by Chen Ran
Nearly a thousand people lived in this small town. Most of them were workers, some women worked in the business of selling meat. The remaining few were capitalists and factory owners. They were the people at the top of the town's biological chain, and they controlled the life and death of hundreds of people in the Eye of Flame.
But to Zero, they were no different from bugs.
The town had a relatively small security force, and from a strategic point of view, the Eye of Flame lacked even the necessary defense. At the very least, it was quite rare to enter a small town without being obstructed. If it wasn't because the owner of the Eye of Flame lacked common sense, it was because the town had enough capable people.
From what Zero now observed, the former seemed more likely. Of course, it could also be because the young mayor had no outsiders, so it didn't seem that important to have a defensive line.
From what Agatha knew, the Flaming Eye did not have a clear management system. It was more inclined to be a business alliance where the owners of the five battery factories controlled the town, and the magma extraction machines around the town belonged to them. Only four of the five factories have gone out of business since the natural thermal batteries were sold, and only one factory's machine is still working.
The work of the townspeople had also quietly changed, with a small number of people still employed in battery factories and more engaged in another occupation.
Sulfur collection.
Sulfur was mostly distributed around the volcanoes, and the magma rivers that covered the several thousand square kilometers of land around the Eye of Flame were also mostly produced by sulfur. Sulfur can be used in gunpowder, dyes, medicine, etc. The townspeople had gathered it and sold it to other cities in the western part of the valley, thus becoming another emerging industry for the Eye of Fire.
Even though sulfur was highly toxic and would increase the chances of death if exposed to it over a long period of time, who could care about such things in an era of turmoil? Seven of the ten men in town were employed in the job, one employed by a battery factory, and the other two were either private owners or pimps who sold meat on their wives.
In general, regardless of technology or culture, the Eye of Flame had to be born with more than a few generations of Asgard, and because of the particularity of the geographical environment, it developed into a deformed economic shape.
Of course, none of this mattered to Zero. All he needed to know was that after a day's work, at night, the workers would come to the Raging Flame and drink and have fun, which was the best time to ask around.
He sat in that corner all afternoon, and when he opened his eyes it was seven o'clock in the evening.
Not one minute was too much, not one minute was too little!
After a while, the dinner was placed in front of him. Under Allen's puzzled expression, the zero dinner knife gently cut off a piece of man-made beef and then placed it in his mouth for slow chewing. At this time, the tavern's door was pushed open. A few men in workmen's clothing walked into the tavern with large strides while smoking inferior cigarettes. When they discovered the existence of zero, they took another look at the object tied to the table with a piece of cloth.
No matter how you looked at it, it looked like a gun, a huge gun!
The few men subconsciously turned their faces away. Regardless of the background of that single man, the one who used a large gun was someone they couldn't afford to offend. Even when the man saw the row of money bullets on the table, his eyes couldn't help but burn.
As time passed, more and more people gathered in the bar and the atmosphere became more and more heated. By nine in the evening, the bar was already filled with crazy and noisy music. dancers twisted his body in the middle of the room and made all sorts of suggestive movements, causing the men in the bar to be even more interested.
At this moment, Zero drank the last drop of water. At this moment, a man reeking of alcohol sat down opposite Zero with a bottle in his hand.
Zero raised his head slightly.
"How much do you charge for one night?" the drunken man shouted, and his voice immediately attracted the attention of several nearby guests.
Zero's loneliness and the weapon on the table had long ago attracted everyone's attention. However, the guests all restrained their rationality. Obviously, the man sitting opposite to them had lost all rationality due to the alcohol.
"I can forgive your rudeness because you are drunk. But if you don't leave, I don't think you'll be happy about what happens next. " Zero said.
The man laughed. "I know you're a man, but you're pretty, so I don't mind using my big guy to fuck your ass. "Speak, I'll go out."
Suddenly, the man couldn't speak anymore.
Zero, who was sitting across the table a moment ago, raised his right hand. The gun lay flat on the table in his hand at some point, and the barrel wrapped in the cloth was now thrust into the man's mouth so that he could no longer speak.
Even with the cloth wrapped around him, the man could still feel the thick smell of gunpowder coming from the muzzle. What was even more important was that the other party's finger was pressing down on the trigger.
The atmosphere in the bar immediately turned cold. The music was still going and the dancers was still jumping, but everyone's eyes were on the zero table.
Zero An sat like a mountain, while the other man who was being stared at couldn't wait to find a hole in the ground to burrow in.
"Please take back your gun, sir."
Allen squeezed through the crowd and gasped at the big gun that was stuck in the drunkard's mouth: "Listen to Sir, it's his fault that he offended you, but I do not wish to cause too much of a commotion. Rest assured, I will teach him a lesson. "
After hearing what Allen had to say, he kept his sniper rifle. The man who had spoken out so rudely had now lost all signs of drunkenness. After recovering his life, he sat back down heavily in his chair. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, followed by the sound of glass shattering.
The back of his head smashed into the ground, causing the man to get up and touch his head. His tentacles were sticky. He brought his hand back to his eyes, and his five fingers and palm were covered in blood. The man looked at Allen in shock. The only thing left of the bottle in Allen's hand was a ragged bottleneck. Obviously, Allen had just beaten him up with the wine bottle.
