Chapter 43 - 36: Prison Break
The prisoners, freed from the jail, scattered like vicious dogs let off their leashes, slipping into the various corners of Yang City.
Greed for freedom glittered in most of their eyes as they roared and lunged at any monster in sight, desperate to trade slaughter for a brief reprieve—the tantalizing promise of a reduced sentence.
However.
On a remote street, slick with mud from the downpour of blood-rain and lined with dilapidated buildings.
Among four prisoners walking shoulder to shoulder.
Two of them abruptly stopped in their tracks.
The two men in the lead sensed something was wrong.
One of them, a burly man with a thick beard known as Hu, immediately spun around. "Yan Shan! Yan Hao!" he barked. "What are you two lollygagging for? Get a move on! The more monsters we kill, the more years we get off our sentences! This is our chance!"
The elder brother, Yan Shan, broke into a smile that was more mocking than gentle. He began to speak, slow and deliberate, his voice chillingly clear over the sound of the rain.
"Leave? A reduced sentence? Hah... Hu, killing one monster only shaves off a single year. Do the math. I was sentenced to thirteen hundred years. My brother, Yan Hao, got twelve hundred. And I recall your sentence, Hu, is also over a thousand years, isn’t it? Yuan’s is what, over eight hundred?"
His gaze swept over Hu and the other prisoner, a quiet, shifty-eyed man named Yuan.
"You think the few of us can kill over a thousand monsters? We’ll be lucky to kill seven or eight before we’ve wrung dry every last drop of Qi and Blood from our bones. Then, the moment we run into a half-decent monster, we’ll be nothing but a free meal!"
His words were a bucket of ice water, instantly dousing the fervent hope for a reduced sentence in Hu’s and Yuan’s eyes.
The two men froze, their expressions turning grim.
Hu’s expression flickered as he stared intently at Yan Shan.
"Yan Shan... what are you getting at?"
Yan Shan’s smile vanished, his eyes flashing with the fierce, unyielding light of a wolf.
"This is a rare opportunity! We finally made it out of that iron cage. You really want to go back and rot until you die? Of course not. We—escape!"
"Escape?!"
Hu and Yuan cried out in unison, the color draining from their faces.
"Are you insane?! What about the bombs in our hearts? The One-Eye can pinpoint our location anytime. The second he finds out we’re trying to pull something, he’ll blow us to bits with a single thought!" Yuan’s voice trembled.
"What’s there to panic about?" Yan Shan sneered, as if mocking their cowardice. "If I dared to suggest this, it’s because I’m fully prepared! Xiaohao!"
he barked.
At his side, Yan Hao heard the command and immediately raised his right hand.
The tip of his right middle finger began to glow faintly, and several hair-thin, nearly transparent white threads silently unfurled from it like living tendrils.
"My brother, Yan Hao," Yan Shan’s voice held a barely perceptible trace of pride, "awakened his ’Thousand Silks’ Spiritual Essence long ago! These Spiritual Silk Threads are finer than hair, tougher than steel, and he can control them with his mind. Slipping inside a body to dismantle a few man-made bombs is child’s play for him!"
"Spiritual Essence?!" Hu’s face contorted in horror as he stared at Yan Hao as if he’d seen a ghost. "You’re a Talented Martial Artist?! Impossible! Why would a Talented Martial Artist be locked up with the likes of us?!"
Yan Shan snorted, his voice a mixture of venom and triumph.
"Xiaohao only awakened after we were thrown into this hellhole. He’s been hiding his strength all these years. The incompetent fools running the prison never noticed a thing!"
His tone sharpened, heavy with an oppressive force that allowed no argument.
"Enough talk! Hu, Yuan, you have two choices..."
"Either you come with my brother and me and we make a break for true freedom, or you can go hunt your damn monsters, and we’ll go our separate ways right now! And don’t even think I’d let you live to snitch on us!"
His last words were dripping with killing intent.
Hu and Yuan exchanged a look, each seeing the same reflection in the other’s eyes: a struggle, a deep-seated fear, and finally, a wild ambition ignited.
They were desperados to begin with. The hopelessly long sentences they faced had long ago crushed any fear they had of the Rules.
"Fuck it! Let’s do it!" Hu gritted his teeth, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I got a sentence of over eleven hundred years. Going back just means rotting in a cell! I’ll take my chances! I’m with you!"
"Count me in," Yuan added, a vicious glint in his eyes as he gave a firm nod.
"Good!" A flicker of triumph crossed Yan Shan’s eyes. "Xiaohao, get to it!"
Yan Hao’s focus sharpened. Without hesitation, he slammed his finger, wreathed in the Spiritual Silk Threads, against his own chest, directly over his heart.
The transparent threads, like living leeches, instantly pierced his skin and burrowed silently inside.
The process was faster than a flash of lightning; barely a drop of blood was spilled.
Within a few breaths, the threads retracted, their tips coiled around a tiny, rice-sized metal object that pulsed with a dangerous red light.
He tossed it carelessly into the mud.
Then.
He repeated the process with practiced, swift precision, pressing his finger over the chests of Hu, Yuan, and finally, his own brother, Yan Shan.
Each time was accompanied by the scalp-tingling sensation of flesh being pierced.
