Vol. 25: The War Still Rages Within-A New Cold War

The appetizer has been digested.

Neither of the two ancient spirits of the living spoke while they ate their main meal.

Jack shut his mouth, his voice turning cold, as if tearing off the mask of an amusement park clown, about to chop the complete "O" of J[O]KE into fragmented pieces of J[A]CK.

Mary Stuart weighed her hand on her shoulder, her long dress and fur fluttering in the strong wind.

Her eyes were sharp and piercing. Her pupils moved erratically, quickly scanning Jack's knees, shoulders, elbows, and neck to gauge his arm span and height, and to assess the weapon's attack range.

The two moved almost simultaneously.

Jack chased after her with his knife, while Mary jumped out of the car window and hid in the narrow space of the carriage. She needed to use the distance of the heavy rapier to subdue him.

She had just rushed into the corridor when she heard the sound of wind cutting through her ears. Her body changed with the effect of the Soul Power, her hips and lower limbs shifting instantly to make way for the greatsword.

The gleaming silver saw blade pierced through the rosewood armrest of the car seat, then changed course and launched a fierce attack on Mary.

She didn't dodge, but instead met the attack with a kick.

Three-inch-thick bat claws grew from his heels, and in an instant, Jack's throat was slashed open by this vicious, deformed leg.

But no blood flowed out; only a substance resembling iron filings and mud slowly writhed at his neck.

In an instant, half of Mary's torso was about to be sliced open by the meat saw.

The golden, high-temperature holy flames followed the blade of the "an eye for an eye" technique, brutally separating the muscles from her side ribs to her fish-man lines.

There was no bleeding, and no pain was felt.

Mary Stuart could sense that this opponent was unkillable.

Ordinary swords, spears, and bullets cannot kill these undead.

Jack Martin is very much like [Outlaw] influenced by the Immortal Lune, but compared to [Outlaw], this guy's physical form is more like a spirit, a chaotic and disordered energy and dust, as if he were one with the Soul Power, and his physical form is that of an undead.

Sometimes it turns into smoke and dust, sometimes it accumulates into a tower of sand.

Without the magic and divine spells imbued in the weapon, without the impact of strong magnetic and electric energy flows, and without the humanoid soul power emanating from the body to strike Jack's physical form, he would be an extremely difficult opponent.

In just 0.17 seconds --

--Mary has already thought all these things through.

Like Xue Ming, she was a rational and ruthless person with an extremely strong will to survive.

But a lot can be done in 0.17 seconds; Jack Martin's Soul Power began to take effect.

In the cramped carriage, which was only about three meters long, the threads of the spirit pendulum were just enough for it to weave a net that stretched from top to bottom.

While Mary's open wound was still smoking, she didn't turn back, heading straight for the carriage's electrical center. In an instant, her body was sliced into seventeen pieces by sharp steel wire, but it healed as quickly as blood tofu, ignoring the fact that this kind of injury would have a 100% fatal rate for ordinary people.

Her body trembled, cut into countless irregular polygons by the silk threads. The tissue fluid and blood spurting from the wounds were sucked back in by the rapidly moving limbs and skin.

Only the torso, cut open by the silver saw, had carbonized skin that resembled a twisted, terrifying worm. In the dramatic transformation of the body, the charred scabs turned to dust, leaving it perfectly intact.

Jack vanished, transforming into black mist that suddenly lunged at Mary.

He once again blocked the middle of the road.

Mary didn't stop, raising her sword and slashing fiercely at the thick iron sheet, creating sparks.

The heavy rapier quickly turned into a 320-degree Celsius branding needle under the friction and heat of the steel sheet.

What followed was a relentless, storm-like attack.

--The sword-wielding posture, so sculpted as a sculpture, almost made Jack lose focus.

It's a ruthless technique that hides the blade in front of the enemy's eyes, almost in a straight line with the angle of Jack's pupils.

Mary was a seasoned swordswoman, and she knew the best angle to deliver the heavy rapier into the enemy's head with maximum efficiency.

The two attacked at extremely close range, yet not a single sound of saw blade clashing with rapier was heard.

They disregarded physical injuries, seeking only to crush their opponent's fighting spirit in twelve attacks.

Swordplay and blade flashes exploded into brilliant sparks inside the metal carriage.

From the start of the attack to the moment it moved out of range and readjusted its center of gravity, the rapier had already undergone a fire enchantment. It transformed from a 320-degree branding iron into a raging sword radiating a dark red light, reaching nearly a thousand degrees.

Looking at the messy knife wounds on Mary's body, she was missing three fingers, caused by Jack's slashes when he tried to disarm her.

