No one knew the exact population of the City of Iniquity, but the city was larger than most imagined. So even on this night, when a faction war was raging in the Third District under the cover of darkness, Bar No. 15 in the Fifth District was open for business as usual.
It had merely swapped out the crew watching and wiping down the cars.
The patrons arrived much earlier than usual tonight.
Through the dark, the roar of source energy and the clash of dead iron were neither too close nor too far—just right. The thrill they carried seemed to surpass any pulse-pounding music, serving as the perfect accompaniment to drinks.
Regulars stepped out of their cars and, noticing the absence of the familiar workers, asked offhandedly about them. Hearing the manager explain that they had gone over to the Wild Band Alliance... they murmured, "Oh," paused in their tracks, and nodded.
It sounded like just another story of bottom-dwellers refusing to accept their lot in life, choosing instead to try changing their fate.
Most of the time, such stories ended in failure—and the price of failure was life itself.
"Maybe I should've tipped them a bit more. That might've made them think twice about giving up this job."
A customer muttered as he walked into the bar, and that was that.
People died in this city every single day. Every day, countless souls dreamed of changing their fate, or actually took the leap, grasping at what they believed was an opportunity...
"Except those days are long gone."
An older customer reminisced about the past he had lived through—those turbulent decades that had shaken the entire city—sighing with drunken nostalgia. Those were the most brutal of times, yet also the golden age for the underclass; he himself had climbed out of the depths back then.
All in all, hardly anyone looked favorably on their chances this time.
Yet plenty of people were watching all the same.
Take the two street sweepers cleaning the long avenue tonight, or those who had wagered a dead iron fragment or two, and even more so the people with no coin to bet, who were toiling through the night just to earn tomorrow morning's bread.
Casino statistics showed that those who bet on long shots at staggering odds were almost always the poor. Only the poor were constantly hoping to leverage a trifle into a fortune to change their lives, while the rich had both the capital and the peace of mind to make safe money.
And so the poor lost again and again. These people made up the city's bottom rung, the vast majority of its population.
Many of them probably hoped in their hearts that the Wild Band Alliance could work a miracle. Stakes aside, even witnessing someone else create a miracle would give them a sliver of hope.
The Third District.
Under the night sky, the streetlamps glowed dim yet glaring. The wind swept ceaselessly across the street, scattering the trash cleared out by shopkeepers when they shuttered their stores.
People in this city always said that every street in the City of Iniquity bore its own stories and marks. Even so, the Third District remained special; the historical imprints on its main thoroughfare belonged to legends.
"Kill!" The charging, lunging battle lines swept past Chen Buer's blade marks, past Shu You's footprints...
On this night, those who had fled for their lives through the valley turned their blades upon the people who stood atop the ridge.
The bosses had declared that there could be no retreating in this first clash; a single step back would turn into a rout. Dodging and flanking were out of the question as well, for that would tempt men into false hopes and sap their courage.
Boom! Boom!
Up ahead, the Storm Bloodbattle Gang slammed in!
The Anilo Gang slammed in...
Dead iron hacked into dead iron; dead iron sliced through flesh and bone.
"Hah! Hah!"
His breath came in heavy heaves. In full sprint, Lubi Azha constantly adjusted his breathing to match the rhythm of his source energy surge, striving with all his might to keep his place in the charging formation.
"All I have to do is stick close to Uncle Shiliang."
A Grade C degree of fusion, seventeen years old, having never seen the world beyond the City of Iniquity since the day he was born, Lubi Azha was utterly ordinary among the 103 members of the He Guang Gang.
His strange name came from parents of Eastern and Western descent respectively. When he was young, his mother called him Lubi, while his father insisted on calling him Azha, claiming it was an ancient tradition from the distant East—an ugly name made a child easier to raise.
His father and mother had died when Lubi Azha was ten. They perished on a "Harvest Day" when two blue-sheened Great Spikes appeared, dying amid a desperate flight, amidst the singing from the ridge.
From then on, he began living with an Eastern friend of his parents. Azha never learned his real name; like everyone else, he called him Uncle Shiliang.
