Although Gus' body was weak, his five senses were quite sharp. Perhaps it was the only talent in martial arts that he had inherited from his father.
He touched the green brick with his fingertips and found that there was indeed something weird about the joint. The green brick was slightly more protruding than all the bricks around it.
It was as thin as a hair and could not be seen with the naked eye. One could only feel it when one's fingertips touched it with the most delicate movements.
It was as if the green brick was not firmly embedded in the wall but had been pulled out by someone and stuffed back in without reaching the end.
Gus tried to pull out the green brick.
But the protrusion was too tiny, and there was no place for him to exert force. He tried a few times, and his fingernails were almost broken, but the green brick still did not move.
Gus thought for a moment and took out an arrow from the quiver on his waist. He used the arrowhead as a dagger and pried at the joint of the green brick.
This time, the green brick was indeed loose.
Gus was greatly encouraged. He took out another arrow and clamped the green brick from the top and the bottom, pulling it out.
The width of two fingers was finally enough for Gus to exert force. He grabbed the green brick with both hands and pulled it out.
But then, no matter how hard he tried, it was useless.
"That's impossible. There must be something wrong with the green brick. There's no reason why only half of it can be pulled out!"
Gus scratched his head.
The disappearance of his sister and the weird green brick attracted him deeply. He could not help but grope around. After trying more than ten methods, he finally found the trick.
As it turned out, the green brick was only a thin layer in the first place, and it could be rotated and moved.
He turned half of the green brick to the left three times and then to the right two times. After it returned to its original position, he pressed it down deeply.
Half of the green brick immediately sank into the brick wall.
The sound of gears and chains moving came from behind the brick wall all the way to the underground of the training room.
Then, in the southeast corner of the training room, the floor slid open silently, and a dark hole appeared in the ground!
Gus was so shocked that he was almost scared out of his wits.
It wasn't because of the sudden appearance of the cave, but because the cave was actually controlled by gears and chains. These, these were all precision machines!
"Why would there be a mechanically controlled cave in our practice room?
"This … this can't be made by my sister, can it?
"Could it be my father? That's impossible! My father is the number one expert of the Red Gold Town, and he is the most devoted to the Fist God. How could it be?
"Elder Sister, is Elder Sister inside?"
Gus's mind went blank.
But his legs couldn't help but take a step forward, trembling as he walked towards the cave.
At the bottom of the cave was a narrow staircase that led to an even deeper underground. At the end of the staircase, there was a strange light.
Gus swallowed hard. Holding an arrow upside down in his palm, he tiptoed toward the secret chamber.
Just as he was halfway down the stairs, he heard an evil voice coming from the underground chamber.
It was the sound of gears turning and chains clattering, as well as the squeaking sound of steam shooting out.
Although Gus had never heard these voices with his own ears, he had been influenced by his uncle and heard him talk about them before. At this moment, it was indeed true.
His uncle had once told Gus that if he heard a similar sound, it meant that he had found the demon's nest or the evil sect's altar. He told Gus to run as fast as he could and report to the Fist God Palace.
However, his uncle had never told Gus about this. What if this "Demon Altar" was actually discovered under his own home? What should he do?
Gus felt as if he had fallen into his worst nightmare.
He also felt as if he was attracted by the mysterious power of machines and steam.
He moved to the end of the staircase on all fours, and he saw an unbelievable scene.
It was a secret chamber of an enormous scale.
Tubes that looked like the blood vessels and intestines of the steam demons crawled on the walls.
Many of the tubes were rusty, and their joints were sizzling. Evil steam was spurting out of them.
Countless tubes intersected with each other and gathered in a gigantic and strange machine.
There were no words in the world that could describe the horror of the machine.
It seemed to be made of ten thousand gears, and a lot of chains, bearings, springs, and other components that Gus could not name were attached to. It was a living example of a demon that had crawled out of hell.
Inside the machine, there were also a few strange furnaces that were burning furiously and releasing a lot of scorching steam.
