Chapter 174
Chapter 174: Departure, Scarlet Wind [Part 1]
The gray cat moved incredibly swiftly and without pause. It ran straight towards the same direction until it arrived at a tear in the prison. A hole was blown on top of the building because of a big explosion.
The gray cat jumped inside, and the little h.e.l.lhound fellow followed closely behind it. Lung also followed them hastily after parking the flying car at the side.
The electric power source devices inside the building had all been destroyed. After they entered deep into the building, everything in the surroundings were covered in darkness. Lung fished out a few floating energy lamps. The surrounding sights were revealed clearly under the lamps’ illumination.
There were dead people everywhere. More than half of them were convicts since there weren’t many prison guards in this area. Lung looked and checked how some of these people died. Some had died from mutual conflict, whereas some were killed in a single, clean blow. It was very likely that the men of the two forces had dealt the single blows.
Lung let out a sigh. Of all times, why did they have to run into those two forces now? If he knew that they would appear at this place he absolutely would not have come for an adventure. But then again, who would’ve expected that those two forces that were high up in GAL would come to a mere grade one prison?
After making a few corners, the gray cat jumped down to the lower floor and sniffed again. Then, it continued to run once more.
It wasn’t just the gray cat. The little h.e.l.lhound fellow had also caught Cillin’s scent.
"Wheeze, how is it?" Lung asked while running behind it.
"I can smell Cillin. But there is also some foreign smell; a very strange smell." the gray cat replied without looking back.
Not long after, the gray cat arrived at the warehouse and let out a sneeze abruptly.
"What a disgusting smell!" the gray cat shook its whiskers and said.
The little h.e.l.lhound fellow obviously shared more or less the same feeling. It frowned, bared its fangs and circled around a puddle of sticky water not far away before shaking its head and leaving.
"I’ve ran into these things before." Lung said. It was the trace left behind by that mouse-like beast creature after it died.
The gray cat ignored Lung and looked at one direction of the pa.s.sage. Cillin had come over from this direction, whereas a most disgusting fellow had also departed to this direction. Therefore, Cillin had probably encountered that disgusting fellow.
The little h.e.l.lhound fellow walked to a corner and let out a low growl from its throat.
"A woman." the gray cat sniffed and said, "This woman had left together with Cillin."
A woman? Seriously, Cillin&h.e.l.lip;
"They went that way!" the gray cat spread out its four limbs and ran down the other direction of the pa.s.sage.
Lung brought up the prison’s layout. According to the displayed layout, Lung also figured out roughly Cillin’s escape path.
The gray cat had paused at a certain part of the pa.s.sage. This was the part where Cillin had fought against the weirdo who could melt into walls, and where that single eye had appeared.
Although Lung believed that Cillin was alive, he was still very anxious. After all, running into the two forces head on was no joke. One slip of the mind would be fatal. Thankfully, they did not find Cillin’s blood at this place. The gray cat continued to search for Cillin following his scent.
Gradually, the amount of dead people began to grow numerous. This was especially true at the byway of the pa.s.sage, and many of the bodies were cut in half in a single strike. The gray cat had also talked about catching several special scents in the air.
Special scents meant special people. They were not your common and average human, and this meant that the people of the two forces had shown up once more.
Hmm?
Lung looked at the surrounding dead bodies. Every bone in these dead bodies was broken, and this was especially true for those who were already dead and those who had no power to resist at all. Almost all of their bones had been completely crushed, and their muscles were torn off. These dead people lay on the ground like many pools of glue, their bodies deformed. Upon closer inspection, it would seem that they had been affected by a certain force after their deaths. If it wasn’t for the skin wrapping around their flesh, they would have hardly been able to maintain human form.
Lung had instructed robots to capture photos of everything they had seen along the way. He would a.n.a.lyse them once they got out of this place. This was an important piece of intel, and he would upload it to the other Andrea family members who had arrived at Sector S.
Excluding these discoveries, Lung also noticed that the gray cat and the little h.e.l.lhound fellow’s fur had puffed up. It wasn’t that they had sensed any present dangers right now, but that there were some incredibly powerful people here before.
The gray cat locked down its sights onto a particular pa.s.sage and ran into it, "He’s here!"
At first they were pretty exhilarated, but they didn’t run too far before they realised that the pa.s.sage had become narrower and narrower. In fact, at one point the top and bottom of the building had been compressed together directly.
"Cillin, give me a meow if you’re still alive!" the gray cat roared from the other side.
