154: 4.19 Earthquake

4.19 Earthquake

Heimo was racing against the wind, eyes narrowing sharply in focus on chasing after the intruder when the clear blue sky suddenly darkened above him. He skidded to a halt and looked up in bewilderment.  1

That's weird. How come the sky suddenly changed color like that? Well, he had better hurry up then. He didn't want to return to Jingxue-Jun with his whole body soaking wet—no, stop it! What did his appearance have to do with Jingxue-Jun?! He was free to show up however he wanted!

He shook his head and slapped his cheek lightly. "Snap out of it, Heimo. Why do you keep thinking about him? You heard Shijie, he's not the kind of person you should associate with." The thought of avoiding the man who was nothing but kind and gentle to him caused Heimo's heart to itch like thousands of ants were crawling on it. Seriously, why did he feel like this? Jingxue-Jun must have bewitched him. Yes, that must be it. All the more reason for Heimo to end their interaction once and for all.

Fierce lightning struck a few miles in front of Heimo, bringing him out of his reverie. He frowned at the rolling clouds and zap of lightning rumbling in between. Was someone going through the heavenly tribulation? Damn it, Heimo shouldn't waste any time then. The direction of the source of the storm coincided with the way Heimo was heading. Ugh, just his luck. Heimo cursed under his breath.

Seconds passed by and the thunder grew more and more ferocious. Goosebumps flared along Heimo's arms and he shuddered. He wondered what kind of person could incite such powerful tribulation? Holy… what if it was the same person that Heimo was chasing after?!

He clicked his tongue in frustration and picked up his speed. The closer he was to the eye of the storm, the more alarmed he was. He had certainly heard of the Valley of Abyss and he even had the thought of bringing the rest of the family to live near here. However, he found out that there was a very strong barrier around the place, one that he couldn't break through with his strength. 

But that was three years ago… Heimo was certain that he had grown stronger since then. Should he…? Moreover, the person he was looking for might just be beyond the barrier. Heimo twirled the demonic energy around his fingers and contemplated on how to break the array when all of a sudden, the mountain exploded right in front of him.

BOOM!

Heimo had been too close to the source and the impact sent him flying a few thousand meters away. His body would have crashed straight to the ground if not for his spiritual energy that acted as the cushion. But still, the force left Heimo gasping and he coughed hard, a sea of dust and fog rising around him. 

The ground still hadn't ceased its tremor, the rumble that followed was deafening. Heimo covered his nose and scanned his surroundings in caution. He tried to stand to no avail, the earthquake caused him to stagger again and again. Not only that, his ears were also ringing painfully. What the hell was that?! It—It wasn't the kind of eruption that was caused by heavenly tribulation. It was far more, more savage and fiery. He could still feel the strong impact on his chest and the overwhelming heat branded on his skin. The thick scent of smoke mixed with something pungent filled the air around him. 

The low visibility deterred him from seeing anything more than five meters in front of him. However, without even waiting for the earthquake to subside, Heimo lunged forward, relying on the spiritual energy to bring him flying. No matter what, he had to find out about it! He had to make sure that the person who was listening in on him had no way to stand on his path.

He tried to use the height advantage to observe the scene from above and his jaws almost dropped back to the ground as soon as the storm of dust receded. The dark clouds dispersed in time and sunshine sprinkled down, shining on the mountain range. Or at least, the area that used to be the mountain.

A wide, gaping hole stood at where the mountain should be, its depth almost rivaled the Valley of Abyss and the sheer depth of the hole caused the bottom of the alley to become visible to Heimo. And of course, the barrier that had covered the entire mountain disintegrated into dust, not even the trace of it lingering. 

The entire mountain had been razed to the ground.

"What the—" Heimo dove down to the very center of the hole and looked around in stupefaction. "What the hell is happening…?" A glint on the corner of his eyes drew his attention and he dashed to that direction only to find a long saber that was half buried to the ground. From the weak yet unique energy it emitted, it was someone's spiritual weapon. He dug the saber out and found it already broken into half. Its light flickered a few more times before it dimmed and died down, utterly.

Usually, a spiritual weapon would seal itself upon its owner's death but in a rare case when the spiritual weapon was destroyed, it would undoubtedly deal a detrimental blow to the owner for every spiritual weapon was created out of a piece of their golden core. It was part of themselves, losing it was akin to tearing their soul apart. Judging from the scale of the explosion, Heimo assumed that the owner couldn't have escaped. They had either died, or injured badly enough that they had to be confined to bed for the latter half of their life. He leaned toward the former.

Heimo couldn't have been mistaken.

The spiritual energy lingering on the saber was the same spiritual energy which he had been chasing. And now, the person was dead, possibly with no corpse remaining. "Ha…" Heimo let out a disbelieving laugh and crushed the broken saber in his hand. If it was any other spiritual weapon, it wouldn't even budge under the force of thousands but now that its owner had died and its energy resource had been depleted, it crumbled easily into dust, falling onto the soil like sparkling powder.

