Chapter 166: Cyberpunk!?

Uh…

In the endless steel wasteland, filled with massive piles of metal junk, a muffled hum sounded.

Then a disfigured, blood‑soaked hand grasped the edge of the pit and, with great effort, climbed out.

Looking up at the slightly dim sky, Fulade narrowed his eyes, his gaze flickering.

Above, there was a steel city the size of a small continent!

One could vaguely see numerous skyscrapers, and a wave of futuristic sci‑fi atmosphere washed over him.

Around the floating steel city, dense metal pipelines stretched down to the ground, their purpose unknown.

All around lay an endless metal graveyard, packed with all kinds of metal scrap and abandoned metal goods.

"Where's the Mantis Girl?" Fulade scanned the area but found no trace of Mantis Girl Leila Bo Lante.

He shook his head; the most important thing now was to leave quickly.

After all, his arrival made quite a stir and would inevitably attract the attention of those with designs in this world; before he figured things out, it was best to stay hidden.

Moreover, Fulade was in a terrible condition: his internal energy was almost depleted, and his heavy injuries meant even an ordinary person could pose a threat.

He took a cloak from the Space Ring, wrapped it around his body, and after determining the direction, walked west along the narrow paths among the metal ruins.

Fulade remembered there was a city there.

As he walked, he examined his own condition and found it abnormally bad.

Not only was his internal energy nearly exhausted and his mental power feeble, but he also discovered the ambient energy here was unusually thin, almost negligible.

Let alone replenishing energy, even casting spells would be severely weakened—it was essentially an elemental desert.

"This world really has no planar suppression?" Fulade froze, incredulous.

Without planar suppression, there is no planar will.

Such a situation usually occurs in broken or half planes where life never arose.

Yet this place clearly has its own civilization; logically, a planar will should have been born here, so why is there no planar suppression?

It's like a beautiful, alluring widow throwing her front door wide open, telling a burly intruder, "I'm naked, come and ravish me."

With this puzzlement, Fulade continued toward the city beyond the metal graveyard.

Ding‑dong‑clang!

Walking the winding metal path, he was surrounded by small metal hills piled from discarded metal.

A girl's skull suddenly tumbled off the metal heap with a clatter, rolled a few times beside Fulade's feet, and came to rest in front of him.

It was a skull of a sweet‑faced girl with sleek black short hair, porcelain features, and a pair of eyes like those of an anime girl, tightly shut, quiet and serene.

"Eh!"

After a careful glance, Fulade bent down, picked up the girl's skull, his face odd.

"Looks like an android?!" Fulade muttered in surprise.

Using his keen spiritual perception, Fulade noticed a faint lingering consciousness ripple within the skull.

More importantly, it was a sci‑fi‑styled mechanical replica skull.

Seeing a bio‑mimetic spine dragged from the girl's neck, linking to a nearby half‑rotted torso, Fulade thought briefly and gathered them.

As a secondary class Magician, Fulade inevitably shared the common flaw of all casters: curiosity about the unknown.

After this incident, Fulade examined the surrounding metal junk more closely.

Beyond the countless useless metal scraps, occasional metal prosthetics and oddly styled control devices appeared in his sight.

The metal graveyard was vast; after half an hour, Fulade still hadn't left the area.

Along the way, he occasionally encountered scavenger‑type folks, picking through the metal ruins for items of value.

Some wielded futuristic‑looking yet oddly primitive metal detectors, dressed in bizarre garb, and many showed signs of bodily modifications.

Their gazes were wary; as Fulade passed, they eyed him greedily or cautiously.

Seeing nothing of interest on Fulade, they withdrew their scrutiny.

"The meteor that fell earlier should be around here, right?"

"The guild's current contract offers a hefty bounty; once I find it, I can afford an M3p‑grade drive unit for myself."

Listening to the nearby natives' hushed whispers, Fulade's eyes flickered; it seemed the meteor they mentioned was actually him.

Just one piece? Looks like Mantis Girl didn't fall in the same area as him.

Escaping the scavengers' leering gazes, after another half‑hour's walk, a city appeared before Fulade.

It was a city steeped in cyberpunk style.

Under the dim night, neon of all colors lit up, and streets and alleys teemed with various styles of mag‑lev vehicles.

Mechanized, sci‑fi one‑wheel motorcycles roared, racing through the night streets, with boys and girls that looked almost human shouting excitedly from the rides.

A shabby night bus, packed with off‑duty passengers, hit a crowd; amid a clacking sound, a gust of air surged, and the bus levitated, gliding over the heads.

Six‑legged, massive, stout military robots patrolled the area.

Their army‑green coating bore a crossed‑gun and scythe logo, and their arms were replaced by large‑caliber rotary cannons.

Amid a mechanical roar and clacking, they marched heavily, maintaining city security.

Along the streets stood dilapidated buildings with colorful neon signs, rarely exceeding three stories.

The streets were narrow, seemingly unplanned, winding and cramped.

Turning a corner, he saw a tangled network of metal pipes, ten‑plus meters high, resembling factory dust‑removal or oil‑transfer ducts, now abandoned, teeming with pedestrians and occasional hawkers' cries—it was a night market.

Walking this sci‑fi yet clearly dilapidated city, Fulade felt both novelty and a strange familiarity.

Perhaps because it shares a technological plane with Earth; despite the different aesthetic, it still gave Fulade a hint of comfort.

Now, Fulade's top priority was to find a place to settle, heal his wounds, and seek a chance to contact Dark World's Malina and her group.

Before that, he needed to learn everything about this plane—such as the sky‑borne steel city, its script and history, its technological development, and so on…

"Ding‑dong! Ding‑dong! Welcome, this is Dr. Yi De's clinic."

