Chapter 153: Taking the Stone – 1

Luo Bin picked up a hoe from the side and said, “I’ll go too.”
“And me, I’ve already memorized the map,” Zuo Feixian added, stepping forward.
Little Liu also came over and said, “I’ll go too. Since it’s a stone, I can pitch in and help carry it.”
There were actually dozens of puppets on the train, but Yang Zicang didn’t stop these three. After all, those mindless things always fumbled about clumsily.
“Okay, you guys get on. The others take Lyu Zhi and leave first.”
The four stepped onto the train.
[Dispatch!]
The train shot far away in an instant, already hundreds of meters out before it could even finish turning invisible. However, its speed quickly slowed down as it moved further and further away from Xingmiao.
“Young Ma Chao’s speed has skyrocketed.”
Luo Bin looked at the rapidly receding scenery outside the window: “Where’s the first stop?”
Zuo Feixian and Yang Zicang exchanged a knowing smile.
“Naturally, it’s our old friend, Mr. Ning Yang.”
In the small shack compound standing on the wasteland, scattered lights slowly flickered on.
“It was broad daylight, how did it suddenly get dark?”
“Boss, it couldn’t be monsters, could it?”
Ning Yang rolled his eyes at the newcomer beside him. Just as he carefully lit the torch in his hand and began to dispel the surrounding darkness, a sudden burst of strong wind accompanied by a roar came crashing down.
Beside him, the man in the brown leather jacket flinched in fear, grabbing Ning Yang’s arm tightly.
“Boss, there really are monsters!”
“This wind…”
Ning Yang’s voice carried a hint of surprise and confusion, “Huh? Could Yang Zicang be here again?”
The wind was as loud as the breathing of an ancient giant beast, abruptly breaking the silence of the wilderness.
“Why is it so loud this time?”
Before his words had finished, the sharp gust of wind had already appeared behind his crude stone house.
Ning Yang was about to go around back to say hello when suddenly a folded note shot over.
{Lao Ning, lend me that stone of yours for a while.}
Ning Yang, who was hurrying over with a torch, suddenly changed expression.
He saw that Luo Bin and Zuo Feixian were already working in perfect unison—one wielding a pickaxe, the other bracing a pry bar—as they jointly pried up the stone slab that Ning Yang had cherished, tearing it from the firm, dry ground.
With a rumbling crash, the stone hit the ground, sending dust flying.
“Hey! What do you two think you’re doing?”
“I’ll explain later,” Luo Bin replied curtly.
At the same time, Yang Zicang on the cart had already deftly taken possession of this “hijacked” stone, and in a flash, both men softly pressed their palms against the ground and vaulted onto the train.
Accompanied by a low, powerful roar, the train, like a giant beast awakening, broke through the constraints of space in a sudden surge, plunged into the vast night, and vanished into an afterimage without lingering for a single second.
The torchlight flickered across Ning Yang’s face; initially stunned, he eventually shook his head with a complex expression.
“I knew it—sigh—those thirty thousand temporal scores weren’t going to be easy to split.”
……
The sudden descent of darkness struck fear into the hearts of all who lived on and depended upon this land, much like an overturning of day and night.
Earth, daylight, darkness—the cycle of cold and heat; for millions of eons, day after day and night after night had never changed, forming a deep-rooted belief in everyone’s mind.
The world had simply always been this way.
Even in this desolate land, where the climate is harsh and the earth barren, the fundamental rule of day and night should not be altered.
Now, people finally realize this is merely their own wishful thinking.
“Light the torches, all men come out. Prepare yourselves for the Time Sequence, just in case powerful monsters emerge.”
“Could there really be monsters?”
“Haven’t monsters appeared already? Isn’t even our lifespan being used as a weapon? What else in this world is impossible?”
“Perhaps… using lifespan as a weapon is the mercy of the deities of this world upon us.”
In this shed area, people whispered to themselves; even though it was what others called a large shelter gathering, at this moment, the people here remained engulfed in panic.
This land has no government, no nation, no military—only the iron bars in their hands and their lives.
A tall, upright figure stood at the center of the compacted dirt plaza, surrounded by shed dwellers holding torches.
Beside this upright figure gazing at the sky, one person spoke:
“This is truly a cataclysmic upheaval, isn’t it?”
The man in the gray-white Zhongshan suit abruptly turned his head, his expression exuding authority without showing anger.
“Do not disturb the people’s morale. Death is nothing but the end; demons and monsters are also transformed from humans. What is there to fear?”
“Understood, Master Shed All,” this person said with a look of shame, “Sorry, I spoke out of turn.”
Sun Daoru turned around, a red circular symbol emerging on his chest, and a quadrilateral blossomed outward.
“To even hold a sliver of ground in this world is fraught with peril, but precisely because of that, we have nothing left to lose.”
This red quadrilateral swept through the bodies of dozens nearby.
Each of them felt a faint ripple coat themselves, the ripple constantly emitting subtle sound waves—like a low, murmuring, chaotic whisper.
“With Chief Shed Sun here, we should be fine.”
Amid the hushed murmurs, the crowd suddenly heard a wind rushing in from afar.
[Woo——]
“It’s coming!”
“There really is a monster!”
A commotion stirred within the shed district.
“Prepare for battle!”
Boom! A blast of wind slammed through the air as a phantom-like, rusty-yellow subway car emerged from the darkness, hurtling swiftly toward a critical facility deep within the shed district.
“It’s a psionic-type nightmare!”
Lines flickered and expanded outward.
