255 – A Desolate Town

— the dilapidated outwall is crawling with vines and is covered in traces of erosion, the official road leading to the town is full of weeds.

The Qingrao town is a backward and desolate town.

It is quite far away from the Huaibei city that it is affiliated with, and is located on the edge. This rural place is more suitable for a village than a town.

This small town with only a few hundred residents has no unique or special products, nor is it located on any commercial routes. Naturally, there are no merchants visiting or passing by. It has no chance of generating wealth. Moreover, it is surrounded by mountains and forests. It is a remote place, and it even has many vacant official positions.

It’s a place that is virtually cut off from the rest of the world.

The residents here live self-sufficient lives and seldom have contact with outsiders. Because of the lack of resources and the dangerous terrain, there are not many outsiders visiting. Even bandits wouldn’t choose this place as their encampment. It is the best place for some fugitives or people who have to avoid the rest of the world for various reasons to stay.

For the residents, this small town may be the whole world.

If that is really the case, then their happiness must be simpler than that of others. Without fame, wealth, or power, it is a simple life — albeit insipid. Yet its enough to become the target of pursuit of countless people.

It’s such a place. But due to the earth-shaking changes brought by the appearance of the School of Mo’s secret hall, it is no longer ordinary.

All sorts of outsiders have poured in to explore the secrets of the School of Mo. The only shabby inn in the town, which has never been fully occupied, is currently bustling with people. Not only is it impossibly to find a vacant room, but there are even three or four people crowded per room. Even the stable is full of people. Despite all this, the inn still can’t meet the needs of the outsiders.

For those who didn’t find a place to stay, some rented houses, others stayed in camps outside the town, and even more people took the sky as a blanket and the ground as a bed.

The world of the residents seems to have suddenly become wider, even wider than the outside world.

If not, how can the exclamations coming from the outsiders from time to time be explained?

Looking at the behemoth slowly moving along the road with the support of troops, Xue Qilin, who is part of the outsiders, contemplated this dully.

It’s a big wooden chest on wheels.

The chest is divided into nine compartments, each with a spear protruding from it. It’s probably a kind of crossbow mechanism.

But that’s not reason enough to make the lass gape. It was the size of the bolts that really surprised her.

The part of the bolts protruding from the chest is as long as Xue Qilin’s leg. The bolts are made from metal and are engraved with complex patterns. They look really heavy. In terms of size, they are no different from a halberd.

“Junior disciple sister, it is said that the officials found this thing when they first entered the School of Mo’s secret hall.

All of a sudden, a voice came from the crowd.

Xue Qilin looked in the direction of the voice and found that the speaker is a young martial practitioner. From the two short spears crossed behind his back, she can’t tell which sect he belongs to.

The girl he called junior disciple sister also has two short spears on her back. She sighed and asked, “It’s really amazing… I wonder how powerful this thing is?”

“Reportedly, they already tested it! Junior disciple sister, take a look, isn’t there a bolt missing?”

After the young man said this, Xue Qilin noticed that the crossbow mechanism chest is indeed missing a bolt.

“Have you learned the details, senior disciple brother?”

“Mhm, of course I have.”

Whether it was because he didn’t want others to hear, or because he wanted to smell the scent of his junior disciple sister, but the young martial practitioner first looked around, and then put his mouth close to his junior disciple sister’s ear and carried on in a hushed voice, “Reportedly, it can smash a rock the size of an adult man from 400 steps away.”

Xue Qilin was greatly surprised by the statement.

If it can smash a large rock from 400 step away, then what about when the target is closer?

Although it’s not easy to hit martial practitioners due to their nimble movements, but when crossbow mechanisms form an array and perform an area bombardment, that’s another story.

Xue Qilin tried to imagine hundreds of bolts shooting at her, and then felt a chill run down her spine and shivered involuntarily.

It seems that she can now somewhat understand why mechanism arts are so famous.

Not only can such mighty weapons be produced, but those weapons can even be operated by anyone. If they can be produced en masse one day, then the world that respects martial practitioners may be toppled at once.

Although she heard repeatedly about how miraculous mechanism arts are, but it was not until now that Xue Qilin finally gained some real sense of how formidable mechanism arts are.

But Li Wanting, who is standing beside her, seems to be thinking of something else.

Her eyes are shining brightly. If Xia Xue, who rolled her eyes, hadn’t subtly blocked in front of her, she would have already rushed to the crossbow mechanism.