Ambush — White Frost King

Aboard Black Bear No. 1.

Lu Yuan and Amy were in the passenger cabin, splitting the spoils from their latest haul.

"This Chief Grade Transcendent Gene doesn't look bad — Magnetic Binding. Lei Feng, do you want it?"

"Me? No, I don't need that one."

"Then I'll take it."

Amy tucked it away with a satisfied smile.

"We've got more Second-rank Chief Grade Mechanical Puppets too — four this time. I'll take two Spirit Cannon Mechanical Chiefs again."

"Then I'll take the other two."

"And these Chief Grade Gene Armaments — twelve in total. Six each?"

"Sure. None of them suit me anyway, Amy, you pick first."

"None suit me either. I'll just grab whatever."

"In that case, I'll take the ones worth more Spirit Crystals."

"Hey! That's not fair... whatever, I'm not exactly short on Spirit Crystals."

"And let's divide the Spirit Power Gene Fluid while we're at it."

It took a full half-hour before the two of them finished splitting everything from the haul.

The Spirit Power Gene Fluid alone came to 12,000 bottles for Lu Yuan's share.

Adding that to what he'd accumulated before, he now had 22,000 bottles of Spirit Power Gene Fluid in total.

That was equivalent to 220 million First-rank Spirit Crystals.

Over 200 million.

Lu Yuan could have wept.

Beyond the Gene Fluid, there were six Chief Grade Gene Armaments, seventeen Boss Grade Gene Armaments, and far more Elite Grade pieces than he could easily count. On top of that: Mechanical Puppets, spirit bombs, Talismans, and assorted other items.

Just from this single Floating City, Lu Yuan's haul worked out to somewhere in the range of three to four hundred million First-rank Spirit Crystals.

And this was only one Floating City. There were still plenty more to come.

Five days later. Ten and a half days had now passed since the Aier Mechanical Ruins opened.

Only a day and a half remained before the ruins closed.

Over those five days, Lu Yuan and Amy had criss-crossed the ruins aboard Black Bear No. 1, dropping into Floating City after Floating City to strip them bare. At each one, they swept through the four thousand-meter towers and the single three-thousand-meter tower, checked for Aier Core Fragments, then left without lingering.

In five days, they had plundered seven Floating Cities between the two of them.

The Spirit Power Gene Fluid alone totaled 110,000 bottles.

Converted to currency, that was 1.1 million Fourth-rank Spirit Crystals.

And that was only the Gene Fluid. Chief Grade Gene Armaments and other treasures had accumulated in similar abundance.

Rich didn't begin to cover it.

The one frustration was that as the days wore on, more and more Floating Cities were already occupied when they arrived. In the first three days they had cleared five; in the final two, only two more. Every other Floating City they spotted had people in it.

Lu Yuan had no interest in picking fights with other Gene Warriors. Each time, he simply moved on.

Aboard Black Bear No. 1, Lu Yuan sat in his seat while Amy sprawled beside him, thoroughly bored.

"Every Floating City we find lately has someone in it already," she said. "Should we just go down and kill them? Take their stuff? They haven't left the Land of Origin, so if they die their loot drops — easy pickings."

Lu Yuan glanced at her. "Anyone who made it onto a Floating City is a top talent from a major faction. You have a Departure Crystal — odds are they do too. People like that never run out of tricks. Even together, we can't guarantee we'd finish them off before they used one."

Amy turned it over in her head and nodded slowly. "Fair enough. They'd have too many ways to run. So what do we do?"

"We're already heading toward the central zone," Lu Yuan said. "The Central Floating City shouldn't be far now. Once we get there, we'll see if we can get inside directly. If we can, we clean it out quietly — and no one else in this entire run of the Aier Mechanical Ruins will have walked away with more than us."

Amy's eyes lit up immediately. She started nodding with enthusiasm. "Yes! That's what we do! Oh — there's another Floating City ahead!"

Lu Yuan looked toward it and raised an eyebrow. "Let's check if it's occupied."

He guided Black Bear No. 1 toward the city, threading through the defensive ring of flying units circling the outer perimeter. The shuttle slipped inside.

Once through, he steered straight for the core zone. At triple the speed of sound, it took less than a minute.

