When Liu Xing destroyed the tubes and cables behind the man, the man instantly fell, the power that had made him float cut off. However, in mid-air, the man with skin as white as chalk disintegrated, as if made from sand. The moment the majority of his body crashed into the altar, it exploded into a white cloud of dust. Liu Xing suspected the man had indeed been dying for a long time, so much so that he turned to dust the moment his life support was gone.

  Liu Xing glanced at the gun in his left hand. It had absorbed six bullets from killing the man. It was a peculiar case. He had not killed the man directly but had destroyed his life support, yet the gun had filled with bullets.

  Reopening a hole into his consciousness with the Flowing Meditation Method, Liu Xing sent them all into his third core to be absorbed. As he did so, he began to run toward the stairs and out of the facility. There was enough evidence of him here, not to mention the fact that he had killed a puppet. If the elder was smart, he would send people down or perhaps come himself. Thus, Liu Xing needed to get out of this place as fast as possible.

  As he kicked off the ground, ascending the stairs as fast as lightning, Liu Xing peeked into his consciousness, thinking that perhaps his third core had already absorbed half of the potent qi. However, what he saw inside made him stop running and focus his attention inward.

  His third core guzzled qi like a camel at an oasis. Potent qi swirled around it, forming an orbiting belt. There was so much qi that the belt resembled Saturn's rings, though it was white with a blue hue. Seeing this, Liu Xing’s heart beat faster and he was filled with excitement. It was the most qi he had ever gathered. No enemy he had killed was worth this much qi. It was as if he had killed a Sun Refining cultivator.

  “This is crazy,” Liu Xing could not help but mutter. The amount of qi indeed warranted his excitement. He knew it was not enough to saturate his newly formed third core, let alone allow him to create a fourth, but the amount was so immense that it was worth perhaps a hundred cultivators from the Nether Lotus Sect.

  At that moment, Liu Xing had the urge to sit down and guide his cultivation directly. However, the moment he had that thought, he felt a qi signature approaching.

  Clicking his tongue, Liu Xing punched a glass window on a wall, jumped out, and moved in the opposite direction of the qi signature. When he was in the middle of a small grove of red-leafed orange trees, Liu Xing looked up and observed the source of the qi. It was a flying ship. Instead of being made of wood, however, it was created from gray steel. It was so clean and polished that it shone under the glare of the sun, and some of its surface reflected the surrounding area. Rather than sails, the ship had a huge propeller on its back, like a swamp boat from Liu Xing's previous life. There was a roof on top of it, and overall, it resembled a flying ark more than a ship.

  The flying vessel stopped above the square building. The qi it emitted was that of blood, so thick that he could even smell it. It also masked the qi of the people inside—who were probably only a few—making it feel as if the ship was moving on its own. Liu Xing was curious about what would happen next. Would people come out of the flying ship and investigate?

  However, instead of that, the bottom of the ship opened, and from it, balls the size of bowling balls dropped. They moved so fast it was as if gravity had a vengeance against them, and in a fraction of a second, they hit the roof of the square building. Instantly, the balls exploded. A bright light materialized, turning the world completely white and blinding, to the point that Liu Xing had to cover his eyes. It was also accompanied by a thunderous sound so loud it was as if the world itself was roaring. The shockwave created a wind so strong that when it hit Liu Xing, it felt as if he had been punched with immense power. He was blown away like a kite, and the trees, the flowers, and even the ground were uprooted and tossed around like flies.

  Thrown through the air like a ragdoll, Liu Xing felt his ears ringing, but he blinked his eyes several times so that he could see again. His vision only returned when he landed in a flower field perhaps five hundred meters away from the facility. He was accompanied by several trees, boulders, and debris that rained down and destroyed the flower field. In the distance, a huge mushroom cloud of dust rose into the air. It was so big that Liu Xing’s mouth fell agape. He was sure that the facility, along with the corpses of the girl, the old man, the two people he had killed, and everything inside and around it, had been destroyed to smithereens.

  That attack, if it had landed directly on top of him, could likely have killed him. It was an attack so strong that Liu Xing thought the balls dropped from the ark were perhaps nukes.

  Thinking about the ship that dropped them, it emerged from the cloud of dust, its surface covered, muting its shiny exterior until it looked as if it were made from brown wood.

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  “Crazy,” Liu Xing muttered. It seemed the master of the island deemed him dangerous enough to use something that strong. However, instead of fear, what emerged in his heart was hope. If the elder was this serious about killing him, then that meant he was indeed a threat.

