262: if I could

Meanwhile, the village's internal alleyways were intricate and complex, firelight flickered, and figures scurried chaotically.

The Immortal pushed his speed to the limit, fleeing desperately through the narrow streets and courtyards. What was worse, he specifically rushed past villagers who were either driven mad or panicking, even reaching out to shove people toward Lu Jianchuan and Shen Mingyuan who were chasing him!

"Catch!" The Immortal's hoarse laughter mixed with the villagers' screams.

Lu Jianchuan cursed inwardly, but he had no choice but to divert his attention to deal with it.

If a villager was controlled and attacking, he would dissolve the attack with skillful force, using a precise hand chop or elbow strike to temporarily knock them unconscious;

If they were innocent people being shoved, he would quickly turn sideways to catch or steady them, guiding them toward a relatively safe corner.

"Why are you running? Stop right there!" Lu Jianchuan roared, the lightning around him becoming even more dazzling due to his urgency. Several times he nearly caught up, but the opponent used the villagers as shields, widening the distance again.

"Stop? Not run? Hehehe... Only a fool wouldn't run!" The Immortal didn't look back, his voice filled with mockery and madness.

Shen Mingyuan closely followed Lu Jianchuan to his side and rear, his twin stars handgun continuously firing.

Black and red plasma projectiles, like scorching meteors, precisely blocked the Immortal's potential evasion routes, forcing him to flee only along limited paths or utilize the "human shields" again.

Shen Mingyuan's trigger rhythm was terrifyingly calm. Every shot calculated the lead, aiming both to compress the opponent's movement space and to ensure absolutely no harm came to the innocent people caught up in the chase.

This severely limited his firepower output.

The Immortal clearly realized this, making his escape routes even more tricky and insidious. He deliberately rushed into crowded areas and even intentionally knocked over burning debris to create new fire walls and chaos.

The opportunity was fleeting!

During one near-right-angle turn, the Immortal paused for a moment, hesitating in his path selection to avoid several villagers wrestling with each other ahead—to his right was a high wall, and to his left was a rickety wooden house where the fire had already spread to the rafters.

Now!

Shen Mingyuan's red visor glowed brightly. The twin guns traced a brief crossing trajectory in his hands, aiming not at the Immortal, but at the crucial load-bearing pillars of the burning wooden house!

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Four consecutive light projectiles instantly melted the already fragile wooden supports like a hot knife through butter.

"Creak—CRASH!!!"

The burning roof structure groaned under the unbearable weight and collapsed thunderously toward the alley where the Immortal was! Scorching flames, hot timber, and thick smoke rained down like Mount Tai crushing its target!

Although the Immortal could not see, his perception of danger was extremely sharp. The moment the ill wind struck overhead and the heat wave surged, he relied almost entirely on instinct, exploding with the full power of his legs to leap forward and sideways, attempting to clear a pile of debris and escape the fatal coverage area.

He leaped into the air—this was precisely the most probable and only choice Shen Mingyuan had calculated!

"Now!" Shen Mingyuan growled.

Lu Jianchuan, who had been waiting for this moment, had a fierce light burst forth from his eyes!

His silver-white armor instantly changed; dark red energy conduits appeared and glowed on the armor surface like blood vessels. Thruster nozzles instantly formed on his elbows, back, and soles of his feet, radiating scorching orange-red light internally—Explosive Combustion Form, activated!

There were no unnecessary movements; he didn't even wait to fully land before accelerating again.

The instant the Immortal's body had just leaped and reached the apex of his arc, the lightning under Lu Jianchuan's feet and his main rear thrusters simultaneously erupted with a deafening roar!

"BOOM—!!!"

Where he had been, only a ring of spreading hot air waves and a slight depression in the ground remained. He had transformed into a silver-red interwoven afterimage, tearing through the air at a speed beyond the limit of human vision, crashing straight into the Immortal mid-air!

"What?!" The Immortal could only feel a destructive surge of heat and kinetic energy rushing toward him, giving him absolutely no time to implement any effective defense or evasion.

Lu Jianchuan's right fist, boosted by the vector assistance of multiple thrusters, solidly and unceremoniously slammed into the Immortal's chest and abdomen!

"THUD!!!"

A dull, teeth-grinding impact echoed through the alley.

The Immortal's body folded dramatically as if struck by a battering ram. His Protective Qi Energy, the Centipedes summoned temporarily, and even his strange skeletal structure seemed utterly fragile before this pure and brutal force.

His eyes seemed ready to pop out of their sockets, and blood mixed with fragments of internal organs sprayed wildly from his mouth.

But it wasn't over yet!

