Chapter 43: Eternal City (2)
Pitch darkness enveloped the surroundings as loose gravel and stone plummeted continuously from the heights.
The night submerged the populace like an overwhelming tide. Wails and screams erupted from every direction—some faint and distant, others right beside them—intermingled with the heavy thuds of falling debris. Hardly anyone could hear what others were shouting in the chaos.
The slender mechanical arms plunged deeply into the rock face. Yet, compared to the razor-sharp metallic blades, the mountain stone proved somewhat too soft.
Xiang Nanli slid downward continuously, a spray of sparks flashing before his eyes. Their feet hung entirely in mid-air; the mechanical limbs served as their sole point of leverage.
Andrew’s four mechanical arms wrapped tightly around Xiang Nanli’s waist as he howled in terror, “Wah-h-h! Help me!”
As a nearly fully cybernetic individual, Andrew’s body weighed roughly the same as an adult male’s, and its internal machinery was already quite aged.
If he tumbled down from this height, he would inevitably shatter into a scattered pile of spare parts. Given that more than a few people down there were turning into fragmented remains, piecing together an intact corpse afterward would prove quite a challenge.
Xiang Nanli offered no response. With swirling dust and loose dirt filling his vision, breathing itself was difficult enough; opening his mouth to speak was asking too much.
He grabbed Andrew’s mechanical arms and hauled him upward.
Andrew carefully adjusted his posture, clinging tightly around Xiang Nanli’s neck like a koala.
The boss’s mechanical exoskeleton was a wearable suit. Its core frame resembled a massive set of metallic ribs connected to four retractable spider-leg mechanical limbs. Once linked to the neural sensor cables, it could automatically calibrate to the wearer’s frame and latch onto the chest cavity. Two arm rings served as secondary anchor points.
This particular model was called the “Explorer,” a product manufactured under Immortality Tech. Designed specifically to adapt to extreme terrain, it was originally used for manual survey missions in underground cities.
Neural sensor cables were typically meant to plug into the back of the neck, where modern individuals had an interface installed—a circular metal disc that allowed exoskeleton equipment to connect directly to the brain’s nervous system.
To connect multiple exoskeletons simultaneously, some people had so many circular plates installed on the back of their necks that their skin resembled the pitted surface of the moon.
Xiang Nanli had never undergone such cybernetic augmentation. Instead, he simply wrapped the equipment’s neural sensor cables around his wrist. To prevent the data lines from slipping, he pulled a roll of antistatic tape from his pocket and wrapped it tightly a few extra times.
Such a crude method of connection shouldn’t have worked for anyone—it was practically a blatant insult to years of neural exoskeleton science. Yet, against all odds, it succeeded, achieving a compatibility rating of 100%.
The dynamic was remarkably akin to…
Lab-grown fungus: “The ambient humidity is 0.01% higher than yesterday. I am dead.”
Wild fungus: “Life will find a way! [Keep Fighting] [Keep Fighting]”
Unaware of how absurdly difficult this feat actually was, Xiang Nanli simply felt a surge of relief.
Thank goodness he was a deadline warrior who hadn’t procrastinated until the next day; otherwise, he would have been flattened into part of the meat patty on the ground below.
The violent tremors persisted for two full minutes, followed by a continuous, low vibration running through the earth.
Controlling the mechanical arms while carrying Andrew in his arms, Xiang Nanli scaled the cliff face like a nimble mechanical spider.
He called out to Dongfang Qingdi in his mind: [Xiao Qing, where are you?]
No response.
Xiang Nanli pursed his lips tightly.
He had originally intended to head down to inspect the situation underground. However, when he was roughly ten meters from the ground, a suffocatingly thick stench of blood assailed his nostrils.
“Xiang… Xiang Nanli…” Andrew’s mechanical heart hammered wildly. “My scanner detected living entities below—a massive swarm of them. But I can’t tell what they are.”
The floor wasn’t originally this far down; the underground structure had suffered a complete collapse.
Xiang Nanli pulled a light source out from his protective suit, switched on the flashlight, and peered downward. In that instant, he felt his heart rate spike as a cold chill ran from his hands down to his feet.
At the bottom of the circular pit, a dense mass of crimson serpents twisted together. Resembling skinned loaches, they writhed and entangled with one another in a horrifying heap. The visual impact was sickening. The shattered architectural ruins were completely submerged beneath the serpents’ bodies, looking as though they had sunk into a dark swamp.
This was no arena—it was a nest of monsters.
The beam of light agitated the serpent swarm. Several small, blood-red snakes raised their heads, hissed violently, and lunged toward Xiang Nanli’s position. However, their muscular leap was limited, falling back to the ground after barely covering half a meter.
