Chapter 109: Escape and Pursuit (2)

“All right. Can you still walk? Shall Big Brother carry you?”

Jack Chen looked at Qian Ying’s still bloodless face and asked her gently.

“Mmm…”

Qian Ying answered faintly. Jack Chen lifted her into his arms and headed straight toward the Poisoned Lands.

Perhaps without realizing it, Jack Chen was caught on camera while crossing the highway. The computer Xiao Keai was using to search for them immediately began blaring an alarm.

Yanjing, Xiao Anguo’s underground office.

“Master! Master! We found them!”

Xiao Keai pounded on Wu Zui’s door, calling him away from his cultivation just as he was preparing to continue for a while longer. Then, brimming with excitement, she dragged him over and pointed at her computer screen.

“Can you tell where they’re headed?”

Wu Zui watched the fleeting figures and recognized Jack Chen among them. As for the person in his arms, Wu Zui had never seen Qian Ying’s true appearance and therefore did not yet know that she was the culprit behind the Binhai Prison massacre.

“According to the route analysis, there’s a thirty-four percent chance they’re heading toward the inland cities, and a sixty-six percent chance they’re leaving the country through the eastern forests,” Xiao Keai said. She struck a key, and more than a dozen images from the two highways appeared on the screen.

Pointing to the two routes, Xiao Keai continued smugly, “No matter where they’re going, avoiding these highways would cost them more than an extra day of travel. If they don’t avoid them, we’ll spot them immediately. And when that happens… hee hee.”

(*￣︶￣)

“All right. I’ll inspect the vehicle. We should be ready to leave at any time. Go upstairs and see whether there’s any new equipment we can use. Spend some points and exchange for whatever looks useful.”

With that, Wu Zui turned and left.

He was going outside the underground office to inspect the condition of Soaring Dragon One and the weapons mounted on it.

“All right!”

Xiao Keai happily went upstairs, eager to exchange her points for new toys.

Meanwhile, Jack Chen and Qian Ying were hurrying toward the location of one of the highways. Xiao Keai’s prediction had been accurate. Jack Chen could cross a highway in only a few seconds, so taking a detour would indeed have been a poor choice.

Especially since, after crossing this area, they would be able to leave China’s territory in less than half a day. Given the current situation, someone like Wuxiang clearly could not leave the country. Once they reached the other side, the two of them would be safe.

While inspecting the vehicle, Wu Zui also equipped Soaring Dragon One with a considerable number of batteries for replenishing its magnetic energy. There were enough to keep its maglev mode running for a long time. Xiao Keai, meanwhile, went on a shopping spree, burning through a large number of points in exchange for an assortment of new products.

Soon afterward, following the computer’s analysis, the two of them drove Soaring Dragon One directly toward the Poisoned Lands.

Half a day later, not far from the border.

“Big Brother, you should rest for a while. Let me do it.”

Qian Ying looked worriedly at Jack Chen, who continued using the power of his ghosts to move through the mountains.

“I’m fine. We’re almost out of China. Once we reach the Poisoned Lands, we’ll be safe for the time being!”

Jack Chen carried Qian Ying while breathing slightly unevenly. He was not tired; it was merely the aftereffect of using his ghostly powers too frequently.

At that moment, Soaring Dragon One, piloted by Wu Zui, also arrived nearby and began searching for the pair’s traces.

“Master, there!”

Xiao Keai’s enormous eyes had not been wasted on her. Before long, she spotted Jack Chen carrying Qian Ying through the mountains. Just then, Jack Chen passed straight through a mountainside, and Wu Zui and Xiao Keai witnessed it perfectly.

“Well, look at that. He can walk through walls!”

As he spoke, Wu Zui guided Soaring Dragon One into a circling flight above the mountaintop. The craft made very little noise while hovering, and Jack Chen and Qian Ying had yet to realize that they were being watched.

When the two emerged from the mountain and entered an open stretch of level ground, Soaring Dragon One suddenly swept across their path and blocked the way ahead.

“Spirit Investigators!”

“Spirit Investigators!”

The emblem of the Chinese Research Institute manufactured into Soaring Dragon One made both Jack Chen and Qian Ying cry out at once.

“Jack Chen, you think you can just leave? What about the debt owed for the orphanages you slaughtered? How are you planning to settle that?”

Wu Zui leaped from Soaring Dragon One with a golden longsword in hand and addressed Jack Chen, who was secretly calculating how to escape. Beside him, Xiao Keai held a golden grenade launcher trained on the two fugitives.

*A golden grenade launcher! I wonder how it differs from an RPG.*

Seeing how similar their shapes were, Xiao Keai could not help feeling secretly expectant.

Before Wu Zui had even climbed down, Jack Chen had already whispered to Qian Ying, “Little Sister, can you still fight?”

Qian Ying gave a slight nod and whispered, “I can, Big Brother.”

“Good. You take the woman. I’ll handle the man!”

