Chapter 156: I Am An Evil Pen (XIII)

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Chapter 156: I Am An Evil Pen (XIII)

It took Wen Jingrong four hours to reach Kistler Mountain. By then, he had already learned the general situation from his investigators over the phone.

The mining site Qingwei had established at Kistler Mountain had recently suffered one accident after another, delaying the project. Bai Lin therefore asked Ge Junxuan to accompany him to inspect the site. Just as they were preparing to leave that evening, a sudden torrential downpour forced them to stay overnight at the worksite. Then, around one or two in the morning, part of Kistler Mountain collapsed and triggered a massive mudslide that nearly buried the entire site. Including workers and villagers from the surrounding area, more than three hundred people were trapped.

By the time Wen Jingrong reached Kistler Mountain, large numbers of police officers and rescue personnel had already gathered at the scene. Because the storm had only just passed, the ground was a quagmire and the mountain remained unstable, making rescue work extremely slow. So far, only several dozen villagers from the outermost area had been rescued. Ge Junxuan and Qingwei’s workers were still buried beneath the mud and debris, their fates unknown.

Seeing the anxiety on Wen Jingrong’s face, Shang Ke said, “I’ll go take a look.”

Where there was baleful energy, there were living people. Dense baleful energy had gathered above the village buried by the mudslide, which meant that many people were still alive and trapped in extreme fear.

“Be careful,” Wen Jingrong reminded him worriedly.

Shang Ke nodded, turned incorporeal, and flew toward the place where the baleful energy was most concentrated.

Passing through the earth, Shang Ke found numerous villagers trapped inside the ruins of collapsed homes. They struggled to breathe in cramped darkness, enduring terrible pain and seemingly endless despair, their lives liable to end at any moment.

After searching for roughly five minutes, Shang Ke finally located Ge Junxuan and Bai Lin inside one of the village houses.

Bai Lin and a mother and daughter were sheltered inside the cellar and had suffered few injuries, while Ge Junxuan was pinned beneath debris at the cellar entrance. His lower body could not move, and he appeared to have lost consciousness.

Shang Ke could not understand it. Ge Junxuan was only a single step away from the cellar. Why had Bai Lin not helped remove the debris pinning him down and pulled him inside? Five or six hours had already passed since the disaster, meaning Ge Junxuan had been trapped like this the entire time. If he remained compressed much longer, even if he survived, his lower body might be permanently paralyzed.

Although Shang Ke possessed supernatural power, the abilities available to him were constrained by his true form. Most of what he excelled at involved illusions, and he had little direct destructive force. Breaking through such a thick layer of earth and rescuing everyone outright would be difficult in the short term, but he could at least remove the debris crushing Ge Junxuan.

While Ge Junxuan still appeared unconscious, Shang Ke materialized and quickly got to work.

“Shang… Ke…” A hoarse voice suddenly sounded beside him while he was working. It turned out Ge Junxuan had not actually lost consciousness. Feeling the pressure on his body change, he immediately noticed Shang Ke.

His bloodstained eyes widened in astonishment. The faint white glow surrounding Shang Ke looked extraordinarily bright within the darkness.

Since he had already been discovered, Shang Ke stopped trying to conceal himself and reassured him softly, “Don’t worry. Someone will come rescue you soon.”

“What exactly are you…?” Even in his dazed state, Ge Junxuan knew perfectly well that no ordinary person could silently pass through layers of earth.

Shang Ke winked at him. “I’m an immortal. Try not to worship me too much.”

Ge Junxuan actually laughed. “If you’re really an immortal, why don’t you use immortal magic to get us out? Why are you digging through the dirt with your hands?”

“That’s what you don’t understand. Immortals have restrictions placed on them when they descend to the mortal world. Without restrictions, wouldn’t we be able to do whatever we wanted?” Shang Ke spoke with complete seriousness.

Ge Junxuan actually believed him, astonishment appearing on his face. “Really?”

Shang Ke gave him a sidelong glance and changed the subject. “Never mind me. Why didn’t Bai Lin help you when you were trapped here?”

At the question, sadness flashed through Ge Junxuan’s eyes and his expression turned cold. “When the mudslide started, the owner of this house was about to take me into the cellar. But Bai Lin was still in the guest room, so I ran back to get him. By the time we reached the cellar together, the mudslide had already smashed into the house. That was when he pushed me aside and jumped into the cellar himself.”

