Infinite Fighting

Shanli Island wasn’t small. In fact, its total area was comparable to some small countries. It had only been designated as an island of exile due to its barren resources.

For this very reason, it harbored an exceptional amount of filth.

So much that it couldn’t be cleaned up overnight.

Kratos had a good idea of where the pirates were headed.

Shanli Island was only so big, so of course Kratos knew the locations of the factories that violated all human ethics and morals.

Their business had even extended into Kratos’s own district.

So Zhang Ji and his team departed that very night, heading straight for those locations.

They soon reached the first district on their list.

The factory there had already been destroyed. When Zhang Ji’s group arrived, they found only a blasted landscape that had been burned to ruins.

Many people in the district had died, but some survivors remained. They were mostly ordinary people who had been exploited, and now they lived like the walking dead.

Some people saw the Five Elements Sect’s convoy and came forward, begging for food.

No one from the Five Elements Sect paid them any mind, but Kratos gave them directions, telling them to gather near Kui District.

Then, they set out again.

They quickly passed through three more districts but still hadn’t encountered their targets.

These were all places the pirates had already torn through. All related evidence had long since been wiped clean. Even if they found something, it would be impossible to connect it to the powerful figures behind the operation.

"It’s been over half a month, after all. If they knew the exact locations of the factories, they probably would’ve finished the job and been long gone by now," said Fat Bear, who was a whole lot thinner now.

He had also been tortured, with a great deal of flesh carved from his body. Compared to Kratos, who had lost an arm, his condition was just as horrific, if not more so.

"How much did you tell them?" Li Long asked gravely.

"I told them everything I knew. Can’t speak for the others," Fat Bear said.

"I only told them what was already public knowledge," said Kratos.

"I don’t know any more than they do," Hong Kang chimed in. "But there’s one place they’re sure to go. Its business reaches all over the world. It’s the biggest flesh factory on all of Shanli Island..."

"You don’t have to tell me. I see it," Li Long, who was holding a tablet, suddenly said.

He had just received a message from Liu Hetong’s secretary; they had granted the Five Elements Sect access to Shanli Island’s satellite maps.

With satellite reconnaissance, they no longer had to run around like headless chickens.

On the tablet’s satellite map, they could clearly see the group’s movements.

...

Bai City District.

This was a large district with a total population of one hundred twenty thousand.

This was one of the first districts the pirates had ravaged upon arriving at Shanli Island.

And now, those same pirates had returned.

The pirate leader was a man named Pu Xinde, an asset cultivated by the Yin family. It would be impossible to organize a force of this size at sea without powerful backing.

And the five official figures in "Blade" armor were from the Kang family.

They were merely cooperating; they were not from the same faction.

"Fellas, we’ve looted everything there is to loot. What are we doing back here?" Pu Xinde asked the five men.

The squad’s captain, Song Yuan, didn’t tell Pu Xinde that the Five Elements Sect had arrived. He just said they might have missed a spot during their search and told them to return.

"Like I said, we missed something," Song Yuan replied flatly.

If he didn’t need these pirates as cannon fodder to delay the Five Elements Sect later, he would want nothing to do with Pu Xinde.

He was a professional soldier with his own code of honor; he had a natural disdain for such unscrupulous scum.

’As for whether doing a powerful figure’s dirty work violated that code?’

’Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference between black and white in this world. But he knew one thing for certain: for society to remain stable, some people had to stand in the light, and others had to stand in the shadows.’

’He couldn’t wrap his head around the intricacies of politics, but he understood how to follow orders.’

Pu Xinde didn’t get a straight answer, and his instincts screamed that something was off.

So, he shrewdly made a backup plan, ordering his men to prepare an escape route so they could pull out at a moment’s notice.

They soon arrived inside Bai City District.

Many people were still alive in the district they had plundered, but with order completely gone, their existence was a harsh one.

Seeing the pirates return, they all hid themselves away, terrified of being discovered.

Meanwhile, Song Yuan and his team’s vehicles quickly reached their destination.

Before the ruins of a massive skyscraper.

This had once been a processing plant.

Yes, a *human* processing plant.

Literally.

But by the time they got there, it had already been bombed into ruins, and anything related to it had been incinerated.

Song Yuan leaped into the air. The plasma thrusters on his back flared with blue flames, propelling him above the ruins. His tactical visor began scanning the area below, and he quickly pinpointed the location. At his command, the pirates in their exoskeletons came forward to help clear the rubble.

Before long, they had cleared the debris, revealing a utility access cover that once led to the underground garage.

Song Yuan raised his arm. The cannon mounted on it charged up and fired in an instant.

BOOM!

After a flash of light, a hole the size of a person’s head was blasted through the cover.

Song Yuan grabbed the edge of the hole, and with a heave of strength, ripped the entire cover off and tossed it aside.

The shaft below was crammed with dense wiring. Song Yuan tapped his belt, and a small, egg-sized drone flew out of a tactical pouch. It descended into the shaft, feeding information back to his tactical visor.

Soon, Song Yuan saw what was at the bottom of the shaft.

"Confirmed. This is more than just a utility shaft. We’re going down!" Song Yuan said to his teammates.

"What about me, fellas?" Pu Xinde asked.