A mechanical‑sounding electronic tone suddenly rang out.

The gravely wounded Fulade, who had not felt a thirst for blood in a long time, paused when a sweet, delightful scent drifted from the façade of a clinic‑like building he passed.

He turned his head to look.

It was a two‑story shabby building that looked a bit cramped from the outside, unlike other shops that hung colorful neon signs.

On its marble‑like façade were six stained‑glass windows shaped like Western cathedral arches.

Despite its dilapidation, it still exuded a hint of grandeur.

Pushing the door open revealed a spacious, tidy examination room with a faint sci‑fi vibe.

One side of the entrance housed a medicine cabinet; beyond a load‑bearing stone pillar straight ahead were two beds covered with white sheets.

On one of the beds lay a man with his upper body naked.

A doctor in a white coat and a nurse nearby were bustling around the man on the bed.

However, this clinic was not a traditional one that merely administered IVs and prescriptions.

Under the doctor's orders, the nurse removed the patient's arm and chest‑area synthetic skin, then located several ports and attached oil tubes that delivered a maintenance fluid.

After the gurgling blue liquid was pumped into the body, the doctor perched on a high stool, operating a night‑crystal screen, and three or four mechanical arms sprang into action.

Disassembly, linking, inspection, repair— they kept working on the cyborg without pause.

Meanwhile, a string of curses occasionally escaped his mouth, as if he were arguing fiercely with someone.

Not far away, a blonde girl in a wheelchair heard the door and turned toward Fulade; she looked about fourteen or fifteen.

She was delicate, pale, and the wheelchair‑bound figure exuded a hint of frailty.

When she saw Fulade, the girl timidly turned her head away, as if instinctively wary and fearful of strangers.

Nearby stood a black‑silk long‑dressed, slender, aristocratic woman with black hair, a purple crystal embedded in her forehead.

Her deep eyes hinted at melancholy, and her features bore a faint resemblance to Jennifer Connelly.

Yet this elegant, slightly seductive lady seemed to be having a heated argument with the doctor.

When Fulade entered, the lady glanced at him once and then ignored him.

"Sir, I'm sorry, it's already very late today. If you need anything, please come back tomorrow."

The doctor, whose hair was slightly graying, lowered his head a bit and looked at Fulade through his glasses, his tone softening.

After speaking, he turned his gaze to the constantly flashing data on the LCD screen, ignoring Fulade and the woman beside him.

Fulade, who could communicate via telepathy, didn't know the local language, but could understand the words from the counterpart's mental frequency fluctuations.

Fulade quietly surveyed everything before him, finally fixing his gaze on the girl and the lady.

A trace of blood‑lust made Fulade's eyes blaze.

The beautiful, dignified lady seemed to keenly sense Fulade's scorching stare and furrowed her elegant brows as she looked at him.

A hint of displeasure flashed across her brows as she turned to the doctor and said, "Yi De, no matter what, Li Ta is my daughter. I could never harm her. Why are you being so obstinate?"

"She doesn't have to get prosthetic limbs and become a cyborg to stand up! If we return to Angel City, we have other, better ways. Think it over."

After speaking, he crouched with a hint of pity, kissed the girl, and, under her lingering gaze, hurried out.

Passing Fulade, she curiously met his gaze; through the clinic's dim light, a pair of captivating eyes beneath a wide hood made Yi Lian's heart flutter, and she quickly averted her stare, pushed the door and left.

From the snippets of their argument, Fulade seemed to grasp a few points.

He cast a meaning‑laden glance around the clinic, especially at the girl's legs, then slowly pushed the door open and left.

He watched the lady board a car, escorted by two fully‑armed cyborgs, and drive away without showing any emotion.

"What a pity…" he shook his head, lamenting.

He had hoped to extract some information from the woman, but it seemed impossible now.

"Angel City?"

Fulade looked up at the massive city floating among the clouds in the night, grander than it appeared by day.

The tech‑saturated Angel City gave Fulade a strong sense of threat; clearly, a place that could evoke such a feeling was not merely a city on the surface.

The city at night looked especially enchanting.

Fulade did not act rashly; after all, gravely wounded, his strength had hit rock bottom, and the faint threat emanating from Yi De indicated that the seemingly gentle, scholarly doctor was not as simple as he appeared.

His thoughts drifting, Fulade glanced at the law‑ring concealed on his arm, sighed helplessly; with his current energy he could no longer activate it, otherwise he could release Weiluona and the others, and wouldn't have to cower.

"Aaa!! Take him down!"

"Heavens…"

"Mai Ke! Mai Ke!"

"Right now Gravedigger is far ahead; will he clinch tonight's Mobile Ball Tournament championship? Let's watch and see!"

A clamor snapped Fulade's attention back as he followed the sound.

Amid the noisy crowd, a giant advertising screen broadcast a sport unique to this world.

As the commentator and surrounding spectators shouted excitedly, frame after frame of passionate, violent scenes unfolded.

It was a brutal, bloody competitive game.

Contestants had to seize the moving mobile ball and, despite being pursued by all participants, cross the finish line to claim victory.

The screen showed, amid the cheers of tens of thousands of spectators, a massive cyborg over four meters tall—its brain the only relatively normal part—its blue mechanical arm tethered to an alloy chain. As the arm swung, a rotating blade disc studded with sharp teeth flew out, slicing a voluptuous female cyborg at the waist.

That female cyborg was clearly still alive; the high‑definition camera caught a flash of terror rise in her eyes, and before she could react, a tank‑like, military‑green cyborg charged from behind, instantly crushing her beautiful head. Red and blue fluids splattered, countless mechanical parts flew everywhere, and the audience's excitement surged even more.

The scene reached a climax! (End of chapter)