Editor: Elanor
The door to the arsenal was half hidden underneath the crumbling wall, and the exterior was made of a rotting wooden door with large weeds growing on it.
The Killing Show contestants had just poured fuel oil on it and burned the weeds clean, revealing the metal door beneath the wood.
On top of that, they had detonated five bombs. Although there were no hot weapons released yet, these people were experts at making explosives from highly flammable and explosive items that could be commonly found in their kitchens or bathrooms.
As soon as Wei Xi’s broadcast came out, all the players gathered in front of the arsenal, and now the place was as lively as a vegetable market.
The first team was nearby and arrived on the scene within a minute. When the leader first saw the metal box, he immediately recognized what it was. He circled it, turned to face Xia Tian, and said, “The organizers won’t like it.”
“It just so happens that,” Xia Tian said, “I don’t like the organizers either.”
After a while, more and more people gathered over, excitedly discussing and feverishly getting to work.
Not far from Xia Tian, a group of people were experimenting with aluminium thermite—kudos to them for getting this stuff out, and that too in such dizzying quantities. A network logistician next to them shouted that they were just looking for death and that they didn’t understand what “3,000 degrees of heat” meant, but no one paid any attention to him, and everyone looked like they were going to go all out.
Someone on the other side was testing liquid nitrogen. God only knew where they got it from.
It probably wasn’t too hard. For the sake of a good fight, there were always countless lethal materials hidden in the middle of the seemingly homely arena, it just depended on whether you could find them or not. And given that most of the Killing Show contestants were considered half chemistry experts… or in the least they had some idea of how to make a bomb using the common stuff in the kitchen.
Now, everyone has shown their creativity by collecting dangerous materials from all over the arena and directing them in this direction.
Xia Tian stood at the top of the arsenal and looked around. The scene was mind blowing.
The height of the alloy cast building was over seven meters, and the floor area was about eight hundred square feet, but now, the behemoth buried in the earth was fully exposed. The soil around it was pushed aside by explosions, corrosion and manpower, and broken pieces and burn marks were visible everywhere.
A few guys assembled a closure instrument with a repulsive force field function, and temporarily modified it to push the soil away and compact it, making it easier to work.
Some people took down nearby building boards and used them as temporary passage pathways between the building and the mound. The colours were varied and messy, making the buried area of this solemn steel behemoth look like a giant slum.
It took only six hours.
Xia Tian felt a kind of cold pride. Originally, this thing was planned to be opened mostly a week later, where someone would stumble upon the blind spot, get the passageway password, and then open it. The process would be elegant and would also have the thrill of decryption.
But now, the solid alloy shell under his feet was covered in spots of corrosion and burn marks, exposed to a large number of fluorescent lamps, mining lights, and disposable light bulbs found by the players. The whole scene smelled of chaos, madness, and recklessness.
After all, everyone knew what lay in the depths of this isolated island of gardens.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ktfs tjv jii rffc atf ktlaf rtjvbkr oijrtlcu ys atf fvuf bo atf mjwfgj jcv atf wealijafv ybvlfr lc atf ujgvfc. Ktfs xcfk atja, gluta cbk, atf iluta kjr atf bcis atlcu atja rfqjgjafv atfw ogbw atf wbcrafgr bearlvf.
Ccv tbk ojlca atlr iluta kjr, kjr lc atf tjcvr bo ktjafnfg la kjr.
And it would always go out.
The monster was hiding in the darkness, waiting to drag people into it.
Not far away, someone shouted, “Move over, it’s starting.” A group of people trotted away from the top, and those doing other things stopped to look at the spectacle. The next second, a dazzling bright light lit up, and a high temperature of nearly 3,000 degrees rose inside, lighting up the entire building, more blinding than the half-sunset.
It was almost hard to imagine how many crazy things these people had done to the arsenal in this half a day.
The aluminium thermite didn’t work, and the site of the arsenal was a noisy mess.
“This won’t work. It will take at least a week to melt through. Who has that much time? Besides, there’s not enough material—”
“I think we can use liquid nitrogen first and then use aluminium thermite—”
“Let’s do it now!”
“Everyone calm down!”
There was a pungent smell in the air. After the blinding light had died down, a piece of scorched and messy molten metal remained. The alloy was still cold and remained sealed, fully demonstrating the insurmountable height of the Upper World’s technology.
Xia Tian heard someone next to him talking about how the thing was like a giant beast, still alive, refusing to submit to the ant-like players like them, and that only the organizer’s agreement could open it. The tone was mysterious as if they were really talking about some supernatural creature.
But it was not, Xia Tian thought, it was just a turtle shell made of alloy.
He stared at it viciously, contemplating all the ways to destroy it.
It was never a dead rich man’s collection room; instead, it was a high-strength alloy nightmare. It was a disaster that even after putting all your efforts, it puts you just inches away from protecting yourself, your friends, your dignity, and all that you own. And people just watch your struggles for fun.
Not far away, a group of people had gotten a few cars and were dismantling parts. It seemed that they had some new ideas and were ready to make a big scene.
Bai Jingan stood on the edge of the arsenal room, staring down at his feet. He had been standing like this for ten minutes. He looked very quiet, but he blended in perfectly with the chaotic scene.
