Chapter 10: The Stranger’s Melody (Part One)

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Chaos reigned beneath the Graystone Tower, where relics were being salvaged. Bandits in burlap hoods appeared as abruptly as if they had risen from the ground. They seemed more familiar with the terrain than the salvagers, launching attacks from behind cover and out of blind spots, easily driving the salvagers out of the tower.

Most of the salvagers fled at once. A few with some backbone remained to defend the entrance. One young salvager swung his club, beating back a bandit, his youthful face twisted with outrage and disbelief.

“Big Brother, have you gone mad? We’re all colleagues scraping by in the workshop! What on earth are you doing?”

This was already the third attack that month. Though the bandits had hidden their faces beneath sacks, he recognized those familiar figures. Most of them were veteran salvagers who had once worked at the Ansa Workshop. When he had first entered the trade, those old hands had taught him everything personally. At the farewell feast held when he resigned, he had even gone around offering each of them a toast.

Yet only a few months had passed since he last saw them. How had those honest, plainspoken salvagers become so deranged?

The attacking bandit snarled and drove a savage fist into the corner of the young man’s eye, making his vision burst into stars.

“Colleagues, my ass!” the bandit roared. “We wear clothes we picked up, scrape together loose change by selling trash, and outsiders like us don’t have a shred of hope in this wretched city. Even if we picked garbage for ten thousand years, we’d never make it home!”

He wrenched the club from the young man’s hands and began beating him mercilessly about the head. The poor youth was left bloodied and unconscious. The defensive line at the entrance collapsed completely. The red-eyed bandits surged inside, their leader at the very front, shouting encouragement as they attacked.

“The authorities want us homeless wretches to live like beasts! They’ll bleed outsiders dry until we’re dead!” the bandit leader cried. “How much longer are we supposed to stay here? If we don’t act now, how will we ever return to our own Dust Isles?!”

“Break the Curtain! Leave the City! Return Home!” the bandits answered in unison, as orderly as soldiers. “Break the Curtain! Leave the City! Return Home!”

Most of the bandits charged into Graystone Tower with their leader. A handful stayed behind and immediately began constructing a defensive line. Four bandits carrying long-barreled weapons climbed onto the wall to seize firing positions, while the rest cautiously searched the surrounding area.

The bandit farthest from the entrance saw two figures rushing toward the tower. He raised his weapon and took aim, but before he could pull the trigger, a black blur slammed into his chest. His breath stopped instantly. It felt as though a rhinoceros had rammed him in the chest.

In the next moment, silver tentacles coiled around the bandit’s long-barreled weapon and tore it away. A precise chop to the back of his neck knocked him unconscious. Chu Hengkong picked up a small, pitch-black stone. It was this little object that had interrupted the bandit’s shot.

“Aim for the head. Then we won’t waste time finishing them off,” Chu Hengkong said.

“I’m afraid you’ll smash their brains out if you aim for the head!” Ji Huaisu shouted from nearby. “Remember, you’re a law-enforcement officer now. No killing unless absolutely necessary.”

“Your orders, Captain.” Chu Hengkong tilted his head aside, dodging a water bullet. “Let’s split up for now. It’ll be troublesome if you get hit…”

The bandits were far more capable than the thugs under Hugos. They were organized, methodical, and clearly possessed some degree of training. They knew how to seize high ground and fire from behind walls. Moving side by side made the two of them an easy target, and Chu Hengkong had no confidence that he could charge forward while protecting Ji Huaisu.

“No need. Charge with me.”

The girl, however, was not one to heed advice. Without taking any defensive measures, she rushed out straight into the path of seven specialized water bullets.

Each shot possessed enough explosive force to send an adult man flying a hundred meters. Seven such attacks landing together could shatter even a body of steel and iron in midair.

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Chu Hengkong hurriedly sent a tentacle toward Ji Huaisu’s waist, intending to drag her back to safety. But then he saw golden light bloom from her hand, many times brighter than it had been while she was gliding high above. With almost no delay, the golden radiance solidified into a translucent knight’s shield.

The powerful water bullets bounced straight off the luminous shield. They could not even force Ji Huaisu to take a single step backward.

“Holy hell, is that—”

“A Calamity Knight!”

“That lunatic from the Resurrection Corps!”

“Why does she have a tail?!”

“Look closely! She’s connected to the man behind her. That witch must be draining his energy with some demonic spell!”

The bandits sucked in one startled breath after another. Ji Huaisu slowly looked down at the tentacle around her waist, a faint vein throbbing at her temple.

“What is wrong with you?”

