Embers Ad Infinitum

The north wind howled, and the leaden clouds hung low. The guards at the city gate were freezing despite wearing thick clothes. This was especially so for their faces. They either felt a stinging pain as if they had been scraped by a knife, or their muscles were already numb and cold.

Although the sky was dark like it would be before an impending storm, it was ultimately morning—daytime in every sense of the word. This made the guards less vigilant.

As they swept their gazes, they saw faces that were so numb that they didn’t look like living people. It was as if they were facing a group of statues that were completely inept.

“I wonder when the other slave hunters from First City will rush over… It won’t be good if this continues.” The junior officer with a pistol hanging from his waist walked back and forth at the city gate and casually said, “If more people die, a plague might erupt.”

A plague was a nightmare that many people found more terrifying than war.

At this moment, he heard a loud boom—this clearly came from an explosion.

The sound came from the depths of North Street!

All the guards at the city gate turned their bodies and heads to look over, unsure of what had happened.

At this moment, the junior officer from before saw a group of bearded wilderness nomads suddenly stand up from the crowd near the city gate from the corner of his eye.

They were all holding guns!

Some held revolvers, some held shotguns, and others had rusty-looking rifles. However, they were ultimately firearms.

“Care…” The junior officer had just shouted a syllable when he heard numerous gunshots. His vision turned black as intense pain drowned him like a tide.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After a round of intense shooting, more than half of the guards at the city gate fell. The remaining few were injured, and they were in terrible conditions.

They each ran to the fortifications and retaliated with their weapons. However, they were abnormally horrified to discover that the group of wilderness nomads had stormed over despite the bullets. Although people kept falling, the rest remained unaffected. It was as if the New World or Paradise was up ahead.

These people’s expressions were extremely warped, and their eyes were bloodshot. They looked like intelligent beasts or Heartless.

At this moment, Li Tou held a loudspeaker and shouted crazily, “Rush in! Rush in! There’s food if we rush in! We can survive if we rush in!”

Countless wilderness nomads outside the city cast their gazes over, their eyes turning red one after another.

Upon seeing that only a few guards were left at the city gate and that they had almost been wiped out, they instinctively stood up and rushed over.

Some still had stamina and ran very quickly, while some were already relatively weak and could only follow behind slowly.

Ta! Ta! Ta!

The machine guns on the city tower lit up, showering the nomads with bullets. Large swaths of wilderness nomads fell down like straw.

In just a minute of sweeping gunfire, a large number of people lost their lives.

The wilderness nomads behind the frontrunners cowered, hesitated, and paused.

But at that moment, the machine guns went silent. A new ammunition belt had to be reloaded.

The first batch of people—Ah Cai and the others—had already finished off the guards there and obtained better weapons. They quickly rushed up the stairs to the city tower.

Upon seeing this, the wilderness nomads—who were about to scatter—went crazy again and surged into Weed City like a tide.

The city guards and castellan guards—who had been mobilized due to the explosion at First Hospital—were momentarily at a loss as to which side they should support in such a situation.

…

In First Hospital, Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei raised their guns and aimed at their colleagues.

At this moment, Jiang Baimian finally understood something.

Lin Feifei’s entry into Wild Wolf Alley had nothing to do with any bar. She passed through it and had entered North Street through a secret passage.

At this moment, Shang Jianyao—who was fighting his hand—suddenly asked, “Why didn’t you fire yourself? Why did you find two servants?”

Father originally didn’t want to waste any more time, but for some reason, he felt that he should share his meticulous plan. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have done so much for nothing?

“Don’t be in a rush,” he said to Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei. He then smiled at Shang Jianyao as Oudick kept sneezing. “Guess.”

Shang Jianyao immediately became excited. “I guess it’s a restriction of that ability of yours. Its essence is to connect a certain part of your body to another person’s corresponding body, allowing the target to ‘replace’ you in doing what you want. In other words, what we are doing now is equivalent to what your hands are doing.

“Since it is already doing something, there’s no way to complete other actions. For example, pulling out a gun and firing.”

Father chuckled. “Although it’s not right, it’s not too far from the truth. You’re smarter than I imagined, but there seems to be something wrong with your brain.”

Shang Jianyao smiled and looked at the other party before saying something strange. “Fall, fall, fall…”

As soon as he said the third ‘fall,’ Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei’s eyes glazed over. Their bodies fell to the ground uncontrollably.

Father also realized that he was about to lose consciousness. He blurted out in surprise, “Y-you…”

Jiang Baimian—who was near the door—laughed. “As a company that specializes in biology and medicine, it doesn’t seem too strange for us to be equipped with anesthetic gas. Knowing that you can make others lose control and harm themselves, how can we not be prepared before entering this place?”

