Dual wielding volcanoes, killing through the west

"I don't know why, but I have a bad feeling."

……

After the loud noise, the woods fell into a deathly silence, without a sound.

So much so that the sound of the horses' hooves seemed somewhat jarring in the deathly silence.

Chapter 104: A Gift from Heaven

The explosion occurred much farther than they had initially estimated. They had been deep in the woods for some time but still hadn't reached the epicenter.

However, the effects of the explosion have already begun to appear.

The lush forest had been transformed into a continuous expanse of dead trees. Judging from the traces, they hadn't even undergone the process of "burning"; rather, they were completely robbed of their life in an instant, turning into the gray of burnt-out wood. Although they still retained the shape of trees, their branches and leaves had vanished without a trace, and the trunks had shrunk considerably, becoming crooked and twisted, like a broken spine.

Birds and beasts seemed to have vanished from this forest; apart from the occasional night breeze, there was no other sound.

Deeper still, even the twisted, unrecognizable trees had vanished, leaving only seemingly dead earth. Soil, grass roots, and bushes all peeled away from the ground like old wallpaper, the smell of sulfur growing stronger until it was impossible to deny it was an illusion. The horses began to resist moving forward; the reins had to be pulled tight to keep them going.

"This is……"

Further on, the ground, which should have been flat, gradually sloped downwards. Zhang Wusheng had a sense of déjà vu, as if he had seen it somewhere before. A flash of inspiration struck him, and he remembered an insect called the antlion, which digs a funnel-shaped, sunken pit in the sand to catch ants and other insects.

If tiny ants could sense changes in terrain, they would surely find it terrifying—a deep pit suddenly appearing on the platform's surface. In the unfathomable darkness, their natural enemies lurk.

At this moment, Zhang Wusheng and his group were facing such a huge pit.

At this point, the possibility that it was an enemy weapon has been largely ruled out.

The rocks and soil in the vicinity had clearly been completely shoveled by the powerful impact. What they were seeing was only the aftershock of the explosion, yet it was enough to carve a crater into the hard mountainside. If the Federation army possessed such a terrifyingly powerful weapon, they would surely have used it in their very first engagement with the enemy.

……

"Whoosh—!! Whoosh—! Whoosh!!"

It seemed they had reached a "critical point," and the horses refused to move forward any further, no matter what they did. Tightening the reins or feeding them oat biscuits had no effect. When forced to move forward, they resisted frantically, almost throwing the soldiers off their backs.

“There’s no other way.” Silverfrost gently stroked the old fellow’s mane, trying to soothe him, but he could also sense his fear. “From here on, we’ll dismount and walk.”

"As you all have probably sensed, this matter is somewhat unusual..."

"Do not take any action without my instructions."

----

"what……"

Despite having prepared themselves mentally beforehand, when they crossed the deep crater and actually arrived at the epicenter of the explosion...

What they saw still made everyone gasp in shock.

What lay in the center of the crater was not a spherical lightning bolt, but an irregularly shaped polygonal rock.

By the time they arrived, the thick smoke had dissipated, leaving only a few inconspicuous sparks on the ground. The source of the sulfurous smell was the rock itself, which, through its impact, had become intimately embedded in the forest floor.

"It looks like it fell from the sky..."

A soldier mustered his courage, walked up to it, raised his lantern to examine it, looked up at the boundless night sky, and couldn't help but wonder, "I've lived for so long, and I've only ever heard of rain falling from the sky, never stones."

"That must be a shooting star."

Using the lamplight, Yinshuang circled the stone, carefully observing it before calmly explaining, "About... about 15 years ago, I received a request from a town saying that a family in the mountains had died mysteriously."

"Their deaths were gruesome and terrifying. The locals said they were eaten by demons, and no one dared to collect their bodies. The locals pooled together some money and asked me to go and check on the situation."

"When we arrived, it was an ordinary hunter's hut, but there was a huge hole in the roof. Just standing at the door, I could smell a terrible odor. The scene after opening the door... I won't describe it to you, but it was so bad it would make you vomit. If I had to put it in words, the family had died very 'evenly'. They were everywhere—on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, in the closet, on the plates."

