Chapter 41: Relocation

  My mind reeled as I raced through the cramped streets of dark cement and flashing colors. The multileveled blocks that were both building and street were even more labyrinthine and destitute than those that surrounded the workshop I had been staying in. Given that none of this tier was mapped out on the official city net, I knew very little about this area outside of what Diaochan had mapped on our way here.

  If my plan was to return to the siblings’ home, that would be helpful information, but I couldn’t do that now. Not only was it a terrible place to hide, as numerous people knew I had been staying there, but it was also within the territory of the very clan that was now hunting me. On top of all that, Ji-Ho and Ha-Rin had been nothing but kind to me and had supplied me with both equipment and knowledge. It would gain me nothing to bring the wrath of Clan Irons down upon them, and I thought that was really the only plausible outcome if I returned to their home.

  If ‘Lyn Lu’ really was Lu Linqi, as both I and the Diaochan A.I suspected. I knew that she would be extremely difficult to dissuade from the hunt. I might not understand how my daughter had arrived here before I had, given that she definitely died after I did. It stood to reason that she would have gotten to the afterlife later. I did, however, understand Linqi, and not only did she likely still resent me, but she would see me as a major threat to both her own power and the stability of the region. I couldn’t really blame her for that. By the time Linqi had turned five, they were already calling me ‘The Beast Of Chaos,’ and I hadn’t ever given her a whole lot of reason to doubt the title.

  If you asked me to put together a list of potential opponents I had encountered who were more dangerous in single combat than my daughter, I could certainly do so; however, I need to make myself very clear. It would not be a long one. Knowing that she was level twelve, I had concluded I needed to get some more levels and increase my stats to match before I next encountered her.

  “Diaochan,” I said as I launched myself up a flight of cement stairs four at a time. Do you have a way to find the closest hunting grounds? This deep into the tier’s sprawl, I hear they produce some pretty powerful drones to ‘farm’”

  The hunting ground I had been making use of near the siblings’ workshop was huge and frustrating to traverse, other than giant machines producing drones that would try to kill me at every turn; such a place was a perfect wilderness to hide myself in. What was more, this was Yantra Clan territory, meaning my daughter wouldn’t be able to just send seekers after me at will; she would need to either pay or otherwise negotiate with the locals if she didn’t want to risk war.

  “Hmmm .” Replied my A.I assistant “I can’t find maps of here on the city net, and there aren’t even local networks available for me to connect to. Buuuut what I can do is check older records about when and where bigger Over-Surges hit the tier. I might be able to put together some rough directions.” She eventually answered.

  “Do it,” I commanded before bursting out of a door that took me to one of the destitute apartment block’s lower roofs. Doubling back, I ducked under a sparking sign made of neon lights and leaped across a gap between this building and the next. Not onto the roof of the second building, mind you, but down and into one of the huge gaps of cracked stone and protruding metal bars, so that I entered the structure, and shoved my way past a few residents in the hall I landed in.

  Confident that I had lost any pursuers, I slowed to a walk and started taking greater notice of what was around me. Like the other huge square buildings that dominated this section of the tier, the one I found myself in was more than just a collection of apartments. It was a vertical town or city in its own right, complete with all the kinds of services and stores.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  It made me feel a little foolish, but making note of the various stores within the poorly lit corridors of the block building made me realize I didn’t need to rely on Diaochan for this. I could just ask the locals if there were nearby hunting grounds and how to get to them.

  It took me around half an hour, but after the fifth store owner I spoke to, I now knew that the Yantra Clan had allowed a Purple Over-Surge to get a foothold in the lower half of one of the vertical towns and several of the streets around it. The act of infiltrating the hunting ground itself without the Yantras noticing me might be a little on the tricky side, but once I had done it, I knew one of these buildings would be a nightmare to hunt for a fugitive through, of a magnitude even greater than what I had originally planned when I considered hiding in a hunting ground.

  Each of the vertical towns or blocks, as they were called, could easily house more than fifty thousand people, and all the features of an internal economy. While the people and businesses wouldn’t be present in a block that had been overtaken by Surge-Drones, it would still need an insane amount of manpower to search effectively.

  Alright, I had a plan of sorts, and the capacity to execute it. I lacked my spear or any other weapons, but that was alright. I am Lu Bu. I am the weapon. Besides, I didn't think it would be wise to call Ji-Ho or his sister right now. The fact that they were both my associates would soon be knowledge my daughter possessed if she didn’t already. Doubtless, they would have to answer all sorts of questions from Clan Irons, not to mention their A.Is would be working double shifts to keep their own HUDS and call history from being ‘hacked into’.

  I didn’t understand why such a delicate practice that took place in what was essentially a plane made of spirits and minds had such a brutal name. Then again, I knew of or had personally witnessed three different techniques that had names starting with ‘Gentle’ that could nonetheless flatten a city street.

  Even with Diaochan slowly building a map of the blocks and the streets between them, bringing the hunting ground into view took almost three hours. Though once I did, there could be no mistaking the purple hunting grounds. The four blocks that surrounded the one that had been overrun formed a square of linked fortresses around the overrun block. There were makeshift bridges connecting their roofs, and gigantic mining machines that had been left and then built around to barricade off the streets below. From each of the heavily defended blocks that made up the cube I could see several iron runged ladders leading down into the area that was contained. What was especially weird to me was that while each of the makeshift barricades clearly had heavily armed clan members locking them down tight.

  If this block hunting ground was anything like the one that I was used to, those ladders would be a massive weak spots from which drones could pour into local homes and businesses.

  I overlooked all of this from a small noodle stand that sat atop one of several jutting cement roofs on the westernmost of the four blocks that locked in the hunting grounds. Like the Clan Iron’s territory, there were a lot of noodle stands around here, and I transferred the owner a few digi-creds with the wave of my hand before settling in with a hot and tasty bowl to watch if the Yantra Clan enforcers that hemmed the place in had any sort of routine.

  “The red drones were different from the green drones.” I quietly said to Diaochan as I looked over the edge of the railingless roof. “Word is that this hunting ground is the result of a purple Over-Surge. Explain to me how purple drones will be different again?”

  “Huh?” asked the surprisingly young man operating the noodle stand.

  “Just talking to my A.I” I told him dismissively.

  “Ahh,” he said, clearly uninterested, as he went back to washing out his pots and bowls.

  Clearly the best plan...

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