Just as he was about to ask "why", his vision suddenly went black, and Allen threw a flying kick at his face. The man fell onto the ground and let out a heavy sound. Then, he heard Allen yell, "F * ck off, those guys who don't know the situation clearly won't let you come to my bar again!"
In the eyes of the flames, Allen was someone who could be counted as one. He had a bunch of fierce thugs under him. Not only did the man not dare to argue with him, he stumbled out of the bar with his head in his hands. After chasing away the drunkard, Allen changed into a smiling face and said to Zero: I'm very sorry for disturbing this guest, why don't you drink to your heart's content tonight, treat it as my treat.
Zero revealed a faint smile, "You are too polite, boss."
With that, he flipped his hand, took out another row of bullets from his pocket and placed them on the table. Allen's eyes immediately lit up. This row of bullets had a specific design, the metal surface was as smooth as a mirror, and only an exquisite machine tool would be able to create this type of bullet. In the wilderness, this row of bullets was quite expensive.
"I want to find someone. I wonder if the boss can help me consult someone else?" Zero could tell that Allen was very capable in the eyes of the flames. On the other hand, who didn't run the bar? Of course, Zero could also ask for it himself, but the effect was much worse than when Allen asked for it. "If you have the exact clue, I can also give you a row of the same bullets."
Allen laughed, and reached out to put the bullet back into his own pocket: "Speak, as long as you are in the eyes of the flames, there is nothing that I do not know. You do
n't need to ask anyone else! "
Zero tilted its body forward slightly, and Allen reached out his ear at the same time. Then he heard Zero whisper in his ear, "I'm looking for the guide."
Although the music in the bar was very loud, a single sentence from zero was enough to suppress all other sounds. Allen's mind was blank for a moment, then he forced a smile: "What guide is this? I really don't know who the guest is looking for."
He straightened up and turned around. However, in the next moment, he abruptly turned around and swept an empty bottle towards Zero's head!
Su Yun smiled. Long ago, when Allen's expression was stiff, he knew that the owner of this bar definitely knew something. Upon seeing the bottle flying towards him, Zhang Xuan kicked his leg and struck the support column below the table. At the same time as he knocked the table towards Allen, Su Lian and her chair moved in the opposite direction.
Not only did Allen manage to scan the empty space, he even hit the edge of the table directly into his stomach. At the same time that he was knocked flying, he was so sad that Allen almost vomited the food he ate the other night.
He fell to the ground, startling the nearby drinkers. Allen did not care about his image, and shouted loudly on the ground: "Quickly close the door! Kill this guy, he wants to find the guide! "
His words were like a bomb, causing the customers to be stunned. Then, both men and women became ferocious, and their faces became ferocious. The drinkers sitting at the entrance to the main door stood up. Not only did they close the door, they even pushed tables and chairs towards the entrance, blocking the exit. Then, Allen's workers rushed in from the back door of the bar, obviously hearing Allen's words, they held long rods and blades in their hands and distributed the weapons to the people in the bar.
All of a sudden, almost everyone had a weapon in their hands. They tightened their grip on their weapons and charged at Zero. Zero still sat on the field and slowly untied the cloth strip on the giant's sniper rifle.
"If you can tell me anything about the guide, I can pretend I didn't see anything." Zero said silently.
Allen jumped up from the ground, and shouted: "Kill him!"
Just as he shouted, Allen squeezed his way through the crowd, but there were some customers throwing themselves at him with knives and sticks. However, the next moment, the few men who were in the front flew up and heavily fell into the corner of the bar.
Zero took back his sniper rifle. He had used this weapon as a baseball bat just now and sent several people flying. This had a slightly intimidating effect, but the men in the bar had already drunk quite a bit. In the effect of the alcohol, they had forgotten their fear, forgot their oversized guns, and roared as they pounced on the seemingly weaker version of Zero.
In the next moment, they knew that strength had nothing to do with body shape.
On the back of the zero sniper rifle, his empty hands were waving like the wind. Each punch contained the power of two stages. Most of the customers in the wine shop were ordinary people, so how could they withstand a punch that was over zero? Thus, there were people falling all the time. When they fell to the ground, their bones more or less broke, and they didn't have the strength to stand up again for a short while.
With just a blink of an eye, almost half of the people were killed. Allen roared at the people behind him: Go, release that thing!
Hearing this, Zero sped up. The "thing" in Allen's mouth should not be any ordinary item, the fact proved Zero's guess, and when he put the last man in the tavern down, a beast like roar came from behind. With that, the door of the kitchen flew out horizontally and smashed onto the bodies of several nearby men, making them wail in pain.
A giant walked out of the kitchen in large strides. With a violent wave of its hand, it smashed the tables and chairs in front of it.
He was slightly surprised. This was a butcher. It was strange enough that the first butcher was hiding in the Raging Flames Bar, but what was even stranger was the iron hoop around the butcher's neck, the three iron chains welded to the hoop. The end of the metal chain was held tightly by a burly man, they should be Allen's hands. Obviously, their strength wasn't enough to control the butcher's movements, so even though they were all trying to push themselves backwards, they were still dragged forward by the butcher.
