The wind in the mine tunnel carried the smell of rust, like a blunt knife repeatedly scraping the throat. Feng Hao panted against the rock wall, the joints of his mechanical prosthesis emitting white smoke, which he had almost drained of his psychic energy just now to break free from the electromagnetic net. The footsteps of the Iron Eagle Guard's mecha came from behind, "clank, clank," treading on the rotten railway tracks as if beating a death drum.
He pulled out a piece of broken lens and looked behind him by the faint glow of the psychic crystal - the blue light of the electromagnetic net flickered at the end of the mine tunnel, and the mesh was denser than last time, clearly custom-made for his mechanical arm. The mark left by his father was burning on the inner side of the metal arm as if to remind him of something, but now he was preoccupied with how to survive.
"Damn it." Feng Hao cursed, dragging his injured leg deep into the mine tunnel. The mechanical prosthesis suddenly made a shrill rubbing sound, not a malfunction, but some kind of sensing. He turned his head sharply and saw a shadow darting out of the darkness, with a fluffy mass in his arms.
At the moment of the collision, Feng Hao thought it was a hunting dog of the Iron Eagle Guard and reflexively raised his arm to block it. Unexpectedly, the glass medicine bottle in the other's hand hit his arm first, and pale golden liquid splashed out, and suddenly burst into blinding light under the catalysis of the mechanical prosthetic limb's psychic energy.
"Damn it!" Lin Banxia's curse was swallowed up by the light mass.
Feng Hao saw clearly that she was a girl, holding a mechanical dog in her arms, and the electronic eyes were still flashing. And on his mechanical arm, the pale golden liquid was crawling along the grooves, like countless little snakes burrowing into the metal veins, and wherever it passed, the blue-purple psychic energy shone again, more vigorously than before.
"This is..." Lin Banxia's exclamation got stuck in her throat.
The mechanical dog suddenly broke free from her arms and barked furiously at Feng Hao's arm, not with hostility, but with excitement. It ruffled its nose against the flowing light, and the green light of its electronic eyes interwove with its psychic power, casting strange patterns on the walls of the mine tunnel - like some kind of rune, like a string of garbled characters.
"Here comes the Iron Eagle Guard!" Feng Hao grabbed Lin Banxia, who was still in a daze, and the light mass on the mechanical prosthetic limb suddenly swelled. "And the people of Qingxiao Pavilion!"
Lin Banxia staggered, and the medicine bag in his arms was flung to the ground, rolling out several syringes. She saw the mark on the man's arm, which was almost the same as the psychic circuit diagram in her father's notebook. And the spilled mixture was condensing into a spiral of light on the metal arm, like a living snake.
"Your arm..." She wanted to say something, but was interrupted by the sudden sound of a flying sword piercing through the air.
A standard flying sword of the Qingxiao Pavilion was driven into the rock wall by Feng Hao's ear, and the runes on the blade were still burning. Lin Banxia recognized that it was Ling Yue's sword, which had split three of her defense talismans outside the pharmacy last time.
"Catch them!" Ling Yue's voice was smugly. "That girl's evil medicine can activate the spirit weapon fusion. It's really hard to find!"
Feng Hao's mechanical arm suddenly lifted up automatically, and a blue and golden light ball crashed against the rock wall. It wasn't brute force; it was a resonance of psychic power and data flow - the tunnel wall, like glass struck by a heavy hammer, first cracked, then exploded a gap as wide as a person, and behind it was an abandoned ventilation duct.
"Go!" He pulled Lin Banxia in, followed by the mechanical dog.
The pipe was so narrow that he could only crawl forward. Feng Hao could feel Lin Banxia's breath spraying on the back of his neck, carrying the fragrance of herbs. The light on the mechanical prosthetic limb was still shining, and the mixture seemed to have found its home, circulating back and forth in the metal arm and repairing the crack that had just been burned by the electromagnetic net.
"What is that liquid?" He asked in a muffled voice, and as he climbed a steep slope, the robotic arm subconsciously protected the person behind him.
"Psychic data mixture." Lin Banxia's voice gasped, "My father refined it, it can..."
"I know it can bring the robotic arm back to life." " Feng Hao interrupted her, his finger touching the fence at the end of the pipe. "Is your father called Lin Mo?"
Lin Banxia paused abruptly: "Do you know my father?"
