Act.6 · Gallant Ones
Foreword:
[The birds of the air, which neither sow nor reap, nor store away as food in barns, yet the Father feeds them; how much more will He feed man!]
[--Chekhov]
[Part 1: The Laughing Man]
Looking out from the ocean pier, besides the Ice Man Hagalaz, another Death Giant stands a kilometer away in the sea.
The rune in its skull means "Wunjo," which signifies joy, happiness, and bliss.
The enormous, still-living zombie had a deep V-shaped gash on its face, as if some sharp weapon had torn apart its cheekbones, revealing a terrifying yet cheerful smile.
The larvae of the Morpho butterfly burrowed in and out of this crack. Every ten minutes or so, a giant, Madness Butterfly would emerge from its cocoon and fall into the seawater, only to immediately revert to its giant form.
In A Ling's [Phoenix] system, this giant is translated as [The Laughing Man], and is also the first target identified by Ibrahimovic.
The Laughing Man is neither too far nor too close to the harbor. If the JoeStar squad wants to test the power of shore artillery and other heavy weapons, and to test the effectiveness of shells in destroying these ancient artifacts, it would be best to start with the Laughing Man.
The Ice Man is too close to the harbor; artillery fire will awaken these ancient creatures. If Immortal Lune and can't grasp their flesh, even a single finger of these behemoths flying into the outpost could cause immense damage.
Apart from Xue Ming and Teacher A Ling, everyone else followed Brother Yibu to the beachhead to repair the gun emplacements and conduct artillery tests.
The local residents of Red Star Hill gathered together, opened thick oil paper packages from the old armory, pried open crates, and carried out 110 kilograms of artillery shells.
Twenty-two men stared at each other, and seeing the rusty and rotten cargo truck in the warehouse, with Yibu's embarrassed expression, they could only roll up their sleeves and, in pairs, carry the heavy shells into the cargo bed of the tricycle.
Starting from the village's refinery, Yibu specifically instructed Meteor and the others to avoid the factory's towers and reservoirs, and not to approach the long-abandoned factory.
Meteor carried a large steel beam as a shoulder pole, with a cannonball hanging on each side, walking with great vigor. Hearing his brother Yibu's instructions, he asked curiously.
What was this factory used for before?
Brother Yibu and his comrades walked towards the shallower, steeper shore, answering without turning their heads.
"Uranium refining is used to make nuclear bomb materials. Even after so many years, there is still some radiation. You should stay away from it."
The old factory building is now deserted. It looks like a towering semi-circular fortress, or an egg sunk deep into the ground. Its bluish-gray steel shell seems ready to defend against a crash attack from Madness Butterfly.
The terrain became increasingly steep, as if sliding down from a giant's knees to his calves, and when people reached the security facilities on the shallows, they had to rely on their bare hands to carry the shells.
The coastline has four roller belts for the ammunition feeders, but they are now rotten and unusable.
Fifty-one Peony 2S7 self-propelled howitzers stand on the shore, but the bicycle assembly of these howitzers is almost completely scrapped, and the rusty diesel engines simply cannot lift their forty-six-ton weight.
Twenty-four cannons had long since abandoned their vehicle-mounted structures, converting their gun emplacements into foundation piles driven into the deep rocks of the mudflats.
People carefully made their way forward, along the stone-paved road, to the artillery position, where they stood beside two shore guns and began loading and test firing.
Yibu shouted to Jason, "Iason! You test fire first, I'll adjust the trajectory and windage."
Jason received the order and, along with his comrades, fed the shells into the muzzle. The Peony's electronic fire control had malfunctioned, the loading machine was on strike, and the rear hydraulic guide rod in the gun chamber had some minor issues.
Soon, the clear sound of the cannon barrel closing could be heard. Jason pulled and pushed the people, telling his companions to stay away. If a cannon of this caliber were to explode, the shockwave from the shell's explosion alone could shatter a person's internal organs and break their bones.
