Published at 8th of October 2024 3:02 am

Chapter 926: Acting Separately

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Silvan’s words may be difficult to understand, but the present facts provided all the annotations that Lin Sanjiu needed.

When she was young, her parents bought her LEGO blocks. She would sit on the floor and play with them for hours. The various shapes and scattered pieces could be seamlessly combined or dispersed, used in different corners—these same batch of parts could ultimately present different appearances.

If LEGO blocks still had limitations, then the buildings before her seemed to freely transcend all restrictions.

As Lin Sanjiu turned her head to look back, she saw that the long wall-like gate behind her had now cracked into pieces. The land between the iron gates rose and fell, slowly moving and overlapping. The park where she had just wandered like a headless fly found a new order in the faint humming sound. The intersecting paths and scattered courtyards quickly formed into square grids.

“So, that’s how it is,” she murmured, feeling the smooth and steady movement of the iron gate beneath her feet. “The Natural Reserve I saw during the day was formed like this.”

“It can also form a thousand different structures and compositions,” Silvan shrugged. “As long as you can imagine it.”

His hands were empty, and there was no “conductor’s baton” in sight. Perhaps he had already put it away.

“But you didn’t change the structure of the Munitions Factory,” Lin Sanjiu asked, staring at the steel city right in front of her. The reorganization of the Natural Reserve had pushed the two of them to the entrance of the Munitions Factory. It was likely impossible for her to find an exit within the Natural Reserve by herself, even if she walked all night. In this place, there were no exits anywhere, but everywhere could be an exit. “Why? Can’t it be divided?”

“It can,” Silvan leaped forward and jumped down from the iron gate. Once both of them landed, he pointed ahead and smiled. “Look.”

Lin Sanjiu, who had been vaguely worried about how to enter, suddenly realized that she had worried for nothing. The road opened up for them unimpeded, and at the end of it, on the towering steel city wall that reached into the sky, a rectangular doorway had opened near the ground.

It was as if someone had originally planned to create a door in this wall but had forgotten. Just by stepping over it, Lin Sanjiu walked into the heavily guarded steel city—entering was surprisingly easy, making her feel like sighing.

The stern and rigid Munitions Factory was mostly engulfed by the dim night, with only distant dim lights revealing its faint outline, along with the straight iron-gray alley stretching before her. Even the alleyways of the Munitions Factory seemed to have been cut out from blocks of iron, devoid of any emotion.

“…However, the easy road ends here,” Silvan smiled at her, his emerald eyes sparkling in the dark night. “There are always people stationed inside the Munitions Factory. If there’s even a slight commotion, it will alert them. Moreover, I haven’t obtained the conductor’s baton for this part yet.”

“Huh? But on that wall…”

“Because that part is the ‘border’ shared with the Natural Reserve, so using the conductor’s baton of the Natural Reserve can also create an entrance.” He seemed unwilling to explain too much, just lifted his chin forward. “The next part won’t be easy.”

This “not easy” probably referred not only to the fact that the two of them had to face the Munitions Factory; Lin Sanjiu understood it well.

… If that moment truly arrived, with her combat power, could she stand against Silvan?

Thinking about it, she weakly waved her hand, “I’ve had a difficult night. Let me catch my breath before we continue.”

Fortunately, the ground of this steel city was also paved with soil and bricks. She sat down with a thud and summoned a curved strand of fur from her card collection. Under Silvan’s direct gaze, she pulled out a few small clumps and stuffed them into the gaps between the bricks.

Compared to carefully storing the remaining fur, this process surprisingly wasn’t too embarrassing.

Clapping her hands, Lin Sanjiu casually changed the topic, “Um… I want to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I never asked you, what exactly happened in the Munitions Factory?” She furrowed her brow, recalling the words the Chicky brothers had once told her. “As the head of security, why did you have to sneak in like this in the middle of the night?”

“It’s not like that anymore.” Silvan sat down next to her, and a breeze mixed with a faint fig scent and a tinge of blood wafted by. “I was curious about the increasingly close relationship between the Munitions Factory and the other twelve organizations… So I did some investigation.”

“Oh, right, you said the twelve organizations have already achieved symbiosis…?”

“Yes, that’s the conclusion I reached after my investigation.” Silvan smiled at her, his hair falling messily. He casually tied his blond hair into a short ponytail, his expression calm and natural. “I saw some things, and a few people. The next morning, I pretended to go after the Puppeteer and voluntarily left the Munitions Factory. I think shortly after I left, they probably realized that the conductor’s baton was missing.”

