Rust Bone Gang X Choice X Gambling with His Life

Jiang Ye gave the rabbits no chance to adapt.

He overlapped his hands again, interlacing his fingers and spreading four of them to form the outline of an open canine mouth, with his thumbs raised as ears.

The hand shadow fell on the iron wall.

"Divine Dogs."

The instant the words left his mouth, two dark shapes sprang from the hand shadow on the wall.

The White Dog landed to his left and the Black Dog to his right, their paws striking the iron floor with a muffled boom.

The moment the Divine Dogs appeared, the previously quiet rabbits erupted.

Thousands upon thousands of white rabbits scattered in all directions like spilled cotton flying through the air, their densely packed figures darting all over the enclosed space.

Some crashed into the walls, some leaped onto the beams, and some trampled one another. Their faint rustling blended into a continuous hum.

Seeing this, Jiang Ye narrowed his eyes.

The rabbits had no intention of attacking. They were fleeing and creating chaos.

There was no need to think twice. Rabbit Escape's original body was surely mixed in among them.

Its aura was perfectly concealed by thousands upon thousands of duplicates. Each duplicate carried a faint trace of aura, and once they scattered, there was no telling which one was the original.

This was Rabbit Escape's strongest defense: overwhelming all perception with sheer numbers!

"Trying to hide?"

Jiang Ye murmured with a soft chuckle.

He quickly surveyed his surroundings.

The enclosed space was fifty square meters, and its only entrance and exit was the narrow gap he had squeezed through sideways.

As long as he blocked it, Rabbit Escape would have no way out, even if it grew wings.

At the thought, he raised his right hand. Shadow extended from beneath his feet and rapidly spread toward the entrance.

Several strands of shadow gathered and intertwined at the entrance, forming a thick, pitch-black wall that completely sealed the only exit.

Now, it was like catching a turtle in a jar!

"Black Dog, draw the rabbits' attention from the front."

"White Dog, track the original by scent."

As he gave the orders, the two dark shapes pounced at once.

The Black Dog plunged headfirst into the middle of the rabbits, biting and swinging his head into them, clearing an open space in an instant.

The rabbits swarmed frantically toward the Black Dog, like hornets from a disturbed nest, trying to avoid him. But more rabbits emerged from the shadows to replace them, wave after wave.

The White Dog, meanwhile, silently lowered its body and moved through the fluffy white sea, nose close to the floor.

It ignored the duplicate rabbits that jumped onto it, focusing on the source of an aura so faint it was almost nonexistent.

Jiang Ye stood where he was, sustaining the shadow wall and the two Shikigami.

He could clearly feel the warm current in his abdomen thinning at a visible rate.

The aura capacity of this malnourished twelve-year-old body was severely limited.

Maintaining either the shadow wall or the Divine Dogs required a constant expenditure of aura.

This battle of attrition was clearly to his disadvantage.

Just then, Jiang Ye suddenly felt a twitch between his brows.

The shadow thread he had set outside the entrance had been disturbed!

Without a doubt, someone was coming!

He cocked his ear and could just make out voices outside through the thick iron plates.

The rough, hoarse voices carried the lazy yet wary tone peculiar to Meteor City.

"There's something moving. The sheet metal's making a racket over here."

The sound of metal being struck followed.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Someone was hammering on the scrap iron blocking the entrance.

Jiang Ye's expression remained unchanged. He quickly separated a strand of shadow and sent it through a gap in the iron plates and out the entrance.

The scavengers were crouched outside. Two were hammering the scrap iron with iron rods, while another tilted his head to listen for movement inside.

"Is there something in there?"

"Don't know. It doesn't sound human..."

"What if it's a part we can sell?"

Jiang Ye guided the strand of shadow quietly over to an upright scrap-iron post nearby and gave it a sudden, powerful shove.

With a tremendous crash, the entire post fell in front of the entrance, bringing several heavy sheets of iron down with it. Dust billowed, and the clashing metal was deafening.

The voices outside fell silent at once.

A flurry of panicked footsteps followed.

"Cave-in! Go, go!"

The scavengers left as quickly as they had come, their footsteps rapidly fading into the distance.

Jiang Ye drew back the strand of shadow, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple.

The immediate crisis was over, but time was even shorter now.

He turned back to the battlefield.

The White Dog was still searching, and the Black Dog was still drawing the rabbits' attention, but Rabbit Escape's duplicates were endless, and the original remained hidden among them.

The White Dog ran two laps around the area, stopping each time to sniff more closely at a certain spot. But whenever it locked onto a direction and rushed over, the rabbits there had already scattered, and the original's aura was concealed by the duplicates again.

"Can't find it."

Jiang Ye clenched his back teeth.

This wouldn't do. His aura couldn't sustain a prolonged fight.

Just then, he suddenly noticed a detail.

Although all the duplicates had similar auras, the rhythm of their movements was chaotic and unpredictable.

But whenever the White Dog approached a certain area, the duplicates there always grew denser than elsewhere and scattered outward more desperately.

They were protecting something.

"White Dog, drive them in from the left."

"Black Dog, drive them in from the right."

Jiang Ye immediately changed his strategy.

The two Divine Dogs stopped trying to attack directly. Instead, they moved around from both sides, driving the rabbits on the perimeter toward the center.

At the same time, Jiang Ye controlled more shadows to rise from the floor, forming pitch-black walls that closed in on the center from every direction, like a fisherman drawing in a net.

The space available to the rabbits continued to shrink.

The densely packed white rabbits were squeezed together, trampling one another as their rustling turned into shrill squeaks.

Jiang Ye could feel his aura dropping rapidly.

Maintaining the shadow walls consumed more aura than maintaining the Divine Dogs, let alone raising five at once.

Beads of sweat ran down his neck, soaking his collar.

His breathing began to grow rapid.

A twelve-year-old body, severely malnourished, with less than a day since its Aura Nodes had opened.

A body that should have been resting in bed was now being forcibly drained of every trace of aura by him.

To make matters worse, new voices came from the distance.

And there were quite a few of them!

Jiang Ye could clearly hear the shouts.

"Search! The Rust Bone Gang is turning this whole area upside down today. That batch of scrap iron to the east has to be delivered tomorrow!"

"Damn it, if more than ten people hadn't suddenly died, we'd have finished already."

"We have to find that little brat. I'm going to skin him myself!"

The Rust Bone Gang... a gang!

The realization made Jiang Ye's pupils contract slightly.

The voices were drawing closer. The Rust Bone Gang's search was advancing deeper into the scrapyard, and at their pace, they would reach this iron wall in ten minutes at most.

And now, he had less than thirty percent of his aura left!

Two choices lay before Jiang Ye.

He could give up.

Cancel the ritual, let Rabbit Escape return to the shadows, and try again after his body recovered. But he would have to wait at least a few days before attempting to tame it again, and the gang was already closing in.

Or... he could gamble with his life!

Jiang Ye closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them, a hint of madness flashed in his gaze.

In Meteor City, growing stronger was itself a gamble!

"Keep closing in."

As soon as he spoke, the final shadow wall rose.

All the shadow walls advanced inward at once, shrinking the fifty-square-meter space to less than fifteen square meters.

Tens of thousands of rabbits were packed into a palm-sized area, piled atop one another, their white fur forming a small, writhing mound.

And at the very center of that white mound, one rabbit was squeezed onto its back.

Its belly was exposed for an instant, and Jiang Ye caught a clear glimpse.

It bore the pattern of the Scarf of Myriad Things!