When they saw the streets below, both of them brightened.

Mechanical Guardians on patrol. No other people in sight.

"An untouched city!" Lu Yuan laughed. "Lucky us."

"Go, go, go!" Amy bounced in her seat. "Thousand-meter tower first!"

Black Bear No. 1 cut a gleaming arc through the air and pulled up in front of one of the thousand-meter towers.

They disembarked. Lu Yuan proceeded methodically, issuing the command for the Mechanical Guardians to self-destruct, then walked alongside Amy toward the tower's entrance.

They were almost at the doors when space itself warped beside the entrance.

A massive surge of Spirit Power poured from the distortion.

Lu Yuan's focus sharpened. His body vanished from where he stood, reappearing in front of Amy in an instant.

Amy reacted in the same breath, releasing the Tianrao Purple Vine to form a barrier across both of them.

No sooner had they moved than a volley of devastating attacks erupted from the twisted space, slamming into the Purple Vine.

**BOOM!!**

The Tianrao Purple Vine shattered under the assault. The remaining force came straight for Lu Yuan.

He narrowed his eyes. The White Jade Spirit Body blazed to full activation — white light rippled across his skin in waves. He gripped the Mechanical Sentinel greatsword, a razor-sharp blaze of white energy surging along the blade, and cleaved into the incoming barrage.

**BOOM!!!**

Sword-light met attack. Everything crumbled.

"What—?!"

"That's impossible!"

Cries of shock rang out as nine Kaman figures stepped from the distorted space.

All nine stared at Lu Yuan, unease written plainly across their faces. Five of them went visibly pale the moment they recognized him.

A tall Kaman warrior gripping a black broadsword let out a startled shout: "A human — it's *you*?!"

Lu Yuan blinked. He looked the man over, and recognition slowly surfaced. "You're that... what was it... Liuyu? Didn't expect to run into you here."

The blade-wielding Kaman's face went dark. "Liuyu! My name is *Liuyu* — one of the Four Cornerstones in service to His Highness Prince Yangqian!"

"Oh," said Lu Yuan.

Liuyu turned an ugly shade and started trembling. "Human — are you *mocking* me?!"

He stepped forward — but the Kaman in white armor directly ahead of him spoke quietly.

"Liuyu. Stand down."

Liuyu stopped. He bowed at once. "Yes, Your Highness."

Lu Yuan looked the white-armored figure over. "So you're the Yangqian I keep hearing about?"

Yangqian smiled with easy arrogance. "Indeed. Last time you spirited three little mice right out from under me. Didn't expect us to cross paths again so soon."

"Neither did I," Lu Yuan said.

Amy had been glancing between Lu Yuan and Yangqian with open curiosity. "Lei Feng," she said, "who is he?"

"The one who sent people after Xixi's group."

The warmth left Amy's face in an instant. She fixed Yangqian with a flat, cold stare. "So it was him."

Yangqian looked back at her without the slightest trace of concern.

A different Kaman figure stepped forward — shorter than the others, wearing a black robe and carrying a Staff. He'd been listening to the exchange with evident interest, eyes moving between Lu Yuan and Yangqian.

"Yangqian," he said, "I didn't know you'd actually crossed paths with this human inside the ruins."

Yangqian gave a brief nod. "Bit of a coincidence."

Lu Yuan let his gaze sweep between the two of them.

*Both Yangqian and the black-robed figure have powerful auras. Both Second-rank. Lord Grade.*

*In the entire Aier Mechanical Ruins, billions of First-rank warriors from across White Cloud Continent have gathered — over a dozen races represented. Lord Grade talents at this rank are rare; most races can field two or three at best, and some have none at all. Not every generation produces prodigies of this caliber.*

He hadn't expected to run into two of them at once.

Lu Yuan tilted his head. "You were waiting here for us specifically?"

He'd already pieced it together. Every Mechanical Guardian in this city was still active — which meant these nine hadn't fought their way in. They'd moved covertly, and they'd used a spatial concealment treasure to hide right beside the tower entrance. They had been lying in wait.

For whom?