He suddenly said to Xia Tian, “I think there are vents.”
Xia Tian turned his head to look at him, and Eric said, “But the underground enclosed area does not need vents.”
Bai Jingan gave a nod. It wasn’t that no one had considered it, but based on the depth it was buried at, it appeared that the arsenal had left no room for vents. It was a completely enclosed underground space.
“But there is no such thing as an ‘underground enclosed area’,” Bai Jingan said, “There is only an ‘underground enclosed building’.”
He stared at the giant under his feet.
“They must have used an ‘enclosed underground building’ template to construct this thing in about a month. And those buildings all have vents.”
Xia Tian stared at him for a while, then suddenly turned and walked in the other direction.
With a clear goal in mind, he walked to an area off to the west, paced back and forth for two steps, stopped, knelt down on one knee, pushed aside the remaining dirt, and reached out to press his hand on the uneven metal surface.
He felt a faint air current.
“I told you I didn’t feel right under my feet,” Xia Tian said.
As Bai Jingan walked over, Xia Tian raised his head and smiled at him.
It was the first time he had smiled since An Xiaoyin’s accident, and the smile was unusually bright in the setting sun, reflecting like a glinting light of a sword blade.
Then Xia Tian stood up, turned around and shouted to the people next to him, “We have found the vent!”
The vent of the arsenal used the concept of “closed escape space”, which was very popular in the Upper World recently.
Now, a group of Killing Show contestants gathered around that area for discussion. The vent was measured to be about a meter in diameter, and if it weren’t for the miniscule airflow, it wouldn’t be different from the surrounding area. But beneath this, instead of a hard solid, there was a spongy structure.
—Yes, although it was a vent, it was also made from the same high-grade alloy. It still couldn’t be opened with the current weapon level.
This technology was currently used mainly as a valuables collection room in the Upper City. The configuration had gone through many rounds of optimization. The rich simply had to build one at home. Everything inside was self-sufficient, with top filters and central computers, and a lot of clean energy, it was able to hunker down until the end of the world.
It was this template that was used in the Killing Show.
The group of people quickly discussed options, one more expert than the other, and Xia Tian knew that they had found the way.
In a series of crazy attempts just now, some of these things had an effect on the H-3 series alloys. The reason why it couldn’t be used was simply that the alloy was too tenacious. It would take half a month to make a hole that an individual can pass through. They didn’t have that much time to spend here.
But going in through a vent was different.
The sky gradually darkened.
Under the constant corrosion, the vent began to collapse downward. At this rate, it was not a problem to erode this area within twelve hours. Everyone started to think about the beautiful prospect of having a high-end energy gun in their hands.
The lights around the arsenal came on, and the lights in the entire residential area also lit up in the distance.
On this isolated garden island, human habitation occupied only one-tenth of the area. The outside area was lush with plants and dotted with crumbling buildings and statues, indicating a bloody past.
This faint light was the only thing that isolated them from the monsters outside, and soon they would have guns.
“The preparation is not necessarily enough,” Wei Xi analyzed to Eric, “but after the alloy corrodes to a certain point, bombs or high-strength fuel should work.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Eric said, “I’m saying that everything we can think of, the planning team can certainly think of as well.”
As they spoke, their small group was passing through a bluestone path not far from the arsenal. The crude fluorescent lights in the depths of the branches and leaves were glowing, but the foliage blocked most of the light, making the road look similar to the ones in horror-films.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that these lights were only there for a short time, most likely as a temporary fix after the monster went rampant in the garden.
A few of them went to the West Wing to drive an old-fashioned fuel-powered sports car, which was said to be a classic model that ran on rocket fuel. However, no one cared about aerospace science and technology these years, and “Runs on Rocket Fuel” was not a good advertising slogan, but the fuel was still top-notch and could help pry open the turtle shell.
At this moment, everyone was scraping the ground to collect materials for high-risk chemicals in the garden in a frenzy. It was almost as if the group of people in the third sub-arena and the entire planning team were engaged in it.
Bai Jingan was curious about what the planning team outside was like now. They were probably in chaos with most of them hastily looking for countermeasures on how to salvage the situation.
The group continued along the bluestone trail. The surrounding plants were murderous and encroached on roads and buildings. Strange statues flashed by in the shadows. They didn’t look like sculptures carved by humans, but like totems of darkness itself.
The arena was frightening, terrifying, and stable like the world itself. But now there were loopholes in the “web of destiny”, life and death were out of control, and they were turning sharply in an unknown direction—
Bai Jingan somehow remembered the pre-game interview wherein Xia Tian had gestured an explosion in front of the camera. His smile was bright as lit fireworks and full of aggression.
Like a huge, dazzling explosion.
The “God of Destiny” would stop at nothing to reclaim their territory.
He nodded and whispered, “Something else should happen soon.”
“I’m used to it anyway,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan laughed but Xia Tian paused and looked around. Bai Jingan asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Can you smell it?” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan was startled. The light in front of him suddenly flickered and then went out.
Xia Tian came to a full halt and held up “Marshmallow” in his hand. At the same time, the lights behind them also went out, and the surrounding area fell into darkness.
The anticipation is killing me!
oh cRAP IM NERVOUS!! (｡>﹏<｡)