Chapter 657: A Dead City
Translator: WQL Editor: Aleem
In the moonlight, a black small beetle flew over ridges, woods, cliffs, grasslands, rivers swiftly...
This time, Zhang Tie felt much easier in flight.
As this small beetle enjoyed various variant plant fruits in Castle of Black Iron these days, it looked spirited and excited everyday.
With the cultivation and management of Heller, many of those fruits that Zhang Tie threw in Castle of Black Iron a few years ago had completed variation. Some fruits became completely inedible after variation while some became more yummy. According to Heller, those yummy fruits contained more aura values.
These days, the black beetle became the frequent visitor of that variant strawberry farm on the mountain in Castle of Black Iron. It would eat a lot of variant strawberries over there everyday. When Zhang Tie called it, the little thing drilled out of a strawberry with a sweet juice all over its body.
The little thing was very happy as it indeed treated Castle of Black Iron as the paradise.
Zhang Tie was happy too.
Therefore, even though Zhang Tie was going to make another raid in Mocco City at this moment, he still felt pretty relaxed.
With an upsurging battle force, Zhang Tie became more calm. Zhang Tie didn't care whether Mocco City was collapsed or not. After all, he could not alter the overall situation alone. This time, Zhang Tie had three targets: first, he wanted to get one wing demons' fruit of source and one iron-armored demons' fruit of source; second, he determined to exterminate Senel Clan. Even though he could not clean Senel Clan completely but this time, he aimed to damage their foundation at least; third, Zhang Tie expected to kill another knight of Three-eye Association or demons, which would be great.
During the process of killing that knight of Three-eye Association, Zhang Tie remembered a very interesting board game, the process of which was determined by throwing dices, that he used to play with other students when he was in Blackhot City. In the game, if an inferior player could kill the Boss by skipping a rank, according to the calculating rules of the bonus of the game, the player would become rich at once.
After killing that knight of Three-eye Association, Zhang Tie felt like killing the Boss in the board game. With the rich reward, his battle force was greatly improved.
Zhang Tie returned along the route that he came to the valley.
Even though it was already a few days, Zhang Tie could still see the traces of the battle of the two knights.
When he came to Mocco City, Zhang Tie was startled as many big fires had not died out. However, compared to those big fires, the colorful smoke that covered this city were brighter.
The north city gate of Mocco City had been covered with corpses, which belched the most weird smoke.
When Zhang Tie saw the smoke, a word occurred to his mind——poison!
Zhang Tie dared not enter the smoke. Instead, he flew above them and started to observe them.
The smoke came from those rotten corpses. Compared to that of a few days ago, those corpses of demonized puppets had been rotten completely, especially those corpses of demonized puppets which were piled up, which turned into a rotten mire while dirty fluid flew everywhere with a heavy stink. Meanwhile, bubbles broke out from those corpses constantly, releasing a colorful gas.
Zhang Tie realized that it was a terrifying ptomaine.
The closer he was to the downtown, the more corpses of demonized puppets would he see. Each corpse of demonized puppet became a source of ptomaine. All the sources of ptomaines turned the entire Mocco City into a huge gas chamber.
On the almost ruined urban streets, Zhang Tie saw numerous corpses of demonized puppets. Although many of them had no scars, given their extremely grim looks, Zhang Tie knew that they were poisoned to death. Some of them even maintained the posture to tear open their necks and windpipes, which looked pretty terrifying.
There were also corpses of human fighters among them. However, compared to that of demonized puppets, Zhang Tie could see evident injuries and damages on human corpses. He could also judge that all of those human fighters fought to the death.
There were more than 1 million of corpses of demonized puppets, fighting to the death or being poisoned to death and about hundreds of thousands of corpses of human fighters in Mocco City.
The entire city had already become a dead city full of corpses. Because of those corpses which were releasing ptomaine, although demons corps had occupied this place, they could still not take this place as their stronghold and supply base.
After circling around the city, Zhang Tie didn't see any alive demonized puppet at all. It was so quiet in the downtown that he could not even hear the barks of strayed dogs or meows of strayed cats.
Watching the scene, Zhang Tie instantly recalled an unsentimental, arrogant woman in a black robe——Tirsiris, the terrifying voodoo pharmacist who was awarded as the Snake of Selnes.
When Zhang Tie came to Mocco City last time, he even encountered this woman in the Demon Hunters Bar. When the city was besieged by the demonized puppets corps, this woman disappeared. Zhang Tie thought that she had already left. It was really out of his imagination that the woman always stayed in Mocco City and gave such a "great" gift to the demonized puppets corps when they occupied this city.
Even Zhang Tie felt chilly about such a brutal means.
Watching the tomb-like city, Zhang Tie realized how terrifying was a voodoo pharmacist for the first time. Each voodoo pharmacist was the most terrifying biochemical weaponeer. 'I've just poisoned two b*stards of red-scarf burglars since I was born.' Compared to such a scene, it was like the fireflies in front of the bright moon.
It was Zhang Tie's first time to recognize the great effect of the poison on the battlefield.
Perhaps such ptomaine was nothing severe for powerhouses as they could directly leave when they found it; however, it was lethal to millions of common human fighters and demonized puppets.
After circling around the downtown for a short while, Zhang Tie flew towards the warehouses of allied human forces in the city. He wanted to see whether he could get something there. Zhang Tie remembered that there were piles of materials a few days ago. Zhang Tie even thought about teleporting them into Castle of Black Iron before the city fell instead of seeing them falling in the hands of demons.
The warehouses were covered with ptomaine. It seemed that the warehouses were the last stronghold of urban garrisons. Zhang Tie saw the fortifications and a great number of corpses of human fighters near those warehouses. By contrast, there were more corpses of demonized puppets. Zhang Tie realized that a fierce battle happened here.
The warehouse's area of food had been burned into ruins while the food had turned into black carbon slags. Similarly, the warehouse's area of weapons had turned into plain ruins, which was covered with fragmented corpses of demonized puppets. There were even some terrifying huge pits on the ground in the center of the warehouses. At the sight of those huge pits, Zhang Tie imagined how some alchemist's bombs exploded there.
The human fighters near the warehouses resisted demonized puppets until the last moment; additionally, they destroyed the entire warehouses' area with the alchemist's bombs that were stored in the warehouses. It was hard to measure the loss of the demonized puppets corps; however, after such explosions, it was also hard to imagine how many available weapons could still be explored from the ruins.
Watching such a tragic scene, Zhang Tie felt complicated. He also felt fortunate about avoiding from such a destruction; at the same time, he showed his respect to these human fighters who defended the warehouses at the cost of their lives. If he had rushed over here and plundered all these items away before the city fell, such explosions might not even happen.
'It seems that it's predestined.'
Many human fighters had already fought to death here. Given the quantity of the human corpses here, Zhang Tie predicted that a part of human fighters had broken out of the city.
When Zhang Tie prepared to leave Mocco City and continued to fly southwards, a team of wing demons flew over Zhang Tie's head.
When he saw those wing demons, Zhang Tie instantly realized that he had been noticed by them. Until those wing demons flew over his head rapidly did Zhang Tie realize that he was just a trivial beetle, 'How could those wing demons pay attention to a beetle?' Zhang Tie smiled.
After leaving Mocco City a few miles, those wing demons started to hover above an area. Closely after that, they dove sharply downwards with shrill sounds. In a split second, Zhang Tie had witnessed gleaming luster of battle qi and booms in the area where the wing demons hovered above...
Zhang Tie's heart pounded as he hurriedly accelerated towards that place.