Volume 4, Chapter 168 – Oddity (Two-in-One)

“[Static… latest news. In the current Tongyun competition zone schedule, Shenming Sword Dao has controversially defeated the number-one-ranked Zhengtian Dao and now sits at the top of the standings with nineteen wins…]”

“[Crackle… Zhengtian Dao’s Immortal Venerable Yuexi has accepted an interview, stating that Shenming Sword Dao is not as weak as outsiders assumed, with more than just its Dojo Master as a powerful combatant. She praised Shenming Sword Dao as already fully capable of gaining a firm foothold in the Tongyun competition zone, calling it an overlord team on the same level as Zhengtian Dao… static…]”

“[At present, the preliminary rounds in the major competition zones are already more than halfway complete… static… a large number of teams have withdrawn or been eliminated, and the average number of teams remaining in each zone has already fallen below one hundred…]”

“[We wish Shenming Sword Dao, which hails from Qi territory, outstanding results… static… Qiyun Radio reporting for you…]”

As the vehicle jolted onward, fragmented radio broadcasts kept coming from the car stereo.

The driver turned to glance at it, seeming annoyed at the speaker’s unclear diction, and smacked the console twice, producing two loud clangs.

“Don’t make life hard for it,” came a lazy voice from the back seat. “If you don’t want to walk into the desert, then treat the only vehicle we’ve currently got that still works with some respect.”

“Can’t we just steal another one?” the driver said impatiently. “The streets of the main world are full of these things. If this one breaks, we grab another.”

“But not every car has been modified well enough to drive straight into the desert.” A head poked out from the back seat. It belonged to a half-bald man wearing a neat suit, with a bow tie at the collar of his white shirt. His whole bearing was bizarrely mismatched.

And the reason it felt that way was that his features were too strange. His eyes were extremely narrow, with the outer corners sharply slanting upward. His face was somewhat broad, yet it also had a large, sharply angled hooked nose. Altogether, his face formed a bizarre diamond shape.

“That’d be bad luck.” The driver did not dare argue anymore and only muttered under his breath, “I thought I could keep listening all the way into the desert…”

“Don’t worry.” The man with the slanted eyes and hooked nose narrowed his own eyes, and the expression on his face grew even more crafty. “Aren’t we meeting up with them anyway? They should be able to provide things like satellite phones. Once we get there, it won’t be boring anymore.”

“So, Blood Fang.” The driver suddenly looked back, revealing a face every bit as grotesque as the hooked-nosed man’s. “Going by the report, that old Daoist Ten-Extremes had his scheme ruined by her?”

His face was long and rectangular, and plenty wide as well. Layers upon layers of scalp and forehead folds spread all the way down from the crown of his head, piling over his face like the drooping jowls of a hound. He looked greasy and disgusting.

“Who told him not to listen to our advice?” the hooked-nosed man sneered. “Some people sit at the top for too long and get used to solving everything with brute strength.”

“And on top of that, in the Void Realm all the Venerables have to abide by the ‘understanding.’ As long as they don’t violate it, they won’t attract too much repulsive force. People raised in an environment like that naturally end up full of arrogance. He deserved to suffer a little.”

“That old man really should’ve listened to you, Blood Fang, and sacrificed those disciples right along with it all.” The greasy-faced driver turned back around as the radio kept crackling on. “Those disciples of his are all good stock, especially that Chang Hongyuan. If the sacrifice had succeeded, the clansman born from it would’ve had several times the potential, maybe even a chance to stand out in the tribulation struggle and become a powerful helper to us.”

“At the very least, under the current circumstances, there was no way he could’ve done that.” The hooked-nosed man shook his head. “Don’t think too much about it… that old man definitely has another move prepared.”

“Huh? He’s still got a backup plan?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you now. Mm, go switch through a few more channels and listen.”

The greasy-faced driver did as he was told, clumsily adjusting the dial. The radio alternated between bursts of static-laced reporting and shrill waves of noise.

“[Static… according to rumor coming out of the Tongyun competition zone, one competing team has exposed inside information, claiming that the Zhengtian disciple suspected of being slain by the Shenming Dojo Master had cultivated a secret sword art. It appears to come from the same source as the Shenming Dojo Master’s most prized sword art. Both are supposedly lost inheritances from the ancient Jinguang Temple…]”

After switching to that channel, the greasy-faced driver stopped moving. He listened with a frown for a while before slowly catching on.