Even more snakes began silently slithering up the stone cliff side.
Xiang Nanli snapped off the flashlight and scrambled toward the surface at top speed, his mechanical limbs striking the rock so fast they nearly kicked up sparks.
BOOM—!
The sound of gunfire echoed from the distance as the city’s defense artillery was brought online.
In the Outer City of the Eternal City:
Soaring flames illuminated the night sky as thick plumes of smoke billowed upward. Numerous Crawlers let out enraged roars across the snow-covered ground.
The bodies of many Crawlers were ignited by the blazes; chemical fuel clung stubbornly to their hides, refusing to extinguish no matter how frantically the beasts rolled in the snow.
They had burst out from deep underground. Massive Crawlers forced open the cracked earth, squeezing through the fissures. If possible, they would have preferred to breach the Inner City directly, but the Inner City was a fully enclosed metal fortress. Aside from Ezekiel, none of them could enter through any route other than the surface.
The physical resilience of Crawlers far exceeded that of ordinary biological creatures; their body surfaces could absorb oxygen, allowing them to maintain vital signs on minimal oxygen levels. While the flames proved annoying, they were hardly enough to force a retreat.
“SKRRR—!” Screaming fiercely, the Crawlers surged forward.
Ezekiel had issued them a single command: Assault the city.
Their intellect was far too primitive to comprehend complex orders, let alone tactical maneuvers. If Ezekiel said to attack the city, they would simply launch an all-out assault against the iron wall before their eyes.
Climb up, tear apart every obstacle, and breach the Inner City.
This was the sole objective of the Mutants. Focused entirely on their task, they did not spare a single glance for the humans at their feet.
The unfortunate victims were the innocent civilians. Dense smoke ruined the air ventilation ducts, forcing the people hiding inside their homes to push open roof hatches and crawl out from the underground.
Their frail physical frames meant nothing before the Crawlers; some were crushed directly underfoot, while many more were consumed by the spreading blazes. Meanwhile, the artillery mounted along the city walls maintained a relentless, unending barrage.
A total of 70,000 residents inhabited the Eternal City.
Driven by basic survival instincts, tens of thousands of serfs congregated beneath the walls of the main city district, forming a dense, dark sea of bodies like a swarm of ants. Their ragged clothes happened to share the same dull brown-and-black tone as the terrain. A small fraction wore official uniforms; normally arrogant and considering themselves superior to the masses, they were now equally barred outside the gates.
Some forgot their usual terror and hammered furiously on the city gates; others fell to their knees beneath the walls, kowtowing repeatedly in hopes that someone above would show mercy. Still others slumped against the stone, offering useless prayers.
The Mutants drew closer, the ground trembling under the weight of their advance.
The civilians cried out in the official dialect of the Eternal City.
Yet ironically, the prominent figures standing atop the city walls could not understand a single word.
What those leaders studied was Human Alliance standard speech, supplemented perhaps by a smattering of the Holy See’s forbidden script.
Setting language aside, these serfs were scrawny, plain, and visibly malnourished. They appeared to belong to an entirely different species compared to the fair-skinned, well-fed figures atop the walls.
The City Lord stood inside a circular tower at the corner of the wall, draped in the formal robes of the Holy See with his hands resting behind his back. He gazed out into the distance, never once looking down at his subjects gathered right below the wall.
Feeds transmitted back by drones depicted a scene akin to purgatory inside the district, yet not a ripple of emotion showed on the City Lord’s face.
His eyes were camera-like prosthetics, their lenses reflecting the searing glow of the flames.
The Black Cross Inquisition was divided into three branches: the Senate, the Knights, and the Clergy.
The City Lord hailed from the Clergy. As a mid-level operative of the organization, he possessed the exact traits prized by the Holy See: obedience, composure, and a complete lack of fear toward sacrifice.
Beside him, an official wrapped tightly in a thick fur cloak shivered, looking as though he had been pulled from a warm bed in the middle of the night. He stammered nervously, “My Lord? These Crawlers… seem somewhat smarter than usual? It’s almost as if they’re organized…”
As the Crawlers reached the base of the wall, the panicked civilians scattered with wails of terror, ceding the area to the monstrous horde.
The city walls were smooth and extraordinarily dense. The Crawlers’ claws could leave only faint scratches on the reinforced surface, causing them to slip and tumble back down whenever they tried to scale it halfway.
An eight-meter-long Crawler let out a furious howl, scooped up a chunk of burning masonry, and hurled it over the city wall. The surrounding monsters promptly mimicked its action, raining debris over the defense perimeter.
