Three Days X Yixi X Aura Trail Hunt

Three days passed in the blink of an eye.

The Rust Remains Alliance camp was unusually quiet for the past three days. Few people walked on the narrow passages between the containers, and even the team members who usually took turns guarding the front line huddled behind cover, speaking in hushed tones, as if afraid that making a loud noise would disturb something.

Following the arrangements Jiang Ye left behind, Iron Wall guarded the steel casting workshop line tightly, adding an angled barbed wire fence in front of the shield wall.

Bago and his commando team practiced throwing and close combat behind the fence every day, and after practice they would squat in the fortifications to clean their knives.

Gray Beak spent two whole days moving supplies into the workshop: ammunition, Molotov cocktail raw materials, dry rations, clean water—everything that could be moved was moved in. After finishing, he checked the list three times to make sure it was enough to sustain three hundred people for ten days.

The people with Shattered Eye were sent out and never returned; news of their deaths kept spreading through the camp.

"The number of people in the Dark Red Scavenging Ground has exceeded two thousand."

"The Grey Elder's command post was located on the second floor of the warehouse area behind the scavenging grounds, and everyone going in and out was armed."

"Another batch arrived last night, three trucks, covered with tarpaulins, so we couldn't see what they were carrying, but the tire tracks were deep, so it must be heavy cargo."

After hearing the last piece of news, Iron Wall slammed his shield into the ground. His rough face was expressionless, except for the white knuckles of his fingers gripping the shield.

"Any news from the alliance leader?"

Shattered Eye crouched beside the steel frame at the entrance of the shipping container, his light-colored pupils reflecting the hazy skylight, and shook his head.

"No."

He said before he left, "Wait for me to come back."

Iron Wall didn't ask any more questions.

Three days later, at dawn, the Grey Elder moved.

The dust rising from the dark red scavenging area could be seen from afar, resembling a surging, yellowish-brown tide under the hazy sky. Below, a dark mass of figures moved about, their footsteps forming a deep rumble that made the piles of sheet metal at the edge of the scrap area tremble slightly.

More than two thousand people, fully armed, set off from the Crimson Scavenging Ground and advanced along the main road from Central City to District 13.

In the front row were gunmen carrying rifles and submachine guns, sandwiched between knife-wielding men carrying iron shields, and in the back were several modified pickup trucks with tarpaulins covering their cargo beds, the tire tracks making the gravel road creak.

Grey Elder sat in a stretched bulletproof limousine in the middle of the convoy, the window rolled down half an inch, his fiery eyes fixed on District 13, a confident smile playing on his lips.

What's going on with the Rust Remains Alliance?

The man in sunglasses in the passenger seat turned his head, his voice dry.

"Reporting to the elder, the scouts have reported that the defenses at the steel casting workshop haven't been withdrawn; everyone's holed up behind the fortifications, and we haven't seen that brat."

Grey Elder took a sip of the wine in his glass, the rim of the glass lingering on his lower lip for two seconds.

"They've gone into hiding."

He put down his wine glass, a glint of something unreadable flickering in his cloudy eyes.

He thought he could get through it by hiding inside his shell.

"Two thousand men would be enough to overwhelm his small force in half a day."

The man in sunglasses didn't reply, but simply stared at the gray road ahead.

The convoy continued forward. The lead pickup truck had already passed the boundary of the scrap heap on the outskirts of District 13. A few hundred meters ahead was the Rust Remains Alliance's warning line.

But just as the lead pickup truck rounded a pile of fallen concrete pillars, the driver slammed on the brakes.

The tires screeched on the gravel road, and less than ten meters in front of the car, a small, thin figure stood in the middle of the road.

He wore an old coat, his trousers were still covered in dried mud, and on his feet were a pair of nearly new combat boots he'd bought from the black market, the toes worn white.

The wind ruffled the stray hairs on his forehead, revealing a pair of eyes that were calmer than those of a twelve-year-old boy.

Jiang Ye stood in the middle of the road, his hands in his coat pockets, looking at the dark mass of cars and people ahead, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"They've arrived."

In the truck bed of the lead pickup, a gunman carrying a rifle was the first to react, raising his gun and pulling the trigger.

Bang!

Gunshots shattered the morning silence, bullets streaking towards Jiang Ye's face.

But when the bullet flew to within three feet of Jiang Ye, the shadow beneath his feet suddenly surged, and a pitch-black screen rose from the ground like a wall with no thickness.

The bullet struck the screen without making a sound. The copper coating on the bullet's surface was swallowed by the shadows, and the entire bullet disappeared completely, like a pebble sinking into a muddy pond, leaving not even a ripple.

