Chapter 223: Wilderness

In a bar brawl, drawing a gun is normally prohibited, but now someone broke the rule; since someone produced a blunderbuss, bullets naturally filled the air, and Bai Lang crouched behind a heavy table, gnawing on roasted chicken while saying the shooting was good, the gunmanship stank. Indeed, it's odd that a drunk trash could shoot accurately; the ricocheting and stray bullets had an even higher hit rate, and a bullet struck the table right in front of Bai Lang and lodged in it.

The man slightly exhaled from his palm, forcefully flicking the projectile out; after picking it up, Bai Lang sniffed, "Black gunpowder bullet?" That's right, the ammunition for these pistols is indeed granular black gunpowder, and its power is decent at close range. At least the guys hit have already fallen to the ground… Bai Lang watched the gunfire, "It doesn't affect me; the skill of Golden Bell Shield could already block this kind of firepower. Now that I've entered the Pre‑Heaven achievement of Southern Dipper White Tiger Fist, even the raging wind around my body can nullify bullets."

Thinking of Southern Dipper White Tiger Fist reminded him of Bei Dou Lao San, who could dominate for a while with a short double‑barrel blunderbuss in hand… "Then the Northern Dipper can rest." Bai Lang contentedly took a huge bite of roasted chicken, having basically devoured most of it. Most people in the bar had already hidden behind the counter or tables, and even two or three people appeared near Bai Lang, "Brother, squeeze in a bit, you might kill someone by accident."

At that moment the enforcers arrived, one the bar owner and the other presumably the sheriff—after all, they wore a badge… Coming from the previous city, which was a strange foreign‑style China vibe, it had instantly turned into a Western frontier town, and Bai Lang no longer wanted to say anything. Anything that happens in this world is probably fairly normal; both of them were holding long‑barrel blunderbusses, and they aimed at the guys still standing in the room firing guns wildly, letting loose fire.

The bullets cleanly took out those guys. Then the owner and the sheriff, shouting angrily, dragged everyone present out to pay compensation—Bai Lang was an exception, because he was neither drunk nor armed, and most importantly he had no money. Basically he was let go, and Bai Lang didn't mind their rudeness; in fact he found it amusing—when you can kill these people at any time, you become magnanimous.

The town even had a small library, and the text inside was Chinese characters that Bai Lang could read—human‑made traces in this world were becoming increasingly evident. The library contained a map, a map of this wilderness, with the town's location marked only as a tiny point at the entrance. A large portion of the map was left blank; "Given the scale, the mapped area must be roughly tens of thousands of square kilometers…"

The map showed streams and mountains, basically the look of the American West wilderness. Several areas were circled in red—obviously dangerous zones. "But this circle is huge; a single circle must cover at least several hundred to a thousand square kilometers," Bai Lang muttered. He had no money to obtain a more detailed map, so even this publicly available map could only be recorded in his memory.

Bai Lang also drifted around a salvage shop for a while; people kept coming in from outside, bringing in some oddly shaped creatures—mostly hybrids of several species, varying in size, and sometimes strange‑looking plants and minerals. Bai Lang roughly understood, so he didn't wait any longer and left the ground buildings, running toward the wilderness.

He had no map, no compass, no firearms, and no special "preservation box"; of the ten men who venture into the wilderness, eight die on their first attempt. Bai Lang employed Lightness Skill—at this moment the smoke and flames rolled like the lone desert smoke, and a lone‑traveler's Lightness Skill truly lived up to its name. Bai Lang only had a pair of flesh hands and iron legs, nothing else, and thought, "Quickly kill something, then go back, change clothes and gather equipment first!"

Bai Lang's lone‑traveler reputation was a bit overblown, so he didn't notice that he had overshot and rushed into what should be the red‑circled area. With his smoke‑filled movement, any prey would have already hidden. Thus Bai Lang, unaware, barreled straight into the danger zone. What was the danger zone like? First, succulent plants became extremely scarce, and even the small roadside puddles had water of a very strange color.

Before Bai Lang appeared a swarm of trapezoidal coal hoppers, each with hydraulic‑powered legs underneath; atop each hopper sat a tiny boiler the size of a water dispenser bucket, its small chimney puffing black smoke. In front of the hoppers was a moving mechanism that looked like a pointed cone. These devices clank clank as they rushed toward Bai Lang, and with the sound of a steam whistle the cones were shot out under steam pressure.

Bai Lang flashed aside, dodging more than ten incoming chained iron cones, then watched the internal gears creak as the cones were retracted. "Huh? What is this?" The coal hopper posed no threat, and Bai Lang found it quite novel. Then a worm over a person long emerged, a giant blue worm. The problem was that the blue worm's head bore a smoking chimney while its feet had become wheels—how? The spot that should have been a small head turned into a tube, clearly a gun.

Sure enough, the worm fired, Bang— and shot, and Bai Lang also dodged. "This exoskeleton… wait, there's definitely a biological aura! What is this? A hybrid of organism and steam machine?" After watching for a while, Bai Lang wasn't sure whether the coal hopper counted as a creature, but the giant blue worm undeniably had a biological skin, so he acted. Destroying the coal hopper was easy; Bai Lang was too lazy for close combat, he simply stood there and raised his hand.

A Tornado suddenly appeared, aligning the coal hoppers caught within into a line and shredding them all. When Bai Lang struck with a palm, the cone‑shaped tornado that fell from the sky also pierced the giant blue worm from head to tail. Repeating this a few times, Bai Lang cleared the area. Amid the wreckage on the ground, he found a large pile of coal, several intact wheel‑equipped coal hoppers, and even a surprisingly intact boiler.

As for the worm, it left behind a skin and a gun—these were all that several giant blue worms yielded. The small steam engines inside these worms were integrated with their innards, and when they exploded, hot steam and sticky viscous fluids sprayed everywhere. However, Bai Lang searched carefully and found, amid the gooey organs and fluids, a finger‑sized capsule‑like object.

In any case, all the items were piled onto the coal hoppers; Bai Lang linked the hoppers together, dragging them as he sprinted back to the town to sell them later—actually, he had never seen anything like this in a salvage shop before.