Volume 2, Chapter 83 – Memories

After sending Han Shiyou away, Huang Meng took the elevator down to the B2 underground parking level of the Jinhua Dance Hall.

On the way, the elevator stopped at B1 and a man with a very similar build and outfit stepped in.

Huang Meng nodded at him, and the man lowered his head in a respectful dip.

When they reached B2, the elevator doors slid open and the man strode into the underground garage. Two men in sunglasses standing by a sedan immediately stepped forward to flank him, personally opening the car door and watching him get inside.

Huang Meng himself hid in the narrow gap on the side of the elevator where the buttons were, quietly waiting for the doors to close. After a brief pause, he pressed the button for the fifth floor.

The Jinhua Dance Hall offered lodging; at the end of the day, this place was essentially a playground of indulgence. Rather than watching impatient customers rush out to find somewhere to take care of business, it was better to make that money in-house too.

The fifth floor was all luxury suites. After stepping out, Huang Meng quickly passed through an L-shaped corridor, turned right again at the far corner, and stopped before a door marked “507.” He took out a room card, swiped it, and went in.

This was his secretly prepared safe house.

On paper it was registered under one of his other identities, and he paid to keep it booked out every day. There were guns, ammo, and ready cash stashed under the mattress, and in the wardrobe there was an escape passage leading through the wall.

Even Han Shiyou didn’t know about this place. Huang Meng had never told anyone. He only came here when he needed to contact “up above.”

This time was no different. Once inside, he didn’t touch anything at first. He went behind the curtains and pulled them open a crack, watching the sedan that had just left the garage turn the corner and drive off. Then he took out his phone, swapped in a different SIM card, and dialed the number on the other side.

The beeping tone lasted for a while before the call connected. An old man’s slightly hoarse voice came through. “…What is it?”

“Are you planning to move against the Shenming Dojo?” Huang Meng’s brows drew together slightly.

“What are you sticking your nose in for?” The elder snorted. “Instead of worrying about that substitute, you’d do better to put more effort into the ‘consumables.’”

Substitute.

Huang Meng’s fingers tightened slightly.

So he did know.

“I can choose not to report what’s happening on your side,” the old man went on. “But you need to send three hundred people over within a week.”

“…Impossible!” Huang Meng’s pupils shrank a little. “We’re not in wartime! That many people going missing in such a short span… it’ll be noticed!”

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“How do you know it’s not wartime?” The elder let out a soft laugh. “Just because it isn’t wartime today, does that mean it’ll never be wartime?”

What was that supposed to mean?

Huang Meng’s expression shifted again.

Up till now he’d only vaguely inferred their target from higher-level deployments. He had been puzzled about how they dared to make a move this big, but listening now—was Chilong Circuit about to enter “wartime” soon?

A memory surged up in his mind.

First-person view: he was clinging to a swaying rope ladder. Above him was the furious thrum of an armed helicopter, below him a vast plain with a medium-sized city clearly visible at its center.

The city’s edges were wrapped in silver-white metal walls, rising in sheer lines toward the sky. Those walls were like irregular planks, encasing the city in a flat cylinder.

On the horizon, the dying sun was as red as blood. Hanging there in midair, he gazed into the distance and saw, at the edge of the world—on that line where the sun burned behind it—a monster suddenly crawl out from below.

It was huge. Even at that distance he could make out its outline. It looked like a blown-up lizardman, similar to a kind of prehistoric creature called a “dinosaur,” except it had barbs along its spine and joints. Its snout was shorter and thicker than a dinosaur’s, its forelimbs more robust and elongated, and it could even rear fully upright, its thick tail dragging along the ground.

With the setting sun behind it, the thing was impossible to miss.

Once it emerged, it went straight up on two legs. Its arms hung in front of its chest like a kangaroo’s. That blunt snout—short and ugly, but still jutting forward more than a human’s—naturally turned to face them, as if it were looking this way.

In that instant, Huang Meng saw a pair of blood-red eyes.

They were filled with madness, brutality, and bloodlust. His entire field of vision was washed over by red, all other sounds dropped into silence, and all he could hear clearly was the pounding of his own heart, loud enough for his ears to catch every beat.

Panicked shouts from the monitoring team broke through his headset. Huang Meng knew the patches stuck to his body must have detected his sudden change in condition.