This group of Crawlers was indeed far more intelligent than ordinary beasts; they had actually learned to utilize tools.
Ezekiel’s influence was undeniably at work.
Recognizing the incoming threat, the city’s defense system launched interception nets. The compressed netting expanded in mid-air, forming broad circular barriers to catch the debris.
The City Lord was a stern, middle-aged man, the fiery light reflecting in his prosthetic eyes: “Irrelevant. Our directive is simply to hold them off. Nothing must disrupt the birth and assimilation of the Holy Spirit. Has there been any word from Lord Sariel yet?”
“L-Lord Sariel said… very soon. He instructed us to stall for a bit longer,” the official replied with a flattering, eager smile.
The City Lord pondered briefly before continuing, “Deactivate the anti-air interception system for now. It consumes too much power.”
While the thrown masonry posed a minor threat, its destructive capacity was limited.
“Understood.”
“What is the status at the arena?” the City Lord asked next.
The official clasped his hands in front of his chest, the twelve gemstone rings on his fingers sparkling in the firelight: “The Holy Spirit’s companion entities have hatched. The seismic disruption caused by their hatching severed our signal to Lord Xiang Chenxi.”
The official deliberately omitted several critical details.
For instance, he found it rather difficult to explain why the arena had begun collapsing from the top down. His subordinates had inspected the perimeter—the place was entirely deserted, and surveillance logs yielded zero biological evidence. He assumed the structure had simply fallen into disrepair due to neglected maintenance.
Since taking the blame for such a failure would fall squarely on his shoulders, the official preferred not to bring it up.
The arena hadn’t been used in a long time anyway; it was Xiang Chenxi who had insisted that the outside venues lacked sufficient grandiosity and were poorly suited for maintaining secrecy, forcing the relocation into the city limits.
Regardless, the outcome remained the same; the process was unimportant. If necessary, an investigation could be launched later…
At the mention of Xiang Chenxi’s name, the City Lord couldn’t help but frown slightly.
“Lord Sariel will not let anything happen to him. Even if something went wrong, rushing over now would be too late; we are five or six kilometers away from the peak. We must not panic. Maintain a tight defense and ensure not a single Mutant breaches the Inner City.”
With that, the City Lord subtly manipulated a metallic object gripped tightly in his palm. It was the activation key for the Gospel.
Xiang Nanli hauled himself onto the edge of the cliff with great difficulty. His biological arms felt numb. Behind him, the mechanical limbs extended, retracted, and folded back into the storage pack mounted on his back.
Barely ten minutes had elapsed since the arena’s collapse.
Looking down, Xiang Nanli caught sight of the harsh, blazing fires at the foot of the mountain. The sharp, pungent odor of burning chemicals filled the air; fortunately, he was still wearing his protective mask.
Andrew’s feet touched the ground once more, his demeanor visibly shaken: “What on earth just happened? Where is Sirius? Where’s Lhein? And… where is Donghuang?”
His facial expression remained locked in its default smile, but his tone betrayed sheer disorientation.
Lhein was almost certainly dead, most likely turned into snake feed down in the pit.
Sirius and Xiang Chenxi had fallen into the depths together.
Xiao Qing was out of contact, likely still underground. With Sariel and the Holy Spirit down there as well, there was no telling what condition Xiao Qing was in.
“There are Mutant sounds coming from outside—it’s likely a Mutant siege. Let’s find a secure location first to assess the situation. I need more information before making a judgement…”
Xiang Nanli spoke as he advanced, but his voice came to an abrupt halt.
A humanoid entity stepped out from the roadside, blocking his path directly ahead.
Xiang Nanli retraced his recent memories and suddenly realized that the entity had actually been standing there all along. It was just that no one had perceived its presence until it moved.
It was Ezekiel.
Was “it” or “he” the appropriate pronoun?
His skin was a pale, raw pink, and his facial features were still in the process of forming. The proportions of his limbs were unnaturally elongated, yet he wore a neatly fitted uniform in a strangely humanlike fashion.
Xiang Nanli took half a step back, the mechanical limbs behind his back deploying instantly—an unmistakable posture of high alert.
Ezekiel tilted his head slightly, pointing to the uniform he wore: “Does it look good? I stripped it off that guy just now.”
He had just been a bit careless during the stripping process.
The outer layer of skin had been peeled off along with the fabric, leaving behind a somewhat heavy scent of fresh blood.
The unfortunate victim was a city defense officer sent by the official to inspect the area. Fresh off delivering his report, he had met an untimely demise.
Xiang Nanli took a deep breath, forcing a composure onto his features as a polite smile appeared on his face: “Long time no see, Ezekiel.”
