bookbashuk Chapter 159 Golden Roulette Lottery! Return to Dongjiang City!
Chapter 159 Golden Roulette Lottery! Return to Dongjiang City!
Jiang Ming sat on the steps, feeling the cold wind, when the system screen in front of him displayed dazzling golden characters.
[Main survival mission ended early!]
[Completion Condition: Defeat Augustus, Abbot of the Crimson Monastery (Completed).]
[Train docking point has been generated; the Pioneer will arrive at the current coordinates in ten minutes.]
"We can go back now." Jiang Ming closed the panel and casually took out the [Gold-level Lottery Roulette Ticket] he had just received as a reward for the first kill.
Chen Qizheng, who was slumped to the side bandaging his arm, relaxed completely upon hearing this, lying back on the cold stone slab and panting heavily.
The goblin Marlowe, meanwhile, was engrossed in studying the pile of blueprints he had scavenged from underground, gazing at them intently by the moonlight, occasionally letting out a high-pitched, eerie laugh.
"System, use a lottery ticket," Jiang Ming muttered to himself.
As soon as he finished speaking, a huge virtual golden roulette wheel appeared out of thin air in front of him.
The roulette wheel was divided into hundreds of grids, each shimmering with light of various colors.
Purple epic items make up the majority, and there are even a few legendary rewards that radiate dazzling gold light.
"change."
The roulette wheel began to spin rapidly, its golden and purple lights intertwining, making people dizzy.
After a dozen seconds, the speed gradually slowed down.
The pointer swept across a [Purple Epic - Bloodthirsty Greatsword], past an [Epic Skill Book - Meteor Shower], and finally came to a steady stop on an extremely narrow gold grid.
[Ding! Congratulations to the player for triggering an extremely rare prize pool!]
[Item Obtained: Spark - Mechanical Fortress Core (Gold - Legendary)]
Jiang Ming felt a slight weight in his hand, and a metal cube the size of a Rubik's Cube appeared out of thin air.
The surface of this thing is covered with extremely intricate geometric patterns, and there seems to be a ball of blue energy slowly flowing inside, exuding a sense of technology that transcends time.
[Spark - Mechanical Fortress Core (Gold - Legendary)]
[Effect: Grants "mechanical life" to inanimate objects. It can fuse and recombine any large quantity of inanimate metals, parts, and energy modules to materialize a mobile base that can grow and evolve. The initial form is locked as a heavy land combat vehicle by default.]
Current integration progress: 0%.
[Note: The higher the grade and the greater the quantity of materials fused, the stronger the fortress's initial attributes and firepower configuration.]
Jiang Ming gasped.
This thing is practically tailor-made for him!
He was worried about running between the apocalypse and the other world, without a safe place to stay.
Even with his storage card and the new ring having large storage spaces, he couldn't fit more than a few armored vehicles.
But with this "Spark Core", he could fill all the old weapons and armor plates that Chu Tianfeng had promised him into this bottomless pit and smash out a steel behemoth that could sweep across the wasteland!
"Waaah—"
A long, deep whistle sounded from high above.
The clouds were violently torn apart.
A jet-black train, spewing scorching steam, emerged from the air and came to a steady stop above the monastery square.
The car door slid open automatically, revealing a metal step.
"Boss, the car's here!" Marlowe quickly stuffed the blueprints into his crotch and, with his short legs, was the first to rush towards the stairs.
Chen Qi also forced himself to stand up and picked up the rifle that had been emptied.
The three boarded the vehicle one by one.
The doors closed, and the interior of the train maintained its retro steampunk style.
But this time, the carriage was empty.
Those Bloodfang mercenary groups that used to clamor have long since turned into minced meat in the underground chapel.
The screen at the front of the carriage flickered, revealing cold, red text.
[Next stop: Blue Star - Country C - Dongjiang City.]
Estimated arrival time: 5 minutes.
Jiang Ming found a leather sofa by the window and sat down.
"Brother Jiang, will the military on Blue Star back out of their plans this time?"
Chen Qi sat down next to him, his brows slightly furrowed.
"We were forcibly pulled into the vehicle, and there's still fighting in Dongjiang City. Although you've wiped out most of that undead army, it's still uncertain whether Brigade Commander Chu and his men can hold out."
"Going back on your word?" Jiang Ming sneered, toying with the metal Rubik's Cube in his hand. "If they hold out, they'll have to obediently pay my reward. If they don't, this deal can simply be voided, and I can just source the goods from other military regions."
He is now very confident.