Feng Hao did not reply, but pushed his mechanical arm against the fence. The bluish-gold mass of light condensed again, and this time he clearly felt Lin Banxia's mixture guiding the flow of spiritual energy, as if an invisible hand were adjusting the strings of a musical instrument. The bars of the fence wailed in resonance and finally "snapped".
"My father is Feng Zhan." He got out of the pipe, turned back and reached out to pull her. "Your father's lab is next door to my house."
Lin Banxia's eyes lit up in the darkness as if two stars had fallen into them. She grabbed Feng Hao's hand, her fingertips touching the scar where the mechanical prosthesis was connected to the flesh, and suddenly remembered the man in her father's photo album holding the psychic test instrument, standing beside a young man in the same white coat, both of them had a similar metal wrist guard on their arms.
"Turns out..." She wanted to say something, but was interrupted by an explosion in the distance.
The Iron Eagle Guard's mecha clearly found the entrance to the mine tunnel, and a dull rumble came through the ventilation duct, shaking dust down from above. The mechanical dog barked at the source of the sound, and the green light of the electronic eye suddenly pointed to the left - where the rock walls were slightly lighter in color, as if deliberately concealed.
"This way!" Lin Banxia pulled Feng Hao over, and at the same time pulled out the last tube of the mixture from the medicine bag. "Hold it down for me!"
Feng Hao understood, his mechanical arm pressed against the rock wall, and his blue-purple psychic energy flowed along the arm like a dragon ready to strike. Lin Banxia injected the mixture into the crevice of the rock wall, and the moment the pale golden liquid met the psychic energy, it made a buzzing sound like a dragon's roar.
"Right now!"
Both of them exerted force at the same time, Feng Hao's mechanical arm burst with blinding light, and Lin Banxia pried through the cracks in the rock wall with a short knife. With a "boom", the rock wall cracked, revealing a passage behind it - an abandoned maintenance tunnel with a rusty mine car parked on the rails.
"Get on board!" Feng Hao kicked off the brakes of the mine cart, and the mechanical dog rushed up and wagged its tail at the two men.
When Lin Banxia jumped into the car, she caught a glimpse of half a human face faintly emerging from the light band on Feng Hao's mechanical arm, just like the young man in her father's photo album. She suddenly realized that what her father had said on his deathbed, "Go find the Feng family boy," was not just a casual remark.
The mine car slid along the track, making a shrill scraping sound. Behind him came Ling Yue's roar: "Lock Spirit Array! Activate the Lock Spirit Array quickly!"
Feng Hao turned around and saw a dense array of runes lit up at the entrance of the mine tunnel, like a huge net tightening. He fished out a piece of psychic crystal and stuffed it into the energy slot of the mechanical arm - a treasure he had picked up from the mecha graveyard, but now it looked like a red-hot iron.
"How long will your mixture last?" He asked.
Lin Banxia examined the medicine bag, her face turning pale: "At most twice." "
Feng Hao suddenly laughed, and the light ball on the robotic arm swelled again. He swerved sharply to the right side of the road, and the mine car nearly overturned under the force of centrifugal force, but precisely went into another tunnel.
"If you want to survive, just trust me once." He said, the robotic arm pointing to the faint light at the end of the tunnel, "where there is a fault in the spirit vein of the previous age, and where the runes of the Lock Spirit Array will fail."
Lin Banxia looked at his profile, which, under the illumination of his psychic power, had a fierce force hidden in the angular outline, much like the "uncle Feng boy" as his father had described. She suddenly held the mechanical dog even tighter. It was the second dog she had saved right under the nose of the Qingxiao Pavilion, and perhaps this time it could really survive.
The faint light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter and brighter, and the sound of flowing water could be faintly heard. Feng Hao's mechanical arm suddenly quivered, as if responding to some kind of call. Lin Banxia's mixture boiled in the tube, and the pale golden liquid resonated with the blue-purple psychic energy across the tube wall, weaving an invisible web in the air.
"They're catching up!" Lin Banxia pointed behind him, and the cold light of the flying sword had already pierced through the darkness.
Feng Hao did not turn his head; he just suddenly pulled the steering lever of the mine cart. The mine car rose into the air at the end of the track and fell towards that faint light - not an abyss, but an abandoned underground factory, the remnants of machines glowing cold in the moonlight, like a silent steel forest.
At the moment of the fall, Feng Hao's robotic arm and Lin Banxia's mixture burst out simultaneously, propping up a shield of light around them. On the light shield, psychics and data streams interwove into complex patterns, like some kind of ancient contract, or like strings of freshly compiled code.