But at the time, he had no mind for that.

He just quietly—

Very quietly—

Locked eyes with the monster at the horizon.

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Suddenly—the thing twisted its body, spreading its arms and the scythe-like claws at their ends. It threw back its hideous snout and opened its jaws toward the sky, as if letting out a roar.

The distance was too great; Huang Meng couldn’t hear anything. All he remembered was the image.

Yellow was the brightest color.

Black was the darkest color.

Those two colors contrasted and interlaced, making the creature’s silhouette stand out even more. He could practically pick out the sharp teeth in its gaping maw, the faint trembling of the barbs at the back of its head as it roared.

A demon’s silhouette.

That was the only way he could describe it in his heart.

Then he saw the scene he’d never forget for the rest of his life: a ceaseless flood of red mist surged up from the horizon, like a tsunami made of blood-fog, sweeping toward them.

It moved too fast.

In at most a dozen breaths, the blood-fog had already drowned the plain, slammed into the city’s outer silver-white walls, and then split and poured on past… staining the entire plain into a sea of blood.

Amid the rolling clouds and smoke, only the solitary city was still standing there, like a lone island in that blood sea. And the water level was still rising; it looked like it was only a matter of time before the city was swallowed.

“Sha… Meng… Huang Meng!”

After a long while, Huang Meng finally made out the noise in his headset.

The voice was choppy, as though heavily interfered with. On the other end they were anxiously trying to snap him out of it. “Can you hear me? Ranger?”

“Y-yeah… I can hear you.”

“Return to base now! Sha… right now! Immediately!”

“What about Panyan Circuit?”

The blood-red in his vision deepened.

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“There are at least one-point-six million people in there!”

“Sha… this is a strategic abandonment…!”

“Sha sha… don’t be reckless, Ranger! Sword Lord Qingping is on the way! Sha… we’ll be back! Don’t do anything stupid!”

Bang!

It was like his very soul had taken a huge hit. The present-day Huang Meng jolted back to himself and found he was lying on the floor, his phone beside him still blaring the old man’s questions.

“Hey, hey?”

“Huang Meng?”

“What happened to you? Hey?”

“…I’m fine.” Huang Meng grabbed the phone at once and quickly asked, “You just mentioned ‘wartime.’ What exactly did you mean by that?”

He himself didn’t realize his tone had already changed.

The other end went quiet for a moment, then the elder probed, “Is that issue acting up again?”

Huang Meng’s face darkened. He didn’t answer.

“Ah…”

The old man sighed.

“You veterans are all like this. It’s your one big flaw.”

“All right, to put your mind at ease, I can guarantee this isn’t the situation you’re afraid of.”

“The Blood Sea hasn’t rioted in a long time. You can reason it out yourself… if it had, how could the new system be facing so much resistance?”

It had indeed been because of the Blood Sea back then that they’d agreed to modernize their equipment…

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Huang Meng did some mental math.

Any new technology, the military always gets first.

Foreign tech was definitely another generation ahead now compared to twenty-odd years ago, but from what he knew, the army at home hadn’t undergone any large-scale re-equipping.

That meant the pressure up north really wasn’t that severe yet—not enough to force ordinary soldiers to fight to the death.

“So you can relax.” The elder coaxed him. “It’s just a small, minimally invasive surgery. At most it’ll affect seven or eight Circuits.”

Huang Meng was speechless. “That’s your idea of small?”

“Then let it not be small.” The old man chuckled. “With that ‘not small’ as a backdrop, whatever happens in Chilong Circuit then won’t attract much attention at all.”

Huang Meng frowned but said nothing.

“I’m telling you this because I value you…”

The old man’s voice dropped.

“Back then I helped you fake your death and swap identities. Don’t you start making trouble for me at the last moment.”

“Does that include working with the demon-folk?” Huang Meng asked quietly. “The Demon-Immortal Dao, Zhengwo Dao—they’re all extremists, and we have their movements mapped…”

“Don’t blame me for indulging extremists,” the elder cut him off.

“Like I told you when I saved you—if you wipe out all the extremists, who takes their place? You? Or me?”

“There’s always a need for people like that.”

He offered Huang Meng a few more words of comfort. “All right, stop overthinking this.”

“My spleen’s been acting up again lately.”

“Hurry it up and get me some quality stock.”