Chapter 278: Sang Family Village - Battle for Survival IV

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

As far as Ye Chong was concerned, the current pattern of Collision’s attack would be too simple to face against the raid. Assuming the description by the chief was true, Ye Chong would not be confident to face the battle.

And the following days, BOOM, passed rather lively at the Sang village, for explosions would come roaring from the sir’s research room along with columns of smoke rising to the sky. Boom! There were even times when they witnessed white light bursting from the place. And to their disbelief, at one time the whole research foundation blasted off itself after an explosion, leaving a giant crater on the ground. Boom!

Boom! Boom! Bang! Boom!

The miraculous part uttered by every villager in their bewilderment was, sir, without fail, had always been coming out in one piece. And as time went, the daily explosion scheme had immersed itself in the routine of the villagers effortlessly. To their shocking discovery, the frequency of explosion had been drastically reduced itself over the time, in the end, no explosion had occurred again.

Klink!

Phew…

Ye Chong took a deep breath, as his squinted eyes set upon the crude-looking sphere resting in his hand. It had the size of his fist and yes he made it; it was his latest invention. The craftsmanship of the appearance did not matter, for that was the last thing on his list.

Ye Chong had invested ounces of his effort into the research of mildstone in order to find a way to trigger the explosion. He even moved everything out from his research room, including that hefty processor. And to make sure that he would not become the mortality of his own experiment, he performed every of his experiment only after putting on the Guardian.

But well, even with the superior guard of the Guardian, Ye Chong remained rolling on the ground upon every chemical reaction. The momentum caused by the blow was not something that the human anatomy was designed for. If it was not the Guardian, he would have been counting his negative health points on the way to hell.

At the very least, eventually, finally, the research had been accomplished.

The valley in the outskirts of the village was the only entrance to the Sang Family village. Ye Chong was dragged there by Sang Pu, along with Sang Fan and Sang Ling. And Sang Ling’s attitude towards Ye Chong had become much more dignified, which was a little uneasy for Ye Chong.

Ye Chong passed Sang Pu a sphere, "Toss this there," he said while pointing at a slope near the valley.

Sang Pu, although looking bewildered, did not withdraw his swinging arm, instead, his right arm tensed, as he launched that sphere all the way towards the slope at the other side. The force was so strong that one could hear sound of the wind piercing, with a thin lining crossing over the azure.

BOOM!

A thunderous explosion was heard, the landing point of the sphere was engulfed by column of white smoke. Everybody, except for Ye Chong, was stunned by the explosion, as their face flinched with unknown horror.

A giant crater was revealed as the column of white smoke parted away, with a size way larger than the crater Ye Chong made near the research room before.

Gasp! The men and lady breathed in their fear.

"T-t-this… what… is this?" Sang Pu, who tried too hard to act calm, was still clogging on his words. The gigantic crater, as if exerting attraction one-of-a-kind, was taking all of their attention.

Thump! Piles of rocks and earth slid from the top, half of the narrow valley was utterly filled.

"Compression explosives," Ye Chong stated briefly. He was a little disappointed because the blow did not turn out to be as enormous as he presumed. Ye Chong who had seen an array of fireworks in the darkest space had an unimpressed expression of a boy seeing a simple sparkler on the last night of summer. He actually intended to process the compression explosives into some sort of an additional grenade for the village mech. As habitually as he got whenever mech was concerned, he automatically assumed the foes to be always a mech pilot, one from the 4 forces especially.

Missiles had taken up a dark bloody spot of history of humankind ever since war happened centuries ago. But intergalactic war soon dethroned the almighty missiles after humanity shifted into the galaxy. Additionally as hologramic detection system was invented, missiles again, being the slow and outdated weaponry were forced out of the stage immediately. Then the energy-based weaponry came in and took the place, like the heat-ray guns for example.

Ye Chong did not believe that missile-based weaponry was completely obsolete. He himself had once used a similar weaponry, namely the Beauty’s Secretion. The outcome of the war had taken a turn for him in the end, even with the most fearsome Black Covers. It was not that the missiles could not cause fatal damages to the target mechs, it was simply that they travelled too slowly in the boundless space and with those advanced detection system in-built with vast scope, most missiles would have been annihilated way before they touched the mech or spaceship.

The only fact that led to Ye Chong’s anti-theoretical success was the material itself. Those missiles were solely made out of skeletons, which could go undetected by the system, thus the success of a new silent killer in the dark.

