NOVPUBChapter 86: Chapter 85: Secret Technique Divine Artifact
Chapter 86 -85: Secret Technique Divine Artifact
Misty Zone, southwest edge of Huiqiu Mine, within an abandoned mine tunnel.
The two most elite groups of the city’s guards were encircling a newly discovered rebel camp. This was the fourth camp they had found, and based on its location at the very bottom of the mine shaft, it was likely to be the last.
The barrage of gunfire echoed back and forth through the narrow corridor, a tremendous ordeal for everyone’s ears, and the rebels’ counterattack was especially tenacious. The guards had organized several assaults but had been repelled each time.
——Indeed, the enemy was also equipped with firearms.
Heaven knows where they got these weapons from.
“Watch out, grenades!” someone shouted.
What followed was an earth-shattering roar! A bright fireball lit up the tunnel like daylight, but only a second later, the flames were replaced by a cloud of black smoke. The scorching blast caused countless fragments of rock to clutter and crackle.
“Cough cough… cough cough…” Deputy Commander Woody leaned against the barricade, his eyes brimming with tears and his nose running from the thick smoke. Fortunately, the ventilation shafts in these abandoned tunnels were still functioning. Otherwise, a few more blasts and no one would have been able to hold on.
This was already the fourth day of the great purge.
They searched from the hills to the hollows, transitioning from ground combat to underground battle. Woody had initially thought this would be a simple troop exercise, but the resolve of the resisters turned out to be far stronger than he had anticipated. What unsettled him even more was that before Commander Shandela announced the commencement of the assault, no one had expected that such an underground force would be secretly hidden so close to Magnificent Castle! The group, mainly composed of Haiwei Clan miners, used the abandoned mine tunnels as their hideout and had been secretly gathering strength. If not for this cleaning operation, who knows what earth-shattering acts they intended to commit!
“Damn it, they still have explosives!”
“No shit, they mine by blasting rocks, how could they not have them?”
The soldiers complained to each other and began to clear the passage again—the enemy was able to temporarily block the guards’ advance each time they used grenades, making it difficult for the latter to break through despite their superior firepower.
Even Woody had to admit that fighting in the pitch-dark mine tunnels was much more troublesome than facing pirates.
“Report, Leight’s scouting team has found a passage that enters the enemy camp from the side,” reported one of his subordinates at that moment.
Upon hearing this news, Woody’s spirits were lifted, “Where is team three? Tell them to follow Leight and try to distract the enemy’s attention—”
“That won’t be necessary.” Suddenly, a familiar voice interrupted his command. “Your reinforcements have arrived.”
Woody turned around and saw it was Mechanical Sect Priest Ge Wei.
There she stood, alone holding an oil lamp, without any attendants by her side. In the flickering flame, the black iron studs on her lips and ears seemed to emit a faint light as well.
If it had been anyone else coming alone and claiming to be reinforcements, they would have certainly met with Woody’s rebuke, but when these words came from the female priest, no one on site dared to contradict her.
Because they had all witnessed the priest’s abilities.
“May I ask… where is High Priest Shandela?” Woody asked in a low voice.
“She is presiding over the heretic’s trial. She can’t spare a moment for gentlemen right now. Although we all know those folks have nothing to do with heretics, that’s just how the public is—they’d rather have a false answer than no answer at all.” Ge Wei shrugged, “So… here I am again.”
“High Priest, please be cautious with your words! You shouldn’t say things like…”
“Are you loyal to the Commander?” She raised the corners of her mouth.
“Of course!” Woody immediately replied. Not just him, but the other city guards involved in the attack also nodded in agreement.
“So, if you all keep quiet about it, what difference does it make whether I say anything here?” Ge Wei chuckled lightly, seemingly enjoying the sight of everyone’s troubled expressions, “That’s enough idle chat, where’s the enemy?”
“At the end of this tunnel, the camp is a mining rest area, and the number of enemies is approximately—” Woody hadn’t finished speaking when he noticed the priest had already taken off the silver cross from her back and was striding toward the bottom of the cave.
Despite the floor being littered with rubble and many collapsed areas on the walls, she was unaffected and could even hop on the sharp-edged stones; the weapon she carried had been weighed by Woody before and was roughly the equivalent of a grown man’s weight, yet it seemed to weigh nothing for her!
“Follow quickly, cover the High Priest!”
Woody immediately picked up his gun and followed.
The moment Ge Wei appeared at the entrance of the cave, the enemy’s firearms roared together!
The female priest set up the cross in front of her, blocking most of the incoming bullets. Then the cross began to emit a peculiar silver shine as if an additional contour had formed around its body.
It’s coming! Woody couldn’t help but hold his breath—
Ge Wei lifted the cross, pointing its longer end forward.
Next, the silver light swept across the enemy camp like a rapid crescent wave, acting as both an extension of the cross and an abrupt enlargement of the silver outline. This ripple, like a solid wall, obliterated everything in its path!
This was the power of a Divine Artifact!
No matter how many times he saw it, Woody couldn’t help but feel envious.
Even as a Third Class Oddity, it was a massive boost to the owner’s abilities. If the cross were in the hands of an ordinary person who could activate a Divine Artifact, just this strike would be enough to reduce him to dust.
After clearing the obstacles, Ge Wei tossed aside her lantern and began a frontal assault with the surviving enemies—a part Woody didn’t particularly admire since the cross had now become the most unadorned bludgeon in the priest’s hands. She maneuvered her seemingly frail body through the ruins left by the silver light’s sweep, and anyone hit by the cross, if not killed instantly, would at least be crippled.
Woody didn’t understand why she, who could have ended the battle cleanly and effortlessly from her position, insisted on engaging the enemy in close combat, resulting in herself being covered in blood and even at risk of injury.
But after all, the other party was a master-level priest whose combat strategies were not for him to question. At this point, the only thing he could do was to provide cover for Ge Wei and clear the battlefield. He rushed out of the entrance, raised his arm, and shouted, “Let’s go, watch out for sneak shots from the sides! If possible, try to capture some alive!”
Faced with the fierce attacks of the Mechanical Sect’s priests and the city guard, the Seaguardian miners quickly fell into disarray, cries of agony echoing one after another, and resistance growing increasingly feeble.
When Woody found Ge Wei again, he saw that she was covered in blood, with flesh and blood smeared all over the cross; heaven knows how many skulls she had shattered with that thing.
Sitting opposite her was a Seaguardian man whose legs were completely gone, and whether they were crushed by Ge Wei or sliced by the silver light was anyone’s guess. His eyes were fixed on the priest with visible hatred.
“You have already lost; there is no point in stubbornly fighting on. Tell me, where are the Hidden Mist Sect followers hiding? How many of them are there?” Ge Wei crouched in front of him, asking calmly, her demeanor and tone starkly out of place with her blood-stained skirt.
“…Pah!”
The man exerted much effort to spit a mouthful of blood.
Ge Wei did not dodge or avoid it, letting the blood spatter on her face.
“To be honest, I have no opinion about your rebellion; whether you band together to survive or to oppose GaoTian Mining doesn’t matter to me, but cultists are different—they are enemies to all living beings, and allowing cultists to continue their misdeeds will lead to the complete destruction of the world.” She continued, “Of course… saying ‘destruction’ might not be quite right, as the world itself will still exist; it’s just that we would no longer be ourselves. Therefore, to avoid such an end, all creatures conspiring with cultists must be severely punished, whether you are ordinary people or from the Seaguardian Clan.”
