Chapter 102: Panic and Flight

Ning Yang nodded somewhat awkwardly, practically admitting that the story of one person dominating the entire shed area in a Jiazi interval was not without basis.
Zhao Qi exclaimed in surprise, “So there really is such a formidable person? And a guy like that actually became a thief?”
“He didn’t steal anything; it was just a misunderstanding.”
“Oh?” Zhao Qi’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Your men here don’t say that.”
“We just said that to deceive the real thief.” Ning Yang explained.
Suddenly, a folded line shot toward him. A silvery-white ring shimmered into existence in front of Ning Yang’s chest, a breach occurring between interlacing pieces of law.
{Ning Ge, some of our residents just said that their friends saw the high-quality water well Lost Engine being auctioned at Wuyou, and it seems to be the one we lost.}
“He’s not mistaken?”
{Absolutely certain.}
Ning Yang was burning with anxiety and anger.
Two things made him both ashamed and furious: one, that the engine was being auctioned, and two, that every damn person knew his settlement had lost something.
Why are these people’s tongues so long!
“Who’s selling it!”
Too busy to blame the big mouths in the shack area, Ning Yang asked urgently.
{Someone claiming to be an assistant from Jiazi Studio.}
Ning Yang almost spat blood.
Could it really be that bastard who stole it? What exactly is he trying to do, mess with me?
“Can we buy it back?”
{Bro, the price is too high—it’s already been bid up to forty-eight hundred years.}
“I’ll fuck his damn grandpa!”
……
Within the auction hall, the price of the water wells kept climbing. At the same time, more and more people from afar learned through their informants that a high-quality water well had emerged.
{Bid with all you’ve got, but don’t go over eight thousand.}
“Yes.”
{Do you know who the producer is?}
“They say they’re right nearby. Just now, quite a few people have spotted them, but they haven’t accepted a Mental Link.”
Inside the hall, exchanges like these were happening everywhere, and quite a few of the larger shed areas were stirring with activity.
“The agent in Room 67 hasn’t answered me. The good news is, it seems they haven’t answered anyone else either.”
In the hall filled with rows of wooden seats, a person reported to the zone master behind them.
{After this, make a missing person notice indicating that we want to mass-purchase these Forgotten Engines from him, at five thousand Sequence Moments per piece.}
“Good, I’ll have it done right away.”
……
In the material shop, Su Qing chuckled. “See? Now you’ve tasted the glory of being famous.”
Yang Zicang felt utterly helpless. The constant stream of flickering, fine lines never let up, and he finally understood why everyone he met seemed to have heard of him.
The very thief who had stolen the water well engine had dared to impersonate his assistant and come here to sell it!
And wouldn’t you know it—he himself had actually shown up, too.
“Damn it.” Yang Zicang clenched his teeth and cracked his knuckles out of frustration.
He had no idea what the person impersonating his assistant even looked like. He badly wanted to go wait at the auction hall right now. If that thief were to hand over the materials bought with the auction proceeds to him directly—wonder what kind of expression the guy would make.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The sound of heavy footsteps rose outside the house.
“Su Qing!”
A deep voice sounded outside the door. A man with solid muscles cautiously eyed the few people inside the room.
Su Qing quietly stepped back two paces, Yang Zicang staring fixedly at his movement.
“Spread out your model,” the leader bellowed, motioning for a few people to come out.
Teacher Chen and another person hastily dragged the box out, still unaware of what was happening.
“Oh? Captain Wang, I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding between us.”
“If you don’t do it, don’t blame me for being ruthless.”
Captain Wang pointed his sword directly at Su Qing, while also glancing at the khaki-jacketed young man inside the room, who looked as if he had nothing to do with it.
“Don’t waste time on nonsense.”
“Hmph, if that’s how it is.” Su Qing smirked. “Thank you, everyone. I am very satisfied with this visit.”
Suddenly, the ground outside the door churned.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Aah! Aah!
Their bodies were instantly sent flying. A monster with the features of both a crocodile and a pangolin suddenly erupted from the ground, biting at two people’s protective timings with its jaws; it was about to tear them apart.
“Watch out!” the group exclaimed in alarm.
Yang Zicang gently shut his eyes, and a wave of mental energy radiated outward.
Everyone was momentarily overwhelmed by a faint sense of being abandoned by the world, as if the surrounding ground, the woods, and even the air were stamped with a label that did not belong to them.
Whispers echoed in their ears.
“Ah, help!”
Someone who had been hurled several meters into the air cried and screamed as they fell back down.
Within the ring before Yang Zicang, which had been continuously appearing due to Mental Link, suddenly rotated and produced flickering quadrilateral lines.
Whoosh! The person who had already fallen into the crocodile’s mouth suddenly accelerated forward amid his screams, landing in a parabola on the eaves of the house.
Yang Zicang pressed down with his toe, and with a time-sequence stamped kick, sent a grain of construction sand flying. It traced a parabola out of the house and exploded. At the same time, the soil scattered in the air was coated with golden splendor by the explosive burst of the sand grain.
The moment the golden radiance descended, Su Qing inside the room looked astonished, then frowned sharply.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The golden, luminous soil struck like swerving bullets against the exposed monsters’ heads.
The scent of blood instantly filled the air as screaming, Teacher Chen and the others recoiled onto the steps.
“My God!”
The ground looked as if bombed by explosives; the crocodile corpses, missing half of their bodies, were still writhing below, gradually losing signs of life. The crocodiles untouched by this soil dared not emerge again.
Su Li, trembling, leaned against a tree trunk, turning to look at the young man in the room in disbelief that he could achieve such a feat.
