【Qijie】The Kingdom of Eternal Life

BGM: AXION-Diverse System

Xiaojie retreats quickly.

But in the next second, Kate rushed in front of him faster than he had imagined, stopped suddenly, and raised her arms to attack.The huge momentum and inertia caused his long silver hair to fly wildly like a curtain, almost blocking Xiaojie's sight.The latter has already retreated to the wall, and there is no way to retreat, so he can only raise his wrist to catch this powerful punch.

He felt a light cracking sound from the bone in his hand, and the bone in his hand, which had been injured by the machine, might have cracked.Although this pain, which is comparable to a catastrophe, is terrible to ordinary people, it is not unbearable to Xiaojie.Xiaojie's wrist strength is several tons, but his teacher can only surpass him, especially Kate does not know what has been done to him now, let alone recognize Xiaojie, Xiaojie has no doubt that he has completely lost Out of his mind, he only knows to attack randomly, without any sense of propriety.The most frightening thing is that Kate's strength and physical fitness have been forcibly increased to a level multiplied by a level, which has directly caused Xiaojie to barely parry the attacks from Kate. .

However, perhaps because of her loss of sanity, Kate’s original fighting experience and fighting skills are completely gone, leaving only a primitive and brutal attack, relying entirely on brute force to fight against Xiaojie—but even this is scary enough .

Try to imagine a super weapon with no strategic intent at all, no cap on power consumption, no sense of proportion, no defense, no tricks or tactics of any kind, no pain, just attack, attack, attack.

And every punch is tonnage level.

This wasn't any teaching sparring they'd ever had.This is killing.unilateral.

Xiaojie tilted his head slightly, and within a few milliseconds his teacher's fist cut his left cheek, like a [-]-yard truck crashing into a wall, making a loud noise that pierced the sky.The echo sang repeatedly in the huge metal cage, and the buzzing sound made Xiaojie almost deaf for two seconds.Before his hearing recovered, he clamped Kate's hand that was still embedded in the wall with one hand, stifled the movement of that hand, and slammed Kate away, stuck one leg against the wall, turned over in the air, and slashed Kate's hand with a knife. nape of neck.

What can defeat a super weapon whose combat power is comparable to ten tanks...

—without fighting back?

The silver-haired man dodged the knife in his hand with a vigorous movement like a storm, grabbed his arm with his backhand, knocked him down, raised his leg, and hit Xiaojie's stomach with his knee.

The world buzzed.The sharp pain at that moment made Xiaojie feel that he might spit out his intestines.

Although this description is a bit disgusting... But he is not free.This kind of pain can completely break through the upper limit of the average person's tolerance, but it has not yet reached the level that makes Xiaojie completely lose his fighting power.Their movements almost sparked dense sparks, the violent wind tore through their fists and feet, making the piercing sound of silk being torn apart, and the entire space seemed to be filled with a real killing intent.The metal walls and ceilings that could reflect lasers continued to shatter and break, and large alloy plates fell one after another, exposing the bare reinforced concrete.

But Xiaojie has no time for him.In fact, facing an opponent of Kate's level, not to mention his reluctance to counterattack and take the initiative to attack, he has already tried his best in defense alone.

Since Xiaojie recovered, he has never encountered such an opponent who needs to exert all his strength and mobilize every nerve and cell in his body, otherwise he will be beaten without hesitation in the next second until he is unable to fight back .

This is a contest between two S-rank sentries.It is the collision between two of the best and most powerful individuals in the world.This battle is roughly like a storm tearing apart a tsunami, and thunder and lightning piercing a volcano. It is earth-shattering, but it is buried silently in a small city, an unknown underground.

But this didn't affect Xiaojie's nerves in the slightest with crackling electric currents, scalding the blood all the way into bubbling boiling water magma.Every blood vessel was dilated to the point of spasm, as if it was about to burst in the next moment.All five senses were mobilized to the point of trembling, it wasn't cold, but his hair stood on end -- as if he was clearly underground, but his eardrums with rumbling hammers clearly caught the whistling wind.