"You stay up here and keep watch. Notify us immediately if anything happens," Song Yuan replied.

Then the five of them jumped into the shaft one by one, leaving Pu Xinde alone on the surface.

....

There was a tunnel at the bottom of the shaft. In their two-meter-tall armor, Song Yuan and his men had to crouch to move forward through the cramped space.

This wasn’t the main entrance, but an escape tunnel.

The true entrance to that facility was inside a lighthouse out at sea. From there, an undersea tunnel led directly to their destination.

Song Yuan’s team made a turn at the first ventilation opening. After proceeding a short distance, they pushed open a door.

In the next instant, a massive underground laboratory unfolded before them.

The facility hadn’t been operational for some time, but their eyes were immediately drawn to the numerous incubation pods filled with nutrient fluid.

Some of the pods contained embryos, others held deformed human variants, some were filled with organs, and some held things that weren’t even human.

Song Yuan’s squad of five didn’t linger. They headed straight for the core of the lab and found one incubation pod that was still active.

Inside it was a purple heart, connected to a series of tubes.

"We finally found it!"

...

...

"Alchemy Technology? Isn’t that completely banned in the Eastern Extreme Country? They don’t even allow gene editing to be used on humans..." said Zhang Ji.

"Banning it is one thing, but what happens in practice is another. How could the powerful ignore a technology with such tantalizing possibilities?" Hong Kang said. "Besides, technological progress always requires a price. Unfortunately, the common people are most often the ones who pay it, and they don’t even realize it..."

"Enough talk. We’re here," said Li Long.

The members of the Five Elements Sect arrived in Bai City District and headed straight for the utility shaft.

Unsurprisingly, they ran into the pirates.

Automatic machine guns mounted on the armored vehicles opened fire as Five Elements Sect disciples in exoskeletons charged down, easily routing the pirates, who were unskilled in martial arts.

In the end, these were just pirates. Despite being equipped, they were no match for the professional martial artists of the Five Elements Sect.

The pirates began to scatter and flee before Grandmasters like Zhang Ji even had to make a move.

"The trackers on the ’Blade’ armor show they’ve gone underground," Li Long announced.

As active-duty military armor, they were all equipped with tracking devices.

And Li Long’s team had now been granted access to those trackers.

"Then that must be the entrance," said Wang Quan, looking at the utility shaft.

"Elder Zheng, you stay here and clean up the remaining pirates! We’ll give chase!" Li Long ordered.

"Understood. Leave it to me," said Zheng Chengze.

"Zhang Ji, let’s go!" said Li Long.

He was deliberately trying to foster Zhang Ji’s growth, so he had no intention of leaving him behind to clean up minions. Instead, he wanted to give Zhang Ji a share of the real credit.

Soon, they were descending into the shaft.

Guided by the trackers, the three didn’t take a single wrong turn. They followed the path Song Yuan’s team had taken and arrived directly at the underground laboratory.

"This ’erasing evidence’ story seems to be just a cover," Wang Quan said, facing the rows of incubation pods. "Their real objective must have been to find something."

"Whatever it is, as long as we can confirm they deployed ’Blade’ units without authorization, that, combined with everything here, will be enough to make the people behind them pay dearly," Li Long replied.

Zhang Ji’s gaze fell upon the incubation pods, a thoughtful expression in his eyes.

’The world of this fighting game was filled with many complex and varied elements.’

’Alchemy Technology was one of them.’

’The so-called Alchemy Technology had nothing to do with the scientific discipline of chemistry.’

’It was closer to a form of occultism.’

’It was a technology that used various special materials to induce anomalous transformations in matter.’

’The process was less like a physical reaction and more like performing some kind of mystical ritual, causing the materials to react in mysterious ways.’

’However, it was highly unstable. Many research projects resulted in unbearable consequences, which was why the Eastern Extreme Country had banned it long ago.’

’It could only be called a ’technology’ because many of its ’rituals’ were repeatable.’

’Of course, many human experiments weren’t all that different from rituals either. It’s just that Alchemy Technology broke from convention even further. The process of an alchemical reaction often defied the laws of physics.’

’For example, if a limb made of steel that had undergone an Alchemy Transformation was simply implanted into a body, it would gradually become a part of that body. It could self-repair using the body’s nutrients, provide sensory feedback, and if it was smashed, the person would even feel pain.’

’It was less like technology and more like Magic.’

’Its scope wasn’t limited to just biological Alchemy; it also included mechanical Alchemy and more.’

’It wasn’t even impossible to grant consciousness to an inanimate object.’

’Zhang Ji clearly remembered that one of the Five Great Saint Kings had a body that had been modified with Alchemy Technology.’

"They’re picking up the pace! We need to move faster!" Li Long suddenly exclaimed.

With that, Li Long broke into a run.

Wang Quan and Zhang Ji quickly followed suit.

They hadn’t gone far before they passed through the lab area and entered a wide underground tunnel.

The passage was rather dark. Suddenly, Li Long stopped in his tracks and violently shoved Zhang Ji aside.

In the next instant, a bright light flared up ahead.

BOOM!

A beam of plasma shot past the spot where Zhang Ji had been standing just a moment before.