Chapter 372: Letting Go
"Huh? We have to throw things away?" Stelle's face immediately fell. She clutched her bulging tactical backpack to her chest, her golden eyes swimming with deep, agonizing reluctance. It looked as though Lumine had just asked to carve out a piece of her own flesh. "But... I went through so much trouble to hoard all this..."
"Stelle," Lumine walked over, placing a comforting but firm hand on the Trailblazer's shoulder. "If the Cattle-Ghoul Bringer escapes or manages to complete its evolution, the resulting Hollow disaster won't be something we can offset with eighty—or even eight hundred—Ether fuel canisters. We need to be fast."
Stelle looked at her exasperated companions, then down at her precious, overstuffed backpack. She visualized the escaped Cattle-Ghoul Bringer rampaging through the city, triggering a massive Hollow outbreak... Finally, she gritted her teeth. A deeply tragic, heroic expression washed over her face, like a seasoned warrior preparing to sever their own arm for the greater good.
"...Fine! I'll drop the loot!" she wailed. Under the intense, unyielding gazes of her team, she slowly, painfully unzipped the heavy canvas. She began pulling items out one by one. With every single piece of gear that hit the floor, she let out a faint, heartbreaking gasp, mourning the loss of her hard-earned treasure.
The first casualties of her purge were bullets. An absurd, frankly terrifying amount of them.
Heavy boxes of high-caliber ammunition, their brass casings shimmering with a cold metallic luster, poured out like spilled beans onto a nearby rusted metal plate. Within seconds, the pile formed a jagged little mountain of ordnance.
"One, two... five, six..." Paimon floated over, her tiny hands hovering over the pile as she tried to count the heavy magazines. Her starry eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Stelle! You hoarded more than fifteen full magazines of just these Advanced Bullets?! When did you even have the time to pick all these up?!"
Stelle pouted, gazing at the ammunition as if she were looking at a pile of pure Gear Coins. "It's really not that much. A Trailblazer always needs to maintain adequate combat supplies. Besides, seeing all those pristine ammo boxes just sitting there on the ground... wouldn't it be a criminal waste not to loot them? You guys know how useful these bullets are!"
"The problem isn't their usefulness, the problem is whether your spine can physically carry all that!" March 7th groaned, aggressively rubbing her temples. "The Chat Group event clearly applied a hidden weight system, you dummy! You were moving like a turtle!"
Dan Heng crossed his arms, his expression perfectly stoic. ", carrying an excessive amount of the exact same ammunition type yields an incredibly low marginal utility. We require high mobility and sustained combat efficiency to track the target, not a walking, groaning mobile armory."
Stelle released a long, suffering sigh and resumed her painful ritual of letting go.
However, the next batch of items she pulled from the depths of her bag made everyone's eyelids twitch in unison. Clutched in her hands were the battered remnants of seven or eight Ether fuel canisters. They were violently crushed, sporting jagged, torn metal edges, and worse—they were actively hissing, slowly leaking highly unstable, corrosive Ether mist into the air.
"Wait! Stop!" Paimon shrieked, frantically flying backward to put distance between herself and the leaking contraband. "Stelle! You actually picked up broken, leaking fuel canisters?! Isn't that basically carrying around an active time bomb?! Weren't you terrified it would go 'bang' and blow us all to smithereens while we were sprinting?! That's insanely dangerous!"
Stelle scratched the back of her head, adopting a stubbornly defiant expression to mask her incredibly weak logic. "I... well, I figured that since the system interface allowed me to physically stuff it into the event backpack, it magically became safe! It shouldn't explode inside a spatial inventory, right? The system has to have some basic safety protocols."
She pointed a finger at the blurry, acid-burned label on the side of the hissing canister. "Look! Even if it's heavily damaged, recovering just one of these 'Damaged Ether Fuel Canisters' can be exchanged at the outpost for tens of thousands of Gear Coins! Every little bit helps the trailblazing fund!"
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the group.
Paimon rubbed her tiny forehead in the air, her face twisting into an expression of genuine, horrified awe. "Alright... Paimon officially admits defeat. When it comes to being a shameless money-grubber and scavenging... no, wait, 'resource recycling'... you are definitely on a completely different level than Paimon!"
After finally emptying the hazardous materials and excess weight, Stelle tested her new center of gravity. She jumped lightly on the metal grating, then jogged in place for a few steps, her coat flaring out behind her. "Hey! I actually feel so much lighter! I feel like I could sprint a marathon right now! It's just a crying shame about my beautiful treasures..."
"Alright, let's not delay any further," Dan Heng said, cutting off her mourning. He turned his piercing gaze toward the dark corridor where the Cattle-Ghoul Bringer had vanished. The ambient Ether fog in that direction was churning violently, glowing with a toxic purple hue. "A beast of that size couldn't have gone far. Let's move."
The combined team immediately shifted gears, darting forward like a volley of sharp arrows. They plunged deeper into the twisting corridors of the Hollow, chasing the ominous, purplish-black mist.
Meanwhile, in a completely isolated sector deep within the same Hollow, the chaotic aftermath of a brutal firefight had yet to settle.
