Chapter 66: Bell Toll
Boom!
In the blink of an eye, Ji Jue surged forward in a flash of motion. The illusion-controlling female assassin gave relentless chase. Even though there were more than ten meters between them, the moment Ji Jue hit the ground, a dagger should have already pierced his back and killed him on the spot.
But what exploded was the grenade strapped to the woman’s waist. More precisely, two grenades: three hundred grams of incendiary explosive plus an electric net restraint launcher.
The spinning, disorienting illusion stopped cold. In its place, a terrifying wall of fire shot skyward like a torch. There was barely any time to scream; the shrapnel and incendiary blast struck with furnace-like intensity, tearing everything apart in a split second.
Only a half-charred body was hurled upward by the shockwave, falling and smashing beside the giant creature.
Whether it was a final flicker of life or something else, on that shattered, burnt face, the carbonized lips silently opened and closed, as if pleading for something.
“Su!!!”
The sudden change caught the giant off guard. Seeing a teammate he had spent so much time with reduced to a dying, charred corpse, he screamed in agony. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to continue attacking An Ran.
Turning, he lunged at the dying teammate, the faint glow of spirit matter appearing in his hands as he desperately tried to save her.
But it was too late. Before she could speak her dying words, an iron shard wedged into her skull from the left and pierced through on the right.
Hurling Pot Ritual, Earshot Throw!
The moment the giant realized its teammate had died, he let out a bone-rattling roar. His body swelled again, howling as layers of bone sprouted across his face.
Bone branches unfurled like those of a giant deer, covered in dense, blood-like markings. All around his body, he was wreathed in what looked like solidified bloodflames.
Vortex Matrix: Wendigo[1]!
He over-processed his own blood and life force without regard for costs, forcibly pushing his abilities up a tier, and transforming himself into a creature from myth and folklore. He charged forward, meeting the incoming iron shards that screamed past like falling meteors.
An Ran said, “Mr. Ji, get out of the way!”
Get out of the way? Where? How?
All the questions flashing through his mind had no answers, yet Ji Jue, still prone on the ground, shot forward like lightning. He couldn’t spare a thought for the stabbing pain and burning sensation across his limbs and back, nor could he afford to consider his dizziness and the urge to vomit. He seemed to completely ignore the aftereffects of the explosion.
Ji Jue slapped himself with the back of his hand, and the White Deer emblem appeared. Using both hands and feet, he lunged forward.
In the next second, the wall behind him exploded into pieces, as if struck head-on by an invisible iron hammer, while a red-hot bullet grazed Ji Jue’s thigh and embedded itself in the wall on the far side of the hall, disappearing from sight. Ji Jue broke out in cold sweat.
A sniper too! Bro, you’ve got aimbot and wall hacks now? Not even trying to hide it?
The moment the bullet passed, Ji Jue’s ability tracked it, displaying all the parameters before his eyes: a 12.7mm anti-materiel sniper rifle, imperial-made, well-maintained and fully operational, with a straight-line distance of over eight hundred meters!
Bang!
The second shot immediately shot toward An Ran’s head.
Under Ji Jue’s command, Horsey had already started charging forward at full speed, kiting the monstrous enemy like a fishing line and pulling him along, never once engaging head-on. The scooter was just like a non-stick pan that refused to let anything stick. Otherwise, with the Wendigo’s terrifying power, one punch and the scooter would have been turned into paste.
In the distance, the Aether Chosen One remained expressionless as he pulled the trigger once more. Amid the deafening blast, the bullet flew, sending dust rising and falling in terror. But to his dismay, he was still a second too slow!
To avoid prematurely triggering the killing-intent detection and other blessings of the White Deer Path, he was the last one to prepare. As a result, he could only watch helplessly as his teammate died in the explosion.
In the reflection on the water tray, the battlefield among the ruins appeared. A moving aim reticle locked onto Ji Jue again, and the trigger was pulled!
Another deafening shot rang out. This time, Ji Jue nearly had half his body blown apart.