"I forced myself to stay awake and walked around the room, trying to figure out what caused their deaths. As far as I knew, there shouldn't be any weapon that could have caused this effect."

"After searching for a long time, we finally found a hole in the floor. The wooden floor had been punched through, and embedded in the soil under the house was a hard stone the size of a goose egg."

"That's right, exactly the same as this meteorite, only the size of a goose egg, yet it had such terrifying destructive power upon landing. Such a large piece..."

Everyone turned around and looked at the ravaged forest, filled with emotion.

How many rounds of artillery would it take for humans to achieve a similar effect?

"Since it's not an enemy weapon, that's fine." Silver Frost breathed a sigh of relief and turned around. "Then let's go back..."

----

"Click!"

A clear sound came from inside the meteorite. Because of the silence of the forest, the sound stood out, and it was the kind of volume that would never be mistaken for a hallucination.

"?!"

For those present, nothing could be more terrifying than this moment.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The tension in their hearts prompted them to instantly draw their sidearms and unleash a hail of bullets at the motionless meteorite.

But the result was...

"when--!"

A sound like striking a block of iron could be heard.

……

"Stop! Ricochet! Ricochet!"

Yinshuang, who was the first to react, quickly stopped everyone. She half-squatted down and examined the meteorite again carefully, only to make an even more astonishing discovery.

"how so……"

"Boom!"

Silver Frost controlled her strength and kicked out.

The meteorite's "outer shell" shattered and peeled away, revealing the true core beneath the stone outer layer—a piece of pure, gleaming metal. What I had just heard must have been the sound of this stone outer shell cracking open.

Moreover, it's frighteningly hard.

The bullets that were fired just now bounced off without leaving a trace!

This meteorite... no, it should be called this meteorite iron material, is something I've never seen before, which gave Silverfrost a very strange feeling.

……

"It's like a mirror."

Zhang Wusheng stood before the meteorite, as if talking to someone, or perhaps muttering to himself. His gaze remained fixed on the countless raised surfaces of the meteorite.

The surface of this metal is as smooth as a mirror, and when illuminated, it faithfully reflects the world.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror, lost in thought.

A faint, almost imperceptible sound of dragon's breath echoed from the depths of this meteorite.

Chapter 1005: The Burning City

"In the end, we still didn't understand what it was."

"I can barely accept a rock falling from the sky, but this huge piece of iron? Have you ever heard of it before? Half a forest was destroyed by its power. Isn't that too exaggerated? And it's as smooth as a mirror. Bullets can even bounce off it. Even refined iron might not be able to do that, right?"

"I always felt that stone was a bit eerie..."

"What kind of evil method is this?"

"Have you read the Bible stories? It says that when the end times come, an archangel will sound the trumpet of judgment. Then, a rain of sulfur will fall from the sky, washing away all the impurities of this world."

"So that's it, the smell of sulfur! And some people in the camp did say that it looked like a big fireball when it fell, now it all makes sense."

"The problem is, the book says it's 'fire rain,' right? How can you call it rain if only a stone falls down?"

"Hey! One rock is already such a huge problem, and you want a whole bunch of them to fall down? Humanity will really go extinct, okay?"

"If it really is the end of the world, it doesn't seem to matter whether we win or the federal government in the north wins."

"Don't worry, we still have Mr. Red Center, don't we?"

"That's right, and there's Hong Zhong too! With him around, we'll definitely find a way to deal with something as trivial as a meteorite!"

……

In the dead of night, on the way back, the soldiers, exhausted and shaken, had no choice but to chat about random, incoherent things to stay awake. Luckily, their horsemanship was quite good; they could ride and talk without biting their tongues.

As for the meteorite, it was left unattended in the forest.

They did consider transporting the meteorite back to the city, initially hoping to use horses, but the horses refused to approach it. In desperation, they tried using manpower, but even with the combined strength of eight people, the meteorite seemed rooted to the ground, refusing to budge, so they quickly gave up.

After a busy night, terrified by the enemy attack, they ventured into the forest in the dark until they spotted the meteorite, and then spent quite some time searching for it.

It's already two o'clock in the morning.

----

"..."

Noticing that Zhang Wusheng was still frequently turning back to look in the direction where the meteorite had fallen, Yinshuang spoke up to warn him, "Wusheng, if you don't hold on tight to me, you'll fall."

