Chapter 226: Anomaly

Bai Lang deployed Lightness Skill, directly escaping the ant hell—these ants, even if dead, would use pheromones to summon their kind, unless within a certain range, where possibly all ants within tens of square kilometers would be completely dead—but doing so might possibly draw out the ant king and queen.

'In the future, if short on money, this could be a good score—the ant king's mandibles and the queen's reproductive chamber and ovaries are valuable.' Bai Lang tapped his toe on the ground and then shot out over ten zhang.

Although this place is dangerous, the actual dangerous 'things' aren't that densely packed. At most there are groups of coal scuttles, and as Bai Lang gradually goes deeper, even the coal scuttles start to disappear.

Now out in the wilderness, Bai Lang saw dust in the distance. Accompanying the dust was a rumbling sound—the sound of a steam engine; the approaching thing Bai Lang had already seen—a truck, a steam truck.

These are bigger than internal‑combustion trucks; behind the cab is a boiler over a person tall and a compact combustion chamber, with coal in half the cargo bed, continuously fed into the furnace by a gear‑driven belt. The other half of the cargo bed holds a ridiculously oversized Gatling gun.

It even uses a belt‑driven Gatling; seeing the bright‑shiny canvas ammo belt, Bai Lang exclaimed. The cab has no glass windows, but has a roof, with the two seats empty—'Really a steam‑powered automatic machine.' Bai Lang also saw a perforated strip endlessly circulating in some mechanism at the driver's seat.

'Indeed hardcore!' Bai Lang praised. This steam truck is all treasure, every part recyclable. A fully disabled one captured, with its punching‑machine brain shut down, can be used straight away—it's hot property in the wilderness.

This thing has no weakness to speak of—it's not alive, so sprayers are useless, and a wrecked machine still fetches at least half price. But close combat should work; smash the punching‑machine brain and it's paralyzed. Bai Lang is far more agile than the truck; after casually circling it twice he realizes how weak it is against him.

Don't be fooled by the spikes on the doors, the ram on the front, or the constantly firing, auto‑rotating Gatling in the cargo bed—this thing's steering is truly inflexible, especially its suspension, which is just a plain spring, not even leaf springs.

Even if three of these trucks show up together, to Bai Lang it's still nothing; in battle the three trucks end up wrecking each other. The soul‑seizing killing intent of Southern Dipper White Tiger Fist is useless on machines—this is the privilege of those who train Southern Dipper Train Cannon.

Against this sort of thing, Southern Dipper Train Cannon absolutely holds a huge advantage.

White Tiger Fist plus Golden Bell Shield means taking a few bullets is fine, and the bullets might even ricochet back causing splash damage. But Bai Lang doesn't need that; after just a few rounds he ducks in and jumps into the cab, directly snapping the endlessly looping punching‑tape on the punching machine, and the truck stops instantly.

Three trucks—one wrecked by another truck's bullets, two stopped by Bai Lang. 'This thing's really unfriendly to the driver.' Bai Lang felt the scorching heat on the backrest—sure enough, the boiler is pressed against it, essentially treating the driver like a fish patty being grilled.

Moreover, one person can't operate it, because with the punching machine stopped the feed belt stops too, requiring someone to shovel coal manually. And the truck's clutch is extremely stiff; Bai Lang can shift gears easily, but an ordinary person would need to hammer it.

The trucks are indeed valuable, but they're big; Bai Lang alone can't drive them back, so he can only lament leaving them in the wilderness. 'Come to think of it, those destroyed steam machines from before have vanished—could it be that this wilderness still has scavenged steam machinery?'

The premise of that remark is also because Bai Lang hasn't seen any other scavengers so far—it's just him alone.

Besides the Gatling, the truck's cargo bed sometimes holds trash; Bai Lang found in it a morning star of unknown origin, its melon‑sized hammer head studded with blunt nails—a genuine weapon of murder, 'It weighs thirty or forty catties, enough to smash anything.'

Just as Bai Lang was scavenging, the 'Guangzhou City' underwent an anomaly.

In the city, the Guangzhou Prefect was assassinated—four men struck, breaking through layers of guards to kill the prefect himself. The prefect's own martial ability is negligible, but his guards are no slouches. After these four succeeded in one blow, they now face a continual surge of 'strongmen'.

That is steam‑toilet armor, resembling a toilet, with a small steam engine at the back, hands and feet, presumably housing a driver. Overall round and plump, almost cute, but the assassins fighting them find nothing cute about them.

Whether palm or fist techniques, striking these armors does nothing at all—these arts that could mow down tens of miles are reduced to mere punches and kicks here. Even the flames, icy cold, and lightning summoned by the arts hardly affect the armor, whereas solid weapons can still inflict some damage.

These toilets constantly spew steam; their attacks are extremely fierce—flames, ice, and the like are shattered in a single blow, and only bodily gangqi can hard‑block the assault. Bewitching martial arts are utterly useless; arts containing the 'Dao' end up reduced to blunt force clashes.

'Go!' a tall young man swung a blade; his hundred‑catty longsword turned into wild thunder, enveloping the toilet before him—but most of the thunder's damage was drawn into the ground by the toilet's fine upper spike.

The heavy longsword chopped a toilet, breaking its surface armor, but when trying to put force into the cut, it was locked solid by the axe‑spear in the toilet's hand. 'This world is totally different from before!' someone among the four said.

'This Thunder Blade technique, in another world, would cleave hundreds or thousands of such things in one stroke—I never imagined here I couldn't even split a single toilet! And the flesh of people in this world isn't special either.' The swordsman gave a wry laugh, 'This is still Thunder Blade; if I used the Karmic Blade instead, it'd be utterly useless—this thing has no karma at all.'

All in all, the assassination went fairly smoothly, but the escape was embarrassing.

With a muffled grunt, one of the four suddenly twisted his midsection; he frantically slapped his chest, then his butt, and at once spat out a mouthful of blood while letting out a long fart—the blood, before hitting the ground, turned into a grotesque meatball covered in eyes, which then, amid a strange cry, vanished as a wisp of green smoke.