There was a salty smell in his mouth and nose, and he felt thirsty.Maybe it's because of the imbalance of salt and water, or maybe it's because he just got punched in the back of the head, his eyes are a little dizzy, and he can't even breathe.This effect is actually not obvious, but in this battle, it is enough to become a flaw and weakness in every move:

A slender hand came forward suddenly, passing through the narrow gap intertwined with killing intent, dexterous and light, as graceful as lifting a cup of tea, swift and fierce as if cutting a glacier.strangled his neck.

Then raised his arm.

Xiaojie grabbed the hand that was stuck to his vitals with one hand, raised his leg and kicked his upper arm, trying to kick away the hand that was cast like steel - but he obviously couldn't.For an ordinary person, the strength of his legs is enough to break the opponent's hand bones into three or four pieces.But Kate didn't know what he had experienced. The physical fitness of the already terrifying S-level sentinel had been strengthened to an unimaginable level. A cement or marble column three to four meters thick was erected.

His movement caused his neck to sink even deeper into Kate's fingers, a steel cage that brutally squeezed out any remaining oxygen in the windpipe in his lungs.This is not the first time that Xiaojie has felt the pain of being deprived of breathing, and it will probably not be the last time... But even though he has experienced many battles, he still regrets that he has never been able to adapt to this suffocation and pain.Just when Xiaojie was trying to gather strength to fight back, he heard a bang.

A sharp, devastating pain came belatedly from the back of the head and spine.The blood on his face covered one eye and stuck to his eyelashes. Xiaojie blinked hard, only then did he dimly realize from the blood-red, upside-down vision that he fell headfirst into the room in the innermost wall.The metal wall had been shattered a long time ago, and I don't know how they hit it. The ceiling was also hit with a huge crack. It was crumbling for a while, and a few pieces of steel plate and cement fell down with a bang, falling on Xiaojie's body almost dangerously. beside.

Although it failed to hit him, the rustling wall powder fell on him. For him who has super-sensitive five senses, this made his respiratory tract more painful.

The dim room suddenly brightened up. The upper layer of the shattered ceiling was not soil or the ground. Through his blurred vision, he could see lights.

Kate stood at the door of the room and looked at him, not smiling, not moving, not speaking, standing there indifferently like a solidified sculpture.It seemed that there was no intention of attacking suddenly.

Xiaojie lay there with his head up and down, his mind that was almost exploding, filled with all kinds of emotions, finally calmed down a little because of this little leisure, and had time to weigh how many ribs he had broken.At this moment, his tortured airway finally couldn't stand it any longer, and he protested violently, the air flow was cramped and broken through the trachea, sprayed out of his throat, and splashed a few drops of blood.Sometimes it is very difficult for people to stop once they cough. Xiaojie coughed with his bloodshot eyes open and watched a person slowly walk into the door of the dilapidated room that had been half demolished.

Xiaojie tilted his head, realizing that the impact just now might have given him some concussion.Although the S-rank sentry's physique is extremely superior, after all, he was fighting against another S-rank sentry who could be called a monster.This indirectly caused Xiaojie's vision to blur. Several rosin lamps mounted on the wall were blown up. The liquid rosin dripped all over the floor, and the flame burned slowly on it, burning the room into a haze. The rich rosin and the violent smell of blood are mixed together, and the smell is so weird that it makes people sick.

The lungs hurt like a prairie fire, the blood vessels were hot, and the brain was even more chaotic. He wasn't sure if this was also a manifestation of the sequelae of the concussion.Xiaojie squinted his eyes a few times, but he couldn't see what the person who walked in looked like.

But it should be male.

He didn't know who came, but it must have something to do with the mastermind behind the scenes, Kate and the human experiment, so Xiaojie closed his eyes and pretended to be knocked unconscious by Kate.The person who came came to him, and heard the rustling of the cloth, he should have squatted down.