“Framing her?”

“Obviously.” The hooked-nosed man gave a cold snort. “Once that pack of bald monks go mad, they won’t recognize friend or foe. They don’t even care who wins.”

“If I’m not mistaken, that old man’s incarnation is deeply connected to the remnants of Jinguang Temple. Bai Zhixing won’t have an easy time of it after this.”

“But no one wants to deal with bald monks who’ve gone demonic.” The greasy-faced driver chuckled. “Those people are every bit as fanatic as we are… so yeah, she’s definitely in for trouble.”

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After that topic ended, the vehicle fell temporarily silent. But as the road continued to shake beneath them, the scenery beyond the windows grew increasingly desolate, and the sound on the radio gradually faded into complete dead silence.

After driving for some time like that, they could finally see rising sand through the windshield.

It was a “golden wall” standing at the end of the horizon, over a thousand meters high. Sand had been swept up wholesale by the storm, forming a natural barrier of astonishing workmanship.

“So this is what used to be Xizhou.”

The greasy-faced driver looked outside. Through the shifting sands, he could vaguely make out silhouettes resembling the tops of towers surfacing within them.

That alone was enough to show how high the sand had piled up. If nothing unexpected had happened, then this was what had once been Xizhou of Great Yu, and also the Dao-city nearest the western region: Xifeng Circuit.

But from the looks of it now, Xifeng Circuit had been completely erased from the map.

Endless yellow sand had swallowed the place and buried the entire city whole.

“How could mortals possibly compete with resurrected ancient totems for profit?” The greasy-faced driver sighed in endless regret. “They shouldn’t have resisted. What a waste.”

If someone had shown him a scene like this before he entered the main world, he probably would not have felt a thing. He certainly would not have made a comment like that.

But now… he had already experienced the wonders of the main world’s newly developed “technology.” More importantly, he had tasted those marvelously miraculous seasonings. Of course he found it regrettable. Maybe one of the dead had been a great chef.

“If you want to find someone to help you cook human flesh, you can always go online and recruit one after Blood Soul Heaven descends,” the hooked-nosed man said with a grin, having seen through the source of his regret.

“You need to learn how to make use of these new things. I don’t want people gossiping that my deputy general is some country bumpkin.”

“I see something up ahead, Blood Fang.” The greasy-faced driver changed the subject. “Looks like a vehicle. Probably their people got here first.”

It really was a vehicle.

In fact, there was more than one. Four or five in total, all resembling bus-sized RVs, with eight mechanical anchoring feet extending from beneath the chassis and drilling into the ground. They were the kind of professional research expedition vehicles built for going deep into the desert.

The sandstorm around here was already strong. The two of them got out, yet were hardly affected by the wind and sand at all, and simply walked slowly toward the vehicle encampment.

There seemed to be movement ahead too. Looking more closely, it turned out to be a blood-red barrier, hanging in the sandstorm like a sphere of blood, with two indistinct figures showing through from inside.

The hooked-nosed man and the greasy-faced driver stepped straight into the blood sphere. The moment they entered, the motion of the wind and sand vanished completely.

Their eyes could not help turning toward the center of the sphere. Standing there was a stern-faced woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a white lab coat and black silk pantyhose, with a pair of glasses on her face.

“Why are there only the two of you?” the woman with the bun asked, frowning. “Is the Blood Division planning to give up its schemes in the secular world?”

“Oh, even if you asked me about that, there’s no way I’d answer you.” The hooked-nosed man raised his brows. “All I can tell you is that for this operation to support the Hidden Division, the two of us are enough.”

“…Is that so.”

The woman with the bun gave him a long look, then flicked her gaze over the greasy-faced driver’s face a few times before shifting slightly aside and presenting a thin human man.

“This is Dr. Awa.”

“He has done deep research into ‘ancient divine artifacts’ and has also worked on those troublesome totems. Our western project… that Augu Divine Spear only completed its awakening with his help.”

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“By the rules of etiquette, this is where we’re supposed to shake hands, right?” The hooked-nosed man looked Dr. Awa up and down with interest. While asking the bun-haired woman, he had already extended his right hand on his own initiative, clearly intending to greet the man in the human fashion.