They had run almost seventy meters away, with only Brother Yibu remaining in the beach bunker, looking towards the Laughing Man in the distance to observe the impact point and calculate how to fire the next shot.
Jason gripped the rope tightly and pulled hard.
"Boom--"
Thick smoke and flames erupted in front of the cannon barrel. The Laughing Man's right shoulder was hit by the cannon, as if he had been violently charged by a bull or horse. His body swayed and staggered backward, but after taking a step back, he still stood firmly in the shallow sea area, showing no sign of falling.
The thunderous cannon fire was like an alarm clock. The Ice Man, closest to the coastline, turned his head slightly, as if drawn by the peony-like cannon fire, and heard the roar of humanity.
Further away, the Laughing Man waved his hand, using his fingernail to pick out the sesame-seed-sized cannonball from his shoulder, and then began to let out a loud, slow, dull laugh.
The voice was deep, strange, and terrifying.
People first saw the Laughing Man shrugging his shoulders, shaking his neck, his chest heaving, and his throat moving. After a full three seconds, the belated sound waves and gale almost washed away the rotten rust on the peony.
Yibu gritted his teeth. "Laugh all you want! Laugh all you want!"
The Ice Man has no eyes, mouth, or nose, but its ears are extremely sensitive. As it takes a step toward the coastline, the scalding mud immediately churns up, turning into heavy waves that press toward the artillery positions. Fortunately, this immense force cannot extend beyond a distance of seven hundred meters.
The Ice Man took another step forward, but it was as if he was being tightly gripped by the Immortal Lune. His shinbone and knee were suddenly exposed to the air, and the flesh of his right leg seemed to be ruthlessly gouged out by the blade of time. His bones had already stepped forward, but his body was held in place by an inexplicable force.
Yibu yelled at Jason and threw away his artillery notes.
"Adjust the wind speed! Aim at the Laughing Man's head! Aim at the runes inside its skull!"
Without saying a word, Meteor and Xia Xia cleaned the carbon deposits from the cannon barrel, waited for it to cool down slightly, and then loaded the next round.
Jason had already begun turning the axle, re-locking onto the enemy's Gate of Death based on the new artillery wind drift data.
If the Immortal Lune within the heads of these giants can be destroyed, they can be put into an eternal slumber.
At that moment, the Ice Man's facial features began to twist and deform, resembling a large chrysanthemum, with contorted fleshy strands converging into a strange, protruding tube-like structure.
--Upon seeing this, Yibu's face turned ashen.
"Get down! Get down! Get down!"
In that instant, Katusha was once again frozen in fear, at a loss in the face of the overwhelming spiritual pressure.
Jason reacted quickly, shoving the waiter and Diamond into the mud. The three of them tumbled into the filthy mud, as if trapped in a heavy iron coffin, unable to move.
Meteor crouched in front of the gun emplacement's armor plate, trying to look out through the observation window.
Hundreds of meters away, a jet of black, powdery energy suddenly shot out from the [Ice Man's ] chrysanthemum-shaped nozzle.
They resemble sharp ice flowers and iron rain, drawing an unforgettable straight line in the broad and turbulent nearshore shallows!
Black ice sprays swept through the mud, creating fissures several meters deep. These terrifying wounds were slowly healing, leaving behind extremely cold ice fragments, like scars left when the earth begins to heal.
Meteor felt his head and face tilt as if he had been punched hard. He heard the crackling sound of the armor plates of the self-propelled gun. He finally woke up when he fell to the ground. Teacher San San, through the pressure plate visor of his helmet, gritted his teeth and said firmly to him, "Don't try to kill yourself again."
The armor plates of the cannons rumbled as if they were being strafed by anti-aircraft machine guns. Ice shards seeped into the gaps in the observation windows and flew straight toward the large shell of the refinery, slicing through the old mortar and revealing more of the steel's color.