Three pieces of flesh were missing from her shoulder and elbow, stuck to the car window, and trembling as they burned intensely.

Her spine was nearly severed in two, and the wound remained deep in her right lung, almost damaging her motor cortex.

She shifted her feet, turned her body backward, brandished her sword in a threatening manner, and adopted a high-attack stance. She needed a little time to adjust her metabolism and heart rate, just two seconds.

The images depicting Jack's physical injuries are even more grotesque.

His dusty flesh was inlaid with countless gems, allowing the heavy rapier, heated to nearly a thousand degrees Celsius, to pierce out fist-sized vacuum zones of silicon carbide.

His body was hunched over, like a lone wolf that had suffered a severe injury. His expression remained unchanged, even though there was a chestnut-sized dent on his head near his right eye, filled with glittering shards of vitreous sand. His eyeball had been pierced into a gem by the enchanted attack of the heavy rapier.

From the moment the battle officially began, the two didn't exchange another word, and only thirty-one seconds passed.

At thirty-three seconds --

--Mary exhibited an even more bizarre ability to control her body.

Half of her torso exploded—a sudden, unexpected crack.

From it flew out even thinner and smaller bats.

They covered Mary Stuart's flesh and skin, and the connective tissue of Mary's flesh could be observed through these sub-bodies.

Six of the bats are made up of Mary's head, with the small bat in the center having Mary's two eyes on its wings, while the other five bats show bloody and mangled brain tissue.

Some of the small bats darted out of the window, seemingly trying to escape.

A portion of them headed towards Jack, seemingly to stop the persistent pursuers.

Only Mary's head remained suspended in the observation position, alongside the other eight sub-bodies who raised their swords to meet the enemy.

This is the amazing power of Mary Stuart's Soul Might, which almost fully utilizes the vampire's ability to modify their own body.

Jack Martin set off again, his knee snapping open with a horrific wound to his kneecap and meniscus, separating his lower leg from his thigh. Halfway there, he was like a rag doll, wanting nothing more than to leave the monstrous bat behind.

The battle of the undead is about to come to an end.

--A command issued from Mary Stuart's neural command center.

Approximately sixty-six blood bats with supple skin roared out ultrasonic shockwaves in an instant.

At that moment, all the windows of the carriage shattered; even the most resilient resin glass could not remain intact under such terrifying spiritual pressure.

Jack's body was pierced by the scorching greatsword. The loose sand and gravel became dense and crystallized. Under the bombardment of the sound waves, fine quicksand gushed out from the wounds in his raven feather coat, just like blood.

The Ripper was torn apart by five horses at that moment, his pupils dilating.

He maintained his right arm raised high, poised to lunge forward.

However, his body had already turned into stiff fragments, which were then entangled and held by small groups of baby bats.

With a "thud--",

The silver-plated meat saw, along with his arm, crashed onto the liquor rack and shattered into pieces.

The heavy spike, suspended in mid-air, fell to the ground with a thud.

Of Mary's many blood bats, only Eyes and Brains continued to observe Jack's head.

The rapier was like a pile driver; each thrust and withdrawal was like forging tools, hammering nails.

Her thrusts weren't fast, but they were very steady.

--Like a precise sewing needle, it was meant to pierce through the frontal lobe and cerebellum of Jack Martin's skull, shattering the brainstem and thalamus.

She wasn't sure if doing this would kill Jack, but how would she know if she didn't try?

She finally had a moment to catch her breath, and under the relentless onslaught of the meat saw, she sent out her left hand, allowing her nimble bat-like offspring to search for the spare pistol on the bookshelf.

The outcome is already decided?

Yeah?

Really?

Mary thought this to herself, but she didn't dare to be careless at all.

She learned a lot from Jiang Xueming and from the Steel Heart, the most important of which was to punish the dead to prevent resurrection.

White Grape spilled from the shattered liquor rack; Mary remembered it as the base spirit used to mix human blood—a strong liquor.

As far as she knew, fire could kill any living thing on Earth.

Fire itself is divine magic, fire itself is magic.

She simply pierced the fire again with a scorching hot steel needle, watching as Jack's head, scorched by the flames, turned into a piece of crystal, seemingly about to become a new pyroxene.

She hesitated for only a moment—

--Really, it only lasted for a fleeting moment.

That pyroxene was simply too captivating.

As is well known, Mary was a woman who loved beauty to the extreme, to the point of madness.

Her battle with Jack Martin, which exposed her inhuman ugliness, has driven her to the brink of despair, forcing her to fight a desperate, all-or-nothing battle.

