Salty Smoke Worms

As the head of the Liang Household family this generation, or rather, as a woman, Liang Yanqiu was well aware of the essence of palace intrigue.

It's not about fighting over men, but about identifying the target and physically eliminating the opponent.

No organization or power can remain intact without the death of its leader; at least, no power in Nanyang is as formidable as this.

However, she knew it, and Zheng Qingbo knew it too.

At this moment, an unfamiliar force emerged as a third party on the outskirts of Zheng Family Garden.

No, it should be said, there was more than one.

"Little girl of the Liang Household, it's been many years since there's been any fighting in the city. Don't you even know such basic etiquette? How did Old Man Liang teach you?"

The speaker was an old man, nearing sixty, yet showing no signs of aging or fatigue. He was of medium height, with a broad frame, and his shoulders and back were slightly hunched from the wind and waves at the dock. His neck and the backs of his hands were covered with old scars of varying depths, including knife wounds and cuts from sea rocks.

Master Chao of the Tide Sea Righteous Hall was only seven or eight years younger than the old master of the Liang Household, but he was still very active. His cultivation of the Golden Core was like a huge wave in the sea, filling the air. As the leader of a major gang in the port, Zheng Qingbo had once paid his respects and served drinks at the docks when he was competing for business.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the leader of the royal guard on Java Island was a powerful barbarian clad in golden armor.

Although Liang Yanqiu used Secret Method to elevate herself to the Golden Core in a short period of time, she was not Golden Core after all, and it was extremely difficult for her to resist the pressure from two Golden Core cultivators.

She knew that Zheng Qingbo had several private armies. According to the information she received, these private armies were all outside the city, some even outside the island. Zheng Family Garden only had one bodyguard team at the moment. So after the Demonic Machine Hall made its move, he immediately realized that this was a great opportunity.

But she never expected that Zheng Qingbo's connections were so deep. As soon as she made a move, the forces of two local gangsters immediately came to her rescue.

"I don't actually like Zheng Qingbo; he's a treacherous bastard. But I hate those who overturn tables even more," Master Chao frowned. "Because once the table is overturned, everyone gets splattered with blood. Liang Household girls, unable to bear children, they rebel? What kind of rule is that?"

"Step back, Madam Liang Household. Gang warfare is not permitted within the city; this has been the rule for many years."

The royal barbarian spoke in broken Heavenly Gate language.

Liang Yanqiu had no intention of wasting words; if it really came down to rules and human relationships, she could talk for three days and three nights and still not get enough.

She looked down. The gang war was also a war between cultivators, and it couldn't really be a gang fight. Of the five formations set up by the cultivator group to which the Liang Household family belonged, three had been suppressed by the people brought by these two, one had been ambushed, and one formation had been broken. The one who broke the formation was one of the Liang Household's own people.

"Seventh brother, ninth brother," Liang Yanqiu closed her eyes tightly.

If Hu Mang were here, he would definitely know who these seventh and ninth brothers were—a man and a woman among those who had become disciples.

"How so?"

When Wu Luosuo rushed to the main street near the blacksmith's shop and found the place where the Law Artifact's signal had disappeared, she could hardly believe her eyes.

As Nanyang demonic cultivator and a worshipper of the Demonic Machine Hall, she herself has inherited witchcraft. However, witchcraft has a downside: once used, it can interfere with the operation of implanted Law Artifact. Therefore, she is one of the few worshippers who has not undergone any modifications.

But as she looked around, the scene was bleak, even indescribably bleak.

All the implanted Law Artifacts, regardless of cultivation level, exploded, and blood gushed from all the implanted parts. Some Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivators even bled to death.

When she found one of the Golden Core cultivators, she discovered that a large part of his chest was missing, and his metal Dantian had vanished.

Without the Dantian as the source of Law Power, the aura displayed by the opponent was not even at the Foundation Establishment.

"Lin Jinhuo, are you dead? Lin Jinhuo!?"

Wu Luosuo tried to wake the other party, "I just helped Holy Son Sun suppress that troublesome old man, and then your Law Artifact artifacts lost signal on a large scale. What happened?!"

"He's not dead, his Divine Sense just went blank. He might be dead if the implanted Law Artifact in his brain also exploded."

The speaker was another Golden Core cultivator, the same underground black cultivator who had fought Hu Mang a long time ago.

Chen Yaxing felt that his current condition was almost the same as it was back then, with all four limbs broken. What was worse was that this time he hadn't even fought his opponent for more than ten rounds.

"What exactly happened?" Wu Luosuo asked angrily.

"You witches can summon spirits, why don't you summon one yourself and ask?" Chen Yaxing said with a sinister smile, but his smile was more like a grimace.

"I can not only summon spirits, but also torture them until I drive them insane with their last shred of consciousness. You've seen my methods," Wu Luosuo said threateningly.

Chen Yaxing sighed, extremely reluctant to recall what had just happened.

"The Demonic Machine Hall's Law Artifact are faulty, or perhaps the Heavenly Blood Python's methods are flawed. In any case, our Law Artifact explode on the spot as soon as they enter within three zhang of the opponent. What's even more terrifying is that the opponent doesn't even need to make contact with us; a mere glance is enough to cause the implanted magical Law Artifact within our bodies to explode. Can you imagine? We two Golden Core cultivators were instantly killed in a single encounter, all the modified components within our bodies went berserk. I didn't even have to force him to make a move!"