The jet lasted for a brief moment, stopping after four seconds.
After using the "I fucking shoot it out" move, the grotesque fleshy strip on the Ice Man's face returned to its terrifying dent. It seemed to have lost its balance due to exhaustion, squatting in the mud while leaning on its knees. However, after taking a couple of deep breaths, it stood up again.
Yibu, with a strong voice and a ruddy complexion, looked incredibly energetic.
"Everyone! Are you alright?"
The brothers from each squad crawled out of the Barry. Most of them were lying on their backs, wearing artillery earmuffs. Their eyes, ears, noses and mouths were not poisoned by chiral molecules. After shaking the mud off their cotton-padded clothes, they immediately became energetic again.
Jason scrambled to his feet from the mud puddle, looking disheveled.
"It's alright. It's alright, it... you're alive!"
He wiped the mud off his mask, pulled over the dazed Katusha and Diamond, and went to let Yibu know he was safe.
"Fine!"
Yibu immediately spoke to everyone.
"Go! Go! Go back! Run!"
The meteor still didn't understand what was happening.
Only one shot fired? Time to run?
This time, he wasn't interested in being a curious child anymore, and he followed 3301 as they ran back the way they came.
Strange "click-clack" sounds came from behind. A Xing turned around and glanced back. He was immediately terrified. He had been following behind 3301, but after seeing clearly what was on the beach and in the shallow sea, he picked up 3301, lifted him above his head, and ran as fast as he could.
What's on the beach?
That was a possession of the giants.
--From the energy streams sprayed by the [Ice Man], hundreds of bizarre humanoids crawled out from the scars left on the earth and in the mud.
These humanoid figures are composed of black, multifaceted prism-like ice blocks, like mysterious creations from an ancient era. They are the result of the mythical magic of Mountain Giant whose blood, when sprinkled on the earth, could give birth to life.
The Ice Man's appendages are these humanoid substances composed of sharp, black ice shards.
They resembled clumps of tumbleweed, their cone-shaped limbs intertwined and linked together, forming sets of rollers about eight meters high, tumbling forward and moving rapidly through the muddy swamps on the border of Niflheim.
The group ran behind the eggshell wall of the refinery and saw the surging frost wheels crash into the narrow alleyway, scraping sparks on the smooth concrete slope. After spinning ten or so times, they turned into mud and water, and were pulled back into the [Ice Man]'s body by the power of the Immortal Lune.
Many small ice shards bombarded the sturdy nuclear facility building, crashed into the round and solid shell, and bounced even further away.
Almost instinctively, Meteor's gaze followed the ice shards toward the abandoned residential area, where it saw sparse ice pieces flying like knives and bullets, disappearing back into the sea through the broken doors and windows of the warehouse.
The Slavic men hid on the second floor of the warehouse, raising their large shields and forming a circle. After an unknown amount of time, the beach finally returned to silence.
Yibu raised the Spirit Calamity concentration indicator.
The value plummeted from a near-total [999%] to a near-total [999%]
--Back to [97%].
"We're safe!"
Jason was panting heavily, as if he had been given a second chance at life.
He patted his heavy armor all over his body, checked the seams of the helmet plates to make sure there were no ice flowers left by the Ice Man, and then pulled Katusha over and touched her from head to toe.
Meteor wanted to repeat the same tactic and make a move on 3301.
To his surprise, 3301 had already touched him all over before he could. The half-wolf girl was very concerned about her employer's safety, after all, this little fool's behavior just now was just like that of a new recruit going to the battlefield for the first time.
"Diamond is fine! I'm fine too!"
"Is everyone alright?"
"Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!"
A young man of about twenty-five or twenty-six raised his hand. He had two very deep wounds on his arm and abdomen, both stained with chilling bluish-gray blood.
Yibu immediately opened the first-aid kit, took out the White Lady's products, and dissolved the freeze-dried powder in water.
He had just unscrewed the kettle lid when he realized he couldn't pour out any hot water.