“What did you see?” Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but ask.

“If the timing is right, maybe you’ll see it with your own eyes too.” Silvan didn’t answer and took a long breath; his white breath dissipated in the darkness. “Regardless, it has nothing to do with our current mission.”

As soon as this mission was mentioned, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but feel a bit embarrassed.

“Although I left you behind,” she muttered softly, unsure if it counted as an apology, “there was a reason for that… The favor you asked of me, I still intend to fulfill it for you.”

“I never doubted that.”

According to the original plan, they were supposed to split up after entering. Lin Sanjiu sat on the ground for a while, feeling her stamina gradually recovering, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words “let’s go”—it was precisely the idea of acting separately that had led her to decide to sneak in on her own in the first place.

What should I do?

Lin Sanjiu had a vague idea of what Silvan was planning to do tonight, but she couldn’t let him go just like that. What if it was really what she suspected…

In the end, it was Silvan who broke the silence.

“Do you feel better?” he asked in a low voice. At such a close distance, his voice almost permeated the air like smoke.

At that moment, Lin Sanjiu made a sudden decision.

“I’m fine,” she looked ahead at the straight alley, “Where is your first target?”

“The Command Tower,” those words sounded gentle and pleasant, as if devoid of any bloodshed.

Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes and exhaled. She didn’t care about the Commander of the Munitions Factory, so whatever Silvan wanted to do was fine with her. She paused for a moment and whispered, “I need to act swiftly. How much firepower can you divert for me?”

The golden-haired man let out a soft laugh, and the warm breath captivated the cool night.

“If you need it, all the firepower in this steel city can be focused on me.”

“That… won’t be necessary,” Lin Sanjiu hurriedly waved her hand, realizing that it was his usual way of speaking. “Tell me where the Command Tower is. Once I succeed, I’ll come to find you immediately.”

Silvan looked at her for a moment in the flickering light and then sighed. When she thought he was going to object, he silently pointed her in the right direction.

After checking her belongings once again—it was inexplicable that her weapon bag was still on her back after experiencing such a night—Lin Sanjiu stood up and nodded to Silvan.

“Take care.”

Without a word more, the two of them turned and headed in different directions. In an instant, the figure of the golden-haired man completely merged into the darkness, and when she held her breath and listened intently, she couldn’t even catch a faint sound of the wind in the distance.

She still remembered the path she took last time, so it didn’t take much effort to find the building and the scaffolding on its exterior. With the experience from last time, she quietly climbed up the scaffolding and once again used the lock card on the rooftop door—evidently, the Munitions Factory still hadn’t figured out how she had sneaked in last time, so they hadn’t implemented a more effective countermeasure.

When the door slid open soundlessly, Lin Sanjiu didn’t rush in. Whether it was her pure senses or her [Scan Consciousness], both indicated that there was silence behind the door, with no signs of life. Nevertheless, she waited a little longer before finally stepping inside.

All the researchers of the Munitions Factory had left, and all the lights were pitch black. Only a little bit of night and starlight seeped in through the skylights, enveloping the interior of this cylindrical brass building in darkness.

Lin Sanjiu entered the elevator, and the low hum of gears and belts echoed through the silent building, almost startling herself. She took out her flashlight and scanned the area as she descended—it always felt strange and unfamiliar when the flashlight beam passed over the empty building at midnight.

Arriving at the same door for the second time, she couldn’t help but take a deep breath.

The journey to the Munitions Factory was so troublesome, but she didn’t expect that completing the mission would be so easy. Lin Sanjiu listened carefully for a while, but she couldn’t tell for sure whether Silvan had already started his assault on the Command Tower—this place was more than halfway across the Munitions Factory from the Command Tower, so even if there was a battle, she probably wouldn’t be able to hear it through the brass walls.

She used the flashlight to locate the position of the hinges on the door and inserted the wolf tooth into the narrow gap. With a single stroke up and down, the hinges connecting the door to the wall immediately broke off, even easier than cutting tofu. She grabbed the door frame and held it firmly before it slid open and hit the wall, carefully aligning it step by step before stepping inside.

In the shadows, the “Erudite”, composed of countless skeletons, pipes, and branches, stood silently in the center of the room, resembling fossils of prehistoric dinosaurs.

Share