Then came the second and third shots. The gunmen in the first pickup truck opened fire, and gunfire erupted from the cargo beds of the following pickup trucks as well, with bullets raining down like a storm.

The shadow spread out in front of Jiang Ye, extending from the ground to the top of his head, forming a semi-circular shell. All the bullets that hit it were swallowed up, and the surface of the shadow didn't even tremble.

The gunfire gradually subsided.

The gunmen in the pickup truck bed looked at each other, some glancing down at their guns, then looking up at the bottomless black screen, their Adam's apple bobbing.

Jiang Ye pulled his right hand out of his pocket, and the screen followed his movement, shrinking to the sides and back to his feet, once again forming a quiet, dark carpet.

He tilted his head, his gaze passing over the first few pickup trucks and landing on the extended armored sedan in the middle of the convoy.

"The Grey Elder."

His voice wasn't loud, but in the quiet of the wilderness, you could hear the wind whistling through the tin roof, and the two words carried clearly to the back.

"You brought so many people here, are you planning to run me over here?"

The bulletproof car window rolled down another half inch.

The Grey Elder's voice drifted out from the crack in the car window, unhurried and with the composure unique to those in power.

"Rust Remains Alliance, I gave you a chance."

"If you accept my terms and stay quietly in District 13, I'll guarantee your survival."

But you won't answer.

Jiang Ye's smile remained unchanged after hearing this.

"You call that a way out?"

He put his hands back into his pockets and tilted his head toward the pile of scrap metal by the roadside.

"Come and kill me if you want."

His figure began to fade, and the shadow beneath his feet surged up like boiling water, enveloping his ankles, knees, waist, and abdomen. His whole body seemed to melt into the water like a drop of ink, disappearing without a trace.

"Let's see if I kill you first, or you kill me first."

By the time the last word was uttered, the middle of the road was already empty.

Only a faint shoe print remained on the gravel road, which was quickly dispersed by the wind.

Inside the bulletproof car, Grey Elder tapped his finger on the armrest.

"Try to find."

As soon as the word was uttered, the more than two thousand people scattered like ants whose nest had been disturbed.

The gunmen jumped off the pickup trucks, and the knife-wielders slung their metal shields over their shoulders. They moved in small groups of three to five, sneaking along the narrow passages between the scrap metal piles and behind the toppled concrete pillars.

Some people were searching the gaps in the rubble heap with guns, some were climbing up the high scrap metal racks to look down, and others were squatting on the ground looking for footprints and traces in the shadows.

Jiang Ye's Shadow Stealth through the scrap metal pile with ease. Every time he emerged from the shadows, he would only show half his face to glance at the pursuers' location before disappearing back into the shadows.

The search lasted for nearly ten minutes, but they didn't even find a trace of anyone.

The Grey Elder's brows finally furrowed.

He turned his head and gestured with his chin toward the man in sunglasses in the passenger seat.

"Yixi."

The man in sunglasses got out of the car, stood on the gravel by the roadside, and took off his sunglasses.

When those narrow, elongated eyes were revealed, the surrounding gunmen involuntarily took a half-step back.

Yixi put his sunglasses in his coat pocket, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

His aura slowly dissipated, spreading out like an invisible mist along the ground, creeping in all directions through the gaps in the scrap metal pile, the cracks in the cement pillars, and the pits in the gravel.

The aura wasn't fierce or intense, and he couldn't even feel any oppression, but wherever it spread, even the sound of the wind blowing through the metal was clearly etched in his mind.

A moment later, Yixi opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Grey Elder's car window.

"Elder, I've managed to control that brat's aura."

Grey Elder's eyebrows twitched.

"I memorized his scent when he first came to the manor."

Yixi's voice was flat, and he lightly flicked his fingers at his side.

"Scent Tracking."

As the four words were uttered, the gunmen and knife-wielders scattered around simultaneously felt something extra in their minds, as if someone had placed a map under their noses, marked with a constantly moving red dot.

The red dot was located less than 200 meters to their east, behind a pile of overturned scrap metal.

"East!"

Someone shouted, and the nearest group of gunmen immediately pressed forward, followed by a surging tide of people heading east.

Jiang Ye was emerging from the shadow of a pile of corrugated iron sheets, preparing to change his position, when he suddenly saw the pursuers ahead turn in his direction in unison, their footsteps so fast it was as if someone was giving them coordinates in their ears.

He frowned slightly, his figure sank down, and he disappeared from the spot again.

No matter where he hid, the pursuers could always turn around within a second or two and bite him like a pack of hyenas smelling blood.

The bullet hit the spot where he had just been standing, sending shards of stone flying and leaving a row of bullet holes in the metal sheet.

Jiang Ye re-emerged from another shadow, his face darkening.

They know my location.