"Oh no, oh no, damn Iason! Do you have Universal Elixir!?"
Jason was about to take out his medicine from his bag.
Then the Slavic lad raised his hand. "No, no, no, no! Iason! This is for saving lives! This isn't for treating wounds!"
The young man snatched Yibu's water bottle and examined it closely.
--The steel shell of the water bottle was cracked by the ice skates, and the insulation layer was also broken. In such a cold environment, the clean water inside the bottle had frozen into a large block of ice.
He pulled back his cotton sweater to reveal his wound. The open wound, the size of a palm, had completely frozen over. His kidney function was beginning to fail, and his face turned ashen. Ice crystals kept emerging from his skin, slowly taking away his body heat and trying to assimilate his essence into a part of the Death Giant.
The guy grabbed a bottle of engine antifreeze, lay down in the warehouse, keeping his heart level with the wound, filled a vodka bottle cap with some liquor, and then lit it on the wound.
As if he had treated this kind of injury many times before, he poured the freeze-dried powder onto his arm and abdomen, slowly melted the water in the iron kettle, and poured it onto the freeze-dried powder to fully activate the medicinal properties of White Lady's products.
Just a few seconds later, there was a "pop" sound.
A clump of dark red, blood-stained mud, resembling a leech or worm, emerged from the upper arm and fled towards the sea.
The scars on my abdomen are gradually healing completely.
--The Slavic lad downed a mouthful of fiery liquor, then vomited up a pile of black mud.
He rinsed his mouth with warm water, his eyes were bloodshot, and his brain was spinning from the rapid heartbeat and sudden high blood pressure. Finally, he stood still and a bright smile appeared on his face.
"Hahahaha! I'm alive! Brother Yibu! Iason!"
[Part ② - Exclamation Mark]
The feeling of surviving a disaster is the best.
This energetic young man pulled off several impressive feats in front of the passengers at Nine Realms Station, making Liuxing's eyes light up and start fantasizing about doing the same thing himself.
This wasn't the first time Jason had seen RSH people use this method to force out the giant essence within them. There were also cases of failure, where the person was disemboweled by shattered ice shards, and it was a miracle if they survived.
This energetic young man has done this before. Judging from his treatment of the injuries and his stable mental state, Yibu has tried it many times before and has fired at these giants.
Meanwhile, Jiang Xueming and Teacher A Ling followed the old engineer from the boiler room to the power workshop of the outpost base, in order to find those weapon platforms that could carry heavy firepower.
After passing through four residential areas, Xue Ming finally understood the layout of the village. Its overall design resembled a five-pointed star—not like the Pentagon, but rather a city that relied on five nuclear power plants to supply electricity and heating to each zone.
However, these factory and residential areas have been abandoned, and various towers and base stations can still be seen today.
The power workshop was located on the northeast side of the outpost, not far from the outpost at the Heaven's Ladder.
These followers of the Madness Butterfly also need to collect scrap iron and steel in this desolate and resource-scarce wasteland to build their huts and settlements.
His eyes swept over the various facilities, shops, and warehouses along the way.
Relying on the Phoenix's identification and authentication capabilities, it can discern the Russian characters written on the rusty signs, and perhaps find some useful materials in these dilapidated warehouses and shops, which are neatly organized like bookshelves.
As he passed through the central square, in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes, Xue Ming saw a decaying statue standing in the very center of the city.
Its true appearance is no longer discernible.
--Several soldiers wearing pressure-resistant frog suits gathered here.
Without exception, they were all men, wearing armbands for the Heaven's Ladder, and had just opened cans of fast food.
When Xue Ming and A Ling came into their view, the soldiers all turned around.
Right now, at this very moment.
The Phoenix UI immediately marked them as red names and highlighted their health bars.
Bright red exclamation marks appeared above the soldiers' heads.
Like this --[!]
Xue Ming asked in a low voice, "Teacher A Ling, do you consider them enemies?"