Of course, the concept only remained as a concept, an idea in his mind. Assuming he would really make the compression as a grenade to be launched, he would have to design a kind of miniature engine to help them navigate through the space at considerable distance or it would be hardly anything in the space than a cluster of ornaments to be smashed. Miniature engines were not the hardest part of his plan, the time limitation was however, since every man and woman in the village had been working on the Collision itself.

That was an untick on Ye Chong’s checklist. Inability for mass-production equals "out of his consideration". Ye Chong was more concerned on how he should resolve the upcoming problem without losing everything.

"Great, sir!" Shouted Sang Fan excitingly, which toppled Ye Chong’s thoughts, "So great! That means we got a new powerful weapon? Compression explosives? Compression explosives! This strength… this marvelous strength… such power!"

"Yeah. Not that marvelous though," said Ye Chong coldly, "It did give a nice firework but it could hardly travel. No engine, no homing feature either. Not really practical."

"Engine? Sir?" Sang Fan could not comprehend, "Why would we need engines sir? Why can’t we just toss it?"

Right!

Ye Chong realized something. Sang Fan was right, he did make a mistake. This was never an intergalactic war to begin with! Their enemies were not sheltered in a layer of high quality alloys, they were merely a type of beast rampaging in the woods! With the strength of the Sang, the reachability of the explosives would be more than fearsome!

Ye Chong began visualizing the scene where the villagers launched the grenades over the sky with their strength competent enough for a Jie expert. Horrifying! A tiny piece of rock could already be destructive when it was in the hand of a Jie expert, now replace the rock with an actual bomb, in the hand of the well-trained villagers… Seriously…

Yes! Ye Chong was inspired. Even if the enemies were coming in a mech, the continuous shower lobbed by the villagers would be annihilating at close range!

"Right, sir?" Supported Sang Ling, "Sir please do not forget we had always been guided by rock-tossing daily as we hunt. Everybody knows rock-tossing in the village, who needs to aim anyway?" Sang Ling was right as well. The villagers had been trained to test if there was a gravity region at the front by lobbing a piece of rock. This was their bread and butter, the sole trick for their survival. So everybody must know it well to be able to lob far enough, accurate enough as they pleased.

Hmmm… that means…

Ye Chong got the message quickly, he began mumbling… I seemed to have created a monster for the villagers…

"Sir? Sir!" Sang Pu the silent one suddenly initiated, "Is it possible to block the opening of the valley?"

Ye Chong flinched, "Umm…" He took a glance at the partially blocked valley, "Possible." He nodded.

"Pu, my brother…" Sang Fan who could not get what Sang Pu meant, asked, "Why would we block the opening?"

"This is the only entrance to our village," pointed Sang Pu at the opening. "If we blocked it, that means we only have to look up for our battle. We could have lesser distraction on our guard. Also, I was worried that if it was the Steelbat that caused the beast to attack us, they would join the fight too. It would be nasty, so we block the opening, one less thing to worry."

Ye Chong looked all impressed at Sang Pu. He *is* the candidate to succeed to the village. Thoughtful, careful to details. The other two Sangs were looking impressed as well.

"Sir. Excuse me…" Sang Fan was too a quick thinker, "Is it possible to blow a hole with compression explosive?"

"Well this…" Ye Chong gave a thought, "Great idea but explosion on a certain orbit of direction would require some works. I was not really an expert on this."

The Songs were looking disappointed. It would be wonderful if they could create caves in a split second since with caves they would be able to hide themselves from the Steelbats, which also meant less mortality.

Since the suggestion was not feasible to run at all, they eventually discarded the tempting idea. They were showing immense gratitude towards the inclusion of a new powerful weapon though. They believed they had hit the jackpot as compared to their forebears who had progressed almost nothing over the past 500 years and now they got metallic weaponry, an actual mech and even a highly compressed explosive. The villagers were very much convinced that they would once raise upon the other races again as soon as they survived the crisis this time.

Looking at Sir who was pondering in the meantime, their eyes were overflowed with appreciation and respect. It was this teacher from the mystery, with his vast knowledge unfitting to his youth, that had brought all these gifts, striking the hope of the tribe in their luxuries.

So the villagers received a new task from the teacher - production of compression explosives. Ye Chong was surprised though, that this little bomb actually had taken over Collision, becoming the favorite among the Sangs.

Well, unlike Collision, the explosive was simple to use while being able to dish out significant damage, and the roar it produced was exciting to the ears of the villagers.