“So strong.”
The crowd broke out into an uproar.
“So, why aren’t you willing to unfold the model?”
Yang Zicang opened his eyes and stared at the sweat-soaked Su Qing.
Su Qing’s hand, gripping the Lost Engine, kept exuding traces of perspiration.
“My mistake, pal.”
It turned out to be a quadrilateral model, one capable of attaching time sequence to a spot several meters away. Su Qing’s heart had already sunk to the depths.
Yang Zicang reached out and shook his hand before him. Only after he had started did he realize it was a silent request—to hand over the very Won-Nien Engine he had nearly pocketed on the spot.
The engine traced a parabola through the air and landed firmly in the hands of the man before him.
“Impressive. No wonder you know so many formulations.” Su Qing forced out a smile.
Yang Zicang, his back against the wall, smirked and waved faintly.
“Hand over all the time sequences and then surrender without a fight.”
Su Qing let out a gentle puff of stale air from his lungs and cast a glance at Su Li, who outside seemed ready to devour him alive.
“I admit you are strong, but how do you know that my end would truly be here?”
In an instant, a red ring materialized on his chest.
A heavy rumble sounded as the ground collapsed beneath them in a thunderous crash. Su Qing, still smiling, vanished into the pit that opened beneath him.
Suddenly, White Shadow Thought-Dragon charged forward and shot into the hole.
“Psi-body?!”
A shell-shocked voice came echoing from the pit below.
BOOM!
Gushes of mud and filthy water spouted upward, clogging nearly half the house.
White Shadow Thought-Dragon tore into crocodiles that burst from the deep walls of the pit. Resisting his own instinct to greedily devour their psychic energy, Yang Zicheng restrained the dragon and—angered inside—without a pause drove him deeper down.
Seeing the terrifying semi-transparent phantom tearing through the mud toward her, Su Qing felt a chill crawl up her spine, as if she had been locked onto by the Grim Reaper.
“Damn thing!”
His hand quickly reached his chest, his fingers grabbing the zipper of the shirt under his jacket and pulling it down in one swift motion.
Rrrip! The skin of a nearby crocodile monster split open like a zipper, peeling apart to either side.
The White Shadow Thought-Dragon charged through more than a dozen monsters burrowing underground, their psionic bodies buying Su Qing precious seconds.
As the skinless figure shed Su Qing’s appearance during its fall, it reached out to touch the crocodile hide, swiftly pulling it over itself like a suit.
After the White Shadow Thought-Dragon rushed to the spot where the person had been, it turned its head to look at the crocodile now wearing a human jacket.
A red circle flickered on the crocodile’s chest as it clung to the edge of the pit, shoving its head into the dirt.
{Hurry, get more crocodiles to save me, Niya!}
{Skin shed, do you even know how many of my babies you’ve killed? I’ve worked so damn hard to build this place up here, and you’ve ruined it all today!}
{Shut up, we’ve got the formula now, we’ll make it all back. Just get me out of here!}
The crocodile clad in the jacket frantically burrowed forward into the hole. Skin shed could feel the icy breath of death closing in from behind.
More crocodiles hidden underground sprang up from the mud like a torrent of raging beasts.
“Faster! Hurry up!!”
Feeling himself gradually turning into a beast, Quipis’ eyes were bleeding; if he stayed in this state for too long, he would truly become a monster.
“Roar!” He couldn’t help but let out a panicked cry from the beast’s throat.
Before White Shadow Thought-Dragon could be summoned again, the dark mud loosened, and a crocodile appeared. Quipis eagerly twisted his claws, hooking them at the zipper under his chest and abdomen.
Bang! White Shadow Thought-Dragon passed through the crocodile’s body ahead and instantly snatched out its willpower body, but it quickly dissipated and lost its energy.
Quipis had already completed the body swap two seconds ago, leaving behind only the undigested flesh of the previous crocodile.
Inside the house, the swarm of crocodiles created chaos and confusion.
Having to protect everyone while also keeping an eye on the fugitives underground, YangZicang felt stretched thin.
Underground, a large horde of crocodile monsters burst through the soil, rolling out and gathering in front of White Shadow Thought-Dragon—a great pile of delicious prey.
Feeling that White Shadow Thought-Dragon was once again drawn to these monsters’ willpower bodies, YangZicang was helpless, knowing that he probably couldn’t catch up to that man.
My connection with Thought-Dragon was a bit peculiar; it wasn’t really a part of me, yet not entirely separate either. This monster existed by drawing from my own mental powers.
Driven by Yang Zicang’s will, the Nian Long swept its gaze into the mud with slight confusion, sensing numerous delicious psionic forces there, but the distinctive aura of the target kept getting mixed with those of the other crocodiles, causing its unique scent to fade steadily.
“I almost died for real!”
Tuipi felt an excruciating pain splitting his head.
“Damn it, where the hell did that bastard come from? How infuriating!”
Having pushed his limits using his malicious nightmare five times in a row, while digging his tunnel, he vomited out a mass of blood and grime from his mouth about the size of his body; with his head spinning in daze, he continued clawing and tunneling forward.
It was the most dangerous escape run in history.
“To think such monsters exist in the Out-of-Sync Region.”
Tuipi never expected that this newly emerged supposed Engine Forger would be so damned powerful!
“And I had the misfortune of running into him.”
The commotion here quickly drew the attention of the guards from the Carefree Trading District.
Not long after, a crowd cleared out the mud that had oozed into the material shop. After peering at the broken hole’s edge, the Guard Leader felt a sudden spell of dizziness.