  “I can do this,” Liu Xing said. Not kill the elder, but navigate the situation to retrieve his belongings and even get more information. In this place, he was not as alone as he thought. If all the puppets controlled by the elder cooperated with him, then gathering valuable and vital information was possible. Not to mention the qi he would get by giving them death.

  Liu Xing nodded, sensed the area around him, turned, and moved as fast as he could without relying too much on qi. That attack was big enough to kill him, but evidently, the explosion had not caught him, which meant that thing did not have any good sensors that could pick up on him. Whoever controlled the ark would need to confirm whether Liu Xing was dead, and he thought that would take time—time he could use to gather more qi.

  With renewed purpose, Liu Xing moved. The island was flat, making traversing the place quite easy, and soon, he could see another building. This one was a tower made from red bricks, and surrounding it were floating blobs of blood, each the size of an elephant. The blobs floated around freely as if they were mere bubbles. However, from the fact that the blood was absorbing qi, Liu Xing knew it was an important place. He could not sense people from that building, so he concluded that it must be another facility run by an enslaved person turned into a puppet.

  Liu Xing ran toward it. When he was close, he looked around for an entrance. As he circled the tower, he felt that the surrounding blood qi was quite thick, comparable to that of the ark. This meant that the elder could, in theory, detect his presence. However, after a minute of looking around, there were still no signs that he had been located, which was a relief. This made him feel a little more surefooted. It meant that the blood qi could not detect his presence, at least for now.

  After circling the tower several times, Liu Xing finally found a small entrance. It was a window with a simple locking mechanism. He cut through it with his sword, entered the room, and followed the qi. Soon, he arrived at the room at the bottom of the tower. Similar to before, it was a dark place. In the center of the circular room sat a man on a throne made of black, decaying wood adorned with colorful mushrooms. From what he could sense, the man was alive, but the man he saw was a mummy with dried, almost nonexistent flesh and skin that looked to be wrapping him. Thousands of small cables and tubes, as well as one large blue tube, were connected to the man’s back.

  Liu Xing nodded, then went to search for the facility’s main controls. The mummy likely could not speak while its mind was still occupied with running the facility. Soon, he found a room occupied by several giant, transparent tubes filled with blood. Bubbles rose through the liquid before it was pumped elsewhere. He located the cables connected to the tubes, found a control panel on the side of the room, and destroyed it. The facility's operations halted instantly, and an alarm blared. Liu Xing destroyed more cables until the alarm shut off and the facility fell silent. His task completed, Liu Xing returned to the underground room. Once there, Liu Xing stepped forward, hoping for the man to speak. However, he did not speak. Taking a risk, Liu Xing deliberately made a sound, but there was no response. In the end, he decided to take a bigger risk and said, “Hello?” His voice echoed in the dark, circular room, but the man definitely did not respond.

  He was a little disappointed by this outcome. This person could not give him information. He was merely a husk that had been turned into a puppet, one that was forced to perform certain tasks forever.

  Liu Xing took pity on the man. He walked to the side, took aim at the cables and tubes behind him, and shot them with an Exploding Fist bullet. The moment the man was separated from the apparatus connected to his back, he too turned into dust.

  Liu Xing nodded as he felt his gun absorb the man’s qi. Then he sent all the bullets into his consciousness. His third core was still absorbing the qi he had gotten before, and the potent qi he had just acquired joined the belt orbiting the core. Seeing that, Liu Xing’s heart filled with excitement. Perhaps one more puppet, and his third core would be saturated. At that time, he could fill his second core, then his main core, and when all of them had had enough, he could create the fourth core, making him stronger.

  Thus, Liu Xing moved again to the next facility.

  The next facility with a puppet he destroyed was a mining facility. The man enslaved there could make sounds and express himself with his face, but he could not talk. However, Liu Xing knew that the man wished to die, and Liu Xing gave him a swift death. The man smiled gratefully at him. For his effort, Liu Xing was granted a lot of potent qi. Though not as much as before, it was still a great deal.

  Liu Xing repeated the same thing one more time, killing the fourth puppet. However, the moment he intended to go to the next facility, it seemed his modus operandi had been discovered, because the ark was waiting for him atop the building.

  Upon seeing that, Liu Xing pinched his chin, a crazy idea coming to his mind. That ark too likely had a puppet as its core, so what if he destroyed it? At the same time, he was curious about it. It possessed strong attacking power, but it was only reacting to him. Surely the elder of this place, who could design such a gruesome and horrible automation system, was smart enough to come up with a solution to unveil him. He suspected there was something else at play here, and he was sure that he could get some information if he entered that ark.

  “Alright, let’s do it,” Liu Xing said as he looked toward the ark. He felt a small, bad premonition in his stomach, but he ignored it.

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