{We’re the Great Jia Charter Freight Team, borrowing your divine stone to cope with the celestial upheaval.}
Hearing they intended to seize the rock treasure from their shed district, the crowd was shocked, yet they could no longer stop it. The train pierced straight through the cluster of buildings, crashing into a structure hundreds of meters behind without sparing a glance for the vigilant crowd.
Chief Shed Sun pondered briefly before recalling this name he had heard of some time ago.
“The Great Jia?”
This charter freight team had suddenly risen to fame, with rumors even claiming their captain alone had wiped out the Wasteland Wagon Freight Team with just a few men, and had recently pulled off something particularly noteworthy in a distant place.
Sun Daoru roared in anger, “Is it really you? What do you mean by stealing our shelter’s sacred stone?”
As his furious shout swept out in a red sonic wave, it surged forward dominantly. Countless solid soundwaves materialized, like an army charging through the billowing noise toward the distant mobile storm.
{How awful it sounds.}
Little Ma Chao, even faster, dashed toward the hall at the back.
Inside the dark stone hall, rocks stood upright. As the train’s phantom image faded across the stone, Luo Bin and the other two had already jumped down. In a single second, he swing his pickaxe upward, while Zuo Feixian perfectly cooperated by wedging his staff under the rock’s crevice.
Wham! A single strike with the pickaxe followed. Little Liu took a running start and slammed into the stone with an iron-mountain-lean posture. The half-man-tall rock toppled in an instant.
“Stop!”
Outside, the group came rushing over in disarray—before they arrived, the soundwave had already appeared.
[Silent Night.]
Shrouded in darkness, the effect of Silent Night proved even more potent. Of the hundreds rushing in, at least half seized up with terror.
Like emotional bombs triggered once and all, their internal doubts and panic—already wavering—intensified massively right away. Quite a few lost control on the spot.
Most disrupted were the visitors who hadn’t yet been integrated by Shelter-chief Sun’s design model unification.
At the train’s doorway, Yang Zicang was taken aback, surprised by such a strong effect. Looks like the Changed Atmosphere had inflicted a great panic upon people here.
“Everyone, don’t mistake our motive—we come not to plunder, but to use this object to defend against the looming crisis.”
As he spoke, the three men were already carrying the rock and passing it to Yang Zicang.
“I told you to stop. Big ‘Client,’ do you want to become enemies with our Ding Shi Great Shed?!”
Several figures exuding a chilling aura stepped out from outside; these were the pillars that enabled the Ding Shi Great Shed to exist.
The burly man took a long spear from the person beside him, his silver-white Model on his chest flickering as Sequence infused into it.
“Are you Sequence Room Jia? I heard you can control trajectories. Try to take this spear thrust from me. Hyah!”
Bang! The spear shadow instantly burst into countless phantom images shooting out, with no way to tell which was real and which was fake.
The three men, who had just lifted the boulder and were climbing into the vehicle one meter off the ground, were immediately enveloped by these spear shadows.
“I don’t have time for your nonsense.”
Yang Zicang raised his hand, and in everyone’s eyes, a strange black shadow resembling a small black hole abruptly appeared directly in front of the spear shadows.
Ding!
Spear tip against spear tip!
A silver-white long spear shot straight out from the black hole, accurately stabbing into the oncoming spear shadow. The immense force parried it, sending it flying with a thud back to the ground before the man’s feet.
The base of the spear emitted a humming tremor.
“How is that possible!”
The man was shocked. He had already elevated his Seat to 99, and that single thrust had generated dozens of phantom images.
As long as the main entity was unharmed, the spear shadows would not dissipate. But the opponent had instantly found the location of his main projected entity!
Yang Zicang inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that he had activated Silent Night at the first moment. All surrounding objects now gave him information feedback, making it effortless to find people or things.
“Shed Master, this person is no ordinary. Let’s all attack together.”
Models flickered before the group, when suddenly a shout came from behind: “Stop, don’t attack him!”
The newly arrived Shed Master Sun turned his head. The one shouting was from his shed district—the very person favored by the divine rock, the only one who could occasionally communicate with it.
He had forged for the shed district what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of “Inert-Mind Engines,” earning him immense credit.
“Why not?” Sun Daoru asked sternly.
The newcomer, panting heavily, supporting himself with both hands on his knees, gasped: “The Divine Stone… it told me… it is about to leave. These people are the ones it invited to take it away.”
At those words, the panicked crowd felt their inner turmoil instantly dissipate. They looked toward the four figures on the train, some crouching, some standing.
It was because Yang Zicang had retracted his technique.
They exchanged bewildered glances.
“It… chooses to leave,” muttered Shed Master Sun, before shifting his gaze from the rock to the young man on the train. “Is that true?”
Yang Zicang, who had already deactivated Silent Night, nodded to the crowd.
The train plunged into the wind.
More and more people rushed over, watching the gust of wind pass through the stone hall and quickly vanish into the darkness of the night.
{Next stop…}
“Haotian Big Shed.”
Vroom—the train sped across the land like a phantom, swift and silent.
Although it had not yet transformed into the ghostly Midnight Train, the train now possessed some of those traits with its two blocks of rock.
Zuo Feixian gently touched the rock beside him, feeling as though he could perceive the subtle energy constantly emanating from the stone, energy that helped the train glide faster across the land.
“Feixian, when did you first arrive in the Lost Frequency Land?” Little Liu asked idly.
“Me? Hmm, I think it’s been two or three years. The past is like a dream—I barely remember it. Ha, don’t be surprised; I just don’t want to think about it.”
Little Liu sighed too, as if reminded of his own experiences.
“It’s okay, I understand.”