Uncle Shiliang scraped by in the He Guang Gang—or "scrounged for meals," as he liked to put it. Uncle Shiliang's scrounging raised Lubi Azha to adulthood, and once grown, Lubi Azha joined the He Guang Gang as well.
"Azha, stay on my heels!" Uncle Shiliang's voice cut through the howling wind.
"Right behind you!" Lubi Azha shouted back even louder, battling the headwind. He looked up at Uncle Shiliang's back, then toward the clashes further ahead.
Azha knew their gang was about to carve its way in too.
During preparations this afternoon, the leaders of the wild bands had said: "Just charge straight in! Charge like our lives depend on it! In the end, the major factions will chicken out first."
To chicken out meant to be afraid... The bosses had said:
"Because we have no way out. For us, it's do or die."
"They have an exit. All the major factions are fighting for is their pride and a fraction of their profits."
"Even if they give that up, they're still major factions."
"But if they grind themselves down fighting us to the bone, they'll lose everything."
"So all we have to do is show them that if this drags on, they'll go down in flames right alongside us. That'll be enough."
Azha didn't really understand these arguments. When he asked Uncle Shiliang, his uncle said the bosses were right. He said that in the distant East, there was an old saying: the barefoot fear not those in shoes. And another went: the ruthless fear the reckless, and the reckless fear those who value not their lives... They are ruthless, but this time, we're throwing our lives away.
The distant East seemed to have many such old sayings and strange traditions. It was the homeland of both his father and Uncle Shiliang, and Lubi Azha had always wanted to see it for himself. Yet he knew that until the day he died, he would never leave the City of Iniquity.
"Swallow!" Gang Leader He Guang shouted from the front.
There was no girl named Swallow. It was an internal combat code signal among the wild bands, devised so other gangs wouldn't understand when competing for wild drops.
In the He Guang Gang, it meant "Left Wing Pounce."
Whirr! The source energy apparatus on Lubi Azha's back erupted. Planting his left foot outward, he stepped out from behind Uncle Shiliang to his diagonal flank.
He wasn't the only one moving. In that very instant, the entire left flank of the charge spread out like the wings of a great bird, then lunged fiercely forward.
Boom!
They hacked in.
Before Lubi Azha could even make out the enemy before him, his blade cleaved straight down.
Clang! A tremendous resistance pushed back; his strike slammed against a horizontal parrying blade.
Hah! Turning his wrists, he locked both hands around the hilt, swept the blade horizontally, and leaned forward with all his weight... Lubi Azha acted without hesitation or thought, moving in exact lockstep with the formation.
"We're advancing!" Azha suddenly realized, a thrill of excitement coursing through him.
That meant they had the initiative.
The resistance was giving way; the enemy was falling back!
With a brief lull to finally take in the scene before him, Lubi Azha glanced first at Uncle Shiliang to his front right, just as he always had.
His uncle was the same as ever: while everyone else gripped their blades with both hands, he held his long blade in his right hand alone. In his left hand behind his back, he held a short blade.
That short blade... had saved Lubi Azha seven times.
He remembered a couple of days ago, during the tensest, most anxious hours, asking Uncle Shiliang whether he would choose to fight this battle if he had a choice.
Uncle Shiliang had said yes. "I'm growing old. Your fate hangs on this fight."
Lubi Azha knew what Uncle Shiliang meant. The man was always scolding him for being useless, saying that if he died one day, Azha probably wouldn't last long either... But if they won this battle, Azha's chances of dying would drop dramatically, and he would have the chance to grow strong enough.
He would no longer have to hunt for wild drops or endure "Harvest Days," and there would be more source energy blocks.
"We'll win," Lubi Azha thought, casting a glance forward.
Gang Leader He Guang was at the very forefront of the battle line, his eyes locked onto a man Azha remembered as being quite famous on the other side, hacking at him desperately, hacking at him like a madman...
Before, Gang Leader He Guang had fawned and groveled before that man like a dog.
Now, he hacked at him like a rabid dog.
Today, every single leader of the wild bands stood at the front of the line, fixing their sights on the strongest opponent in view and hacking away.
Chapter 466