Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

Although his body was weak, Gus' five senses were quite sharp. Maybe this was the only place where he inherited his father's talent in martial arts.

He touched the brick and found that the joints were indeed weird. The brick was slightly more protruding than the other bricks nearby.

It was as thin as a hair and could not be seen with the naked eye. One could only feel it with the most delicate movements.

It was as if the brick was not firmly embedded in the brick wall but had been pulled out and stuffed back instead of being stuffed all the way down.

Gus tried to pull the brick out.

However, the protrusions were too subtle, and there was no place for him to exert any strength. After several tries, his fingernails were almost broken, but the brick remained absolutely still.

Gus thought for a moment and took out an arrow from the quiver on his waist. He used the arrowhead as a dagger and pried at the joints of the bricks.

This time, the brick was indeed loose.

Gus was greatly encouraged. He took out another arrow and squeezed the green brick from above and below.

After clamping down with the width of two fingers, there was finally a place where he could exert force. Gus grasped the brick with both hands and pulled hard, pulling out more than half of it.

But no matter how hard he tried, it was all useless.

"It's impossible. There should be something wrong with this brick. There's no reason why I can only take out half of it!"

Gus scratched his head.

The disappearance of his sister and the weird bricks deeply attracted him. He could not help but feel around. After more than ten unsuccessful approaches, he finally found the trick.

As it turned out, the brick was only a thin layer and could rotate and move.

He turned the half brick three times to the left and two times to the right. After it was back to its original position, he pressed it down deeply.

Half of the brick immediately sank into the brick wall.

From behind the brick wall came the sounds of gears and chains turning, extending all the way to the underground of the training room.

Then, the floor of the southeast corner of the training room slid open silently, revealing a dark hole!

Gus was so shocked that his soul almost left his body.

It was not because of the sudden appearance of the hole, but because the hole was controlled by gears and chains, which were all precise machines!

"Why is there a mechanical hole in our training room?

"This—this can't be Sister's doing, right?"

"Is it Dad? It's impossible. Dad is the best expert of Red Gold Town and the most devoted to the Fist God. How can it be?"

"Sister, is Sister inside?"

Gus's mind went blank.

But he couldn't help but walk toward the underground cave.

Below the hole was a narrow flight of stairs leading to an even deeper underground. Weird brilliance was blinking at the end of the stairs.

Gus swallowed hard. Holding an arrowhead in his palm, he crept toward the secret chamber.

When he was halfway down the stairs, he heard evil voices coming from the secret chamber.

It was the sound of gears turning, chains rattling, and steam spurting.

Although Gus had never heard the voices in person, he had heard them from his uncle before. Right now, he could tell that they were exactly the same.

His uncle had told him that, if he heard such noises, he must have found the nest of the devils and the altar of the evil Cultivators, so that he could run as fast as possible and report to the Temple of Fist.

But his uncle had never told Gus that the 'demonic altar' had been discovered in his own home. What should he do?

Gus seemed to have fallen into the most terrible nightmare.

He seemed to be attracted by the mysterious force of machinery and steam, too.

He moved to the end of the stairs on all fours and saw an unbelievable scene.

It was a spacious secret chamber.

Veins and intestines-like tubes were crawling all over the walls.

The joints of many rusted tubes were hissing and spurting evil steam.

Countless tubes interweaved into a giant, weird machine.

No language in the world could describe the horror of this machine.

It seemed to be made of ten thousand gears, with a lot of chains, bearings, springs, and components that Gus could not name. It was like a devil that had crawled out of hell.

Inside the machine, several weird furnaces were burning furiously, releasing scorching steam.

The steam was compressed to the front of the machine through tubes. It was a metal ball that was slightly larger than a heart and embedded with a lot of rivets and valves.

And in front of the metal ball…

Grey, Gus's sister, was kneeling there devoutly in a pair of goggles and a greasy canvas uniform. She was reciting an evil spell.

Although he had already guessed it, Gus's heart still fell into an abyss.

His sister was indeed a believer of 'the power of machinery and steam'.

Compared to Qin Yi, who had just been burnt at the stake, his sister's depravity was a hundred times worse. Her soul had probably been absorbed by the mechanical demons and the steam demons a long time ago.

What was left in the human world was just an evil shell.

Gus was caught in a dilemma. He did not know whether or not he should run away and report to his uncle so that his uncle could rescue his sister's soul.

But when he thought of how Qin Yi had been burnt into a toad, he found it impossible to take a step forward.

At this moment, his sister's words after the spell made him even more dumbfounded.

"Dad, do you see? I've made it. I've found the answer that you've been looking for all your life!"

Grey was so excited that she laughed crazily amid the shrieking steam. "This is the purest force of steam. This is the strongest force in the world that is above all the 'punching force'!"

After finishing the last word, Grey seemed to have made up her mind to die. She gritted her teeth and hit the rattling metal ball hard with a hammer.

"Chi—"

The metal ball shrieked and spurted out steam that looked like mist. In a moment, the entire secret chamber was enshrouded.

Such appalling evilness finally shattered Gus' nerves. He screamed and rolled into the secret chamber from the stairs.

"Who?"

Grey was shocked, too. She punched at Gus without looking back.

When she discovered that the intruder was her blood brother, it was already too late for her to stop. The punch hit the floor of the secret chamber and left a hole that looked like a honeycomb.

"Gus?"

His sister's face turned extremely pale.

"Sister! Sister!"

His brother burst into tears.

"Cough cough, cough cough cough cough!"

Before the siblings explained everything, weird coughs suddenly echoed in a corner of the secret chamber deep inside the steam.

A thin and short figure gradually emerged from the steam.

"Who is it?"

Grey's eyes were wide with shock.

No one knew the structure of the secret chamber better than her. There was no other way out except for the stairs that her brother fell off.

Why was there a third person inside the steam?

Gus was so scared that he hugged his sister's thigh and hid behind her. He looked at the 'person' that crawled out of the mist in fear.

It was a very ugly child.

She was six or seven years old at most. Her hair was yellow, and her skin was dark. At first glance, she looked like a deformed bean sprout. Her head was so swollen that it might break off at any moment.

The little guy seemed harmless, but Gus and Grey did not dare to be careless.

When they saw the feet of the ugly kid, their scalps turned numb, and they could not believe their eyes.

The ugly kid had no legs.

From the waist down, his body was dragging a cluster of dense steam that extended to the weird metal ball.

It was as if he was made of dense steam from the metal ball.

Gus remembered the mysterious rituals that his uncle had told him about.

He shuddered and stammered, "Sister, are you summoning the real 'steam devil'?"

"How—how is it possible?"

Even though Grey was a believer of 'the power of machinery and steam', she was still scared out of her wits by the ugly kid. She said, "I was merely extracting the purest power of steam. How could it be? Hey, kid. What are you exactly?"

Grey waved her hammer at the ugly kid that she had summoned.

"Don't be like this. Let's talk nicely. Can you put down the hammer first? I'm very timid. I can't take a scare."

The ugly kid curiously looked around, as if he had never seen such a world before. After looking for a long time, his deep eyes that were beyond his age returned to Gus and Grey. He smiled and said in a childish voice, "Although I don't quite understand what the 'steam devil' you are talking about is, I'm definitely not that thing. Let me introduce myself. My name is Lu Qingchen. What about you?"