"Hold on tight!"
With Feng Hao's roar, the mine car crashed heavily onto the ground of the factory building, sending up a cloud of dust. The footsteps of the Iron Eagle Guard's mecha and the flying sword of the Clearsky Pavilion stopped at the entrance of the tunnel, clearly not expecting such a world to be hidden in this abandoned mine tunnel.
In the smoke and dust, Feng Hao and Lin Banxia helped each other to their feet, and the mechanical dog circled merrily at their feet. In the depths of the factory building, faint mechanical sounds came, as if someone had been waiting in the darkness for a long time.
The smell of rust in the smoke and dust had not yet dissipated when Feng Hao's mechanical arm suddenly pointed to the depths of the factory, and blue-purple psychic lines shot out like lines, drawing a shaky track of light in the darkness. Lin Banxia held down the stunned mechanical dog, and on the tip of her nose smelled a familiar odor - a mixture of psychic glue and engine oil, exactly the same as the scrapped puppet machine in her father's laboratory.
"There's someone." She said in a low voice, and the short knife was drawn again, with the psychic poison on the blade emitting a blue mist in the light track.
Feng Hao did not move, and the light track on the mechanical arm suddenly became docile, like a pet that had found its master. He grabbed Lin Banxia's wrist, which felt as delicate as an unpolished spirit crystal, in a satirical contrast to his own rough robotic arm. "Don't be nervous," he said in a hoarse voice, "this light... There's no hostility."
The sounds of machinery in the depths of the factory grew clearer and clearer, mixed with humming tunes, out of tune, but with a carefree air. In the shadow at the end of the light track, a huge object slowly emerged - the chassis was a scrapped mecha track, the body was welded with a washing machine tub and an air conditioner outdoor unit, and the most ridiculous part was that a toilet lid was placed on top as a turret, with a bunch of plastic flowers stuck in the muzzle.
"Welcome to Iron Lump Park!" A young man in work clothes poked his head out of the cockpit, his face smeared with oil, but his smile was brighter than a psychic crystal. "The ticket is... Huh? Were you being chased by the Iron Eagle Guards?"
Feng Hao's mechanical arm suddenly trembled violently, and the light track spread along the pile of waste like a ignited fuse. The mechanical dog in Lin Banxia's arms barked wildly at the turret, and the green light of the electronic eye interwove with the light track, forming half a broken rune on the ground - the "symbiotic rune" recorded in father's notes, only missing the key spiritual node.
"Qin Tie Luo." The young man jumped down, revealing half a wrench in the pocket of his workwear. "This is the 'iron lump' I made, the best mobile fortress for Rust Belt Star." Pointing at Feng Hao's mechanical arm, he suddenly gasped, "Psychic and mechanical fusion? And you girl, the dog in your arms... Did you repair it with fragments of the purification Talisman from the Clearsky Pavilion?"
Lin Banxia's short knife pressed against Qin Tieluo's throat: "Who are you?"
Qin Tieluo did not look at the knife, his eyes fixed straight on the needle in her medicine bag: "Mixture! Do you have Mr. Lin Mo's compatible formula?" He suddenly hugged Feng Hao's arm, "And this arm of yours is Mr. Feng Zhan's craftsmanship! My father was an apprentice to both of them back then!"
The mechanical dog jumped out of Lin Banxia's arms, grabbed the wrench that Qin Tieluo had dropped on the ground, ran to Feng Hao's feet and put it down as if to show goodwill. Feng Hao watched the absurd scene and suddenly remembered what his father had said about a crazy boy who was always taking things apart next door to the laboratory.
"Here comes the Iron Eagle Guard!" Lin Banxia suddenly turned and pointed his short knife at the entrance of the factory.
In the shadows there, the searchlight of the mecha was already on, and the blue and white beams pierced through the darkness, illuminating the mottled slogan on the wall - "Psychic and data are born from the same root", the handwriting was blurred by the passage of time, but it could still be vaguely recognized as the handwriting of the previous era.
Qin Tieluo whistled, and the iron pit toilet lid turret suddenly turned, and the plastic flower at the muzzle fell off automatically, revealing the stuffed psychic explosives: "Don't be afraid, my old Pal has a new job." He patted Feng Hao on the shoulder, "Your father said that the ultimate form of a robotic arm is to protect the person you want to protect."