Run as much as you want, kid! Even if you escape, you’ll still end up dead!
The sniper let out a cold laugh, worked the bolt, and ejected the searing hot shell casing. But when he aimed again, he saw that Ji Jue had already stopped moving.
Half-kneeling on the ground, Ji Jue raised something toward the sniper.
A rifle?!
Its shape and model left the sniper momentarily stunned. The Federation’s .40 caliber Thunder lever-action rifle was 1134mm in length, with an effective range of eight hundred meters. By the standards of modern firearms history, this weapon had a storied legacy, having caused countless deaths and victories, and striking fear into enemies of its time.
The only problem was that it was a relic from a hundred twenty years ago, so it was long obsolete! Who knew which antique shop that kid had dug this thing out of? The sniper almost laughed out loud. No, he was already laughing. A twisted grin spread across his face. Ignoring the fact that he was still being targeted, he raised his own rifle as well, aiming straight at Ji Jue.
“Come on, kid, let’s send you off to the underworld!”
Bang!
Two deafening blasts erupted simultaneously from opposite directions, flames and gunpowder smoke soaring into the air. In that split-second, it was nearly impossible to discern with the naked eye that what sprayed from Ji Jue’s barrel was a streak of silver light that stung everyone’s eyes. It was the bullet An Ran had just tossed over.
It didn’t carry the An family’s inherited matrix. An Ran’s matrix was one he had later discovered in the Wasteland Assembly, called Sword Cry. Its effect was simple: it transformed his spirit matter and attached it to a physical object, forming a sword-like energy effect for a short duration.
What burst from the rifle’s chamber was a stream of sword energy. Screeching as it sped forward, it crossed the vast distance and, the instant it collided head-on with the armor-piercing sniper round, it erupted in a blinding, cold flash.
From the very center, it sliced through. Then, the silver light surged across the battlefield. Over eight hundred meters, it pierced the sniper’s scope and finally erupted from the back of his head. Crimson and pale white interwove, gushing outward.
The sniper was gone, silent forever. In his final moment, he only had time to whisper softly, “Too fast...”
The moment the bullet left the barrel, Ji Jue heard a phantom voice echo through the Thunder rifle in his hands, like a taciturn old veteran, speaking only when necessary. It had passed through the baptism of the Central Lands blood wars, carried by four successive users, long nourished by spirit matter over years of use. Eventually, it had returned to the Federation along with its final wielder, only to fade into obscurity.
“Sir, target neutralized.”
When Ji Jue requested it, Layla had scoured the market and finally found the relic in the hands of an old veteran from a Retired Soldiers’ Mutual Aid Association.
After Ji Jue disassembled, refined, and maintained it, this old antique, which had gathered dust on a display rack for over twenty years, finally regained the sharp, lethal aura that only a weapon of this caliber could possess.
Now, only one attacker remained. Ji Jue turned back to face the frenzied giant.
After losing contact with his teammates through the communication channel, the leader, the Wendigo, finally sensed something was wrong. With a furious roar, he abandoned caution and lunged straight at An Ran. In midair, a pair of massive wings suddenly burst from his back. Wind howled as he tore itself off the ground and shot into the sky, attempting to escape into the distance.
Alas, it was already too late. After the storm of Hurling Pot Method and the hunting bullets whistled past, the giant creature tumbled once more, cornered from front to back by An Ran and Ji Jue.
There was no way out.
“Wait, I—”
The Wendigo raised a hand and opened his mouth, as if to speak, leaving behind only half a final sentence.
A strand of dark light shot out from An Ran’s sleeve, piercing through the monster’s eye socket like a bird diving in. It went straight through the giant’s skull and exited the back of his head, leaving behind a hollow, gaping hole.
Then it returned to An Ran’s fingers and vanished. From start to finish, Ji Jue never even clearly saw what it was.
“Shouldn’t we leave one alive for questioning?” Ji Jue advanced cautiously with his gun raised, confirming the Wendigo’s condition, only to find him already completely silent. He was killed in a single strike.