At this moment, the prismatic gemstones that emerged from Jack Martin's body, scorched by three and a half liters of liquor, dazzled her eyes.

She didn't even have time to look at the scenery outside the window.

A bullet shattered her skull.

Those were scorching bullets fired from the depths of the mines in Golden Township, from a ventilation duct, at a distance of six hundred meters.

Russian Mirage H-type civilian sniper and hunting rifle.

It belongs to Jason Megan's waitress Katusha.

The little girl was positioned in front of the platform in the ventilation duct, crouching and shooting, constantly on guard, ready to run away at the slightest disturbance.

But before escaping--

--She's going to send ten bullets.

The first bullet shattered the language area in the middle right brain of Mary Stuart.

The second bullet, with the accuracy of a Phantom sniper rifle at 0.1 MOA, after ballistic correction, pierced both of Mary Stuart's eyes.

The third scorching hot, silver-plated steel bullet struck Mary's sword-wielding hand, blasting the blood bat into dust, and turning the greatsword's hilt into a twisted piece of iron.

Mary only heard the gunshot after the fourth bullet had just left the barrel.

The sniper bullet with an initial velocity of 900 meters per second caught her almost completely off guard. If she had still been on the train, and if the train had still been moving— Katusha would have had a very difficult time hitting a high-speed moving target.

Only for a few seconds, when Jack Martin's skull turned into pyroxene, did this damned bat brain calm down.

Mary Stuart is about to die here.

The little bat quickly returned to its body, attempting to repair the damage to the brain's fundamental structure as soon as possible, to reconstruct the neural pathways, and to reclaim consciousness from the body.

This sophisticated egoist stood frozen in place. Four hundred and eighty-three years of solitude and waiting had finally led to a desperate battle. In the past, given Mary's personality, she would have surely tried every means to escape.

But at this moment, she was not facing Jack Martin, nor the lone Ripper.

She was facing an attack from the entire [JoeStar], the entire Anonymous School.

It was all thanks to the power of the Steel Heart. This radiant stone caused her mental strength to surge several times over in a short period of time, giving her the illusion that she could take a gamble.

She believed that if she could defeat these villains who had come from the underworld to carry out "Operation Chastity," the deterrent effect would make the Black Cat back down, and the "Philosopher Foundation" would have to reconsider the manpower costs required to eradicate the vampires.

If a reconciliation can be achieved through violence, the next steps will be a ceasefire agreement and territorial concessions and reparations—the world will begin a new Cold War and a new human trafficking trade.

But what the petit bourgeois ultimately awaited was her destined Bolshevik.

Before the person even arrived, the stick, spinning and burning with scalding blue fury, smashed Mary's neck. The little bats chased after the shattered and deformed head as if they were chasing the most precious treasure in the world.

They are like the numb and ignorant masses. They only know that the idol formed from the head is so beautiful and powerful, but they don't know that in order to survive, the head will only turn all these flesh and blood into its own part.

A motorcycle crashed through the train's side door, crushing Mary's remains between the motorcycle and the luggage rack inside the carriage.

Xiao Qi twisted the handlebars, suppressing her fear in the eerie and terrifying spiritual pressure environment. The spinning tires exploded rapidly in the sharp physical essence of the vampire saint.

Beneath the steel wheels, flesh turned to mush.

--As Xue Ming got out of the car, he pulled the iron mace along with him. There were six solid and deep sounding blows. The head that was flapping its wings in mid-air was split into three pieces. Finally, Xue Ming kicked it out of the car door.

While Mary was still suspended in mid-air.

For a fleeting moment—

--She felt free, or perhaps the meticulous and rigorous Jiang Xueming had finally been careless for once.

In this world, as long as even the slightest trace of Mary Stuart's essence exists, like an ineradicable mold virus, she will become the moss on this railway track, the lichen of this railway, carried back to the station along with the steel wheels.

Maintenance personnel will soon arrive to clean the stains on the train, thus staining it with the Blessed Holy Blood of Mary Stuart.

She will be reborn in another way, but with a different body, a different personality, and a different way of living.

It's not over yet; this battle will never end.

But she immediately realized—

How could Jiang Xueming possibly let her live?

As she flew out of the carriage and hovered in mid-air, she saw three motorcycles parked next to the maintenance shoulder of the railway.

Xue Ming: "Robert Tang Ning! Kill her!"

In Mary Stuart's eyes--

--I saw my jaw split in two, spilling out along with my skull.

This was the first time she had seen what Robert Tang Ning looked like.

He was a blond boy with a clean-cut and handsome face.

And so, before the revolving lantern of life—

--She began to think.