The very first dose of the [Radiant Holy Water] he drank caused his normal strength to break through the 45-point mark.
With the addition of the epic-level materials in his storage ring, he is practically invincible on Earth at this stage.
Marlow leaned closer, lowering his voice slyly, "Boss, I just saw the blueprints that old madman drew. Guess what? He used a demon's heart as an engine and underground devil vines as a drive shaft... If this technology were slightly improved and installed on a war machine, it would be even more powerful than goblin engineering!"
"You understand this?" Jiang Ming raised an eyebrow.
"I know a little, I know a little!" Marlowe patted his sunken chest. "As long as the boss gives me enough metal, I, Marlowe, guarantee to carve out a vehicle for you that can crush dragons!"
"We have plenty of materials, they'll be here soon." Jiang Ming put the metal Rubik's Cube into his ring.
Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye.
The train jolted violently, and the blood-red sky outside the window was instantly torn apart, replaced by the familiar gray smog and the piercing sound of air raid sirens.
The car door opened.
A strong smell of gunpowder and the acrid odor of ammonium nitrate hit the air.
Jiang Ming stepped off the train.
The boots made a crisp cracking sound as they stepped on the cratered asphalt.
They returned to the No. 3 defense line in the south of Dongjiang City.
The surrounding scenery was even more devastating than when they left.
The park, which was originally used as a shelter, has been razed to the ground by artillery fire, with charred craters and scattered shell casings everywhere.
The remains of the few [Skeleton Siege Beasts] that Jiang Ming had crushed were still in place, but there were now thousands of soldiers' remains in camouflage uniforms around them.
Clearly, during the time Jiang Ming was forcibly teleported away, the military experienced an extremely fierce defensive battle.
"That's... Brother Jiang Ming?!"
From behind the ruins not far away came an incredulous exclamation.
Special forces company commander Lei Zhan crawled out of a trench, covered in dust and dirt, and rushed over without even taking his tactical rifle with him.
He stared wide-eyed at Jiang Ming and the other two, as if he had seen a ghost.
"You...you're not dead?!" Lei Zhan's voice trembled. "Didn't that black car pull you into the spatial rift? It's only been less than six hours!"
"Six hours?" Jiang Ming's heart skipped a beat.
They stayed in the monastery for more than thirty hours, while only six hours had passed on Earth.
It appears there is a significant time flow rate difference between the overlapping region and the copy.
"Where's Chu Tianfeng?" Jiang Ming, too lazy to explain, cut straight to the point, "Is my shipment ready?"
Lei Zhan swallowed hard, and the way he looked at Jiang Ming completely changed.
He could clearly sense that the young man's aura was completely different from what it had been a few hours earlier.
If Jiang Ming before was a sharp, unsheathed knife, then Jiang Ming now is like a ferocious beast lurking beneath human skin; just by standing there, he exudes a suffocating sense of oppression.
This is a pure, instinctive suppression of lower-level life forms by higher-level life forms.
"The brigade commander is at the temporary command post in the rear! Follow me!" Lei Zhan didn't dare to delay and immediately turned around to lead the way.
After passing through two steel defense lines that had been temporarily welded shut, the three arrived at the command post located in an underground civil defense project.
Chu Tianfeng was standing in front of a huge tactical map, his brows furrowed in a deep frown.
His arm was bandaged, and his uniform was stained with dark red blood.
Hearing footsteps, he looked up and froze instantly.
"Jiang Ming?!"
The brigade commander, who had seen countless life-and-death situations, raised his voice eight octaves at this moment.
"Commander Chu, it looks like you've held out." Jiang Ming pulled up a chair, sat down with an air of authority, and tapped the table with his knuckles. "I'm a man of my word in business. Now that I'm back alive, the previous deal will continue."
Chu Tianfeng took a deep breath, suppressing the shock in his heart.
He glanced deeply at Jiang Ming's tattered combat uniform and Chen Qi's fresh wound on his arm, and said in a deep voice, "After you left, another batch of low-level undead emerged from the rift. Thanks to the [Netherfire Fragment Mines] you left behind, we managed to hold out until the main force's heavy artillery support arrived. You not only saved my life, but also saved 50,000 civilians behind Line 3."
Chu Tianfeng paused, his tone becoming extremely solemn: "I will fulfill all the conditions you have set."
Half an hour later.
The No. 7 Warehouse of the Dongjiang Military Region.
The heavy roller shutter door rose with a bang, and a strong smell of machine oil and rust rushed out.
The huge warehouse, covering nearly 20,000 square meters, was piled high with scrap metal.
