapped around her restricted her movements, and her struggles only produced a clang of metal.
However, just when everyone, including Gu Qiqi, thought the weirdo would give her a “heavy blow,” he merely stood there motionless, his gaze passing over Gu Qiqi’s shoulder and landing on the painting that the system had left behind in a flurry.
He gazed at the painting for a long time, and the originally dull eyes momentarily regained clarity, and then…
Two crystalline tears flowed from his reddened eye sockets, slowly tracing down his face.
Then, the weirdo’s lips trembled a few times, and with a voice that sounded as if it had been eroded by wind and sand for millennia, he uttered a line that left everyone puzzled.
“She… they… have returned… finally returned…”
Who are they? Referring to the creator of the painting, or the person in the painting? Why say they have finally returned? Such doubts quietly arose in everyone’s minds.
————
As time drifted into the later hours of the night, the darkness that should have deepened was instead tinted red by the firelight on the ground.
Under the city wall of the southern Yumen Pass, the mingling smells of bl**d and burnt flesh were so thick it was suffocating. Severed limbs, charred bodies, and piles of rotting flesh, indistinguishable from their original forms, were strewn across the ground.
The advancing Shaman Queen’s Army treaded on what seemed to be a “carpet” from some evil god’s palace, seemingly unfazed, because any moment of distraction could make them one of those corpses.
Long Bang rushed through the city wall’s passage, wielding the bl**d-soaked Fengchi Spear.
The Longxiang Army Armor Soldier next to him seemed to say something, but the continuous sounds of battle, shouting, bowstrings twanging, and the clashing of weapons drowned out everything.
“Charge——!”
A tribal d*ath warrior leaped past the long spear guard’s obstruction, scaling the city walls with a roar, uttering something in an unintelligible language, then swung his scimitar recklessly at the Longxiang Army’s spear guards surrounding him, creating a chaotic arc of light.
However, before his weapon could harm those Longxiang Army spear guards, Long Bang’s Fengchi Spear struck first, sweeping in with a roar, and with the enhancement of Long Bang’s spirit patterns, it carried over a thousand pounds of force, smashing into the d*ath warrior’s waist.
“Boom——!”
With a loud explosion, that person was directly knocked away, crashing into a nearby wall and bursting into a spray of crimson.
After the strike, Long Bang stood still, breathing heavily, his hands under the arm armor trembling slightly, dark red bl**d trickling down the spear tip.
There was also the bl**d that had become indistinguishable from enemy bl**d, slowly sliding off his armor, dripping onto the ground with a “drip, drip” sound.
In the past nearly hour, he had covered over a hundred miles on the city wall’s passage, killing nearly a hundred enemies, far more than any fight he had ever experienced, enough to make him a bit numb.
Although he could still easily eliminate the d*ath warriors scaling the city walls with his strength, he sensed that the operation of spirit energy inside him had begun to grow sluggish…
Regaining his focus, Long Bang looked at the surrounding Longxiang Army, worry evident in his brows.
He, as a spirit ability user, was already beginning to feel fatigued; those Longxiang Army Armor Soldiers who had no spirit energy and were only slightly stronger than ordinary people were afraid they couldn’t hold on much longer.
……
It had been nearly an hour since the Shaman Queen’s Army appeared outside the southern city gate.
At first, the young Longxiang Army Armor Soldiers, with their fine equipment, well-trained coordination, and the geographical advantage of Yumen Pass, managed to suppress the invading enemies with an almost cruel attitude, even though their numbers were far fewer.
But compared to the defending Longxiang Army Armor Soldiers, the numbers of the Shaman Queen’s Army were overwhelmingly high, and even if they had to sacrifice ten or dozens of lives to pile up, they could create a “staircase,” dragging the Longxiang Army soldiers into the mire and sinking them into despair.
As time passed, the enemy army realized that forcibly breaking through the southern city gate was not feasible, and gradually stretched out the battle line. The disadvantage of the Longxiang Army Armor Soldiers in strength began to manifest.
To avoid harming the civilians gathering in the northern and western parts of the city, they had to keep shifting positions and engage in what little resistance they could, resulting in enormous physical exhaustion.
Back and forth, facing multiple enemies, being hurt in exchange for d*ath… Due to these many factors, the young Longxiang Army Armor Soldiers quickly began suffering casualties. Even those who hadn’t been injured were showing signs of fatigue after nearly an hour of high-intensity combat.
The walls were left scattered with severed limbs, and thick bl**d turned the ground red, creating a nauseating stench.
The long spear soldiers who had just rushed over from a relocated position greedily gasped for air during an enemy assault pause, heavy breaths echoing one after another.
Not far away, a somewhat weaker Longxiang Army Armor Soldier even collapsed directly in a corner, lying in a puddle of bl**d and broken weapons. A half-body enemy corpse lay next to him, covered in bl**d, with its filthy head only a foot away from his face.
As he breathed, the air from his mouth and nose rippled outwards on the pool of bl**d, causing the corpse’s disheveled hair to sway…
————
How much longer? Why hasn’t my brother returned yet?
Pulling his gaze back from that soldier, Long Bang’s thoughts drifted.
According to their agreement, Longxiang should have appeared half an hour ago. As long as he brought the Longxiang Army soldiers from outside the city, the defending soldiers could temporarily retreat to the rear.
However…
Could something have gone wrong?
This is what my brother delayed returning, and if we finally can’t hold on… Long Bang thought anxiously.
Soon, his thoughts were interrupted by the renewed sounds of battle.
After a brief interval, the Shaman Queen’s Army outside the city wall moved about a kilometer to the west and launched another attack.
Without time for excessive contemplation, Long Bang once again raised his Fengchi Spear and charged forward.
As he advanced, his gaze rushed towards the horizon where the sand dunes met the sky, hoping to see the figure galloping towards him.
Then, he suddenly widened his eyes.
At the end of his line of sight, a “monster” was carrying a figure, charging toward the Yumen Pass.
What the hell is that? Is it a monster created by the Shaman Queen?
Instead of seeing Longxiang and the rest of the Longxiang Army soldiers appear, he was met with an unknown entity draped in iron, sending Long Bang’s heart racing…