"You were instantly killed? He would have self-destructed if he had just gotten close to you!?" Wu Luosuo asked incredulously.

"Yes, when I agreed to let you experiment, you didn't tell me this at all. You said this was the future of the cultivation world, that we would surpass the ancient demonic path, even the cultivation technology of the Heavenly Gate. You said unifying the Nanyang was just the beginning. You said we would become Nascent Soul, that we would become true big shots..."

Chen Yaxing muttered to himself, his gaze unfocused, as if talking in a dream.

Looking out from behind the Zheng Family Garden, Hu Mang gazed at the area not far ahead where the Spiritual Qi fluctuations were most intense.

"Not bad, even the firepower has been upgraded. When I participated in the Corner War, getting two ancient Thunderfire Cannon from the Old Heavenly Gate was already a big deal. Thunderfire Repeating Gun, Blazing Fire Chain Cannon, Thousand-Mechanism Crossbow, Heavenly Serpent Thunder, where did you get all this stuff, sister-in-law? This is comparable to the firepower of Heavenly Gate's second-line retired troops."

"They're all seasoned swindlers, each with incredibly powerful connections; it's a pity, though, it seems Zheng Qingbo still has the upper hand."

He knew about the Tide Sea Righteous Hall. This gang wasn't a port power; it was the port itself. Port Surumai was built by them.

Hu Mang's steps seemed to tread on thin air; with a light leap, he jumped over the wall and landed on the ground, warily surveying his surroundings while simultaneously pulling out a large, dark spear from his Storage Bag.

Judging from its appearance alone, this gun is extremely ugly. The entire gun body is jet black, without any decorative patterns or runes, and the surface is so rough that it looks like a half-finished product that has just been pulled out of molten iron and has not yet been polished.

The shaft is also uneven in thickness, being slightly thinner at the grip and thickening towards the front, before suddenly narrowing again near the tip, forming an asymmetrical cone shape.

The spearhead was utterly devoid of any aesthetic appeal; it was simply a flattened lump of iron, with a roughly beveled edge, and even the sharpening was done carelessly. Under the sunlight, it gleamed with a dull luster typical of blunt weapons.

If this gun hadn't been crafted by the best artisans on Java Island, and hadn't been made with top-quality materials provided by Hu Mang would have suspected it was the work of an apprentice.

But as soon as Hu Mang got his hands on the gun, he felt it was worth it, because the gun felt like a piece of ice to the touch.

Hu Mang silently surveyed his surroundings, activating his Yin-Yang Eyes. He wasn't afraid of the Nanyang cultivators, but some of the things Nanyang kept were quite evil.

In Yin-Yang Eyes, all colors except black and white disappeared, and soon he heard a series of buzzing sounds.

"I think this thing is called a 'Salty Smoke Worm,' right?"

Following the direction of the sound, Hu Mang saw, in the black and white vision of his Yin-Yang Eyes, a grayish-white, cloud-like thing gushing out from the window of a building deep within the Zheng Family Garden. It flowed down the wall and then, close to the ground, like a grayish-white river, slowly spreading towards him.

Hu Mang didn't use a gun, but instead took out his previous spoils, the Devil-Breaking Needle. Although he didn't know needlework, his ordinary methods of controlling magical Law Artifact were still quite effective. Soon, the golden light transformed into a dense array of needle shadows.

Then, the gray smoke dissipated and scattered, revealing what looked like a pile of grayish-white fly corpses.

But the strange thing is that after a short while, these flies revived and almost turned into a gray cloud.

Hu Mang tried using a magic needle that was almost Law Treasure, but the result was still the same.

This is the troublesome thing about the Nanyang Gu worms; there's no way to control them, and these things are simply impossible to kill.

Hu Mang weighed the "strange gun" in his hand and muttered to himself.

I hope you can be more reliable.

The next moment, the gun swept horizontally, and all the gray clouds it swept over fell down just like before. But this time it seemed a little different. The shattered corpses regenerated and turned into pale flies, but they seemed to be drunk, flapping their wings on the ground and struggling several times, but they couldn't fly up.

"If you can't kill him, but you can control him, then that's enough."

The Hu Mang's target was not these flies.

In a secret room in Zheng Family Garden, Zheng Qingbo was remotely monitoring the battlefield using a surveillance Law Artifact smuggled in from Heavenly Gate.

Seeing that even with secondhand weapons, the Liang Household was still entangled by forces from all sides like a spider web, he immediately revealed a faint smile.

"It seems the Liang Household is finished this time."

The people around him wore knowing smiles, as if they had everything under control.

Suddenly, an old man from Nanyang changed his expression, and one of his pale fingers suddenly fell off.

That finger segment transformed into a large, unconscious fly.

His expression immediately tensed up, and he started babbling something in his local dialect.

Those present could all understand the foreign language and quickly understood what the other person meant: the "Salty Smoke Worm" he was offering had fallen asleep.