In reality, Cillin had noticed the gray cat and the others’ arrival a long time ago. He could hear their footsteps, and the cat’s footsteps in particular was way too familiar to his ears. There was also Lung’s and another creature’s footsteps that made sounds like claws scratching against the floor. It was likely that little h.e.l.lhound fellow.
When he heard the gray cat’s call, Cillin very respectfully responded with a ‘meow’.
The gray cat’s ears twitched. Cillin’s meow was very unpleasant to the ears, but it was fine as long as he was alive. Plus, judging from his voice, he wasn’t hurt too badly.
Lung was finally at ease as he sat down not far away from the ruin. The reason he didn’t go over was because this side of the pa.s.sage was too narrow.
"I’m going to dig in directly. Is there a problem?" the gray cat asked again. It was worried that it would cause a collapse or something if it dug strongly.
"Just go at it at full force!" Cillin said.
Cillin could now move his arms, but he was still feeling somewhat lethargic. Plus, he couldn’t stand up in such a small s.p.a.ce.
The gray cat began getting rid of the surrounding walls using its claws. The little h.e.l.lhound fellow followed suit when it saw this.
Lung’s mouth twitched as he watched the two fellows working before looking at his own hands. He shook his head and sighed: This disparity!
It wasn’t long before a hole appeared in the compressed pa.s.sage. When the gray cat dug over to the other side, it took a look at Cillin and sniffed his body once. After patting Cillin with its paw and confirming that he had not suffered a fatal wound, the gray cat then jumped on top of Cillin’s head and began scratching his hair.
"See, I knew you couldn’t get by without me around!" the gray cat slapped Cillin’s face hard while messing up Cillin’s already disheveled hair even worse than before, venting.
Cillin smiled and raised a hand to scratch the gray cat’s chin. Then he pointed at the closed door beside him and said, "Come on, be good. There’s still a door in the way. Keep digging."
The gray cat humphed once before slowly walking before the door with a highly raised tail and began digging.
The little h.e.l.lhound fellow had enlarged the hole the gray cat had dug earlier so that both it and Lung could pa.s.s through it. When Lung came in through the hole and looked at Cillin on the ground, he pushed at the debris and said, "Brother, it’s way too small in here. Let’s get out quickly."
Cillin looked at Lung crawling over to him and said, "Give me a moment. I don’t have strength right now."
"We’ll rest for ten minutes then. There shouldn’t be any danger for now." Lung turned around and lay on his back. He gave Cillin a kick and asked, "Hey, the cat said that you were with a woman.
Cillin pointed outside the door, "She went out."
"Where’s the comrades.h.i.+p? This is no good, the woman you found can’t be trusted! Your eye for woman just can’t compare to mine." while Lung had said this smugly, a killing intent was permeating through his words.
"It’s not her problem. At the time we had both rushed outside the door together, but I was dragged back into the building by a kind of force. She wanted to drag me back outside, but it was too late." While saying this, Cillin pointed at the snapped stretch of a whip beside the door.
"A kind of force?" Lung’s attention was diverted, "Was it someone of those two forces?"
"How did you know that it’s two forces?" after a pause, Cillin asked again, "You know who they are?"
Lung let out a long sigh and put his arms behind his head, "If my guess is correct, that these two forces should be the two finest hitman organisations who had never appeared on the hitman’s table of ranking, ‘Mist’ and ‘Merciless’!"
Translator’s Notes: "Those who do not understand true pain can never understand true peace."
Chapter 174: Departure, Scarlet Wind [Part 2]
Cillin had guessed that they were hitman organisations, but he did not know of ‘Mist’ and ‘Merciless’ that Lung talked about.
Lung himself expressed that he didn’t know much about them, "They did stop showing up for fifty years. After that incident fifty years ago, the two top hitman organisations actually lay low as well. The decision really was quite puzzling, since they were apparently not involved in that incident. Of course they could have partic.i.p.ated in it, it’s just that no one knew about it."
"Oh right!" Lung asked Cillin excitedly, "Did you encounter several people from the two forces?"
Cillin nodded, "Their target wasn’t me however, so we never really clashed against each other. That blue-skinned woman in the end did try to kill us, but something happened at the time. It was probably the arrival of someone from another force."
"They’re really strong, aren’t they?"
"They are!" Cillin closed his eyes and recalled the scene at the time, briefly explaining what he encountered back then. The gray cat and the little h.e.l.lhound fellow also straightened their ears, lay on the ground and listened to him.