Dr. Awa’s head looked like a carrot with only two or three tufts of leaves left on it. He too wore a narrow pair of glasses, but he carried himself with even more authority than the bun-haired woman and simply ignored the offered greeting.

“Hm?”

The hooked-nosed man frowned, a teasing smile curling at the corner of his lips. “For a mortal with no grasp of the supernatural, you are remarkably bold.”

“You despise us?” he continued. “Do you think what we’ve done… has gone a bit too far?”

Dr. Awa’s tone was icy. “Whether it’s gone too far or not, you should know the answer yourselves.”

“If it weren’t for rescuing those ancient ancestral spirits who died in the Void Realm, I would never cooperate with monsters like you.”

“But aren’t you mass-producing exactly this kind of ‘monster’ yourself?” The hooked-nosed man bent down in complete seriousness and stared at the doctor with a face that, examined too closely, might even trigger the uncanny valley.

“You’re an executioner too… darling, neither of us gets to shrug off ‘sin.'”

“Can you stop with the nonsense?” The bun-haired woman impatiently lifted a hand to check her watch. “The barrier has sixty seconds left. Get back in the vehicle first, and after that you can talk all you want.”

The four of them boarded the vehicle. The bun-haired woman poured the two visitors something to drink, tossed a satellite-connected phone to the greasy-faced man, then sat down at the table and began organizing image files and documents.

“These are your recent findings?”

The hooked-nosed man leaned over and saw on several diagrams rubbings of a “great totem sigil” depicting a nine-headed monstrous bird.

It looked somewhat like the sacrificial seal script used by humans in the era before Yu script had been unified, an emblematic image pieced together from many such seal characters.

“Everything we’ve found on ‘Jiuli’ is here.” The bun-haired woman slapped a hand on the thick stack of files. “Take a look for yourself, then see what kind of help you can offer.”

“Spreading the Sacred Weapon Clan here, researching legends there…” The hooked-nosed man glanced at her. “Is the Hidden Division really trying to run several fronts at once?”

“Of course.” The bun-haired woman replied in a syrupy, sarcastic tone. “Who told our branch not to be valued? We’re not like you two, sitting at home with an endless supply of blood-meals for cultivation~”

“Blood Fang climbed up from below too.” The greasy-faced man played with the phone while still keeping an ear on this side of the conversation, and started speaking up in his defense. “Blood Fang was originally from the Reports Division. In terms of rank, he used to be a full level lower than you~”

Oh?

The bun-haired woman was taken aback. Narrowing her eyes, she immediately began appraising the man opposite her in a different light.

“Don’t tell her things like that,” the hooked-nosed man cut him off stiffly. “They’ll think I put you up to it.”

“Hmph… that isn’t important.” The bun-haired woman pursed her lips, her attitude finally straightening out a little. “In any case, the universal rollout plan for the Sacred Weapon Clan was our Hidden Division’s responsibility from the start. The layout on this side is already more or less complete. We don’t need your help with that.”

“You only need to use the materials we’ve gathered over this period to head deeper into the desert and see whether there really are fragments of an Illusory Realm hidden there, and whether remnants of Jiuli really exist inside.”

“If we’re describing this with a tech tree, then that’s an extremely lopsided line of development.” The hooked-nosed man gave his evaluation. “It’s basically a side quest.”

“Just tell me whether you’re helping or not.”

“If I remember right, all those ancient clans had divine artifacts of their own for ritual worship?” The hooked-nosed man looked toward Dr. Awa, who had not spoken a single word since they got in the vehicle, and a sinister curve appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“That counts as the main quest too.”

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“I’m really curious how much potential a new race bred this way would have.”

“I need you to show me the progress of the main quest first,” the hooked-nosed man said, looking at the bun-haired woman.

“Ask him.” The bun-haired woman jerked her chin toward Dr. Awa.

So everyone began staring at Dr. Awa. He could no longer remain unmoved. Hopping down from his seat, he went to the end of the narrow passage and dragged out a large tin box covered in plastic sheeting.

The box was fairly large, and with Dr. Awa’s small frame, he could only push it along the floor.

Seeing that, the greasy-faced man immediately stepped forward to help. He lifted the tin box, took it from him, then used brute force to snap the lock open as easily as a human pulling apart a thread of spun sugar.

