Chapter 375: Chapter 375: Harvest
The "King’s Castle" possessed by Honglian can swap her position with a specified item, while "Shifting Form and Shadow" allows items to transfer among each other. With two marked items prepped, she can instantly leave the battlefield.
The next steps are quite simple.
Chen Xuan activated the shopkeeper recall ability.
He even had the leisure to observe the Celestial Patrol, close at hand, several times due to the slow motion effect of the Divine Eye Technique.
At that moment, he saw someone seemingly gazing back at him atop the gigantic steel leg.
The silhouettes against the light were not corpses hanging on the steel framework; they were clearly alive and waving at him.
The next moment, Chen Xuan was back in the familiar shop.
"Did you succeed?" Xu Xuanling came over and asked.
He nodded somewhat absentmindedly.
"Did something happen?" His disciple noticed his hesitation.
"On the Celestial Patrol... I saw some figures," Chen Xuan said, lost in thought and speaking softly, "They were standing by the steel staircase, sizing me up the whole time."
"There were people on that thing?" Xu Xuanling exclaimed in surprise, "Isn’t it supposed to eat people? And with its movement speed, anyone on it would have been thrown off."
Indeed, a small step for the Celestial Patrol would mean a few hundred meters of jostling and bouncing for anyone on it. Such vibrations wouldn’t just knock someone off their feet; even if one were tied up, they’d likely pass out from the frequent overloading and weightlessness.
"Maybe I saw it wrong." Chen Xuan shook his head, trying to shake off the lingering image of the strong light in his mind, "Let’s go, it’s time to collect the goods from the future."
...
When he returned to the subway suite, he heard a knock on the door.
Chen Xuan opened the door to find Lin Qing standing outside.
Seeing him appear, Lin Qing visibly breathed a slight sigh of relief.
"A rare guest indeed," Chen Xuan whistled deliberately, "I thought the Fireline Band members never spend the night in the shelter."
"Didn’t you hear anything just now?" Lin Qing frowned, glaring at him, "It’s an emergency, we’re here for shelter, not staying the night!"
He noticed that the green night lights usually replacing illumination in the hallway after lights-out had all turned deep red.
The subway station folks clearly had noticed the anomaly outside the Third Ring Road.
While Chen Xuan knew the reason perfectly well, he had to feign a bit of ignorance, "I probably was sleeping too deeply. Do you want to come in and sit? You can tell me what’s happening outside."
"No need, I just came to check on you."
"Checking on me?" Chen Xuan asked, puzzled.
"Well..." Lin Qing hesitated, "An unidentified phenomenon appeared in the sky to the west, triggering the alarms at the subway station. When I saw the phenomenon, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was related to you guys, so I..."
She shrugged here, smiling self-deprecatingly, "Anyway, I was overthinking it."
Chen Xuan was shocked. How could she have linked it to him? She knew nothing of his abilities, only his test scores off the charts. Could it be a woman’s intuition?
"Oh, I get it." Xu Xuanling peeked from behind Chen Xuan, "You’re worried about Master’s safety."
"What? Not really..."
"Really? If he hadn’t responded to your knock, you’d have been pretty anxious, right?"
"I..." Lin Qing froze, realizing she need not answer the question. But seeing Xu Xuanling’s young age, she decided to flick her forehead, "Young lady, don’t interrupt!"
Xu Xuanling even stuck her tongue out like a little girl.
Had Chen Xuan not known his disciple better, he’d have almost believed the act.
Suddenly, a violent tremor shook beneath them, red lights flickering, and the ceiling creaked with pressure. Lin Qing lost her balance, stumbling into Chen Xuan, and they ended up holding each other tightly.
Two seconds later, the tremor subsided.
"Th-thank you..."
Lin Qing attempted to prop herself up, instantly freezing as she found herself almost glued to Chen Xuan, their noses nearly touching.
Chen Xuan was also a bit stunned.
This scene seemed strangely familiar.
After the botanical garden incident, Lin Qing had leaned this way, and the sensation of her soft lips lingered in his memory. Although her hair was now a less vibrant multi-color and she had fewer piercings, those differences vanished with the close proximity, merging their outlines perfectly.
"Sister Haiyan, Sister Haiyan! Something big happened!" A few panicked shouts echoed from the hallway.
Hearing her teammates’ calls, Lin Qing snapped out of her daze, pushing herself off him and turning away as if nothing had happened, "I’m here, what’s wrong?"
Running over were Huang Gou and Ji.
Gesturing wildly, it took them a while to make their point clear: a spaceship had appeared outside the band’s camp.
Lin Qing was dumbfounded, disbelief written all over her face, "You haven’t taken any stimulants, have you?"
"I’m telling the truth, you can see everything on the big screen in the square district. Everyone there saw it!" swore Huang Gou, "If I’m lying, I’m a dog!"
Ji nodded repeatedly, "Moments ago, a massive explosion occurred to the west, suspected to be a nuclear strike, and then the spaceship wreckage appeared! We’ve confirmed it’s the same crashed Dimensional Limit Mechanism ship, with the damage perfectly matching the photos, no mistake!"
"A nuclear strike?" Lin Qing was stupefied, "Was the earlier trembling caused by a nuclear blast?"
"Yes! Uncle Li and Brother Liu Yi have already headed there, you should go too!"
Lin Qing instinctively glanced at Chen Xuan.
The latter showed no surprise, merely smiled and nodded at her, "I’ll go with you."
...
Outside the subway station, Chen Xuan saw the camp teeming with people. Surprisingly, the band members were a minority amidst local spectators. The protective gear people wore varied widely, with some even donning rubber raincoats, seemingly unphased by minor post-nuclear radiation.
The surrounding houses and trees remained mostly unchanged, indicating the shockwave had not affected the area like seismic forces would. In the concrete jungle, the high-temperature, high-pressure air current was surely the fastest diminishing force.
However, upon reaching the camp, they heard intense arguing within the crowd.
Lin Qing quickly pushed through, reaching the heart of the commotion — the spaceship wreckage.
Now, she was sure Huang Gou and Ji hadn’t been lying. The outline of the Dimensional Limit Mechanism ship lay before her, still in its crash-landing posture under the flashlight beams, as if it never moved. Yet rationality told her it must’ve shifted from Jiang City’s edge to within the first ring.
Such an occurrence sounded utterly surreal, yet there it undeniably was.
The dispute was between Uncle Li and the Binjiang Garden Security Team.
More than twenty guards formed a perimeter around the wreckage, setting up a cordon to prevent anyone from nearing the ship.
Uncle Li was also blocked, visibly disgruntled, claiming the phenomenon resulted from the Fireline Band’s efforts, granting them first access to the ship for exploration.
The two sides reached an impasse.
Lin Qing immediately grasped the situation, a look of dismay crossing her face. Uncle Li was undoubtedly bluffing; if the Fireline Band could move such a massive object, they wouldn’t need such a complex feint plan.
"He’s right."
Surprisingly, the deadlock was broken by Chen Xuan, who stepped forward, announcing to all, "This is the result of our orchestration."
Everyone’s eyes simultaneously turned to him.
"That’s Chen Xuan!"
"Who is he?"
"You don’t know him? He’s our strongest Ability User here, with a test score of 999!"
The crowd buzzed with whispers, and those who previously questioned Uncle Li fell silent in an instant.
It was as if any words spoken by Chen Xuan, no matter how outlandish, were truths!
Comments