On the left are hundreds of main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers that have been completely scrapped due to damage to electronic components; on the right are piles of thousands of tons of abandoned aerial bombs, rusted shell casings, and bundles of high-strength armor steel plates.
This place is practically a steel graveyard.
"As you requested, this place is full of irreparable heavy weaponry and obsolete ammunition." Chu Tianfeng stood beside Jiang Ming, pointing to the steel jungle. "If you can take it with you, it's all yours."
Chu Tianfeng actually had his own plans in mind.
After the spatial overlap occurred, electronic devices were paralyzed on a large scale. These modern war machines were reduced to scrap metal and ended up occupying precious living space.
He wanted to see how Jiang Ming, even with a spatial device, could possibly store hundreds of tons of scrap metal.
"Very good." Jiang Ming nodded in satisfaction.
He walked directly to a pile of scrapped Type 99A main battle tanks.
Chu Tianfeng, Lei Zhan, and dozens of fully armed guards around them all held their breath, eager to see what kind of magic trick this mysterious expert would perform.
Jiang Ming did not hide anything from anyone.
He slowly raised his right hand, palm facing upward. The [Fire Seed - Mechanical Fortress Core], radiating a ghostly blue light, appeared out of thin air in his hand.
"System, activate core, target area: all metal materials in the warehouse," Jiang Ming silently recited in his mind.
"Buzz—"
The metal cube suddenly emitted an extremely dazzling high-frequency blue light.
The beam of light, like ripples on water, instantly swept across the entire warehouse.
Then, an extremely shocking scene unfolded.
The wrecked tank, weighing over fifty tons, closest to Jiang Ming, suddenly disintegrated on its own like building blocks, turning into countless metal fragments that shimmered with blue light.
These fragments did not fall to the ground, but defied the laws of physics, hovering in mid-air and surging wildly towards the core in Jiang Ming's hand like rivers flowing into the sea.
"Click-click-click—"
The ear-piercing sound of metal scraping echoed throughout the warehouse.
It's not just this one tank.
Hundreds of armored vehicles, piles of aviation steel plates, and even scrapped bomb casings all disintegrated and took to the air under the blue light, turning into torrents of steel that flowed into the energy vortex of the core manufacturing.
Chu Tianfeng and Lei Zhan were dumbfounded.
The surrounding soldiers were so frightened that they could barely hold their guns steady.
What kind of divine power is this?
Spatial folding technology?
Or is it some kind of high-level otherworldly magic?!
Jiang Ming's expression remained unusually calm; only he could see the data fluctuating wildly on the system panel.
[Materials being consumed...]
[Obtained 500 tons of high-strength homogeneous armor plates...]
[Received 120 sets of used diesel engine components...]
[80 tons of deactivated aerial explosives were acquired...]
[Core integration progress: 15%...40%...75%...]
In less than three minutes, a large portion of the originally crowded warehouse was emptied!
All the scrap metal disappeared, leaving only an empty cement floor.
The moment the progress bar reaches 100%.
Jiang Ming clenched his fist and cut off the energy output.
[Ding! The mechanical fortress has completed its initial form remodeling!]
[Please select the manifestation location!]
Jiang Ming turned to Chu Tianfeng, raising an eyebrow: "Brigadier Chu, please have your troops retreat a hundred meters. This thing is making quite a racket."
Before Chu Tianfeng could give the order, Lei Zhan had already shouted at the top of his lungs, "Everyone! Retreat! Now!"
After everyone stepped back, Jiang Ming casually tossed the now dark gray core into the center of the open space.
"Boom!"
A loud bang, like a thunderclap rising from the ground.
A dense cloud of white steam, mixed with eerie blue sparks, suddenly exploded on the spot.
The earth trembled violently, and the concrete surface cracked inch by inch.
As the steam dissipated, a colossal steel beast, beyond description, lay prostrate before everyone.
It was a heavy tracked vehicle that was 15 meters long, nearly 5 meters wide, and as tall as a four-story building.
The vehicle is covered with half a meter thick matte black composite armor, with a menacing bulldozer blade on the front and a twin-mounted heavy machine gun turret on the roof.
Although it lacks a main gun, the dense array of firing ports on both sides of the vehicle and the externally mounted explosive reactive armor demonstrate its terrifying survivability.
The most outrageous thing is that instead of black smoke, the exhaust pipe of this vehicle spews out dark red flames with a faint smell of blood—Jiang Ming directly stuffed the [High-Energy Flesh Engine] that he got from the monastery into it during the reconstruction.