What was this thing?

After the box was opened, it revealed a metal cube only slightly smaller than the box itself. It was square and steady, with a smooth surface and nothing visible except some folding seams. There was no other clue from which to infer its function. It looked like a giant Rubik’s Cube.

Then both new arrivals raised their brows, because as Dr. Awa inserted a data cable into one of its ports and activated it, the thing actually began to unfold and transform, instantly becoming a bright silver robot around 130 centimeters tall.

“This is Star Tower Group’s newly released M-31 domestic assistant.” Dr. Awa dryly introduced its general background. “It has extendable mechanical arms, cameras with no blind spots, thermal imaging and night vision capability, and a tool clamp that can lift cargo equal to its own body weight. It also has seven interchangeable tool heads, more than enough for kitchen work.”

After finishing the introduction, he took a sealed vial from his inner pocket.

That too had a metal casing, so it was impossible to see what was inside.

Then he pulled a large drawer out from beneath the table. The hooked-nosed man and the greasy-faced man lowered their heads to look and discovered that an “aquarium” was hidden inside. The transparent tempered glass container was filled with a dark blue liquid, and submerged within it were some mechanical parts that looked… similar in shape and dimensions to the domestic assistant’s components.

“Following the method you gave me, I cultivated these… ‘Taixu essences.'” Dr. Awa paused. “Now I’m going to awaken them and replace the original parts with them.”

He opened the “aquarium” lid and tipped the mouth of the metal vial over it, pouring the entire bottle of crimson liquid inside.

The blood-red liquid mixed with the blue liquid in the tank, quickly turning into a deep purplish-black. The parts inside began to vanish from sight, but everyone present could feel the powerful demonic aura erupting from within the fluid.

“That’ll be awkward for you to handle, won’t it?”

Seeing Dr. Awa take out a long pair of tweezers, the hooked-nosed man instantly saw what he was about to do and rolled up his sleeves as he stepped forward to help.

“Let me do it.”

“I can touch these things directly.”

Then he simply thrust his hand into the liquid.

“But that’s-” Both the bun-haired woman and Dr. Awa’s expressions changed drastically.

They had just started to try to stop him, but the hooked-nosed man had already fished out all the parts.

That was a substance with terrifying corrosive power, something that could dissolve and digest even the bones of a great demon in an instant…

And when they looked again at the hooked-nosed man’s arm, which had not changed in the slightest, the skin on the bun-haired woman’s face twitched. She finally gained a new and much deeper understanding of his “strength.”

“What do I do next?”

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“…Remove those parts, then replace them with the new ones.”

“All of them?”

“In theory, one piece would be enough. But you people want efficiency, right? Then all of them have to be changed.”

“You guide me through it.”

“…Fine.”

The exchange between the two sides was brief and efficient.

Very quickly, under Dr. Awa’s guidance, the hooked-nosed man replaced all the removed parts in the domestic assistant. Then he stood up and took a slight step back, quietly waiting for the change.

Bzzz-

The domestic assistant began to tremble.

On the surface of the replacement parts, the metal began to bulge into structures like meridians. They kept spreading in all directions, and very quickly infested every corner of the machine’s body.

Then, all at once, its camera eye shifted from green to red, and its entire body melted into “flowing mercury,” reshaping itself according to the hooked-nosed man standing opposite it into a vaguely human form. With a cold expression, it stared at him.

“Who are you?”

The newborn silver person spoke in a broken metallic voice, then seemed unable to understand its present condition and lowered its head to look at its own body.

“Then who am I…?”

“You are of the Sacred Weapon Clan.”

The hooked-nosed man broke into a radiant smile.

First he gave a thumbs-up to Dr. Awa and the smug-faced bun-haired woman. Then he stepped forward, walked up to the newborn silver person, and warmly grasped its hand, shaking it a few times.

“My name is Blood Fang.”

“‘Yuluo Sky-Hunter’ of the Blood Soul Clan.”

“Blood Fang…?”

The silver person repeated his name.

“Yuluo Sky-Hunter?”

“We’re natural partners…” Blood Fang leaned close to its body and whispered into its ear in a conspiratorial tone.

“You are the flesh.”

“I am the blood-soul.”

“We were born one family~”