Xiaojie secretly sniffed the tip of his nose, trying to distinguish between the smell of dust and blood.The hard-to-swallow air poured into the burning trachea and was swallowed into the lungs dying. The sentry carefully identified the smell with his messy mind.

Somewhat familiar.

That's when he began to hear small clinks of glass: probably test tubes or injections.

Most of the blood that flowed down from his forehead had solidified, and the blood stains were stuck on the eyelashes at the corners of his eyes, making it even more difficult to open his eyes.Fortunately, for the S-level sentinel, the concussion obviously won't affect it for too long. Xiaojie sensed that his vision had recovered a little bit, and he clasped his hands under his body, and began to calmly estimate the opponent's force value, and his own How many points can there be in a sudden burst of chances.

He opened his eyes slightly, and his gaze drifted upwards.

At this moment he saw a pair of blue glass beads.

At this moment, Xiaojie stopped breathing.He suddenly remembered what Kiya said to him in the cemetery in the early morning about the little girl who was rescued from the criminal base but suffered from emotional perception disorder——

"Just remember 'blue glass beads.'"

Now he knew: those were not glass beads.

But a pair of blue eyes.

Blue to the extreme, nothing else.At the same time, very familiar—especially the way he smiled, Xiaojie was especially familiar—just like now.

The blue-eyed owner smiled at the shocked man and said hello.His face was as bright and generous as ever, and his voice was deep, even a bit simple and honest.Just like the first impression this person will leave on everyone, he is tall, healthy, dark-skinned, blue-eyed, and has a sunny smile, as if he will dispel all the haze.

"Hi, Jay."

Xiaojie searched hard for a long time, but he couldn't get the "Hi, Strange" out of his throat.

The big dark-skinned man obviously didn't care about his thoughts, he raised his hand, and the gun made a sound of being loaded.

"I know what method you used and where you got the news to come here, 'Foghorn Alley on the 31st', right?" Strange's voice even had a little smile on it, sounding very sincere, Very earnestly, despite the fact that he is pointing a gun at someone, he still seems to be the reliable companion who fights side by side with Xiaojie and can deliver his back.

It was not Xiaojie who was pointed at the gun, but Kate who stood at the door and looked at them indifferently, indifferent to everything that happened.

"It's a pity that the news was originally intended for you alone."

"Do you want to ask something?" Strange smiled and said briskly, "You have about three minutes."

Xiaojie took a breath slowly, as if he wanted to pour out all those messy emotions out of his body.

"It was you... who turned Kate into this?"

With blood foam stuck in his throat, he swallowed the words intermittently, and he had to increase his speaking strength to spit out the words smoothly.

"I thought it was obvious." Strange said, turning his head and shouting: "Come in."

Another person walked in through the dilapidated door, Xiaojie's eyesight did not recover much, and he could only see vaguely.It wasn't until the young man approached that he realized that this person looked familiar... He had only met him not long ago——

It was the staff member who instructed him in the tower branch and explained some situations of the tower branch to him.

The young man smiled at him, and there was even a hint of shyness in that smile.

Strange instructed the newcomer, "Point it with a gun."

He motioned for his assistant to help him point the gun at Kate, until his assistant obeyed and stood behind Kate, pressing the black muzzle of the gun to his temple, Strange put down his steady grip. gun in hand.

He probably knows Xiaojie very well.He knew that even if Xiaojie suffered this kind of injury, he still had the ability to violently kill people.But the current Xiaojie will not.He had a weakness that was pinched in his hands.

Xiaojie was silent for a while, his upside-down eyes looked over the broad shoulders of his former companion, over the expressionless face of Kate standing not far away, and scanned the huge hole in the ceiling directly above.

The shadow of the cross penetrated condescendingly, pulling out a long and thin shadow on the side of his face.