Dozens of Ethereal corpses lay scattered across the concrete floor, their twisted, monstrous forms tangled between shattered industrial shelves and dented shipping containers. The destruction was varied and absolute. Some of the monsters had been pulverized into jagged fragments by overwhelming blunt force. Others were scorched pitch-black, their limbs curled inward from intense heat. A few unfortunate Ethereals had been entirely petrified, transformed into solid stone statues that perfectly preserved the terrifying momentum of their final, failed lunges.
Thick, purplish-black Ether energy slowly bled from the deactivated remnants, hissing as it evaporated into the air and staining the cracked concrete with foul, oily grime.
Standing perfectly composed in the center of the carnage, Zhongli calmly lowered the heavy M870 Shotgun in his hands. It was a weapon of brutally crude design, yet it possessed undeniably formidable stopping power. His movements remained effortlessly fluid and elegant as he produced a soft silk cloth from his pocket, gently wiping non-existent smudges from the smoking barrel before stowing the firearm away.
Looking at his serene posture, one would never guess he was the same man who had just been weaving nimbly through the chaotic crossfire. Just moments ago, he had been summoning towering Stone Steles to crush enemies and block attack paths, stepping smoothly into the guard of towering Ethereals, pressing the shotgun barrel directly against their glowing cores, and mercilessly blasting their upper torsos into a shower of crystalline dust.
The only evidence of the frantic skirmish lay at the hem of his long, traditional Liyue coat. The normally spotless fabric now sported several small, conspicuous holes with heavily scorched edges. They were clearly the result of high-velocity shrapnel—or perhaps stray bullets—grazing his form. These jagged imperfections silently suggested that the recent encounter hadn't been quite as effortless as the former Geo Archon made it appear.
A short distance away, Hu Tao stood triumphantly with one foot planted on a fallen container. She twirled a relatively delicate, customized submachine gun in her right hand. Puffing out her cheeks, she blew a dramatic breath across the smoking, red-hot muzzle, treating the modern firearm with the exact same theatrical flair she usually reserved for her Staff of Homa.
Placing her free hand on her hip, she surveyed the absolute mess of shattered Ethereals on the ground and nodded in deep satisfaction. "Mm~ All done! I have to say, these new 'friends' inside the Hollow are wonderfully enthusiastic. Coming at us in wave after wave! It's just a shame their particular brand of business doesn't quite align with the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor's services. This Hall Master had no choice but to grant them a swift, complimentary send-off!"
A soft rush of wind signaled Venti's arrival. The bard leaped lightly down from his sniper's perch atop a towering stack of shipping containers, his boots making barely a sound as he landed. He casually slung a heavy, scoped sniper rifle over his shoulder, adjusting his green beret.
His bright emerald eyes scanned the devastated battlefield with a cheerful smile. Eventually, his gaze locked onto the very conspicuous, smoking bullet holes decorating the hem of Zhongli's pristine coat. A highly playful, mischievous curve tugged at the corner of Venti's mouth.
"Director Hu truly possesses excellent marksmanship," Venti praised with a wide grin, his tone light and breezy. "Your suppressive firepower was absolutely overwhelming. These poor little Ethereals clearly didn't stand a ghost of a chance against you."
Hearing the praise, Hu Tao's small chin lifted proudly, a smug aura radiating from her. She opened her mouth, fully prepared to boast, 'Naturally!'—but Venti's follow-up sentence drifted smoothly through the air before she could speak.
"However, Director Hu," Venti continued, his eyes sparkling with amusement, "the next time you hold down the trigger, if your trigger discipline could be just a tiny bit more 'refined'... and if your aiming reticle could manage to 'favor' your own allies just a wee bit more... your performance would be truly flawless."
He cast a highly meaningful, exaggerated glance in Zhongli's direction. "After all, judging by the precise depth and the fresh scorch marks on Mr. Zhongli's lovely coat, it's quite easy to deduce that the rounds fired from your beloved gun are exceptionally lethal. They tear right through Ethereal armor! But if those same bullets were to accidentally strike mortal flesh and blood... tsk, tsk. I imagine that would sting for quite a while."
"I..." Hu Tao choked on her words, her face suddenly flushing a brilliant shade of crimson. Her earlier smugness popped like a soap bubble. She lowered her submachine gun, shooting a highly guilty, sidelong glance at her stoic consultant.
During the absolute fiercest peak of the firefight, a massive Ethereal had suddenly ambushed them, leaping down from a high shelf to pounce directly at Zhongli's blind spot. Panicking, Hu Tao had instinctively whipped her muzzle around, holding down the trigger to unleash a wild, sweeping burst of automatic fire. While a few bullets had grazed the monster, the violent recoil had sent the majority of her spray flying wide. A handful of those stray, high-velocity rounds had coincidentally scattered straight toward Zhongli's back.
Fortunately, the former Geo Archon possessed reflexes forged through millennia of war. Sensing the incoming friendly fire, Zhongli had reacted with terrifying speed. He channeled a surge of Geo energy, instantly telekinetically yanking the heavy corpse of a recently disabled Ethereal into his path to act as a fleshy meat shield. The beast absorbed the brunt of the spray, allowing him to narrowly avoid the incredibly awkward fate of being gunned down by his own eccentric boss.
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