Each time, one of the micro-bombs—the very shackles of death—was extracted and tossed to the ground like garbage.
In less than half a minute, the lethal threat within all four men’s chests had been neutralized.
Yan Hao retracted all the threads, his voice calm but filled with the joy of liberation.
"The bomb’s core is detached. Remote detonation... is disabled. The device isn’t embedded too deeply. We just need to find a back-alley clinic later to cut it out."
"Excellent!" A vicious light flared in Yan Shan’s eyes. "With the bombs disabled, the prison will get an alert immediately! Our location will be flagged right here! We can’t stay, let’s move!"
Without another moment of hesitation, the four of them shot off like phantoms, rushing out of the blood-drenched street and vanishing into the city’s labyrinthine shadows.
"Yan Shan, where are we going?" Hu panted as they ran, his voice low. His eyes held both the elation of a successful escape and a deep-seated fear of being hunted. "Once the One-Eye realizes we’re gone, our wanted posters will be all over the city in minutes!"
Yan Shan didn’t slow down, his mind racing.
"The prison knows we’ve escaped, which means they’ll be watching every road out of the city. Trying to leave now would be suicide! First, we find a store and get rid of these damn prison uniforms!"
"And then... we’re going to make Yang City even more chaotic. The bigger the mess, the better our chances of slipping away."
Hu didn’t understand. "More chaotic? How?"
Yan Shan whipped his head around, his face a mask of bone-deep venom. He spoke through gritted teeth, squeezing each word out.
"We’re going to Yang City No. 1 High School!"
"If it weren’t for that bastard Chen Zhenguo getting in our way back then, my brother and I would never have been caught, would never have been locked up for all these years! I swear, I won’t rest until I get my revenge!"
A crazed light gleamed in his eyes.
"We’re going to destroy the shelter at Yang City No. 1 High School!"
"Once that shelter’s aura-blocking is gone, every monster in Yang City will be drawn to the thousands of living souls inside!"
"When that happens, all of Yang City’s official forces will be scrambling to save those students, completely overwhelmed. They won’t have the time or manpower to hunt us down."
"That will be our real chance to escape!"
Hu sucked in a sharp breath. A savage grin then spread across his face as he nodded firmly, his eyes glinting with destructive desire. "Good! In for a penny, in for a pound! Let’s do it!"
...
The crimson rain seemed endless.
The Mosquito Avatar retracted all its Demon Qi. Its optical camouflage allowed it to vanish completely into the downpour of blood and the dim light of the sky, leaving no trace, making no sound.
[Tracking LV4] was activated at full power!
Its massive four-kilometer sensory range pierced through the heavy curtains of rain, ignoring all environmental interference to lock precisely onto the silhouette of every monster that spawned and roamed in the downpour.
One grotesque monster after another was silently latched onto by the Mosquito Avatar before they could even sense the approaching danger.
As their life essence was rapidly drained, the monsters shriveled and withered, silently crumbling into dust.
Lin Yi could clearly feel a subtle yet distinct strengthening sensation emanating from deep within his bones.
The Bone Tempering progress for his second rib was climbing at an unprecedented rate.
Hunting, Blood Sucking, Bone Tempering...
The cycle repeated endlessly.
Lin Yi’s main consciousness remained vigilant, dedicating a sliver of his mind to act as a radar, constantly sweeping the sensory area of his [Tracking] skill for any unusual energy fluctuations.
Time slipped by under the ceaseless downpour of blood.
Before he knew it, two hours had gone by.
Throughout this time, his Bone Tempering efficiency was shockingly consistent, with his progress increasing by a steady 1% every ten minutes.
Now.
Ten full hours had passed since the arrival of the Red Moon.
And the Refinement progress of his second rib had already reached an impressive 12%!
[Qi and Blood]: 23.44 / 23.44.
[Bone Tempering]: 1 (100%), 1 (12%), 204 (0%).
His Qi and Blood value was as high as 23.44!
Furthermore, the vast essence of Qi and Blood continuously siphoned by the Mosquito Avatar far exceeded the amount he needed for Bone Tempering.
Every time his Qi and Blood cap increased even slightly, the deficit was instantly refilled. He no longer needed to waste precious training time on stance training to recover his Qi and Blood.
Just then.
The Mosquito Avatar had just finished draining a monster, leaving its body to disintegrate and its Heart Core to shatter, turning to fine powder that dissolved into the bloody water on the ground.
At Lin Yi’s mental command, the avatar shot off again without the slightest delay, like an arrow released from a bowstring, plunging back into the rain to search for its next target.
However, just as it shot forward several more kilometers—
HUMMM!
something unexpected happened!
On the sensory map of his [Tracking] skill, an unprecedentedly massive point of light suddenly flared into existence about three kilometers to his front-left!
The point of light was incredibly conspicuous, its presence so strong that it overshadowed all the other densely packed dots on his map.
What was even more astonishing was...
On the Tracking sensory map, both the monsters spawned from the blood rain and humans appeared as red dots of light.
But this new, exceptionally bright point of light was a deep, profound blue!
’It’s not a monster... and the aura doesn’t belong to a human or a Demon Beast either...’