Book 4, Chapter 118: Charge
Book 4, Chapter 118: Charge
Chen Chuan didn’t bring his packhorses this time and carried his luggage bag with him. He set it down on the ground and opened it to take out his lead investigator’s uniform.
After putting it on, he added two overcoats and protective gloves. After flexing his fingers, he checked the ritual arrays.
He had drawn some ritual arrays before setting out, even if they might not be useful against those with powerful mental energy and mental protective items. Chen Chuan wasn’t planning to rely on them, but treat them as a backup plan. The ritual arrays were just another contingency option.
At the end of the day, martial artists talked with their fists.
After ensuring that everything was in place, Chen Chuan put on his hat and protective mask that had a jade-like quality to it. Then, he grabbed the Frost King Saber, patted the fluttering red scarf, and walked to the campsite.
While there were domain monitoring entities inside, he could see where they were through Hongfu’s domain assessment. As long as he pulled his biofield back, his enemies wouldn’t be able to detect him from a distance. However, once he was out of the forest and entered the sentries’ line of sight, it would be impossible for him to enter the campsite silently.
That was why he decided to forgo stealth.
With a step toward the camp, Chen Chuan released all the restraints over his mutated tissue so that all of them came alive. After a few more steps, his skin started burning, and wisps of white smoke rose. Another step later, a loud explosion rang out.
The wet ground blasted apart to leave behind a deep pit. Dirt and stone flew everywhere, and the branches of the trees swayed violently. With a loud sonic boom, a figure encased in fog shot into the campsite like a cannonball.
***
Yang Yuncheng had already retreated to the cliff, which was the perfect place where he could see everything in the campsite but also retreat into the forest behind him whenever he wanted. The moment he saw anything strange, he would be able to react accordingly.
When he planted his feet down, though, he heard a familiar loud explosion. It was the sound a martial artist made when they ran at such an astonishing speed that they created a sonic boom.
He looked down and saw a white trail shooting through the forest like an arrow splitting apart the ocean. The trees and ground looked as if they had been cut in half by the white trail, which was swiftly approaching the Union and Linacrox Union’s campsite.
Is that...
Yang Yuncheng couldn’t hide the shock and disbelief on his face. He had thought that Chen Chuan had come to scout the place or liaise with a mole rather than do something so crazy.
This was an armed to the teeth campsite with strong defenses. Charging straight into it was something completely beyond his imagination. Yet even though his rationale was telling him that this was impossible, Chen Chuan’s actions brought him such excitement that Yang Yuncheng trembled. His eyes were glued to the area below.
***
Since Chen Chuan caused such a huge ruckus, the people in charge of detecting anything strange from the feedback provided by the domain monitoring entities noticed him right away, but Chen Chuan was too fast. Before they could understand what they were seeing, Chen Chuan had already made it to the perimeter, and all they could do was sound the alarm.
The marksmen in the sentry towers reacted quickly. The moment they detected the anomaly, they turned around and pointed their Skadis’ Spears at the source of the sound.
But Chen Chuan’s speed was beyond their imagination. As the trees fell to the side and dirt blasted high into the sky, they saw a white trail of smoke rush into the campsite.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunshots sounded, but all of them missed.
***
Chen Chuan kept his eyes trained ahead, while he leaned forward so much that he was almost parallel to the ground. The Frost King Saber was positioned behind him, and his overcoats and red scarf were tugged so violently by the wind that they formed a straight line.
Due to his speed, the horizontal trenches, which were a dozen meters wide, weren’t enough to stop him. With just a tap against the ground, he jumped over them. As for the vertical trenches, all Chen Chuan had to do was adjust his angle a bit, and he could avoid them ahead of time. The traps on the ground were also as clear as day to him after Hongfu alerted him about them.
The intersecting barbed wires and irregularly placed metal covers were cut by the Frost King Saber the moment Chen Chuan saw them. When he came across thicker, sturdier obstacles, he chose to avoid them. After all, he had detected them before coming here.
At that moment, gunshots came from the firing positions. The marksmen had set them up after calculating the angles. The bullets came down like an intersecting shower and sealed off every inch of space around him.