“I…” Chu Hengkong awkwardly withdrew the tentacle. “Come on. Charge. Leave the cannon fodder to me.”

Ji Huaisu shot him a furious glare, then led the charge beneath her luminous shield. She was an invincible vanguard. Neither water bullets nor the stones hurled by the bandits could shake the shield. Even the concentrated fire of seven specialized water guns could not slow her pace.

Three bandits rolled out from behind the wall, attempting to circle around and attack from the sides or rear. What greeted them were stones hurled with uncanny precision, as though they possessed eyes. The first struck a wrist and knocked away a weapon. The second hit the heart or the groin, crippling its target. Chu Hengkong’s fingers moved on his right hand, and amid a succession of cries, three fewer enemies remained capable of fighting.

Within seconds, Ji Haisu had reached the undefended entrance. Chu Hengkong withdrew from behind the luminous shield and darted up the wall on the right like a shadow. The bandit guarding the high ground had not even seen his enemy’s face before a chop to the back of the head sent him sprawling.

Chu Hengkong slid around the fallen body, then swung his bent arm backward and drove an elbow into the second bandit’s chest, putting him down as well.

The two men guarding the right side of the entrance fell in the blink of an eye. The bandits on the wall to the left hurriedly raised their weapons and opened the distance. A hint of relief stirred in their hearts. The entrance gate lay between the two walls, and even that tentacle could not possibly reach so far.

Chu Hengkong indeed did not use a tentacle. Under the bandits’ stunned gazes, he raised the weapon he had stolen.

Two shots rang out. The last two bandits were blasted into the air by fountain-like jets of water. Chu Hengkong leapt down from the wall and returned behind Ji Huaisu. The battle on the wall had lasted less than two seconds; Ji Huaisu had only just entered Graystone Tower.

“Your fundamentals are solid. I thought you were the sort who never used guns.”

“I simply don’t like using them.” Chu Hengkong shrugged. “Back where I came from, carrying a knife on missions was enough.”

“Do people in your homeland use swords and knives more often than guns?” Ji Haisu asked with some interest.

“The guns in my homeland are more advanced than those in Huilong City. Anyone with common sense uses a gun.” Chu Hengkong drew several stones back with a tentacle. “I’m one of the abnormal minority.”

Graystone Tower was pitch-black inside. The power source had been shut down by the bandits who entered ahead of them, leaving only slivers of light filtering through cracks in the stone walls. Apart from their footsteps, the tower was utterly silent. The bandits who had come first seemed to have melted into the darkness.

Chu Hengkong took out a white charge ring and tapped it against the walls again and again while Ji Haisu examined the water gun he had seized.

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The weapon was visibly different from the water-bullet pistols used by the thugs. Its slender barrel was painted dark blue, giving it the appearance of a modified hunting rifle. Ji Haisu glanced over it twice, then clicked her tongue loudly.

“A modified Torrent Gun made by the ‘Craftsman.’ I know who this is.” She shouted toward the top of the tower, “Come out, San Sen Wangxiang! Resist any longer and I’ll have you spend ten years in prison!”

A man’s bizarre cry came from high above, shrill as a bat’s song.

“Ten years in prison? Hee-hee, what difference would that make? We’ve already been imprisoned in this wretched city for more than twenty years!”

“No one has deprived you of your freedom of movement—”

“Stop lying! I know the truth now! It was your dear old father who sealed off the routes out of the city!” San Sen Wangxiang screamed. “Sealed them all! There’s nothing left! We can never go home again! Apart from blasting your damned Water Curtain to pieces, what else can we do?!”

“Break the Curtain! Leave the City! Return Home!”

The bandits’ slogan thundered through the tower, echoing again and again across the empty stone chamber. Dozens of dark-blue modified guns emerged from the darkness, and high-pressure water bullets poured down like a torrential rain.

This time, Ji Haisu did not meet force with force. She seized Chu Hengkong and pulled him into a side corridor. Chu Hengkong said nothing. He committed every word of their exchange to memory while searching his thoughts for the name San Sen Wangxiang.

Before his morning exercises, he had made a special trip to headquarters and memorized every wanted notice on the bulletin board. San Sen Wangxiang’s notice had been posted in the middle section, and it contained a description that greatly interested him:

[San Sen Wangxiang, the “Cluster Cannon”]

Reward: 150,000 Flow Pearls

- Possessed by a demon; in possession of a relic.
- Roams the various floating islands in the Workshop District, carrying out random robberies.
- Singularity One: “Craftsman.” Beware of cannon-fists and modified weapons!

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