Is this the person Masha loves so deeply?

It's another version of me, someone I'd be willing to give my life to protect.

That's great.

I'm so envious.

He's crying. Why?

Is it because I look like Masha?

Humans are indeed visual creatures; they love beautiful and lovely things.

--No.

No no no no--

--No.

His eyes were filled with hatred.

Perhaps these tears were shed for Jack Martin.

Did I kill him? Is he really dead?

I can't think anymore, I need to rest for a bit.

Mary Stuart--

The world went dark. It felt warm and safe.

I prefer places without light. These people are too hot.

Especially that big guy, his smug smile is really annoying.

Dragon breath spewed from the muzzle of the SG-2.

A bottle of Balason solution was tossed high into the air by Bu Liuxing and dropped next to Mary's skull.

The silver stag bomb, propelled by the mercury fulminate primer, shattered the solvent bottle, transforming into a wall of fire.

It leaves virtually no blind spots --

--The secondary combustion of the ethanol solvent, carrying the disinfectant pesticide, turned it into a large fireball.

Then came more disinfectant vials thrown by the Earth Dragon Girl.

She took her employer Robert's hand and, in the secondary trigger housing of the SG-2, used the slender tail to pull the trigger to avoid hurting his fingers.

The second shotgun shell exploded in flames like a deadly heart.

When the flames dissipated, nothing could be seen anymore.

The flames spewed from the shotgun shells created charred smoke and dust, leaving a huge [V] mark on the ground.

The motorcycle's skid marks added a touch of elegance to it.

--Make it complete [A]

Tang Ning roared, his face red and his neck bulging. In the instant of avenging himself, he felt a sense of loss.

He shouted angrily, broke free from the waiter, and stomped his feet wildly.

His eyes were filled with tears; he didn't know where Uncle Winston had gone.

He dared not look at the scene inside the carriage, catching glimpses of the overcoat woven from crow feathers, and the mangled, bloodless figures. He could only recall the incomprehensible friendship that had lasted for over a hundred hours, a friendship as bizarre as a maddening dream.

He snatched the G26 from the Earth Dragon girl several times, and amidst the shocked and bewildered looks of everyone, he shoved the black muzzle of the Glock into his mouth.

He then knelt in front of the train and frantically pulled the trigger.

But the empty gun barrel mirrored his empty heart.

--I can't kill him.

"That's enough! Enough! Enough, employer!"

The Earth Dragon girl prostrated herself before Tang Ning.

"How long are you going to torture me! How long are you going to stop torturing yourself?!"

Her claws swept away the tears from the corners of Tang Ning.

"I tried so hard! I tried so hard to live! But how could you kill yourself so easily, without saying a word, with just a few bullets?"

Tang Ning was at a loss.

"I've killed so many people, I don't know what to do. I didn't know that Masha was killed because of my naivety. Uncle Winston saved my life and protected me during my transformation. He wanted to avenge me and help me kill my inner demons, but he was also killed by me."

"Didn't you take my words to heart at all, Robert!" The Earth Dragon girl opened her blood-red maw, almost biting Tang Ning's head off. "My name is Anna! I'm your waitress. If you die, my brain won't be good enough for other employers. I'm useless. The cat will send me to be a research specimen!"

She leaned against Robert and finally managed to wrest the gun back.

"This is a gun that Mr. Jiang Xueming gave me! He hoped I would fight bravely and protect myself! He also gave you a gun! You brat, you're really infuriating me! You're driving me crazy! I'm only six months old! You're two hundred and twenty-six months old! Is this how you treat a baby?"

"Excuse me." Jiang Xueming jumped off the train, snatched the COMBAT MASTER from Robert's arms, and said, "Give it back."

Robert wanted to say something more.

Sister Xue Ming was in a hurry to return to the station and transform back into Ming Ge Xueming. She got on Tang Ning's motorcycle and prepared to leave.

"So fussy." Xiao Qi took two G26 pistols from Earth Dragon and Tang Ning, intending to take them back for Commander Jessica to play with. "So annoying."

Before Robert could even say goodbye, the magical cat couple vanished in a flash.

A long, long time passed, Bu Liuxing couldn't say anything or ask anything.

He felt it was time to let Anna and Robert be alone for a while, and was preparing to leave.

--It's like a dormant volcano starting to show signs of activity again.

Intense flames erupted from Jack Martin's black raven cloak. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, a golden crow spreading its wings, and a spirited blond man emerged from a ball of dark flames.

Jack Martin had just stepped off the car onto the mesh pedals and said, feigning innocence.

"Ah! I'm dead! Hehe! Actually, no!~"