***

Throughout the way back, Heimo listened to people clamouring about the great earthquake that traveled as far as tens of miles. People complained about nausea, tremors and lethargy. Even the village where he left Jingxue-Jun wasn't spared from the aftermath. Tables and chairs were overturned and in some cases, the decrepit houses had even collapsed.

Heimo made his way to the bamboo hut still carrying with him the wonder of the previous event. What was the odd that the person he was chasing after had conveniently died just like that? Surely, his luck couldn't be that good. Heimo knew himself very well. If there was a sour apple amidst a basket of ten, then Heimo would surely pick the sour one. That's how shitty his luck was.

Alas, no matter how hard he pondered about it, he couldn't even make a guess as to what had happened back then. All he could do was to carry back a bag of soil from what was left of the mountain so that he could spend his time experimenting with it. He could do it later tonight after he parted ways with Jingxue-Jun.

He stopped in front of the gate and backtracked, groaning. To his dismay, a beam on the hut's rooftop had crashed down, but no problem, it wasn't even his house anyway. Well, Uncle Liu certainly wouldn't get angry if his old house fell apart, right? He dragged the beam away and tiptoed in, halting once again as he found the peaceful visage of a sleeping Jingxue-Jun inside the house, still not moving from when Heimo left him previously. A knot in his heart loosened and suddenly, exhaustion rapidly crept in and his knees wobbled as he sauntered close. Today had been one hell of a long day; Ningning's condition, the emotional discussion with Shijie and then the explosion… 

Seeing Jingxue-Jun's face made Heimo break into a smile. He chuckled breathlessly. "Do you sleep well? You don't even wake up when there's an earthquake." He wiped the dirt stain from Jingxue-Jun's face — that's weird, how did he get so dirty? Heimo wondered and glanced up to see a little hole on the ceiling. Huh, it must be where the dust came in. 

Heimo should have taken care of it for fear that it would rain later tonight but he had been too tired. His eyelids fought to stay open and the more he stared at Jingxue-Jun, the more he felt like the bed was a good place to pass out. He kicked away his shoes, shrugged off his outer robes and climbed up beside Jingxue-Jun. Heimo's head was all fuzzy wuzzy as he snuggled into Jingxue-Jun's side.

Hmm, it seemed like there was something he had forgotten?

Whatever, Heimo would think about it when he woke up later. As soon as he found a comfortable place, he succumbed instantly to the allure of darkness, unaware that the man by his side had been awake all along.

Lu Yizhou slowly opened his eyes and let out a long sigh. That had been a close call. He had arrived barely a few minutes before Heimo came in, enough time for him to change out of his dirty robes and went back to his position on the bed. Fortunately, Heimo didn't sense anything weird with his messy hair and dusty face. He counted Heimo's breathing in his mind and only when he was sure that Heimo was fast asleep did he finally move. Slowly, trying not to rouse the other man up, Lu Yizhou sat up and hissed when the movement pulled on the gash on his waist. He pulled his outer robe aside and frowned at the large patch of bloodstain that had spread on it. Fortunately, Heimo had been too affected by the nuclear bomb to smell the blood on his body. 

It hadn't been an easy fight.

He had to make sure to let Immortal Zhao be sufficiently distracted enough for him to plant the bomb and moved away before it exploded. The two were engaged in a mighty battle and Lu Yizhou admitted that the old man was one of the most powerful opponents he had ever met. As expected of an immortal. However, Lu Yizhou had the advantage of modern era's strategy and insight. 

Another belief he held onto when he met a stronger opponent where raw strength gave little to none advantages: strategy. A brilliant strategy could solve even the impossible. A colony of ants could kill an elephant with the right strategy. Furthermore, he had 666 to act as another pair of eyes. It was at moments like this that Lu Yizhou truly felt the importance of technology.

Yes, Immortal Zhao could teleport a short distance and take him off guard numerous times but there was no way he could win against the Naive Bayes algorithm[1] calculated by the most sophisticated AI. All Lu Yizhou had to do was to sustain a few injuries enough for 666 to collect the data. After that, everything went smoothly. Even before Immortal Zhao reappeared, 666 had already given him a heads up, sparing him from the great headache. 

(Of course he wouldn't tell 666. Did the system think that he didn't know it had secretly recorded his voice to be posted in that weird forum?)

From the corner of his eyes, Lu Yizhou saw something peeking out of Heimo's outer robes that was left in a messy heap on the ground. Giving Heimo a glance to make sure the man was truly sleeping, he went to retrieve it and found the book of yin constitutions. This must be the book Heimo had taken from his sister. [Do you have this in your library?]

[666: Wai-t, let 666 check for a minute. Nope, we don't have that kind of book.]

[Then scan and copy it.] Lu Yizhou gave the sleeping Heimo a glance. [It will be a new collection to your library.]

[666: Aye aye, Host! On it! Hehehe, Admin God will be so happy to see a new book in his online library! Yay \^^/]

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[1] Naive Bayes algorithm is basically a classification technique with an assumption of independence among predictors. It's used to calculate the probability of an event or statement that has a large amount of data. You can read the full theory on Google ;)

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