Shang Ke was not surprised by Bai Lin’s actions. What he could not understand was why, after reaching temporary safety, Bai Lin still refused to help Ge Junxuan.

“Why didn’t he help me?” Ge Junxuan sneered. “Simple. If I die in an accident, he gets a huge insurance payout. A year ago, we each took out an accidental-death policy naming the other as beneficiary. He told me it was proof that we would follow each other through life and death.”

What could Shang Ke possibly say to this hopelessly trusting fool? Ge Junxuan was a gentleman, while Bai Lin was a thoroughgoing scoundrel.

Ge Junxuan’s eyes burned and his vision blurred. Bai Lin’s exact words at the time had been, “I know you’re your family’s only son and may not be able to marry me. These two insurance policies can serve as both our marriage vows and proof that we’ll remain together in life and death.”

That was why Ge Junxuan had never doubted him, no matter what ugly rumors he heard. Only when Bai Lin shoved him aside without hesitation and left him lying in agony in the darkness for five or six hours did his illusions finally shatter completely.

Once Shang Ke cleared away the debris pinning him down, Ge Junxuan immediately felt much better.

“Don’t worry. The rescue teams are already here. Hold on a little longer.” With that, Shang Ke prepared to return to Wen Jingrong and tell him Ge Junxuan was alive.

“Thank you,” Ge Junxuan whispered toward the place where Shang Ke had disappeared before darkness engulfed him once again.

“Junxuan is still alive!” Wen Jingrong was visibly relieved by the news. “Keke, lead the way. We’ll rescue him right now.”

He urgently summoned several modified compact smart excavators capable of traveling over relatively soft mud and debris—equipment even the professional rescue teams did not have available.

After Wen Jingrong spoke with the rescue commander, the man agreed to send a rescue team with him.

While they were still making their way over, Shang Ke went ahead and began helping villagers who had been buried relatively close to the surface. With the aid of tools and his power, he gradually rescued several people.

Because Shang Ke could locate survivors with extraordinary precision, his rescue efficiency was extremely high. By the time the rescue team arrived, more than ten people had already been saved, and Shang Ke had marked the positions of survivors buried deeper underground, saving the rescuers a tremendous amount of detection time.

Although everyone found this astonishing, the rescue effort was too demanding for them to spare much attention. The reporters accompanying them, however, became intensely interested in the mysterious rescuer. After interviewing several survivors, they were already mentally composing stories about an unknown hero saving people from disaster.

Wen Jingrong left two smart excavators behind, then took the remaining personnel and machines toward the place where Ge Junxuan was trapped.

Shang Ke had already marked the position on his digital map, so Wen Jingrong located the exact spot without wasting much time.

Under the excavators’ work, layer after layer of mud and debris was cleared away. If everything went smoothly, they would break through in less than half an hour.

Then rain began falling again, droplets striking the ground and splashing muddy water everywhere.

Wen Jingrong’s expression turned grim. “Move faster.”

The sky gradually darkened until it resembled heavy black ink, creating an oppressive atmosphere.

After several beeps, the rescue commander’s voice came through Wen Jingrong’s radio. “Mr. Wen, evacuate immediately. The mountain is extremely unstable and may collapse again at any moment.”

“Give me another thirty minutes.”

“No. You must evacuate within five minutes! This is not a discussion. It’s an order.” The rescue commander’s voice turned severe.

They were already so close to reaching Ge Junxuan. How could Wen Jingrong abandon him now? If he left and a second landslide occurred, Ge Junxuan would almost certainly have no chance of surviving.

The rescue continued as the rain grew heavier. More than ten minutes later, Wen Jingrong and the others finally caught sight of Ge Junxuan. At the same moment, a deep rumbling sounded in the distance.

The mountain had indeed collapsed again. Mud, rock, and shattered trees merged into a roaring torrent that came surging down the slope.

Wen Jingrong, Ge Junxuan, and everyone present turned deathly pale. Driven by their instinct to survive, the rescue workers abandoned the rescue midway and fled as quickly as they could.

“Jingrong, get out of here! Forget about me!” Ge Junxuan was badly injured and unable to walk. Even if they pulled him out of the pit, he would never be able to escape on his own.

“Stop talking nonsense!” Wen Jingrong jumped into the pit and hauled Ge Junxuan onto his back.

Just as they were about to leave, Bai Lin crawled out of the cellar covered in mud and grime. Without so much as glancing at Ge Junxuan or Wen Jingrong, he fled for his own life—and even drove away in the last remaining excavator.