He saw stained glass, he saw angel wings.The decoration was so familiar that he didn't make much effort to piece together the rest of the upper building.

Holy pool, cross, lily petals.

- The lobby of the tower branch.

Yes, now it is finally possible to explain why an A-level sentinel can participate in and even lead such a huge underground experiment under the control of the tower branch of a city, and the tower has not received any news: the entire tower branch of the city , are all in cahoots with him.

Strange finally freed up his hand to put Xiaojie on the ground, and chatted like a normal person: "I didn't expect you to come to visit the grave suddenly, you don't have to pay too much attention to Agum and Urata Shuta. They saw what they shouldn't see stuff. Besides, they were going to die too."

Xiaojie knew what he meant, the two sentinels had already been given chronic neurotoxins.Based on the existing clues, it is very likely that they were accidentally arrested when they went on a mission together before - of course now he knows that their arrest was not accidental, but was designed.

From the perspective of short-term effects, this chronic neurotoxin does not kill people immediately, but will lie dormant in the body for a period of time, and when it occurs, it can make people lose their minds and go crazy.

He can even reasonably speculate——

"I have it too?" Xiaojie asked.

He was asking nonsense, but Strange clearly understood what he was talking about.The latter smiled, and patted his head like a reliable big brother: "Your mental power is stronger than I imagined, and you need another injection. You are worthy of being an S-rank."

So that's why his spiritual guide is missing.

Xiaojie turned his head away from his hand.

"What did they see at Kate's grave?"

The blood froth in his chest may have been spit out, and his breath finally began to be even, he no longer felt suffocated all the time, and his questions became smoother.

But Strange's smile told Xiaojie that he would not answer this question.

Maybe it was an illusion, maybe it was the neurotoxin in his body that was finally noticed by the master, and it was attacking unscrupulously... Xiaojie felt that there was still a lingering rusty smell in his throat, which was thick, fishy and bitter.His temples were throbbing and throbbing, a thick fog of dizziness flooded his brain, and his vision flickered from moment to moment.

It may be that the head and brain are congested, or it may be burned by the mad burning anger in the chest cavity.He could hardly feel the pain anymore, but Xiaojie wasn't sure if Strange could sense the killing intent that he couldn't suppress well. After all, although the opponent was not as good as him, he was still a very good sentinel.

"Why are you doing all this?"

"Because of need." Strange threw away the alcohol cotton ball, raised his wrist and looked at his watch: "Their side has almost started... Don't worry, your guide won't be here any time, even if he is beating the enemy, it is probably now It's about to be bombed to pieces."

Xiaojie didn't speak.

"Aren't you worried about Killua beating the enemy?" Strange noticed that the expression he expected was not shown on Xiaojie's face, and asked with interest, "Or are you more worried about yourself?"

Xiaojie said, "I'm not worried about Qi Ya. He'll be fine."

"So confident?"

"I trust him like I trust my own heartbeat." Xiaojie said.

Strange smiled.

"Have you ever heard your own heartbeat?"

He smiled sarcasticly, but at the same time he was too lazy to hide his understatement of sadness.He clearly had no intention of explaining his emotions.He self-consciously sucked the potion into the syringe. The color of the unknown potion in the syringe was bright light gold. The color was very beautiful. If he had to describe it, it would probably be the brilliant tail feathers of a phoenix.He twirled the syringe to show that the crystal clear color, perhaps the more dangerous the more beautiful, looked nothing like the horrible neurotoxin that had made so many people bleed.He said casually: "It's not interesting to talk to you any more. I allow you to ask one last question."

Xiaojie watched his movements.

He said abruptly and softly, "Does Zooey know?"

Zoe is Strange's child.Only five years old.The last time Xiaojie and Qiya visited his father, he was a well-behaved and sensible child. He probably inherited his mother's fair skin, but he had the same blue eyes as his father.

The ease with ease disappeared from the dark-skinned man's face.The contours of his face were not sharp, and even for a bad guy, he was a little too amiable, but when the smile disappeared from his face, there was still almost breathless pressure.

