Chapter Thirty-Four: Go! (Part One)

Wei Wuji rushed out, close on the heels of the others. Since Cecily wasn’t here, he had no reason to linger any longer. The soldiers who had already fired withdrew, and another row quickly surged forward, standing shoulder to shoulder. The gunfire crackled like beans in a frying pan, all aimed at a single target—Wei Wuji.

The layers of protective shields woven by Taoist arts around Wei Wuji faded one after another like bursting bubbles. Yet the bullets in this volley were at most on par with those fired in the great hall, far inferior to the Hegel rounds and flintlock muskets used by the Third Battalion.

Braving the torrential hail of bullets, Wei Wuji charged to the entrance. Just as he was about to make his escape, Euclid leaped forward to stop him, forcing Wei Wuji to focus his full attention on the confrontation.

A single blow of the Xuantian Blacksteel Slash forced Euclid back, but at that moment, a deafening roar thundered in Wei Wuji’s ears. He caught sight of a massive, round iron shell hurtling straight at him.

There was no time to dodge. Wei Wuji summoned the full force of the Black Tortoise Divine Strength and thrust both hands forward. Instantly, he sensed something was amiss. The iron shell, launched from some unknown source, had a surface glowing a dark red, radiating intense heat. Even with his strength, touching such searing heat was unbearable. He tried to fling it away.

But that was no easy feat. More dreadful than the heat was the force and speed of the shell—it flew as swiftly as a sword and struck with astonishing power. Wei Wuji gathered his divine strength, clutched the cannonball, and heard a hissing as the True Water Talisman he had just conjured was vaporized by the shell’s heat. He was dragged backward, feet carving deep grooves in the ground from the strain, yet he still couldn’t muster the force to hurl the shell back.

In a split second, Wei Wuji switched to his art of shifting the universe, but the cannonball, weighing at least two hundred kilograms and fired by gunpowder, was beyond anything a musket could produce. Not even his spatial arts could move it unless its momentum was first spent.

In the brief moment it took for Wei Wuji to change techniques, the cannonball’s speed surged, nearly carrying him aloft. In an instant, he was slammed from the open space before the entrance back into the doorway itself. Desperate, he summoned his great strength once more, ignoring the scalding heat and pushing the shell away. Using the recoil and his own momentum, he finally separated himself from the shell, shooting back into the entrance like a released arrow.

The cannonball remained two body lengths away, unable to strike Wei Wuji. Though he narrowly avoided disaster by retreating into the cellblock, the prisoners behind him who tried to follow were not so lucky. Anyone who touched the glowing shell was seared as if branded by molten iron, flesh torn from bone, screams echoing as the wounded collided with others, spreading chaos.

Panic swept through the crowd. They scrambled for the stairwell flanking the first tier, desperate to avoid the deadly shell, which crashed heavily into the cast-stone wall. Even that formidable barrier was gouged by the impact, and the shockwave rippled outward like an earthquake, knocking people off their feet. Fragments of stone pelted the crowd with the force of bullets. Two prisoners, their arms still stuck to the shell, were slammed headfirst against the wall, their skulls bursting open—a gruesome, fatal end.

Worse yet, the prison’s walls were cast from the hardest stone. After striking the wall, the cannonball didn’t stop immediately; its temperature, having passed through two bodies, had cooled only slightly. It ricocheted without warning toward the base of the stairs, where another was crushed to the floor, bones shattered.

Pandemonium erupted. The prisoners desperately wished for extra legs to escape, but the underground corridor was never wide to begin with, and now everyone was crammed together, making escape impossible.

Just then, two massive, broad hands shot out and clamped firmly around the cannonball. It continued to spin furiously between the palms, threatening to break free at any moment.

The owner of those hands was forced three steps back by the tremendous force. He drew a deep breath, a flush rising to his cheeks, as if a blood dragon had awakened within him, roaring defiantly—his mastery had reached its zenith, blood and spirit condensed into a dragon. A fragrant aura blossomed around Grant, the narrow space humming with a barely perceptible resonance, though there was no actual sound.

Grant exhaled and intoned, “Stop!”

With a single powerful motion, the spinning cannonball abruptly halted, arrested less than sixty centimeters from his chest, his arms bowed under the effort. Behind him, more than a dozen people lay sprawled, but by great fortune, they had only minor injuries—Grant had absorbed the brunt of the blow.

For a long moment, the crowd seemed stunned, then an eruption of applause and cheers thundered through the cellblock. The prisoners had not anticipated that, beyond soldiers and firearms, there would be a great cannon powerful enough to drive even Wei Wuji back. But it was even more astonishing that the leader of the revolutionary group possessed the courage and might to halt a cannonball in its tracks.

Outside the prison, excitement ran just as high. Antonio stood proudly atop a cast-stone platform, beside which rested a giant cannon still trailing wisps of smoke. The cannon was at least twelve meters long, with a barrel wall at least twenty centimeters thick, and a bore nearly a meter in diameter. The terrifying shell just unleashed had come from this very weapon. To reduce recoil, the cannon had been set into a platform fused from clay and cast stone, ensuring it wouldn’t shift and that its aim—fixed squarely on the underground prison entrance—would remain true.

This was the handiwork of Hendrick. The cannon was originally a prototype for a magical artillery piece developed by Randia. Since the advent of cannons, fierce debate had raged over the direction of firearms development. One school argued for pursuing alchemical research related to cannons without magical intervention, believing that, once metallurgy and engineering reached their peak, cannons would far surpass magic in cost-effectiveness and could even replace it.

Another faction vehemently disagreed, insisting that cannons must be combined with magic, for two reasons. First, current cannon firepower could not match ninth-tier or transcendent magic—though they admitted cannons could be produced far more easily than high-level mages. Second, since current alchemy and metallurgy could not yet meet the design requirements for such cannons, only magic could help realize these ambitions. For example, the massive cannon aimed at the prison entrance could fire stone rounds weighing over half a ton and special shells of two or three hundred kilograms. From its length and caliber, it was clear that contemporary alchemy and metallurgy could not have produced it unaided. Its creation was possible only through the convergence of magical arts: fire magic achieved the extreme temperatures needed for forging such a weapon; earth magic enhanced the material’s hardness and toughness, preventing breakage despite the unprecedented length; wind magic helped reduce the cannon’s weight, without which it would be impossible even to move; and water magic, mixed into the forging process, helped dissipate excess heat.

Note: For reference, in 1452, the Ottoman Turks built a giant cannon that breached Constantinople’s walls, firing stone balls weighing half a ton. Under similar conditions, such a weapon is plausible—especially with magical enhancement. Red-hot cannonballs also existed, though their use was extremely dangerous for the crew.