“Fuck!” Wen Jingrong could not stop himself from swearing. With Ge Junxuan on his back, there was no way he could stop Bai Lin.

Ge Junxuan clenched both fists, simultaneously devastated and ashamed.

“Jingrong, just leave me and run.” Whether the liquid on Ge Junxuan’s face was rain or tears was impossible to tell, but his eyes were filled with grief.

“Just worry about yourself!” Wen Jingrong snapped fiercely.

Wen Jingrong valued Ge Junxuan so deeply because, during his most difficult years, Ge Junxuan had been the one person who consistently supported him without conditions. A friend like that was rare, and Wen Jingrong was willing to take risks for him. Besides, Keke was still beside him.

A flash of light appeared at the edge of Wen Jingrong’s vision, and Shang Ke materialized beside him.

The moment he saw Shang Ke, Wen Jingrong’s agitated heart immediately calmed.

Shang Ke looked back at the slope, where mud and debris were surging toward them. At this speed, only a few minutes remained before they were buried—not just Wen Jingrong and the others, but more than a hundred survivors who had not yet been rescued.

Shang Ke’s baleful energy could not directly resist a natural disaster, but his true body had undergone more than a thousand years of cultivation and had become nearly indestructible. If he fused that body into the mountain itself, he should be able to slow the mudslide.

Shang Ke looked at Wen Jingrong and smiled. “Wen Jingrong, you’ll all make it out.”

With that, he cupped Wen Jingrong’s face, kissed him hard on the lips, then turned and flew toward the collapsing mountainside.

“Keke!” An inexplicable surge of panic seized Wen Jingrong.

【Don’t look back. Just run as far as you can.】 Shang Ke’s warning sounded beside his ear once more.

Wen Jingrong gritted his teeth and struggled through the mud with the badly injured Ge Junxuan on his back.

Keke, I’ll wait for you to come back safely.

Ge Junxuan looked back through the curtain of rain and saw Shang Ke transform into a pen in midair before plunging straight into the earth. In an instant, the shifting mountainside abruptly froze. No matter how fiercely the rain poured down, it stood immovable as solid rock.

Faced with such an extraordinary sight, Ge Junxuan felt no wonder. Instead, an inexplicable fear seized him, as though some dark force had descended over his heart.

Beneath the layers of mud, every survivor felt a bone-chilling cold, followed by overwhelming despair, pain, grief, and rage… Their intense negative emotions transformed into torrents of baleful energy that rushed toward Shang Ke inside the mountain.

An object that draws baleful energy gathers corruption and darkness and unsettles the human heart. Once its power reaches the extreme, even heaven and earth will no longer tolerate its existence.

The reason pen spirits formed contracts with humans was to evade the natural laws governing their existence. If one recklessly stirred the darkness in human hearts and absorbed baleful energy without restraint, the laws of nature would immediately retaliate.

To obtain the greatest possible power in the shortest amount of time, Shang Ke had no choice but to break through the limitations of his contract and absorb baleful energy on a massive scale.

As more and more baleful energy gathered, even the air gradually seemed to congeal. The torrential rain ceased, replaced by a darkness as deep as night.

The pen’s body gleamed pitch-black, currents of black-gold light flowing across it in the darkness. Like the legendary Sea-Stabilizing Divine Needle, it anchored the fractured mountain firmly in place.

He wielded dark and sinister power to save lives. Even if doing so defied the laws of nature, his conscience remained clear.

Wen Jingrong abruptly looked back. At some point, the flowing mud and debris on the distant slope had solidified into earth.

A flash of black light swept across the land. The earth trembled, and the entire layer of soil suddenly disintegrated into thick powder, forming a river of sand that slowly scattered on the night wind.

The baleful energy dispersed and the darkness receded. Pale dawn gradually appeared along the horizon, and the bone-deep chill that had enveloped everyone vanished with it.

Everyone felt suddenly lighter.

Everyone except Wen Jingrong, who felt as though he had fallen into an icy abyss.

As he stood frozen, a streak of black light shot toward him. Wen Jingrong instinctively reached out.

The black light settled gently into his palm.

It was his Keke.

Joy flooded Wen Jingrong’s face. But before the name “Keke” could leave his lips, cracks spread layer by layer across the pen resting in his palm.

In the next instant, it crumbled into a handful of powder…

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