"Let go!" Allen roared, and at the same time, he pointed his finger towards the butcher and shouted, "Kill that man!"
The butcher seemed to understand Allen's words, the moment the three big sized fellows let go, he had already roared and pounced towards Zero.
"It looks like you've made the worst decision." Zero said.
Chapter 306 - Fall (II)
By the time the butcher pounced on him, Zero had already jumped in. He grabbed the bar beams with both hands and let the butcher leap into the air, crushing a table and crushing the bones of a few drinkers who couldn't dodge in time. The butcher's temper was not gentle. He was furious that he missed. Hence, the giant randomly grabbed the unlucky guy beside him with his two hands and pulled his head and body apart before letting out a satisfied roar.
Blood danced in the air, and the initial indescribable anger of the people in the tavern turned into deep fear. They started to move back toward the door, but the door had been blocked by themselves, and it took more effort to get out of the tavern.
Zero did not have the time to care about these people. To him, a pub with a butcher hidden inside was a rare clue.
The clue was naturally not on the butcher, but on the bar owner Allen instead, so he did not mind killing this big guy. So he let go and dropped easily on the butcher's shoulder. Zero stood on the butcher's shoulder and let the butcher shake it. Zero seemed to have planted a root on the butcher's body, showing a surprising balance.
The muzzle of the Giant's sniper rifle hung low, pointing at the hood at the back of the butcher's head. The butcher seemed to realize something and reached for Zero's foot. Zero smiled and pressed his finger down on the trigger.
The next moment, the butcher's head along with his neck was blown into powder. The shockwave that was visible to the naked eye left a clear trail of blood in the air before finally blowing a hole in the wooden floor of the bar, revealing the rough floor beneath.
As the butcher slowly fell to the ground, the sound of gunshots rang out. With the fall of the butcher to the ground, the warm blood of the giant slowly flowed out, and flowed through the blood of the military boot.
The tavern was silent, but Allen's expression was as bad as it could get. The butcher was his ace in the hole, but he couldn't last even a minute against Zero. No matter how stupid he was, he knew what kind of character he had offended.
At this time, a loud bang was heard. The walls and roof of the tavern were both sent flying. The iron window was blown to smithereens in mid-air. There were fragmented electric sparks drifting within the shattered fragments, causing the faces of the people below to constantly change between light and darkness. When the dust settled, Allen realized that the only thing left in the tavern that it operated were the floors and the bar counter. However, he did not have the time to feel pain in his heart this time. On the edge of the ground around the tavern, a soldier armed to the teeth used an ability to coil a lightning snake as he coldly looked at the person inside the tavern.
After a long while, the esper turned to Zero and said, "Captain Zero, you are too slow."
Zero picked up his sniper rifle and remained silent.
An hour later, both men and women, old people and children, had to gather in the factory owned by Tiesen, a company on the outskirts of the city. Tissen was the small town's thermoelectric battery company, still functioning as usual. It had a more open loading dock, but now it was crowded with nearly a thousand people.
The citizens were naturally unwilling to gather here, but the weapons in the hands of the soldiers and the few powerful ones had no choice but to force them to submit. Arriving at the loading dock of the factory, the citizens looked at each other, not kno
wing why they were gathered here. At this time, a blonde woman walked out from the factory gate. She casually waved at the crowd, turned around, and walked back into the factory.
However, it was this simple wave of his hand that even the child could feel as if an invisible undercurrent surged through the air. However, no one knew what this undercurrent was used for. And then the citizens were dispersed, which puzzled them a little. As for the citizens, including Allen, they did not know that their own memories had undergone a slight change.
Those foreign soldiers had already become the recently hired soldiers of Tie Sen company in their memories, and even the bar that Allen tore down for him had become a result of an accident.
Of course, the butcher's corpse had long been thrown into the magma river outside the town by the Asgard's servants, leaving no trace behind.
In the Tieshen factory, all the machinery had stopped working, and the workers had already left work. But the lights in the factory shed were still on, so the shadows of the men below were long and straight.
A few capable fighters formed a circle, with a leather chair placed in the middle of the circle. There was a middle-aged man sitting on the chair. The middle-aged man dressed appropriately. There was even a ash-grey silk scarf pinned to his collar, making him look like a gentleman from the old era. However, his eyes were vacant like a puppet, and he did not seem to be in the least bit angry.
Agatha's hand was pressing down on his forehead. Through her "Perception of Memory" ability, she found out that the person was reading the man's memories.
The man's name was Tie Sen, and he was the owner of this factory. He was also the mayor of the Eye of Flame. However, he also had another important identity, and that was the guide!
Zero had a pocket-sized probe that could transmit all the information he saw back to the makeshift camp halfway up the mountain. If Zero was in danger, Agatha and the rest could immediately take action. When the people in the bar started to get angry, Agatha was already sure that the person who was leading the way was not only in the eyes of the flames, but the entire town was also related to the living corpse Kingdom. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a butcher in Allen's tavern, and the men in the town wouldn't attack nothing because of the words "guide".