Bullets of the Outsider (Part One)

Beneath the gray stone tower where Relics were salvaged, chaos reigned. Bandits in burlap hoods appeared as abruptly as if they had sprouted from the earth. They seemed more familiar with the terrain than the salvagers, launching attacks from behind cover and blind spots again and again, easily driving the salvagers out of the stone tower.

Most of the salvagers scattered on the spot at the sight of this. A few with some backbone still stubbornly held the entrance. One young salvager swung a club to drive back the bandits, his childish face twisted with shock and fury.

"Big brother, have you lost your mind?! We're all colleagues just scraping by at the Workshop! What the hell are you doing?!"

This was already the third attack this month. Though the bandits had hidden their faces beneath burlap sacks, he recognized those familiar figures. Most of them were veteran salvagers who had once worked at Ansa Workshop. When he had first entered the trade, these old-timers had taught him the ropes hand in hand. When they resigned, he had even gone around toasting every one of them at their farewell banquet. But only a few months had passed—how had those honest, humble salvagers gone mad like this?

The burlap-hooded bandit attacking him had savage eyes. He drove a vicious punch into the young man's eye socket, making stars burst before his eyes.

"Colleagues, my ass!" the bandit roared. "Wearing clothes you picked up and clutching pocket change from selling trash—outsiders don't have a shred of a way to live in this shithole of a city. Even if we picked garbage for ten thousand years, we grandpas still couldn't go home!"

He snatched away the club and immediately unleashed a wild, head-splitting barrage of blows. The poor young man was beaten bloody and unconscious. The line of defense at the entrance collapsed completely. The red-eyed bandits surged inside, their leader charging at the front while still rallying his men.

"The authorities want homeless people like us to serve as livestock! They want to squeeze outsiders dry until we die!" the bandit leader shouted. "How much longer are we supposed to stay here? If we don't act now, how can we ever return to our own Dust Island?!"

"Break the curtain! Leave the city! Return home!" The bandits answered in unison, as orderly as an army. "Break the curtain! Leave the city! Return home!"

Most of the bandits followed their leader into the Gray Tower, while a small number of guards immediately began building a defensive line. Four bandits carrying long-barreled firearms climbed onto the walls and took up firing positions, while the others warily searched the surroundings. The bandit farthest from the entrance spotted two figures rushing toward the stone tower. He raised his gun and aimed at once, but before he could pull the trigger, a black shadow struck him in the chest. His breathing stopped on the spot. It felt as though a rhinoceros had rammed him square in the chest!

The next instant, silver tentacles swept away the bandit's long-barreled gun, and a precise chop to the neck knocked him unconscious. Chu Hengkong picked up a pitch-black stone. This little thing was what had stopped the bandit from firing just now.

"If you hit the head, there's no need to waste time finishing them off," Chu Hengkong said.

"If you hit their heads, I'm afraid you'll blow their brains apart!" Ji Huaishu shouted from beside him. "Remember, you're law enforcement now. No killing unless it's necessary."

"As you say, Captain." Chu Hengkong tilted his head aside to evade a Water Bullet. "For now, we split up. It'll be troublesome if you get hit..."

These bandits were far more capable than the thugs under Hugos. They were organized, planned, and clearly had some training. They knew to seize the high ground and hide behind walls to fire from the shadows. The two of them moving side by side made a huge target. He wasn't confident he could charge forward while protecting Ji Huaishu at the same time.

"No need. Charge with me."

Yet this girl was the sort who never listened to advice. Without taking any defensive measures, she rushed out straight into seven specially made Water Bullets! Each one had enough explosive force to send a grown man flying a hundred meters. With the same attack stacked seven times, even steel bones and iron sinews would be shattered in midair.

Chu Hengkong hurriedly sent his tentacles around Ji Huaishu's waist, intending to drag her into safety. But he saw golden light bloom in her hands, several times brighter than it had been during their glide through the sky. With almost no delay at all, the golden radiance solidified into a translucent knight's shield.

Those powerful Water Bullets were sent flying straight off the light shield. They did not even make Ji Huaishu take a single step back!

"Holy shit, that's..." "Doom Knight!" "That crazy woman from the Resurrection Corps!"

"Why did she grow a tail?!" "Look closely—she's connected to the man behind her! That witch must be using sorcery to siphon energy!"

The bandits sucked in sharp breaths, their varied cries of alarm coming one after another. Ji Huaishu slowly looked down at the tentacles around her waist, veins faintly bulging at her temple.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I..." Chu Hengkong awkwardly withdrew his tentacles. "Let's go. Charge. Leave the grunts to me."

