214: Chapter 214 The City Overnight (Part 1)

Early the next morning, just as dawn was breaking, the south gate of Cang City opened.

Liu Kun brought twenty elite Martial Artists, each with a standard long saber hung at their waist and armor plates clinking tightly against their bodies, making a rustling din as they walked.

Sun Liang carried a medicine chest on his back, followed by two medicine boys. Each boy shouldered a bamboo basket containing a few types of hemostatic powder and antidote pills he had temporarily concocted—he himself couldn't clearly explain why he was bringing these, just that his hands were itching and he wanted to compare them with the other party's medicinal powder to see whose healing medicine was superior.

Zhao Hu walked at the very front to lead the way.

The team exited the south gate and plunged into the forest along the hunting trail.

Liu Kun followed closely behind Zhao Hu, his footsteps very light.

But Zhao Hu could constantly feel a pressure on his back—the qi energy of a Tier 3 Great Master realm was not retracted, pressing against the back of his neck like a ball of heated air, roasting his hair follicles until they tickled.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Liu Kun's right hand resting on the hilt of his saber, his thumb propped against the handguard, a grip ready to draw the blade at any moment.

Zhao Hu didn't make a sound.

The person they were going to see could kill a Level 3 Demon Wolf in twenty seconds; anyone's nerves would be taut.

Sun Liang, however, was different.

This skinny old man in his fifties walked faster than anyone else, his medicine chest bobbing up and down on his back, squeezing sideways through narrow spots with a speed even more agile than the Martial Artists in front.

Zhao Hu turned back to look at him, and Sun Liang grinned at him: "Hurry up, hurry up, this old man just wants to see what kind of trick their medicinal powder really is."

The team walked through the forest for more than half an hour.

Zhao Hu was very familiar with this path, having walked it just yesterday. He remembered clearly where there were fallen logs and where they needed to detour around ditches.

But as they walked, his pace slowed down.

Something was wrong.

The feeling underfoot had changed.

Yesterday, this section of the road was entirely muddy; it had rained the day before, making it sticky to step on, with boot soles sinking two inches deep.

Now, stepping on it felt hard.

Zhao Hu looked down and saw a gray road beneath his feet.

Level and solid, with not a single stone or cart rut visible on the road surface.

The road was outrageously wide, more than enough for ten carriages to run side by side. The trees on both sides had been neatly pushed aside, the exposed broken stumps still radiating a fresh wood color.

Liu Kun also stopped.

He squatted down and reached out to scratch the road surface.

His fingernail scraped across it with a harsh sound, leaving a shallow white mark on the road surface, harder than bluestone.

"This road wasn't here before, right?" Liu Kun looked up at Zhao Hu.

Zhao Hu shook his head. When he walked here yesterday, it was still a patch of muddy ground, without even a decent trail.

Liu Kun stood up, looked back and forth twice at this hard gray road, the expression on his face changing from skepticism to an unspeakable solemnity.

He stood up and patted the dust off his hands, saying no more. His right hand, which had been resting on the saber hilt, had somehow relaxed and hung by his side, something he didn't even seem to notice himself.

The team continued walking forward along the hard road.

The forest on both sides became sparser, the trees grew shorter, and the light brightened.

Zhao Hu's heartbeat suddenly sped up by half a beat.

He remembered that yesterday when he walked to this position, just a hundred steps further would bring the forest to an end, with a wasteland ahead.

But today, when passing through the last row of trees, his feet were nailed to the ground.

The people behind him also stopped one after another.

Because yesterday's wasteland was gone, and what came into view was a city!

Gray-white complexes of buildings spread from their feet all the way into the distance. Square buildings stood row upon row, the shortest being three or four stories and the tallest seven or eight stories, towering more than two to three times higher than the Cang City Lord's Mansion.

Between the buildings were straight roads, with iron poles erected on both sides of the roads. Transparent covers hung from the tops of the poles, resembling some kind of lamp.

The outer perimeter of the city was a ring of metal walls.

Over three meters high, the wall surface was smooth, with no brick joints or mortar visible, like a whole piece of iron directly growing out of the ground. At intervals, there was a small pavilion, on top of which a few rod-like objects were mounted, slowly rotating.

This place was only thirty-odd kilometers away from Cang City; a hunting team could run two round trips in a day.

The hunters of Cang City knew the terrain within a hundred miles like the back of their hand; where there were rivers, mountains, and roads passable for carriages could be drawn with their eyes closed.

There had never been such a city here.

When Zhao Hu left yesterday, there were only tents, iron vehicles, and that row of forty-four-meter-tall mechas here. Su Mingyuan had indeed said he wanted to build a base, and he had nodded at the time—build it then, how much of a commotion could it make.

He didn't expect the base Su Mingyuan spoke of to turn out to be a city.

And it was a city built overnight.

The strap of the medicine chest on Sun Liang's back slipped down, and the bamboo basket crashed to the ground, the medicine bottles inside clinking together. He didn't go to pick it up, and a sentence popped out of his mouth: "This is the means of immortals..."

Before Sun Liang's voice fell, a low howl came from the forest.

Zhao Hu's expression changed.

He was too familiar with this sound—Yao Beasts.

The howl came from the northeast direction, not far away, seven or eight miles out.

Following closely were the second and third howls, different in pitch, some deep and some thin, at least three of them.

Liu Kun's saber was already drawn, and qi energy instantly flooded his entire body, cracking the hard road surface under his feet. Twenty Martial Artists drew their sabers in unison, the sound of armor plates colliding ringing out in a chorus.

Zhao Hu narrowed his eyes and looked toward the northeast.

The treetops at the edge of the forest were shaking violently; something large was rampaging inside, and the cracking sounds of tree trunks snapping followed one after another.

Rushing out first were two Black-backed Leopards.

Their bodies were three to four times larger than ordinary leopards, with a shoulder height of just over two meters. The black fur on their backs stood straight up, and as they ran, their four paws barely touched the ground, leaving a trail of afterimages.

Tier 2 Yao Beast.

Zhao Hu recognized it at a glance. Cang City's hunting teams ran into this thing a dozen times a year; it was hard to deal with, but could be killed in a team.

Behind the two Black-backed Leopards, a large opening burst open in the treetops, and a much larger creature squeezed out.

Red-bristled Bear.

Over twenty meters tall, covered in fiery red long hair, with two curved horns on its head shimmering with a bluish-steel light. As soon as it came out of the forest, it stood up straight on its hind legs and slammed its front paws against the ground, vibrating the ground beneath them until it buzzed and went numb.

Tier 3 Yao Beast.

Zhao Hu's throat tightened.

The three Yao Beasts, one in front and two behind, charged straight toward the base.

The two Black-backed Leopards ran fast, dashing to a position less than two kilometers from the metal fence in the blink of an eye.

Zhao Hu subconsciously tightened his grip on his saber, his body leaning forward half a step.

Then he heard a sound.

"Beep—"

Very short, very sharp, like a taut iron wire being plucked.

The sound came from those small pavilions on the wall.

The rod-like objects on top of the pavilions that had been slowly rotating suddenly stopped, pointing uniformly in the direction of the charging Yao Beasts.

Before Zhao Hu could clearly see what was on those rods, the pavilions opened fire.

Without any warning.