"Your observation skills need some work, kid." Su Ling pulled an AK-12 out of Xue Ming's backpack, not intending to use her own gun at all.
The old engineer hunched over and nodded, preparing to go up and say hello.
"Thank you for your hard work! You've all worked so hard! Eat and drink well! Thanks to you all, the Spirit Calamity here is decreasing day by day!"
Then, through the soldiers' diving goggles, pairs of bright red, inhuman eyes could be seen.
The squad commander in the combat team placed the canned fast food next to the platform of the Monument to the People's Heroes.
Xue Ming finally saw the frost on the can, and the human eyeballs and brains beneath the ice.
Teacher A Ling glanced at them and immediately identified them as targets to be killed.
The old engineer had just taken off his heavy work vest and was about to take out a cigarette to offer to these menacing men.
The frogman unit commander spoke calmly in Russian.
"We're starving, and everything's frozen. Could you please do us a favor?"
The tone was very calm and composed, as if he were talking about family matters.
The old engineer didn't quite understand, but he spoke kindly to these minions of the Lord of Cinder, "What do you need me to do? I'll do my best to help you, heroes!"
The commander immediately asked, "Is there a fire? We need to melt the canned food, otherwise we can't eat it at all."
The veteran engineer thought for a moment and finally answered, "Come with me to the power plant; it's warmer there."
"But I simply can't wait that long!" The commander flew into a rage, ripped off his mask, and grabbed the Master of Ceremonies's filthy vest. "Why don't you sacrifice yourself for our great cause? Your name can be engraved on this monument! I promise! I promise you! I—"
"Bang--"
A Ling's hand trembled slightly.
The commander's fingers were still trembling, and his head had turned into a paste, splattered all over his comrades.
Su Ling: "I'm sorry."
The soldiers crouching beside the monument tried to draw their guns to return fire.
Su Ling: "What I meant by 'sorry' wasn't what you think."
She showed no mercy as she spewed forth tongues of fire and rain of iron from the Eye of the Blood Wolf, and as the merciless steel-core bullets claimed lives one by one.
"I'm sorry, it wasn't that my hand was shaking, it's that I forgot this thing has a rapid-fire function."
The Master of Ceremonies seemed to have seen it all before. The moment the first bullet shattered the cannibal's skull, his cheek was cut by a bone fragment, and he immediately took cover under the statue of the great man to avoid the stray bullets.
In the brief street brawl, Xue Ming only saw one after another light "[KILL!]" characters popping up.
There were six more corpses on the ground, and one more that was half-dead.
This guy is the only heavily armored unit in the Heaven's Ladder sentinel ranks.
He got up, intending to pick up the gun—
--Then, a gunshot rang out from Xue Ming's hand.
The enemy's arm was thrown off balance, but the bullets were stopped by the thick bulletproof vest.
Su Ling raised her gun and aimed, shattering the ogre's weapons into pieces. Even emptying the magazine couldn't harm a single hair on the heavily armored infantryman's head.
This indestructible scumbag stood up, forcefully pounding the iron helmet on his chest, as if mocking the two passengers' useless actions, or showing off his strong physique and heavy iron armor.
Su Ling removed the magazine and picked up Xue Ming's Battle Master.
"Birds in the sky"
Xue Ming handed over the magazine.
"Neither plant nor harvest."
Su Ling fired a merciless bullet at the ear loops of the helmet, shattering the clips that connected the bulletproof pressure plate to the helmet.
"It is not stored in the granary as grain."
Xue Ming retrieved the AK-12 and inserted a deadly, scorching steel core into the cracks in the shattered helmet.
"Even the Heavenly Father feeds it."
Su Ling pulled out the magazine, took bullets from Xue Ming's backpack, loaded it again, put on the safety, told Xue Ming to stay alert and draw his gun at any time, and then returned the magazine to its owner.
"Let alone people?!"