Feng Hao's robotic arm suddenly lifted up automatically, and the blue-purple psychic energy resonated with the core of the iron lump's energy, weaving a net of light in the center of the factory. Looking at the patterns of the light net, Lin Banxia suddenly splashed the last tube of the mixture onto the light net - the pale golden liquid filled the broken nodes, the symbiotic talisman was finally complete and spun into a dao vortex on the ground.
"Lock Spirit Array!" At the entrance came Lingyue's roar, and the rune's red light lit up beside the searchlight like a venomous snake spitting out a letter.
Qin Tieluo pulled the two of them onto the iron lumps: "Sit tight!" He pulled the lever, and the tracks of the iron lumps suddenly shot out psychic flames, rushing deep into the factory. The toilet lid turret suddenly lifted up, and the psychic explosive, trailing a light tail, shot towards the entrance, but suddenly turned in mid-air and exploded at the edge of the Lock Spirit array.
It wasn't a misalignment, but a vortex of symbiotic talismans guiding the trajectory.
The mixture of Lin Banxia evaporated in the light web, turned into a sky full of light particles, fell on the outer shell of the iron lumps, and condensed into a layer of pale golden armor.
"Well fried!" Qin Tieluo slapped his thigh and laughed. Suddenly, the iron lump braked sharply and rushed into a narrow gap just wide enough for one person to pass through. Feng Hao turned back and saw the Iron Eagle Guard's mecha stuck at the entrance, the blue light of the electromagnetic net shattered inch by inch in the vortex of the symbionth, and Ling Yue's flying sword seemed to be grasped by an invisible hand, struggling in vain in mid-air.
"This is called 'returning the way of the other'." Looking at the chaos, Lin Banxia finally lifted a smile at the corners of her mouth, her fingertips still tinged with the faint light of the mixture. The mechanical dog lay on her lap, its electronic eyes reflecting the fight outside, and its throat purring contenently.
Feng Hao's robotic arm was still burning hot, and when it resonated with the mixture just now, he seemed to hear countless fragmented sounds - like data streams surging, like runes singing. He suddenly held down Qin Tie Luo's joystick: "Where to go?"
"Junk fortress!" " Qin Tieluo pointed to the faint light ahead. "My father's lair is full of treasures - oh, and there's a kid who sneaked in and said he could draw talismans, but a bit... "Fancy."
Before the words were finished, a dark figure suddenly emerged from the end of the crack, holding a yellow talisman in his hand. The ink on the talisman paper was crooked, but when it touched the shell of the iron lump, it suddenly burst into sparks, blowing the two iron eagle guards who were chasing after them black and gray all over their faces.
"You little brat, Chen Mohen!" Qin Tieluo poked his head out and scolded, but with a smile in his tone, "I told you to stand guard, not to play talismans!"
The young man named Chen Mohen jumped onto the iron lump, with stacks of talismans in his arms, and his eyes lit up when he saw Feng Hao's mechanical arm: "This psychic wave!" Can you borrow me to draw a talisman? Just one!" Before he could reply, he reached out charcoal and drew a crooked talisman beside the light pattern on Feng Hao's arm. The moment the talisman was formed, it actually flew out a small fireball and hit the pursuers behind precisely.
"Look!" I said it would work!" Chen Mohen shook the talisman with pride. "This is called 'BUG Talisman'. The old antiques of Qingxiao Pavilion surely won't understand it!"
Feng Hao did not speak. He just looked at the arc drawn by the small fireball in the darkness and suddenly remembered the psychic alcohol lamp in his father's laboratory. Lin Banxia leaned against him, lowering her head to feed the gauge block to the mechanical dog, and her profile was as soft as a painting in the dim light. Qin Tieluo hummed an out-of-tune tune in front, while Chen Mohen studied the light patterns on his mechanical arm, muttering to himself.
The faint light at the end of the gap grew brighter and brighter, and a fortress made of scrap could be faintly seen, as high as a small hill, with smoke rising from the chimney. The roar of the Iron Eagle Guard and the roar of the Clear Sky Pavilion were left far behind, leaving only the rumble of the iron lumps of tracks and the unrestrained laughter of the boys.
Feng Hao's mechanical arm trembled slightly, this time not a warning, but a resonance. He knew they had escaped. Not just from the pursuers, but from those cold rules, they escaped into this chaos made up of junk, potions, BUG symbols and robotic arms.
And at the end of the chaos, there really seems to be light.