An Ran seemed to finally register what happened in a slow dawning of realization. He shrugged. “Right. Anyway, it’s either revenge or a bounty. There’s never anything new when you ask. You get used to it after a while.”
Ji Jue’s eye twitched. “You can actually get used to something like this?”
“Mm, after a long time and enough times, you do. Mr. Ji, you might get used to it soon too,” An Ran said bluntly. “These people also aimed a small portion of their hostility at you. Looks like your bounty isn’t low either.”
Ji Jue knew his expression was cracking.
“Relax, relax. Most of these guys can only cause trouble inside the rift. Outside, anyone who tries anything against you wouldn’t escape Ms. Wen’s wrath. And if someone’s strong enough to beat even Ms. Wen, they probably wouldn’t bother coming after you in the first place.”
Ji Jue’s expression cracked even more.
Damn it. So my value is basically nothing, huh? Those who can beat me won’t bother, and those who can’t are afraid to try. I’ve somehow ended up as completely unappetizing. No, I’m still a freshly recruited apprentice at Tidesound Workshop. I have support! Even if Professor Ye would probably ignore this kind of trouble if she heard about it, that doesn’t stop me from mentioning her name and acting tough! With two such massive backers behind me, what do I have to fear?
During a brief pause, the two took a short break to recover. The closer they got to the bell tower, the clearer the distant booms became. They were sporadic, sometimes fading, sometimes erupting, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right.
It seemed that those killing each other in the ruins weren’t limited to just the people who had come knocking. There was one Vortex-type, one Mirror-type, and another Aether-type.
“This round’s been quite a haul.”
Ji Jue pulled out the devil's work ball, rubbing his hands in anticipation as he approached the corpses. Seizing the moment just after the Chosen Ones had breathed their last, while their souls hadn’t yet fully dissipated, with the right tools, he could extract some of the blessings still bound by their matrices.
The blessings drawn from a Chosen One’s soul were inevitably a bit incomplete and degraded. Once fused with a soul, they could no longer be used by anyone else, but that didn’t reduce their value as raw materials.
The devil's work ball had an integrated Blessing Cage function, capable of temporarily holding blessings granted by the Supreme Benevolence, preserving them for Ji Jue’s future alchemical work.
The Ember Path wasn’t strong in combat, but when it came to being morally bankrupt, it ranked top three among the Twelve Supreme Benevolences. Some even said it could rival the Heart Core Path, which specialized in hypnosis and indoctrination.
After years of grinding in the survival arena, everyone had developed a complete, highly efficient system for corpse disposal and resource recycling. It was highly replicable, and countless theories and sub-schools had emerged from it.
There were even people who, by bridging the Ember Path and the Vortex Path, refined Chosen One corpses directly into puppets and tools. By comparison, Ji Jue’s approach could only be described as “exceptionally kind-hearted,” as he merely interred the bodies with care.
He didn’t even directly extract his opponent’s soul and throw it into the furnace to cultivate a qualitative flame transformation. Honestly, it was quite touching.
The devil's work ball suddenly said, “Wait, something’s wrong. Problem detected. Don’t touch it!”
Ji Jue froze mid-motion. Carefully, he took a step back, then another.
Then he saw it: cracks suddenly formed across the two corpses before him. Then a second, third, fourth... The bodies shattered, rapidly dehydrating until only ashes were left. The viscous blood and spirit matter transformed into thin, flowing streams.
Under an invisible pull, they moved straight toward...
The bell tower!
Boom!!!!
The soul-shaking chime of the bell rang out from afar.
1. The Wendigo is a malevolent, cannibalistic spirit or monster originating from Algonquian folklore in North America, embodying insatiable greed, famine, and the harshness of winter. Depicted as an emaciated giant with decaying skin or a horned beast, it represents a cautionary tale against selfishness and taboo acts of cannibalism, often associated with the Great Lakes region. Here’s a picture for your reference. ☜