Ji Huaishu shot him a vicious glare, then charged ahead with the light shield raised. She was an invincible vanguard. Neither Water Bullets nor the broken stones hurled by the bandits could shake that shield. Even the concentrated barrage from all seven specialized water guns failed to slow her by the slightest bit. Three bandits rolled out from behind the wall, intending to circle around and attack from her side and rear blind spots. What greeted them were stones as precise as though they had eyes. The first struck a wrist and disarmed its target; the second hit the solar plexus or groin and wounded its target. Chu Hengkong's fingers on his right hand flickered in motion, and amid cries of pain, three more enemies were left unable to move.

In just a few seconds, Ji Huaishu had rushed to the unguarded entrance. Chu Hengkong withdrew from behind the light shield and darted up the wall on the right like a shadow. The bandits guarding the high ground had yet to see their enemy's true face when a chop to the back of the neck sent them to the ground. Chu Hengkong slid past the falling body beneath his feet, then bent his arm backward and drove a heart-piercing elbow into the second bandit.

The two guarding the right side of the entrance fell in a single exchange. The bandits on the left wall hurriedly raised their guns and pulled back. They secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The entrance gate lay between the two walls—surely even those tentacles could not reach across such a distance.

Chu Hengkong indeed did not use his tentacles. Before the enemies' stunned eyes, he raised the gun he had taken.

After two gunshots, the last two bandits were blasted high into the air by fountain-like jets of water. Chu Hengkong leaped down from the wall and returned behind Ji Huaishu. The fight on the wall had taken less than two seconds. By then, Ji Huaishu had only just entered the gray stone tower.

"Your fundamentals are pretty good. I thought you were the type who didn't use guns."

"I just don't like using them." Chu Hengkong shrugged, using his tentacles to reel back several stones. "When I used to go on missions, a knife was enough."

"Did people in your hometown use blades and swords more often than guns too?" Ji Huaishu asked with a hint of interest.

"The firearms in my hometown are better than those in Dragon's Return City. Anyone who thinks normally uses guns." Chu Hengkong reeled the stones back with his tentacles. "I'm part of the abnormal minority."

The inside of the gray stone tower was pitch-black. The bandits who had entered before them had shut off the power source, and only scattered slivers of light shone through the cracks in the stone walls. Apart from the pair's footsteps, there was no sound inside the tower. The bandits who had arrived first seemed to have melted into the darkness. Chu Hengkong pulled out a white Charge Iron Ring and tapped it against the walls over and over, while Ji Huaishu examined the water gun he had seized.

This gun looked different from the Water Bullet pistols used by the thugs. Its long, slender barrel was painted dark blue, making it resemble a modified hunting rifle. Ji Huaishu gave it two quick looks and clicked her tongue loudly.

"A Riptide Gun modified by Skillful Hands. I know who it is." She shouted toward the top of the tower, "Come out, San Sen Wangxiang! Keep resisting, and I'll have you locked up for ten years!"

A man's strange cry came from above, shrill as a bat's song. "Locked up? Hee hee, what's the difference? We've already been locked in this shithole of a city for over twenty years!"

"No one has deprived you of your freedom of movement—"

"Stop lying! I already know! It was your dear old father who sealed off the routes out!" San Sen Wangxiang screeched. "Sealed them off! They're gone! We can never go back again! Other than blasting your damned water curtain to pieces with a single shot, what else can we do?!"

"Break the curtain! Leave the city! Return home!"

The bandits' chant erupted thunderously, echoing through the empty stone tower again and again. Dozens of dark-blue modified guns emerged from the darkness, and high-pressure Water Bullets poured down like a rainstorm. This time, Ji Huaishu did not meet them head-on. She grabbed Chu Hengkong and rushed into the side corridor. Chu Hengkong said nothing, committing every word they had said to memory as he searched his mind for the name San Sen Wangxiang.

Before morning training today, he had deliberately made a trip to headquarters and memorized every wanted notice on the bulletin board. San Sen Wangxiang's was in the middle section, and it carried a description that interested him greatly:

["Cluster Cannon" San Sen Wangxiang]

Bounty: 150,000 Flow Pearls.

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Demon-possessed, in possession of a Relic.

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Active across the floating islands of the Workshop District, committing random robberies.

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Trait One: "Skillful Hands"! Beware fist cannons and modified weaponry!