Chapter 114: Captive

Chapter 114: Chapter 114: Captive

"Done."

Xiang Yi got to his feet and headed for the back door of the hardware store.

He gave the robot and Du Bingtian a casual wave, popped open the sealed partition on his way out, and then locked the door behind them as an afterthought.

Any mechanical security structure was effectively wide open to him — unless it had Silent Alloy worked into it somewhere.

His next move was to get to Lu Qi as fast as possible and actually get his hands on the man.

The distance was a bit of a stretch, though, so he’d have to rescue Shi Tie first, then track down wherever the hoverbike had crashed.

Xiang Yi switched the feed on his terminal.

This time the view was aerial — a drone’s-eye perspective.

The drone wasn’t something he’d built himself or lifted from the robot’s stockroom.

He’d just happened to realize there was something sitting at the very bottom of his backpack that he’d completely forgotten about.

He’d picked it up back at the scavenger crew’s camp, and it hadn’t seen daylight again until today.

With the drone’s help, Xiang Yi pinpointed the crash site quickly enough.

It was northeast of the hardware store’s back door, slightly off-center.

Lu Qi’s arrival had sent everyone in the area running, so nobody had bothered with his vehicle.

When the drone shifted its angle a little, he could also see that the Type-C Flesh Beast was still wandering through the tin-shack district to the south of the hardware store.

It looked like it had just eaten someone — its bulk had grown noticeably larger.

And having moved off to feed, it had drifted well away from Shi Tie, who was still pinned in place.

Xiang Yi wasn’t about to waste an opening like that. He took off toward the tin-shack district at a run.

Stepping over a slick layer of gore and liquefied tissue, he found Shi Tie.

Shi Tie was wrapped in layer after layer of iron netting, with two iron spikes — one thick, one thin — driven clean through each arm and through the back.

The moment Xiang Yi reached out and touched the device clamped onto it, he felt his own Spiritual Fluctuation getting dragged, pulling toward something beyond his control.

He didn’t pull back. He kept his grip, drew the thing out of Shi Tie’s body, and pulled up its interface panel.

[Edge Company Large-Scale Spiritual Energy Fluctuation Absorber]

[Functional Module: Edge Company Negative-Spirit High-Drain Conduit Structure]

[Structure Type: Edge Company Large-Scale Spiritual Fluctuation Absorption Device]

The function was straightforward enough — it gradually drained Spiritual Fluctuation from whatever it was attached to.

For Xiang Yi, as long as he wasn’t actively channeling his Spiritual Fluctuation while touching the thing, it couldn’t siphon off much. He had enough control to keep it in check.

For Abnormalities, though, it was a different story entirely. They had no ability to regulate their own Spiritual Fluctuation, and if they stayed in contact with this device long enough, having every last bit of it absorbed was inevitable.

That said, the absorption wasn’t fatal in itself.

In Xiang Yi’s perception, Shi Tie’s presence had faded to almost nothing — but "almost" was the key word. The signal was still there, however faint.

If it hadn’t been, he might have ordered the robot to move in before he’d even confirmed which one was Lu Qi.

Even if that had gotten Lu Qi killed in the process, it still would’ve been better than losing Shi Tie for good.

Maybe it was time to think about reinforcing Shi Tie’s defenses beyond just a bulletproof vest...

The moment Xiang Yi pulled the absorber free, Shi Tie began showing signs of coming back online.

The iron netting wrapped around its body appeared to be made entirely from Silent Alloy-infused materials as well.

It could suppress the spread of Spiritual Fluctuation to some degree, which would probably work against Abnormalities that relied on Spiritual Power — but against Shi Tie specifically...

Xiang Yi could only say it was completely useless.

All of Shi Tie’s Spiritual Fluctuation was internal, sustaining its own movement from within. Something like this didn’t even register as a threat.

He just didn’t want Shi Tie tearing free and wrecking the netting, since he intended to recover it intact.

It was obvious that both the absorber and the Silent Alloy Iron Net had been prepared specifically with Shi Tie in mind — whoever was behind this had done their homework.

Shame it hadn’t amounted to much. All it had really done was buy them a little time.

Xiang Yi got Shi Tie free without any complications, then quickly made his way to the crash site.

He had Shi Tie pull out the EMP Warhead lodged in the hood, then used his Spiritual Energy to assess the damage.

Aside from the puncture the warhead had punched through the engine and the structural warping from the impact of the crash, the rest of the vehicle was essentially fine — just the electronics fried by the EMP.

That kind of damage needed very few materials to fix. The bits he’d pocketed from the hardware store were more than enough for Xiang Yi to sort it out.

Spiritual Power bled away rapidly as he worked.

The hoverbike lifted off again before long, and within moments it had touched down near Lu Qi’s convoy.

Xiang Yi kicked aside the rifle that had been lying next to Lu Qi — the one that, by the looks of it, hadn’t been fired a single time today.

But the sound it made when his foot connected made him instinctively glance over at where it skidded.

That gun... was plastic.

That was almost certainly another countermeasure aimed at him — an attempt to keep the weapon out of reach of his Spiritual Energy control by avoiding metal entirely.

Except they’d gotten it completely wrong. His Spiritual Energy control didn’t care about material composition. What mattered was whether the target had a mechanical or electronic structure.

Xiang Yi crouched down beside Lu Qi, unclipped the still-running recording device from his chest, flipped it off with a middle finger aimed straight at the lens, and cut its outgoing signal.

He then pulled off the helmet the robot had already cracked open, revealing Lu Qi’s face.

A mechanical spider leg was still jammed in his mouth to keep him from biting down, which Xiang Yi found inexplicably funny.

Honestly, he was having a hard time not laughing. Lu Qi, on the other hand, was clearly well past finding anything amusing.

His face was drained white, hollow with despair — the look of a man who had already played out exactly what came next in his head.

Come to think of it.

Xiang Yi suddenly realized why the armor had looked so familiar to him.

Silent Alloy had been woven into the suits — a countermeasure designed specifically to block his Psychic Pulse.

As it turned out, it was never needed.

A few ordinary humans weren’t exactly at the level where Xiang Yi needed to resort to a Psychic Pulse.

And the Silent Alloy Armor had apparently done absolutely nothing against the Laser Rifle he’d conjured with his Spiritual Energy either.

That made sense — the Laser Rifle only generated Blood Crystals on contact with flesh. Against inorganic materials, it behaved exactly like any normal laser.

Unless you had Silent Alloy fused into your skin itself, there was no stopping a Blood Crystal Laser.

Patting Lu Qi down, Xiang Yi also turned up two grenades and a pack of engineering explosives from some brand he didn’t recognize.

Good thing the robot had tied him up fast enough. If Lu Qi had decided he’d rather go out on his own terms, he’d have had the means to do it.

Not anymore, though.

Xiang Yi confiscated everything, bandaged the wound on Lu Qi’s leg, and after making sure there was nothing else on him he could use to kill himself, tossed him into the hoverbike.

Lu Qi: captured.

That left one last problem.

The hoverbike rose into the air and swung back toward the tin-shack district.

The Frankenstein... well, the Type-C Flesh Beast was still prowling around in there.

And the Type-A Flesh Beasts it had spawned were still out there, relentlessly hunting down the last of Lu Qi’s men who’d managed to flee.