Chapter 67: Sudden Attack

Chapter 67: Chapter 67: Sudden Attack

The Living Iron Generator had an remarkably integrated structure.

Apart from the input slot for Living Iron Material and a few standard connection ports, every other component was completely sealed off.

That design had its pros and cons.

The upside was that outside contaminants and dust couldn’t easily get in — unlike the Extraction Device outside, which should have had its own dust barriers by design, yet had still ended up completely packed with Dead Spirit Dust.

The downside was that maintenance would be a pain. Disassembling the thing would be a nightmare.

But as long as the machine itself was well-built and properly maintained during regular use, that downside was basically a non-issue.

And the fact that this kind of sealed structure was used on a generator pointed to something else about its design.

It produced almost no byproducts aside from heat.

This Living Iron Generator appeared to convert Living Iron into electrical energy completely and cleanly.

The 3D projection readout confirmed it hadn’t been damaged — it was still fully intact, and all it needed was material fed into it to start running again.

The exact output was unclear, but Living Iron Material was rare by any measure. Using something like that as fuel either meant whoever built this had money to burn, or the efficiency was genuinely worth the cost.

And this thing was designed to work in tandem with the equipment outside.

As long as an Abnormality was being harvested, the extracted Living Iron could feed a continuous supply into the generator — fully self-sustaining, with any surplus energy routed elsewhere.

Ignore the suffering of the Abnormality involved, and the whole setup was basically a perpetual motion machine in everything but name.

Xiang Yi couldn’t believe he’d overlooked something this significant on his first pass.

And whoever had found this place hadn’t even bothered to take the equipment — they just walled it off and left. What was the plan? Come back and rebuild the whole Living Iron extraction containment room from scratch?

Xiang Yi wasn’t about to stand by while an Abnormality got put through that.

He had to do something.

But before that.

Xiang Yi finally put his finger on the nagging, off feeling this room had been giving him the entire time.

Something was missing.

Where were the surveillance cameras?

A place like this gets built, and there’s no monitoring equipment watching it around the clock?

Anyone with the resources to source this many Shuffling Monsters and all this equipment — how could they not get their hands on the kind of recording instruments Ning Ye had mentioned, the ones designed specifically to observe Abnormalities?

But since he’d entered, Xiang Yi hadn’t found a single trace of any surveillance device.

With his level of perception, hidden cameras weren’t something he could just miss.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were all bare concrete — there was no way any of it had been made one-way.

Could it be that whoever originally built this place and whoever later discovered and walled it off were two different groups entirely — and the second group had stripped the cameras out?

Xiang Yi did a thorough sweep of the room, unconvinced, but found exactly what he’d found before: nothing.

Why hadn’t the people who walled it off at least left a camera behind?

Made no sense.

Fine. It didn’t have to make sense.

Unmonitored equipment just sitting here — not taking advantage of that would make this whole second trip a complete waste of Xiang Yi’s time.

Xiang Yi burned Spiritual Power to direct his Spiritual Fluctuation around the Living Iron Extraction Device, wrapping it tight, and loosened every bolt anchoring it to the floor.

He gave it a shove and quickly realized it wasn’t going anywhere. Moving it himself was out of the question.

"Shi Tie." Xiang Yi called out.

Shi Tie, who had been standing still and zoning out, immediately came over and wrapped its arms around the Living Iron Extraction Device, hoisting it up through sheer brute strength.

That single motion yanked the Living Iron drainage tubes connected to the operating tables taut.

Xiang Yi lurched forward in alarm and told Shi Tie to put it back down, then turned his attention to the operating tables first, carefully detaching all the external drainage tubing and removing the needles at each end.

The Extraction Device had dedicated compartments built in to store those components.

Shi Tie looked clumsy, but much like when it had handled the rifle earlier, its movements while collecting and stowing the parts were quick and precise — Xiang Yi clearly wasn’t needed for this part.

The generator inside was probably just as heavy, so that didn’t require Xiang Yi to get personally involved either.

The beds could stay. The equipment was what mattered.

Xiang Yi left a flashlight in the compartment for light and stepped out for the time being.

His plan was to go widen the opening he’d made earlier, so they’d have an easier time hauling everything out.

It would also give him a chance to scout the area — the last thing he needed was his rotten luck kicking in and running headlong into the people who’d walled this place off while they were halfway through moving the equipment.

Xiang Yi left Shi Tie to handle things and headed up the stairs alone.

He’d barely made it up the staircase, not even two steps out.

Something flickered at the edge of his vision.

Every hair on his body stood on end. The feeling hit him like a blade pressed against his spine — he couldn’t breathe.

On pure instinct, he flooded his brain with Spiritual Energy and Spiritual Power, pushing his thoughts to their absolute limit.

He felt something cutting through the air toward the right side of his neck.

No time to turn around.

Xiang Yi kept every ounce of Spiritual Power locked in his mind and threw himself forward in the midst of that accelerated state, palms hitting the floor as he dove hard toward the nearest doorway.

He felt something sweep over the top of his head.

Before he could feel any relief, that same invisible force was already bearing down on his chest.

He twisted his body frantically mid-dive, wrenching himself into a near-impossible angle, and slipped out of its path.

Something grazed past him again.

But the third came before Xiang Yi had any chance to regain his footing.

This time, his body was already twisted so far there was nowhere left to go.

Xiang Yi felt death bearing down on him — real, immediate, certain.

He drove his Spiritual Power into his mind with everything he had. His thoughts accelerated again, and his control over his own body reached a height he’d never touched before.

He could feel every muscle. And with his mind pushed to that sharpened peak, he forced his body to shift — just enough to take the blow at the least lethal angle.

Xiang Yi contracted his muscles into the best position he could manage and took the hit.

Searing pain exploded across his back.

Three gunshots followed from the direction of the hospital entrance.

That was what had been cutting through the air — bullets.

Even through the body armor, the pain was savage.

He bit down against the feeling of his chest and lungs being torn apart and forced his head up.

At the hospital’s front entrance, a figure in camouflage fatigues stood with a rifle leveled straight at him.

Finger still on the trigger. Ready to fire again at any moment.

Adrenaline surged through him.

Xiang Yi felt his Spiritual Power being driven violently into his brain, wringing out every last drop of potential his body had left.

He seized control of his muscles and forced his body — which by all rights should have gone sprawling from that contorted mid-air position — to correct itself.

He grabbed the door frame and hurled himself into the hospital room beside the stairwell.