"We could not fight against that blue-skinned woman at all. We could only escape. However, even that blue-skinned woman was..h.i.t by that final strike, so there was obviously someone even more powerful in there. You know, I’ve always thought that I could take at least a blow or two, but when I was dragged back into the pa.s.sage back then it felt really bad."
Lung understood what this ‘really bad’ meant. One second you thought that you had escaped the quagmire, and the next you were dragged even deeper into the abyss without being able to resist at all. It was an undisguised blow to one’s spirit.
"It’s fine. At the very least, you survived the incident. Plus, you look like you’re doing pretty good other than a little bit of lethargy." Lung knocked Cillin once with his elbow.
"I am much better now, but at the time a lot of my bones were broken, and my internal organs were severely damaged. If I was unable to endure it, I would’ve died just like that."
"&h.e.l.lip;"
Lung stopped saying anything. Perhaps not even his father had expected that ‘Mist’ and ‘Merciless’ would appear at such an unexpected place. If he knew, he absolutely would have dragged Lung back into his home and locked him in, forbidding him from getting involved in Sector S without needing Lung to say anything.
If the other forces who arrived at Sector S were about the same strength as ‘Mist’ and ‘Merciless’, then just how big was the probability that they would be able to return home safely?
But even if he knew that he was still leagues apart from the elites, even if he knew that those people were very strong, Lung wasn’t actually afraid right now. Fifty years equalled a generation of men, and as an active representative of the current generation Lung did not want his contact to become too limited by surrounding matters and people.
He was still young, and youth itself was a kind of capital. What he lacked was experience and opportunities, and he had to say that every time he hung around with Cillin he would run into something special. There were plenty of prison planets in Sector S, and there were at least hundreds of grade one prison planets, but somehow the incident just happened to happen where they were at.
Opportunities&h.e.l.lip;
"Cillin, what are you going to do next?" Lung asked.
Cillin touched the door at the side, "Are you scared?"
"Scared? A little I guess. But I suddenly feel really fired up too." Lung rubbed his palms, "Let’s go find a grade three prison planet to play with once we recover."
"Alright." Cillin tugged the corners of his lips.
"Bring me together with you next time!" the gray cat also said.
Cillin pinched its ear, "If nothing unusual happen then I’ll bring you all with me."
Cillin had used the words ‘you all’, so he meant that the little h.e.l.lhound fellow was included as well.
The little fellow seemed to understand this and wagged his tail real joyfully.
Ten minutes later, Cillin climbed out of the big hole the gray cat had opened up on the door. He had recovered much of his strength, and walking was not an issue.
When they found an exit, Lung took out the car key and pressed it. The flying car automatically flew towards their direction. When he sat on the flying car, Cillin suddenly recalled a matter and asked, "Did you guys feel anything strange when you came searching for me?"
Lung felt his own body for a bit before confirming, "No, I didn’t."
Cillin looked at the gray cat, and the gray cat shook its head, "I didn’t notice anything unusual."
The little h.e.l.lhound fellow’s ears drooped. How sad that it didn’t know how to talk yet.
Cillin leaned against the seat, "Lung, you probably noticed that there was something wrong with the convicts in the prison rooms, didn’t you?"
Now that Cillin had reminded him, he did recall that they were acting quite strange. At the time, he had put most of his attention on guarding himself against ‘Mist’ and ‘Merciless’.
"Something was wrong those people, it’s like they’ve gone insane or something. But I thought that it was done by one of the two forces and didn’t think deeper into it."
"It’s a kind of virus, but those viruses have now disappeared."
"Could theyy have been destroyed by the other force? No, that can’t be right. Those viruses were probably ineffective against someone at their level, so naturally they didn’t need to waste energy to eliminate them. The surviving people inside the prison had all escaped, so logically speaking no one had the time to tinker with those stuff, did they?" Lung asked.
"They were not destroyed by someone." Cillin rubbed his face, "It was probably something specifically researched by the force who spread out the virus in the first place. The viruses were injected with programmed death genes, causing their Median Lethal Time to be shrink greatly. The timing was just right so that most of the viruses were dead by the time they were finished with their business. Now, the viruses are basically all gone."
This meant that these people also knew how to cause trouble using ways other than partic.i.p.ating themselves. Although the virus used this time was very simple and not fatal, what about next time? What kind of virus would they spread?
A hitman organisation that was well versed in viral weapons was even scarier than norm.
Thank goodness it wasn’t parasites.
When Cillin saw Chamondine’s diary back then, there was a line written in broad point pen, "In the near future, parasites would replace viruses to become an even deadlier weapon. This is because that not only parasites could act as a carrier of viruses, they also possessed intellect."