No matter how fast Chen Chuan was, he wouldn’t be able to avoid this torrent of gunfire blocking his path. The only problem was that he never intended to avoid it. He ducked his head a little and used his free hand to shield it. When the bullets landed on him, his body hardening-type Heartborn Force kicked into effect automatically. Along with the two overcoats he wore, it bounced off the bullets.
Some of the marksmen were martial artists. When one of them couldn’t detect Chen Chuan, he decided not to take aim with his eyes. He closed them, sensed the area around him, and after a while, he opened them and pulled the trigger.
He had managed to predict Chen Chuan’s position, but just as the bullet was about to hit his temple, Chen Chuan reached over and grabbed the armor piercing shell that could cut through steel boards. Then, he casually threw the deformed shell on the ground. At the same time, bright light shone from his eyes.
The marksman’s eyes rolled back, and he fell from his post.
He wasn’t the only one. Around six hundred meters from where Chen Chuan was, all those below the Third Limit who didn’t have any protective items fell down unconscious. The Third Limit martial artists felt dizzy and grabbed something nearby to keep themselves upright. It took them a long moment to clear their heads.
In an instant, most of the shooting around Chen Chuan came to a halt. Only a few irregular gunshots came from the distance.
***
“Who is it?”
After the alarm sounded, everyone heard the explosions from Chen Chuan’s charge. Lenuva and the other security guards in the campsite were startled and tried to figure out what was going on.
One of the security guards in charge of checking the domain monitoring entity cried out in shock, “Sir, the intruder... is headed for Mr. Wilheim!”
Lenuva and the guards’ gazes were immediately trained on the screen, and they sucked in sharp breaths.
They could tell based on the biofield frequency that the intruder was alone. He was so fast that the domain monitoring entity wasn’t able to give them proper feedback, which led to a blur moving on the screen.
Lenuva didn’t linger around to watch. He ran out and saw a white line that seemed to be busy dividing the camp into two heading straight for the Linacrox Union’s barracks. Wherever it passed, loud explosions rang in the air. Even Lenuva felt as if his head and chest were trembling from the force. His vision was filled with debris, some of which flew over to him.
He had no choice but to shout into his Realm Pass, “Activate the highest domain monitoring level! And wake Tarkus up!”
***
Wilheim was sitting in a recliner on the shaded balcony on the second floor of the Linacrox Union’s barracks while reading a report about the merged space. The moment he heard the noise in the distance, he removed his sunglasses while training his eyes on the white smoke.
Then, he saw it cutting through the air at lightning speed while charging at him. Alarm bells rang in his head, and it was a feeling he had not had for a long time. All his cells entered a state of extreme excitement.
Wilheim stood up and opened a box not too far away from him to retrieve a spear made in the fashion of the Western Continent. Despite it being four meters long, he was able to wield it easily.
At the same time, a faint blue color appeared in his veins, and it quickly spread through his entire body. The light symbolic of mental energy spilled out of his blue eyes.
He lowered the tip of the spear he was holding with both hands, and his muscles started bulging. He appeared to be lean, but his body was covered in steel-like muscles.
He had practiced a breathing technique at the snowy peak of Preoas after turning five years old, and when he reached ten, he started developing mutated tissue by reciting the Vangh Scripture on top of the hundred-meter-tall holy pillar in Gliway. During his seventeenth birthday, he reached the Third Limit. After that, he kept polishing his spear technique in Moaydi’s Monstrous Rubber Plantation.
Every mutated tissue and muscle fiber in him had been trained repeatedly, and his mind had been tempered through trials mentioned in the Vangh Scripture. Wilheim had trained himself into an almost perfect weapon.
All his attendants and security guards in the barracks collapsed.
The world slowed down around Wilheim as he stared at his incoming enemy. He saw a trail of white smoke blast through the air, and the obstacles as well as buildings on its path shattered. Then, the white smoke arrived in front of him accompanied by a thunderous roar.
An eye-catching red light was flickering about it, but a saber swinging down at him in a perfect arc arrested his full attention.
Wilheim brought the spear up and thrust forward. The air around him was pushed away like a wall, and the tip of the spear created a sonic boom. In terms of angle, speed, and strength, the thrust was almost perfect.
The next moment, the saber struck the spear.
Boom!
The barracks collapsed, and the tip of the spear exploded.