“GO! GOGOGO! ” Two men in taoist robes stayed behind to maintain the st bit of the protective energy dome, while the rest of them helped escort the monks, schors and the team led by Luoshan Zi onto the buses and van.

  “What the hell is happening?!” A woman in a taoist robe frowned as she fixed her eyes on the Blood Rainbow in the sky. A regur Blood Rainbow would have dissipated by now. But by this very second, it had sted twice as long as regur ones would have. Even though its effects appeared to be less potent than regur ones, the length of its manifestation had built up a swarm of dark spirits around their vehicles. If not for the hardened walls, wooden pques with talisman symbols and arrays engraved on them embedded in the walls and the protective energy dome, they would all be trapped and probably torn apart right now.

  “Everyone’s on board. GO!” The st two men tossed several handfuls of dried beans soaked in wine and oil on the ground at the center of the protective energy dome before going onto two different buses.

  Just a few seconds ter, the dome colpsed, and the swarm of spirits flooded the space. The dried beans glowed in red and green lights while releasing auras like those of real, living humans. In turn, the majority of the spirits swarmed towards them, screaming, crying, cwing and biting at the fake warmth and source of human smell.

  Buses and vans sped away from the scene, and thus the area under the Blood Rainbow. The two motorcycles, with repcement searchlights installed and pointing backwards, followed the group to provide the group with additional protection.

  Luoshan Zi boarded the st bus, along with the least number of injured schors and monks and one man in a taoist robe. Far beyond the colpsed subway station, was the night time skyline of the Northern District.

  Bright golden light fshed before Luoshan Zi’s eyes. It was such a brief moment, that for a moment she needed to blink a few times and asked those around her: “Did something just fsh? Did you see it? Maybe from the lightning? Or - a light of some sort?”

  “I saw it - but - I don’t know what it is.” The man in a taoist robe shook his head: “I thought I was just too tired - ”

  “No - apparently not.” Luoshan Zi frowned, her heart began beating faster, and a strange sense of unknown and unpredictability arose from her stomach: “I - I am not sure how to describe this - I just feel - ”

  “Something’s about to happen?” The man asked, nodding: “Yeah, this is what the Chef told us before we came. It’s - it’s big, and apparently, it’s big enough that he had reached out to almost all the contacts he had in the city.”

  “And what made - ” Luoshan Zi almost asked “what made you so te”, but she pushed this question back - there might not be a good time in the foreseeable future but right now it was definitely not the right time for it: “ - what made the Chef say so?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” The man shook his head: “But - since you asked for a special delivery of his, he began looking into some old documents and notes. And he even spent some time re-interrogating some prisoners of his. I don’t really know what he found, but he called us in the middle of the night to get ready and come here to rescue you.”

  “I thought the Chef has this principle of neutrality?”

  The man chuckled: “Who would actually buy that? If it’s good for our district, then neutrality will be out of the window like spoiled noodles.”

  Luoshan Zi chuckled as well. Just as she turned her eyes to the direction of the subway station, another fsh of gold happened. This time, it sted just moments longer that both Luoshan Zi and the man in a taoist robe could confirm that they did not hallucinate.

  “Something’s changed.” A monk with his left shoulder wrapped in bandages whispered.

  “Yes, but what?” Luoshan Zi narrowed her eyes at the almost invisible site of the colpsed subway station.

  A beam of light shot up into the sky, from a building in a long distance. It was a narrow beam, but bright. So bright, in fact, that the buildings all around it showed their surfaces - surfaces that seemed to be moving, crawling with hundreds if not thousands of moving bodies.

  “What the - ” The man in a taoist robe almost jumped. He pushed his face at the back window, with his eyes open as wide as he could: “That kind of power - how?!”

  Luoshan Zi could not answer but kept her eyes on the beam as well. By rough estimates, it would be near the northern end of Lake Aqiu.

  “The datacenter.” Luoshan Zi muttered under her breath.

  “The what?” The man in a taoist robe asked, frowning.

  “The datacenter.” Luoshan Zi took a deep breath before responding: “My - my friend joined a team to attack a datacenter by the ke. I - I don’t know what they did exactly. But - I think they - they might have succeeded?”

  “We’re almost there! ” Just this moment, the driver of the bus announced.

  Without Luoshan Zi’s knowledge or recognition, the bus drove into some kind of temporary encampment in a mountainous area. Around the area were guard posts with armed guards inside, vehicles like SUVs, vans and jeeps, as well as fgs with evil-repellent symbols on them. Many people waited in a circle, all in healer and nurse uniforms and equipped with medical gear.

  Inside the encampment were tents, a bonfire, and two more jeeps and even an armored truck.

  “How the hell did the Chef pull this off?” Luoshan Zi asked.

  “It’s not just him. He had some allies.” The man in a taoist robe let out a sigh of relief: “Really helpful ones.”

  A huge thank you to my patrons:

  mant06

  Jonathan

  Thank you so much for your support!