The production of Collision was coming to an end as well, fortunately, or the villagers might be procrastinating over their new toy. Collision, the product of the overclocked villagers had become the standard setup at everyone’s home. The mechs would flock upon sky, stampeding the ground daily. It was scenic to see about a hundred thousand mechs traveling like a military air force on a normal afternoon. Ye Chong wondered if the sky would remain that scenic if those Steelbats ever came. The scene had reminded him again the power of cooperation, the bond of a group. It was powerful indeed. But… yes, Ye Chong realized one big catch he almost missed - there was no dimensional keystone, where would these hundred thousand mechs go? Certainly they could have landed in their village, however to accommodate mechs of this amount would be far insufficient for a tiny village in the middle of the valleys. Sang Pu eventually picked a plain next to the mountain behind the village. It was spacious enough to accommodate those mechs, looking like the parking place on Christmas Eve.

Still, it would take around 10 minutes of running to travel to the plain from the village. Sighed Ye Chong, realizing that it would be actually a hassle to introduce a super hi-tech way ahead the chronological order of invention. To assure those 10 minutes of safety were assured, Sang Pu succumbed to sending off a giant flock of Collision to scout the area ahead to see if there were a nest of Steelbats.

2 months had lapsed and everyone was given a Collision mech. And there was one instance where Ye Chong ran out of skeletons to produce stuffs, which Sang Pu immediately resolved by calling his men to hunt for more bones. It was a nice opportunity to test out Collision as they piloted the mech to hunt. And that was the first time they realized the fact that, hunting could have been this hassle-free and the beasts could have been this weak, easily conquered.

The beasts had not scurried away from the proximity of the village. Nevertheless, "Darkness" the once fearsome name branded in the mind of the villagers had degraded into a new hunting ground with Collision.

It usually took the villagers a straight impale, a lift with the spear, then skeleton spears would have a few bulky animals skewed tidily on the shaft. The case where Ye Chong worried about the spears breaking had never occurred, which had affirmed the villagers’ confidence. And soon, after countless encounters, the villagers discovered a more effective way to eradicate their foes.

They maintained a high velocity and travelled right above the beast. Utilizing the 4 sharp skeleton wings on the body of Collision, the blades danced like the Reaper would slice upon the enemies, that one glide they only took, the Darkness would be immediately cut open, bleeding and having its inside rolling out, tainting the ground with thunderous cry. The beasts were bisected, with a clear cut upon.

As time went, more villagers joined the troop after completing the training. Ye Chong got more skeletons in the inventory. But Sang Pu felt it was yet the time to stop the hunt. The Darkness had convinced him the fact that the hunt would provide the villagers the more valuable loot - experience itself!

An on-hand fight would always be the standard procedure to power up a fighter, especially if the fighter was in a troop to begin with. Since there lacked a kind of communicative device, the villagers had to rely on their sense of war to carry out the right action in correspondence to the situation.

It sounded easy on paper but it was a mess, as they soon realized, a highly frequent mess. It was hard for one to even sort out friends and foes with mechs this many in the sky. They had a conference on it and Sang Ling actually gave a pretty good solution - they would dye the mechs into different colors in accordance with the position of the pilots in the team. Sang Pu would be the supreme leader, thus the bright red tone; after that the blue would follow, it would be black, and then white at the lowest. At both sides of every Collision would have 3 types of Lightstones in different colors embedded, there would be also a plate before each stone, it would be like a signal where the plate could be placed down to block the beam of the stones. Thus, every secondary leaders of the team could give commands by flicking signals. Sang Ling even designed a set of codes using the stones’ color as well as the frequency for communication. Ye Chong who was listening at one corner, felt impressed with Sang Ling. "Looks like she was not a bimbo after all. Shang sometimes just likes to exaggerate things…"

The new codes brought up another period of tutorial among the villagers, with each of them having a booklet in the hands while their heads spinning along with their recitation.

It was as effective as the way Sang Ling mentioned it, as the villagers were not only highly experienced, their rapports were great too. They needed no sophisticated language, a few blinks of different colors would be more than enough to tell them what their teammates planned to do.

Even Sang Pu the more demanding one was showing satisfaction on his current troop. Ye Chong? Well, he was losing his head over the codes. He seriously could not imagine how a massive troop could communicate without a standard communicative device but a mere set of blinking lights, especially when the villagers had actually no issue using the code while being able to have a much more coordinated expedition.

Every villager was feeling exhilarated of their improvement. The harvest of Twinkleblues marked also the end of their last concern. The Sangs, with their blood surged from the war itself, were looking forward to this war, the battle of survival with the Steelbats.