"Ah, sorry."

Zhang Wusheng quickly adjusted his posture, subconsciously moving forward a little. But what he didn't realize was that just now, while his upper body was frequently turning his head, his legs had been tightly gripping the horse's belly, supporting his upper body, showing no sign of falling off.

"Just now, you were staring at that rock the whole time, like your soul was being sucked away." Silver Frost's expression was half suspicious and half worried. "Are you alright? Ever since tonight... that happened, you've been acting really strange."

The "that" she referred to was the psychic energy she had channeled into Zhang Wusheng's body. In Yinshuang's subconscious, this wasn't something worth publicizing, so she instinctively lowered her voice and used very ambiguous language.

The awakening of psychic abilities is often accompanied by sensory abilities that surpass those of ordinary people, enabling them to perceive things that ordinary people cannot.

In a sense, this phenomenon is not much different from the auditory and visual hallucinations experienced by mentally ill patients. Zhang Wusheng had finally managed to get rid of his hallucinations, and if she were to cause him to become mentally unstable again because of her, Yinshuang really couldn't laugh.

"I am fine."

"Really?" The answer was so straightforward that Silver Frost couldn't believe it. "Did you... hear, see, or feel anything?"

“Lady Silverfrost, I couldn’t sense the planet’s rotation like you did.” Recalling all that was incomprehensible, Zhang Wusheng’s mind was heavy, like Dante who had traveled through hell, his heart filled with more unsolved mysteries. “But I saw other things.”

He recounted to Silverfrost everything he had seen and heard after receiving the psychic initiation, using the most concise language possible.

What seemed like a long time had actually ended almost as soon as it began, from Silverfrost's perspective. Then, a sudden explosion interrupted the psionic experiment, and only now did she remember to ask about the results.

Upon asking, I discovered an unexpected bonus!

"It actually...it worked..."

Overwhelmed with shock, she instinctively tightened her grip on the reins.

"Did it succeed?" Zhang Wusheng, on the other hand, found it unbelievable and laughed self-deprecatingly. "But I can't sense any psionic energy at all. Lady Silverfrost said it was something like thick honey and that it was everywhere, but I still can't see it. Doesn't that count as a success?"

"No, true failure should result in no reaction at all, but you not only saw it, you also heard a voice calling you. Your body can respond to psychic energy, and that's the best proof!"

Silverfrost shook her head and asserted, "The psionic energy has definitely taken effect on you! Now that we know that, the question is how to develop it. Perhaps it's just that your constitution is different from mine, so you can't use it flexibly."

"Wu Sheng, after the war is over, come back to Gao Shu with me."

“Gao Shu?” Zhang Wusheng’s eyes widened, his gaze fixed on the bright silver ponytail, his breath catching in his throat. “Isn’t that… Lady Silverfrost’s hometown?”

“Yes. The one who taught me how to control psionic energy was the leader of the Hightree tribe, the ‘King of the Hightree,’ Flash. If you ask him, maybe he can help.” Silverfrost nodded. “I’ll talk to your parents. The Hightree is in Granite State, which is quite far, but there’s a direct train line now. You can travel the whole way by train, so you won’t encounter any danger.”

"Besides this..."

"There is also a large grassland there."

“…Eh?” Zhang Wusheng’s pupils widened slightly.

“Didn’t you really like the grasslands when you were receiving treatment before? Perfect, you can have as much fun there as you want. You can roll around on the real grass without any problem.”

"However, in my experience, on those dense grasslands, if you part the grass even a little bit, you'll find the roots covered in spider webs. After walking a few steps, you'll find insects everywhere. It's not exactly a pleasant place, hahaha... Sorry, sorry, did I ruin your beautiful imagination?"

"However, in the morning, standing on the grassland and watching the golden sun slowly climb up from below the horizon, its molten gold-like light spills across the entire grassland, which is quite beautiful. The sunset is equally beautiful; you must see it for yourself."

"..."

Yinshuang continued to chatter on, recommending the stunning scenery of her hometown. Anyone who talks about their hometown always has a lot to say, and she was no exception.

Zhang Wusheng listened quietly.

Glad.

Moving.