Jack Chen glanced at Xiao Keai and the golden grenade launcher in her hands. He knew all too well how much damage that weapon could inflict on an anomalous body. Even with the resentment of living beings shielding him, he would still suffer some losses. It would be better to let Qian Ying deal with her using her ghostly form.

“All right!”

Qian Ying nodded slightly without objecting.

After dividing their targets, the two crouched low the moment Wu Zui began to speak and vanished into the ground.

Xiao Keai instinctively fired a round. It blasted a huge crater into the earth, filling the pit with golden fragments.

“This is nowhere near as powerful as an RPG. It doesn’t even look as cool.”

Xiao Keai muttered her complaint under her breath.

At that moment, Wu Zui released a red shield of karmic fire, protecting the two of them while focusing especially on attacks that might come from below.

Sure enough, a gray-white arm emerged beside Wu Zui’s foot. In the next instant, it seized his ankle and dragged his entire leg toward the earth.

The gray-white substance began spreading rapidly from the point where the arm had caught him. Wherever it touched, the ground began swallowing Wu Zui into itself. If the substance completely covered him, Wu Zui estimated that he would be dragged underground and suffocate to death.

He immediately gripped his golden longsword and slashed at the arm. The collision rang like metal striking metal, yet the sword merely left a white mark on the gray-white hand.

Before Jack Chen could mock Wu Zui for overestimating himself, red magnetic karmic fire surged around Wu Zui’s body. The hand was instantly scorched by the flames, and the agony caused Jack Chen to release Wu Zui’s ankle involuntarily.

By then, more than half of Wu Zui’s right leg had sunk into the ground. Once the gray-white substance left the arm, the earth around his leg began hardening again.

Wu Zui hurriedly pulled his leg free.

On the other side, the black liquid formed from Qian Ying had already begun quietly gathering beneath the earth. Just as Xiao Keai discarded the golden grenade launcher and prepared to support Wu Zui, the liquid suddenly appeared above her and descended over her like a shroud.

A blue, furry creature burst from Xiao Keai’s body and knocked the black liquid aside, but Cat Commander was enveloped by it instead.

“Cat Commander! Hold on for a little longer!”

Xiao Keai glanced at Cat Commander, who was trapped in the black liquid and struggling as it frantically swiped its claws. Then she shouted and rushed directly toward Wu Zui, who was still pulling at his trapped leg.

“?”

Cat Commander.

After Xiao Keai dragged him free, Wu Zui could not help feeling a surge of anger.

He had indeed been careless. Seeing how weak and exhausted Jack Chen and Qian Ying appeared, he had decided to waste time saying a few unnecessary words. He had never expected the situation to turn against him so quickly.

*Sure enough, villains die because they talk too much. Heroes are no different!*

With that thought, Wu Zui took out a small silver sphere no larger than a duck egg and crushed it in an instant. Violent magnetic energy burst from within, and the black liquid lying on the ground immediately stiffened.

A blue, furry creature tore through the barrier formed by the black liquid with its sharp claws and charged out.

The Resentment Interference Device: a new product developed by the Research Institute. It can disrupt resentment energy of five stars or below; the lower the target’s level, the longer the effect lasts. Against a four-star target, however, it lasts only about ten seconds.

But ten seconds was enough.

Karmic fire formed a blazing line and shot toward the rigid black liquid. Once it completely enveloped the mass, it began tearing it apart.

“Cough, cough… wait… could you spare her life? We swear that once we leave China, we’ll never come back!”

Only then did Jack Chen’s head emerge from the soil. The resentment disruptor had nearly suffocated him underground, and even now, the resentment of living beings within his body was circulating sluggishly.

“You killed so many people and used their flesh and blood to nourish your ghosts. And now you think you can simply walk away? How naïve.”

Wu Zui did not stop. He had already recognized that the black liquid was the culprit responsible for the destruction of Binhai Prison.

“I can give you the cultivation method and tell you everything I know about the World-Cleansing Society. Do whatever you want with me—just please spare her life!”

Jack Chen lay on the ground and repeatedly knocked his head against it. The sight made Wu Zui feel as though he had somehow become the villain.

The victor became king and the defeated became outlaws. It had always been so.

Xiao Keai curiously poked at the red chains emerging from Wu Zui’s chest, appearing extremely interested in them. Wu Zui, meanwhile, stared at the columns of evil above Jack Chen and Qian Ying’s heads and sank into their memories.

As two elders of the World-Cleansing Society, they could hardly have killed only a few people. Wu Zui spent more than thirty minutes examining their memories.

Xiao Keai played gleefully with the red chains and had no intention of disturbing Wu Zui. The karmic fire did not harm her in the slightest. She even tossed a certain blue furry creature onto the chains and began playing at tightrope walking.

Jack Chen and Qian Ying, both fully conscious nearby, were left speechless.

*Is she trying to get someone killed? Could this woman act a little more seriously?*

Before long, Wu Zui learned about the Ancient Sacrifice. He also understood why Jack Chen and Qian Ying had joined the World-Cleansing Society one after another.

Ultimately, they were both pitiful people.