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Chapter 331: Battle of Beitian Academy

Chen Xuan looked at the crowd gathered before him, and a surge of emotion suddenly welled up in his chest.

Lin Qing had once said that sooner or later he would be able to rally a team that could stand on equal footing with the Dimensional Limit Mechanism, that this struggle was not a confrontation between one man and an organization, but a clash between two powers... Whether this team could surpass the Mechanism was still hard to say, but he indeed now possessed a force that belonged to him alone.

It was a pity that Lin Qing herself was no longer here.

"Don’t worry, as long as Miss Lin’s room is still there, it means she still exists somewhere in this world."

At that moment, Liu Shuyue’s voice-transmission technique sounded in Chen Xuan’s mind.

He lifted his head, his gaze meeting Liu Shuyue’s where she stood on the roof of Cyan Grass Hall. "When things here are over, I’ll go with you to look for her. No matter which corner of the world she’s lost in, we’ll definitely find her and bring her back."

Chen Xuan gave her a slight nod, feeling somewhat relieved in his heart.

As the partner who had known Lin Qing the longest, if even Liu Shuyue had forgotten her, that would undoubtedly be a tremendous tragedy. Fortunately, the fluctuations of history could not cross the boundary between worlds. It wasn’t just Liu Shuyue who remembered; the people from Hot Pepper Village and the Witch Gathering Hall all still remembered the figure of this Future Warrior.

"Thank you."

"No need, she’s my friend too..." Liu Shuyue suddenly paused. "Hm? I sense people coming up the mountain road, and quite a lot of them."

Chen Xuan’s spirits immediately lifted. "You’re sure?"

His Celestial Mist Cloud Birth True Skill was only at LV2 and couldn’t detect anything at such a distance.

"Mm, the Spiritual Qi reaction is very concentrated; they’re all very close to each other," she continued via voice transmission. "They should be coming in cars. For now it looks like at least twelve vehicles."

Past five in the morning, twelve vehicles coming up the mountain together? Chen Xuan subconsciously clenched his fists. These people couldn’t possibly be here to watch the sunrise, could they?

He knew the Mechanism would take action, but he hadn’t expected the other side to move so fast, so fast they weren’t even willing to wait for daybreak.

Perhaps Honglian’s sudden disappearance had also thrown the Mechanism’s internal ranks into disarray.

"They’re here," Chen Xuan said.

The surroundings fell silent in an instant.

"We still don’t know how the Mechanism plans to deal with Beitian Academy. Everyone, take your positions first," he ordered. "If they force their way into the courtyard, you don’t need to hold back."

Since the other side dared to come quietly, they surely wouldn’t have any objections to disappearing quietly as well. Beitian Academy’s back gate connected directly to the Wanshan Wilderness; its grasslands were vast enough that burying a dozen carloads of corpses would be effortless.

...

"Chief, this is Beitian Academy in Jiang City," Xiao said as he opened the car door.

Xiao Canong stepped out of the car, buttoned his suit jacket, and took in the tightly closed, towering gate of the compound under the night sky. "I heard the previous captain got shut out when he came here?"

Xiao hesitated before replying, "Yes. Back then the organization hadn’t gone public yet, and Captain Wan approached them using the identity of a pharmaceutical company director... At first the talks went quite smoothly, but once the captain revealed that the company’s headquarters were overseas, their attitude turned cold."

"Not surprising. Every era has its own stubborn stones," Xiao Canong chuckled lightly. "If you don’t keep pace with the times, you’re destined to be discarded by them."

"You’re right, we’ve been tolerating them for far too long," Xiao said with a heavy nod. "I didn’t expect them to actually consort with Wanderers and oppose the Mechanism at every turn."

Even now, everything still felt unreal to him. A little after three in the morning he’d received an emergency notice: all members of the Execution Team were to assemble. Then he heard an almost unbelievable announcement—The Chief and the Red Lotus Team had been ambushed by Wanderers in the Erosion World. Though they had driven off the enemy, the price was devastating. At present Honglian was missing, Wang Baihu was dead, and many other Execution Team members were seriously wounded and still undergoing emergency treatment.