Jiang Baimian’s electric eel-like biomechanical limb had another use—the Consciousness Connection chip. When motionless, it could spew out a relatively faint and difficult-to-detect anesthetic gas.

Therefore, back when she eliminated the bandits with the exoskeleton, Jiang Baimian had said that one of her plans was to choose to surrender. After being restrained, she would counterattack to the fullest extent.

This was her counterattack.

This—combined with her genetically modified ability to hold her breath—was enough to reverse the situation. She could also change the gas and turn anesthesia into poison.

Of course, there was no need for her to reveal this. Having made preparations in advance, she and Shang Jianyao had taken the corresponding preventive medicine.

The vinegar—which Father had used to restrain Oudick—concealed the strange smell perfectly.

The effect was beyond Jiang Baimian’s expectations.

Father’s consciousness became increasingly unfocused. “I-I shouldn’t have…”

He began to regret saying so much. It had to be said that he had very strong willpower. Oudick—who was enveloped in the smell of vinegar—had already fainted and stopped sneezing.

Shang Jianyao’s smile became brighter. “Don’t tell me that you really think you like to talk that much? Guess when my ability affected you.”

Back when he rolled to approach Father, it wasn’t just to fire and force the enemy to Oudick’s side. Otherwise, how did that little bit of distance matter? No matter how large the building was, how large could it be? It wouldn’t have affected his hit rate significantly.

Shang Jianyao’s hidden goal back then was to use Corny Person to influence Father. However, he didn’t make the other party do something that would seriously violate their rationality and make them regret it.

In that case, the effects of Corny Person would immediately be removed.

He only used his ability as a backup in the event that Oudick was unable to control Father. He used his actions, words, and performance to induce Father into speaking in a corny manner to buy Jiang Baimian enough time.

When the corniness wasn’t so obvious, the target would find it difficult to sense that they had been affected in a short period of time. This allowed Corny Person to maintain its effects for two to three minutes.

Therefore, even if Shang Jianyao had been resisting his and Jiang Baimian’s hands ever since and couldn’t use other Awakened abilities, it didn’t stop him from making Father talk more than usual.

Upon hearing Shang Jianyao’s words, Father’s body gradually slumped down, indignation remaining in his eyes.

Shang Jianyao maintained his smile and added, “You lost because you are anti-intellectual. Your servants have no intelligence, and they are only puppets that obey your orders. As for my companion, she’s very, very strong.”

With a thud, Father fell to the ground and completely lost consciousness.

“Tsk, there’s no need to suck up to me during that last bit.” Jiang Baimian turned around and tried to open the door for ventilation. She exerted strength with her left arm and directly lifted the aluminum-white electric shutters.

The cold wind outside blew in through the door, clearing away the strange smell in the area, along with the winds that had entered through the shattered glass.

During this process, Jiang Baimian casually asked, “Apart from waiting for my anesthetic gas to take effect, what other preparations did you make?”

Shang Jianyao immediately raised the Ice Moss in his hand, aimed at his head, and pulled the trigger. Then, he pulled the trigger.

An empty click echoed—there were no bullets in the gun.

“I only loaded three rounds in each gun…” Shang Jianyao explained with a smile.

These bullets had been used up during the first few attacks.

If there was still a situation that required him to shoot, Shang Jianyao would abandon the Ice Moss and exchange it for his United 202.

Jiang Baimian couldn’t help but laugh. “Were you fooling around with him at the end?”

Shang Jianyao didn’t need to resist his hands in that tussle at all. He could take the time to use his ability on Father.

“The plan was to anesthetize him, so the result had to be to anesthetize him unless success was impossible.” Shang Jianyao wore a serious expression.

Jiang Baimian smiled and was just about to instruct Shang Jianyao to drag Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei to the lawn outside and use Inference Clowning to make them friendly when they woke up. Then, she would formulate a plan to remove the hypnosis according to the situation.

At this moment, she heard concentrated gunshots coming from the distance. It sounded as if a war had broken out.

“Those wilderness nomads…” Jiang Baimian frowned and quickly recalled the various details. Then, she suddenly muttered herself, “Not good!”

At this moment, Shang Jianyao sighed. “Sigh.”

Upon seeing Jiang Baimian look over, Shang Jianyao took the initiative to explain. “I think Father is too weak. He’s not as powerful as I imagined.”

Jiang Baimian nodded solemnly. “I also discovered a problem. Back when Father hypnotized Zeng Guangwang and the others, didn’t he consider the fact that those people might have failed in their suicide attempt and spread information on his looks, characteristics, and abilities? The truth is that this is actually possible!

“If this is his style of doing things or if it’s a trap targeted at Oudick, it’s very difficult for me to imagine him being active for so long when under the pursuit of a large faction like First City. He’s too careless.”

At this point, Jiang Baimian paused and said in a deep voice, “He looks more like bait.”