*Probably us.* He had some self-awareness about that. Over five days, Black Bear No. 1 had been a very visible presence cutting through the ruins from city to city. Plenty of Gene Warriors had noticed. And anyone who had later entered a Floating City they'd already stripped would have found a city utterly cleaned out without a trace of battle damage. It wouldn't take long to connect the dots. From there, the only logical conclusion was that two people were worth staking out.

The black-robed Kaman's eyes had already drifted past Lu Yuan to the shuttle hovering behind them.

Yangqian allowed a cold smile. "You're right — and you're not quite right. We weren't specifically waiting for *you*. We were waiting for that." He tilted his head toward Black Bear No. 1. "That craft has been dropping into unclaimed Floating Cities for five days straight, stripping everything out of the towers. At first, we assumed it was some rare mechanical lifeform native to the ruins." He paused. "We certainly didn't expect Gene Warriors to be inside."

The black-robed figure studied Lu Yuan and Amy in turn, looking somewhere between stunned and fascinated. "You humans are endlessly surprising. You order the Mechanical Guardians to self-destruct. The flying units don't attack you. If I had to guess — you found some rare relic in here that lets you control the mechanicals." He straightened slightly. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jigong, Seventh Prince of the Thunderclap Empire."

*Two Kaman princes.* Lu Yuan's eyes narrowed slightly. *That explains the Lord Grade bloodlines.*

"So you set this ambush to rob us," he said. It wasn't a question.

Jigong laughed openly. "Human — if you came across someone weak but carrying rare treasures, would you stop to reason with them? Of course you'd just take it." The laughter subsided. "But naturally, the two of you have shown us you're not weak. So we can have a proper conversation."

Amy's eyes went wide. Color flooded her face. "So you were genuinely trying to *steal* from us?! Absolute *thieves*! You can't take it, so now you want to *talk*?! That's outrageous!" She turned to Lu Yuan. "Lei Feng, I want to hit them."

"Funny," Lu Yuan said. "I completely agree with you. I'm not interested in talking."

*Damn — they ambush us and then want a friendly chat? What the hell is wrong with them?*

The two of them moved as one.

Mechanical Puppets materialized around them — one after another after another, twelve in total. Each one radiated a dense, crushing aura.

All twelve were Second-rank Peak Chief Grade.

The combined pressure closed around the nine Kaman warriors like a vise.

The blood drained from Jigong's and Yangqian's faces.

"How — how are there this many?!"

Jigong's jaw went tight with disbelief.

Yangqian's eyes had gone wide, his composure cracking.

Neither of them had seen this coming.

They were both Lord Grade, yes — but they'd only just broken through. They hadn't tempered their genes yet. In raw power, they were roughly matched against a single Peak Chief Grade Mechanical Puppet one-on-one. Against twelve simultaneously, with two Lord Grade humans besides—

*This isn't human.*

Yangqian moved fast. His voice snapped out:

"Human! Let's be reasonable! We're both Lord Grade — four Lord Grade warriors together could hunt far wider than any of us apart! Doesn't that make more sense?"

Lu Yuan's smile was easy and genuine. "Not to me."

His mind moved. Mechanical Control activated, and all twelve Mechanical Puppets surged forward at once.

The wave of force hit the Kaman group like a wall. Yangqian's hand shot into his armor and produced a black metal instrument. He drove Spirit Power into it.

A resonant hum — and a massive Crystal Shield erupted outward, encasing all nine of them.

**BOOM!!**

Every attack crashed into the shield simultaneously. A deafening peal of thunder rolled outward, the shockwave rippling through the air in every direction.

*Crack... crack... crack...*

The Crystal Shield fractured — a web of splits spreading visibly across its surface.

The color left Yangqian's and Jigong's faces.

"We can't hold it — too many at once!"

Yangqian's voice dropped to a low, strained growl.

*I misjudged this.* The realization surfaced with painful clarity. *If I hadn't gotten greedy — if I hadn't wanted to test whether we could cut these two down and claim everything — we wouldn't be standing inside a cracking shield right now.*

Jigong's eyes found Lu Yuan across the barrier. His voice came out sharp:

"Human! We operate under the White Frost King's alliance! Expel us from the ruins, and the White Frost King will come for you himself!"

"White Frost King?"

Lu Yuan's eyebrow arched. He looked at Jigong with an expression of mild puzzlement.