At the same time, the Intelligence Team confirmed that after being forced out of the Otherworld, the Wanderers had fled to Beitian Academy. A large body of evidence showed that the Blood and Flesh Butcher, the White-clothed Immortal, and the Masked Woman—these notorious Wanderers—had been in secret contact with Beitian Academy for a long time. Their operating funds and hideouts had all been provided by the Academy, which was also why the Mechanism and the police had never been able to find them.

It could be said that ever since the Dimensional Limit Mechanism’s Jiang City branch was founded, it had never suffered such a severe loss. After hearing the announcement, all officers were seething with anger and petitioned to avenge the Red Lotus Team.

Xiao was no exception.

No one intended to bring the police into this. At this moment, they all shared a single thought: track down those vicious Wanderers and use their blood to honor their fallen colleagues!

"Chief, let us go in. We can definitely wipe out the enemy in one sweep!" he requested again.

"The enemy’s abilities are extraordinary. The Mechanism must handle this with caution. Since Headquarters has already deployed people here, it’s better to leave this kind of hard bone to them," Xiao Canong said, remaining utterly calm. "Your task is to seal off the slopes around the mountain and let no one escape. Understood?"

"Yes." Xiao could only accept the order, unwilling as he was.

Xiao Canong turned around as more vehicles drove out of the darkness and onto the lawn before the main gate. Car doors slid open, and batches of fully armed Mechanical Officers filed out, forming several columns in front of him. Although this lawn was squarely under Beitian Academy’s surveillance cameras, he had no intention of hiding anything, because all the monitoring feeds had already been tampered with, and the security guards patrolling outside the Academy had been neutralized. One could say that half of Lu Mountain had fallen into the Mechanism’s hands.

These officers had all come from various overseas countries, most of them former soldiers who had undergone strict military training. They were uniformly dressed in matte-black tactical gear, with Night Vision Devices on their heads and suppressed assault rifles in their hands—they were armed to the teeth. Normally, even the presence of one such person on the streets of Jiang City would cause a public uproar, yet the Mechanism could effortlessly send a large number of utterly loyal private troops and full sets of military hardware to any theater of operations it conceived.

They were not Ability Users, but when it came to killing, they were in no way inferior to the latter—indeed, in most situations, they were even more practical.

When he had first heard the news of Honglian’s sudden disappearance, Xiao Canong had been genuinely surprised.

To ensure she had no chance to pull any tricks, they had deliberately taken her into another world for capture, willing to sacrifice the entire Red Lotus Team if necessary. Yet she had still managed to escape under those circumstances. According to Wang Qianduan, she had already been weak and unconscious at the time, the interrogation temporarily halted. In the few seconds when everyone’s attention had shifted away, she had vanished into thin air. The shackles on the chair showed no sign of damage, and Zhang Yingzi had not sensed anything amiss. The whole episode was beyond comprehension.

Fortunately, Wang Qianduan had already obtained a large amount of intel from Honglian, Wang Baihu, and Jiang Siqi—a group called the World Ability Center had entered Xiao Canong’s field of view. It was quietly cultivating pawns in the shadows, harboring tremendous hostility toward the Mechanism, and could even bestow abilities upon others. These Ability Users, assembled by Shixin, were using Beitian Academy as their cover and had repeatedly obstructed the Mechanism’s plans. They even knew the details of this recent meeting with the Demon.

Although it all sounded rather fantastical, he did not dare take it lightly and immediately reported the matter to Headquarters. Headquarters’ reply also came quickly: not only must Honglian be recovered at all costs, they were to gather as much intel on Shixin as possible. The importance of capturing the illegal Wanderers had become secondary by comparison.

Wang Qianduan had deduced that the person capable of extracting Honglian from the Eight Directions Sumeru was very likely this mysterious Shixin. At present, besides Beitian Academy’s contact with it, the supposedly dead Elorie was clearly another key figure. According to the intel, she too was now in the Academy. Since all clues pointed to Beitian Academy, the Mechanism’s choice became very simple.

This group was far from an ordinary enemy, so they had to be dealt with swiftly and harshly. The cleanup afterward might indeed be a nightmare; it might even obliterate the prestigious reputation the Jiang City branch had painstakingly built up—but it would still be worth it.

A power that could command other abilities... Xiao Canong naturally understood how important such a force was to the Mechanism.

He clapped his hands, pointed toward Beitian Academy in the pre-dawn gloom, and gave the order: "Move out."