The steam was transmitted and gathered by the tubes, and it was compressed to a metal ball that was slightly larger than a heart and embedded with a lot of rivets and valves in front of the machine.
And in front of this metal ball …
Gus's older sister, Grey, was wearing a pair of goggles and a greasy canvas overalls. She was kneeling on the ground piously and chanting some evil incantation.
Although he had already guessed it, Gus' heart still fell into the abyss.
His sister was indeed a believer of the power of machines and steam.
Compared to Qin Yi who had just been burned at the stake, his sister's depravity would only be a hundred times deeper. Her soul might have been sucked away by the machine demons and steam demons.
What was left in the world was just an evil shell.
Gus was in a dilemma. He did not know if he should escape and report to his uncle in time so that he could save his sister's soul that had been ravaged.
But when he thought about how Qin Yi had been burned into a toad, he could not take a step forward.
At this time, what his sister said after ending the spell made Gus feel as if he had been struck by lightning.
"Dad, did you see that? I succeeded. I have found the answer you have been looking for all your life!"
Grey was extremely excited. She laughed crazily in the whistling of the steam. "This is the purest power of steam. This is the most powerful force in the world that is above all the power of fists!"
After saying the last word, Grey seemed to have made up her mind to die. She gritted her teeth and hit the metal ball with a hammer that was making a "Zhi Zhi" sound.
"Chi …"
The metal ball shrieked miserably and spewed out a thick stream of steam that instantly covered the entire secret chamber.
Such appalling evilness finally shattered Gus's nerves. He screamed desperately and rolled down the stairs into the secret chamber.
"Who is it?"
Grey was also shocked. Without looking back, she threw a punch at Gus like a python coming out of its hole.
When she realized that the intruder was her brother, it was already too late for her to stop. "Boom!" The punch hit the floor of the secret chamber and created a beehive-like hole.
"Gus?"
His sister's face became extremely awful.
"Sister, sister!"
Her brother cried disappointingly.
"Cough! Cough! Cough! Cough!"
Before the siblings could explain everything, in the corner of the secret chamber deep in the steam, there should be nothing there. Suddenly, a series of weird coughing sounds came from the corner.
A thin and short figure vaguely appeared from the steam.
"Who is it?!"
Grey opened her eyes wide in shock.
No one knew the structure of this secret chamber better than her. Except for the stairs that her brother fell down, there was no other way out.
How could a third person come out from the depths of the steam?
Gus was so scared that he hugged his sister's leg and hid behind her. He fearfully observed the "person" that came out of the mist.
This was a very ugly child.
He was at most six or seven years old. His hair was yellow, and his skin was dark. At first glance, he looked like a deformed bean sprout. His head was so bloated that it could break off from his slender neck at any time.
This little guy looked harmless, but Gus and Grey didn't dare to lower their guard.
Especially when they saw the ugly kid's legs, their scalps went numb, and they couldn't believe their eyes.
The ugly kid didn't have legs.
From his waist down, his body was dragging a stream of thick steam that spread all the way to the weird metal ball.
It was as if he had been made of dense steam in the first place and had crawled out of the metal ball.
Gus remembered some of the weird rituals of the evil sects that his uncle had told him.
Shuddering, he stammered, "Sister, y-you're not summoning the real Steam Devil, are you?"
"H-how is that possible?"
Even though Grey was a believer of the Power of Machines and Steam, she was still scared out of her wits by the ugly kid. She said, "I'm just extracting the purest power of steam. How can this be? Hey, kid, what are you exactly?"
Grey waved the hammer at the ugly imp that she had summoned, trying to appear fierce but was actually cowardly.
"Don't be like that. Let's talk nicely. Can you put down the hammer first? I'm too timid to be scared."
The ugly kid looked around curiously, as if he had never seen such a world before. After a long time, his eyes that were beyond his age finally returned to Gus and Grey. He said with a smile, "Although I don't quite understand what the 'Steam Devil' that you mentioned is, I'm certainly not that thing. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lu Qingchen. What about you?"
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