Lu Jianchuan, holding the Immortal's deformed body, increased his dive momentum instead of slowing down. The thrusters on his back and soles engaged a Secondary Acceleration boost, spewing out longer, scorching exhaust flames!

"Secondary Acceleration! Get—Down!"

"CRASH!!!"

Lu Jianchuan, with overwhelming momentum, carried the Immortal's body and smashed violently onto the bluestone-paved alley below, like a falling meteor!

The fierce impact shook the entire ground. Smoke and shattered stones mixed with hot air waves shot into the sky, forming a brief annular shockwave that violently suppressed the nearby flames. The bluestone pavement shattered inch by inch, forming a distinct crater.

At the bottom of the crater, Lu Jianchuan slowly straightened up. The glow of the dark red energy conduits around him gradually subsided, and white smoke curled from the nozzles.

Beneath his feet lay the Immortal's body, limp as a rag, deeply embedded in the rubble, barely recognizable as human, with only faint twitches remaining.

That punch combined with the super heavy impact of the fall had completely severed all his ability to resist.

Shen Mingyuan quickly arrived from behind, his twin guns lowered, his red visor scanning the target in the crater to confirm its status.

"He's dealt with." Lu Jianchuan deactivated Explosive Combustion Form and reverted to his basic armor.

Lu Jianchuan and Shen Mingyuan dragged the severely injured and unconscious Immortal, who was like a broken sack, back along the way they came.

The fires along the route had been brought under initial control with the intervention of the arriving GUPA Rescue Team and professional firefighting forces. Most of the villagers who were mad or affected had also been subdued, calmed, or evacuated. The two also quickly dealt with any sporadic chaos they encountered.

When they returned to an open area near the village entrance, which had been temporarily set up as a rescue assembly point and temporary medical station, they were greeted by an orderly but heavily somber rescue scene. Medical personnel bustled about, and stretchers moved back and forth.

Then, they saw Wei Ziqing.

He was still maintaining his Hero Shadow transformation state, his plain white armor looking somewhat desolate under the illumination of the firelight and emergency lamps.

He stood quietly beside a stretcher. Lying on the stretcher was the unconscious Little Stone, who had just been injected with a sedative and was being prepared for transfer by medical staff.

Wei Ziqing's gaze, however, was fixed on another spot a few steps away—several medical personnel were gathered in a circle, performing urgent on-site first aid on Reiko, who was lying on the ground.

The compression bandages had been cut open, and more professional hemostatic equipment and medicine were being used, but fragments of the medical staff's hurried conversation drifted over:

"…Too much blood loss!"

"Internal organs might be damaged, the blood pressure can't hold!"

"IV access! Hurry!"

"Hold on! We'll do our best!"

Wei Ziqing seemed to have turned into a statue; only the tightly gripped bone sword and his slightly rising and falling shoulder armor indicated that he wasn't truly motionless.

He listened to those words, looking at Reiko's paper-white face and the blood soaking the ground beneath her, and looking at the oblivious Little Stone on the nearby stretcher.

Lu Jianchuan and Shen Mingyuan handed the Immortal over to the approaching GUPA containment personnel and quickly walked over to Wei Ziqing.

"How is the child?" Lu Jianchuan asked softly.

"Unconscious. He should be... alright for now." Wei Ziqing's voice came through the armor, muffled and distant. His gaze didn't leave the emergency circle.

Shen Mingyuan looked at the scene, then at Wei Ziqing's tense profile, and after a moment of silence, he spoke:

"As a hero, you're bound to encounter things like this. Even giving your all, you might not save everyone... No one can achieve perfection."

This sentence seemed to strike a nerve.

Wei Ziqing suddenly turned his head, his red goggles facing Shen Mingyuan, then turning toward Lu Jianchuan, and finally casting his gaze back toward Reiko, whose fate was uncertain.

Something suppressed within him finally erupted, not as a roar, but as a low whisper, almost trembling, squeezed out from his chest cavity:

"Why can't I achieve perfection?!"

Without warning, he suddenly turned sideways, his right fist, covered in white biomass carapace, struck fiercely against a nearby tree the thickness of a bowl, accompanied by a violent rush of wind and suppressed fury pushed to the extreme!

"THUD—CRACK!"

The dull sound of wood shattering burst forth. The tree trunk shook violently, bark and splinters flew, and the struck area was deeply indented, forming a clear, cracked fist print, even revealing the white wood inside.

The armor's durability ensured the fist was unharmed, but the force contained within was terrifying.

"If I could be faster... if I could be stronger... if I could handle every direction..."

Wei Ziqing stared at his fist embedded in the tree trunk, his voice filled with unwillingness and pain,

"If only I were strong enough, if only I could foresee everything, stop everything, save everything... If only I..."