But Xiaojie is of course not afraid of this, and even has the mood to sneer with a mocking smile from the corners of his cracked lips.

——Does he know that his father is a bastard who betrayed his friends?

Did he know that his father was in the company of the underworld who smuggled and sold drugs?

Knowing that his dad killed so many people, even a little girl his own age?

He didn't say a word, but those cloudy golden eyes threw the sarcasm verbatim on Strange's face.

Strange twitched the corner of his mouth.

"He doesn't need to know."

He was obviously irritated, and he was no longer in the mood to laugh. He put his finger on the syringe and slowly applied pressure: "The question and answer time is over."

The sharp coldness and pain injected into the skin, spread and circled along that point, rushing along with the blood.up to the heart and brain.

Xiaojie laughed amidst the extreme coldness and scorching heat.His chest began to ache again, and the blood foam overflowed and he forcibly swallowed it back.Strange pushed the last dose of medicine, and threw away the discarded syringe, probably convinced that the situation was back under his control. Even though he was still angry, he still sneered and said, "It works so well. Come on, is this crazy?"

"You are so pitiful." Xiaojie whispered.

Maybe because he made up his mind to ignore him, Strange stood up.A large shadow blocked Xiaojie's vision, but it may also be that his vision began to darken.It felt like a cold snake had been drilled into the heart, the venom gathered, and the severe pain began to spread from the chest to the whole body.At the same time, the brain began to throb like an explosion.He didn't need to enter the mental picture, he also knew that it was uncontrollably cracking inch by inch, Xiaojie felt in a trance that falling rocks and flying sand were overwhelming him, burying himself bit by bit——he realized with his remaining rationality that it was He could no longer tell the mental picture from reality.

Xiaojie exhaled dizzily, and he saw Strange's watch hidden under his cuff.In the smooth dial, the long and short hour hands overlap together, forming an inseparable glue.

"Welcome to the kingdom of immortality." Strange whispered.

The shuttle needle of time continues to weave forward, filling every loophole of fate.

On the 31th.

Foghorn Alley.

The behind-the-scenes man who cast a lot of bait finally got what he wanted most, and was one step away from his goal.

31st.twelve o'clock.

On the last day of May, this continent entered early summer amidst the warm and humid monsoon and the hoarse singing of cicada chrysalis.Midnight and early morning reach a consensus, and the handover merges into the thickest darkness.The surface of the sea is shimmering with light, the fishing boat is still in the sleep of the water pattern and the fish and shrimp, and the huge whale is slowly cruising past the bottom of the boat.The distant sea breeze sang a long echo, blowing into the city, blowing into every unextinguished light, and can't blow out the desires gathered in this floating world.

At this moment, the bloody drug lord jumped over the flying bullet tracks, and the helicopter took off with a bang. The fierce wind and waves from the propeller shook the thin chains hanging from the hands of the blond guide, messing up the killer's long black hair, but could not break the tower. Ripples of light gathered in the headspace.The gangsters who gathered on the ground kidnapped a large number of city citizens as hostages, shot and killed innocent lives recklessly, and confronted the tower and demanded that the tower delete all the criminal files of their escaped leaders and organizations.A miniature bomb was detonated silently at the bottom of the tower, burning a life that was as bright as a rose but too difficult to read into a blur of white light.

At this moment, the guide and the sentinel who were separated by thousands of mountains and rivers grabbed their chests at the same time, struggled to let out broken breaths in the same crazy pain across the space, and realized at the same time...they lost each other.

During this eternity-long second, the sentinel clenched his hands on his chest with the last of his strength, as if he wanted to hold the invisible thread that was once connected to the depths of his soul... as if he wanted to hold the dissipated thread. heart of.

"Qiu."

He murmured softly and softly.

Have you ever heard your own heartbeat?

—You must have never heard the sound of it stopping.

TBC.