Never mind. Let’s stop thinking for now. Cillin rubbed his head. It would be counterproductive if he thought too much right now. He should consider the matters at hand first.
When Qi Geyou saw Cillin he was quite happy. It was a rare case for someone to be able to walk out from the site. This was also a reflection of power, and Qi Geyou’s att.i.tude towards powerful people had always leaned on the better side, not to mention that Cillin and Lung had saved his life once.
Cillin and Lung didn’t say too much before their little group got ready to depart by s.p.a.ceplane. There would be all kinds of forces of Sector S arriving on this planet one after another, and Qi Geyou himself was quite busy. Cillin’s group also had their own plans to make. However, before he left Cillin had revealed a bit of information to Qi Geyou. Right now, any bit of extra information was a great aid to Qi Geyou’s influence in ‘Flying Snake’.
Lung also cut off some footage and presented it to Qi Geyou. He patted Qi Geyou’s shoulders and gave him a ‘I have high expectations for you’ look. "Grab the real power in your hands soon. We’ll cooperate with each other when that happens."
Qi Geyou’s eyebrows rose. The fact that Lung could say such a thing meant that his background ran pretty deep. He smiled confidently, "Alright, cut the nonsense and get out already! If you don’t get out now it’ll be difficult later on."
It was true that Cillin’s group would find it difficult to leave once the higher-ups of every force had arrived.
When Cillin’s group had departed on a s.p.a.ceplane, Qi Geyou instructed his subordinates to deal with a certain number of things. If what Cillin and Lung said was true, then the information he obtained would be enough to draw the higher-ups’ attention.
There was no one who knew about this incident better than those who had lived through it, and other than those two forces, those who had the experience were basically all dead. This also reflected just how valuable the information Cillin and Lung had supplied him was.
The moment they returned to the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, they immediately flew away from the area just in case they were discovered when the visitors’ number grew.
Cillin made a fist while lying on a chair. Although he could obviously sense the change in his genes, and the helix structure of his DNA had changed a little, right now he hadn’t discovered any special abilities in himself yet. However, his const.i.tution had improved quite a lot, and his strength had grown bigger as well.
Lung went to sleep after enjoying a fulfilling meal. He had exhausted quite a bit of energy this time, and he would replenish them as soon as possible.
The gray cat was crouching on four limbs while teaching the little h.e.l.lhound fellow how to speak. The little fellow could now say some simple words, although full sentences were still impossible for it. Even if it did manage doing it, its intonation was still incorrect.
Cillin had to doubt the gray cat’s ability to teach.
"Wheeze, just teach him the most basic literacy. Once he knows how to read, tell him to watch some educational videos on his own."
"I’ve taught him the basics a long time ago." the gray cat said proudly.
"That’s good then." Cillin picked up a headphone and put it on the little h.e.l.lhound’s head. Then, he brought up some basic educational videos and gave him time to watch them. The videos would teach him the most correct intonation, and some smart daily dialogues would be conducted at the background of the video. The video Cillin chose for the little fellow was quite attractive, and it no longer needed the gray cat once it began watching the video. The gray cat happily lay on top of Cillin’s thighs and had him scratch its chin and tell it in detail what happened inside the prison. It wasn’t satisfied with the rough explanation from before.
While talking, Cillin suddenly heard speaking coming from the side. The little h.e.l.lhound fellow was speaking one word after another according to the guide within the video.
They were all basic terms. There were terms of weather, and there were terms of color. There were also terms of some commonly seen objects and etc.
The little fellow’s intonation grew smoother and smoother after he got past the initial shakiness. Suddenly, the little fellow appeared to have thought of something as he came to a stop, took off his headphones and turned to look at Cillin, "Scarlet&h.e.l.lip; wind&h.e.l.lip;"
The gray cat shook its ears and c.o.c.ked its head, "What’s that?"
The little fellow pointed at himself and said, "&h.e.l.lip; scarlet&h.e.l.lip; wind&h.e.l.lip;"
"You’re saying that you’re called Scarlet Wind?" Cillin had told the little fellow once that he would give himself his own name once he had learned the language. He didn’t think that he would come up with his name so quickly.
He had probably made the decision after seeing the word ‘scarlet’ that represented the color red within the terms of colors, and the word ‘wind’ within the terms of weathers. Since the wind was very fast, the little fellow probably thought that he could run as fast as the wind.
Seeing the little fellow nodding, Cillin walked over and rubbed his head, saying, "Alright, from now on your name is Scarlet Wind."