Four bullets whizzed by towards Kestin.
The gun that fired the bullets had been silenced so the gunshots were quiet. One of the bullet paths was meant to block him from jumping into the pool while two other bullet paths stopped him from dodging to the right and left, leaving the last bullet to go straight towards his head!
The only place left to hide was the black rock wall behind him but it was obvious he could not do that unless he knew magic.
This was Xia Lei’s tactic to guarantee Kestin’s death in seconds!
And yet, Kestin did not move. The bullets that left the barrel did not fly near him at all, definitely not his head, instead flying towards the hexagonal stone platform within the pool.
The six white light beams trembled for a moment while a tear appeared in the space above the platform. Like moths drawn to the flame, the four bullets disappeared into the tear.
Xia Lei stood in stunned silence.
The prehistoric chosen one mentioned that Zhu Xuanyue intended to draw energy from the six faceless statues to open a portal, bringing her own beings to this world. She was already a predator he could not beat, if she brought more of her friends here, this world would be in deep trouble!
Her plan seemed to be running according to her intentions. What on earth would he do if everything happened as the prehistoric chosen one said?
Xia Lei really wanted to stop her but the sad unfortunate reality was that he could not defeat her at all! This fact tortured him greatly. If Zhu Xuanyue brought doomsday upon this world, he would only be able to watch.
“Why’d you fire your gun so soon? Xia Lei, do you want to kill me that badly?” mused Kestin mockingly.
Xia Lei put his rifle down. It was useless now.
“If you really want to kill me, you should come down here. You’ll only have a chance if you come down here.”
Xia Lei turned to leave.
If he could not stop Zhu Xuanyue and now there was nothing else he could do, staying would just be a threat to his own life. Why wouldn’t he leave?
“Do you really think you’ll leave here alive?” Kestin took a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button gently.
Boom!
A deafening explosion came from the tunnel behind, heatwaves hurling towards him. With nowhere to hide, Xia Lei sprinted and leapt down out of necessity.
He had just left the tunnel mouth when a pillar of fire flew past his head. He felt like his body could have burned to crisp. While he had dodged the fatal blow, half of his hair had been burned off.
Splash!
He fell into the pool.
It was a fifty-metre cannon-ball into the water. If it hadn’t been deep enough, he would have ended up crippled or dead. However, he sank rapidly about ten metres beneath the surface, still not reaching the bottom of the pool yet.
The water was bone-chilling cold. The sharp cold that penetrated his bones and muscles felt as if he had been dunked into a pool of liquid nitrogen. His muscles grew numb while his internal organs and brain shut off from the slowed blood flow. Within a few seconds, his consciousness flickered. A regular person would either have died from the impact or the cold because this water was at least -20 Celsius! It had not yet turned to ice yet because it was not regular underground water.
Xia Lei, with tens of kilograms of arms strapped to him, sank to the bottom rapidly. He did not know how deep this pool was. He wanted to swim up but his limbs were numb and out of his control. His eyelids became heavier, and heavier…
“Am I dying? If I die a few hundred metres underground here, Long Bing and the rest will never be able to find me…” At his last few conscious moments, he did not think about solving the box’s mysteries or stopping Zhu Xuanyue from destroying the world. All he thought about were the women he loved and his children.
He was terrified. Other than death, he was also terrified for his family and children.
He continued to sink. There didn't seem to be a bottom.
One minute later, his consciousness dipped into darkness. No thoughts, no fears.
“Hahaha!” Kestin let out a guffaw by the pool. “The CIA and Pentagon spent so much effort and resources yet were never able to kill him. But I did it. It wasn’t that complicated, was it?”
The corner of Eva’s lips curled into a cold smile. “The Pentagon even said he was the smartest person in the world but I never thought so. YOU are the smartest in the world. It’s too bad he’ll never know who you truly are.”
Kestin shrugged nonchalantly. “I have already forgotten that identity a long time ago. I’m enjoying my life now.”
Charlotte looked at the water surface, which had returned to calm. “Should we fish his body out?”
“I really want to, to kick and spit on him or something. But we can’t do that,” said Kestin. “This pool is five hundred metres deep. Unless we get a submarine, we won’t be able to fish him out.”
“That’s too bad. He got an easy death,” said Charlotte.
Eva walked over and bent over to look into the water. She wanted to see Xia Lei sink to the bottom.
“Hey! Be careful!” Kestin grabbed her hand and pulled.
“Is the water poisonous?” asked Eva curiously.
Kestin did not reply. He took a pistol from his belt and partially submerged it in water. One second later, the part underwater had turned to ice.
“Do you see this? If you fall in, no one will dare save you,” said Kestin. “Plus, even if we save you in time, you’ll either be in a coma or dead.”
She looked shocked.
Charlotte said, “Looks like he’s really dead then. How are you going to explain this to her if she wakes?”
“I don’t have to. She wants Xia Lei dead anyway, it’s just that she had always hesitated. I merely finished the job for her,” said Kestin.
At the centre of the pool on the hexagonal platform, Zhu Xuanyue’s eyes were still tightly shut. The six white lights were focused towards the tip of the pyramid, concentrating to form one pillar of light. It seemed to pass through time and space into somewhere mysterious.
Zhu Xuanyue from another ‘corn kernel’, Isitabu the Goddess of Suicides, was she using this to contact her friends?
No one knows.
Beneath the surface, Xia Lei’s body twitched. Then, his eyes sprung open. His eyes were pitch black without any whites.
He had gotten this idea while hiding in the forest by Alliance Mines, intending to test his underwater breath-holding abilities at some ocean or lake. However, the opportunity came sooner than expected in this pool.
He did not need to breathe because the mysterious energy in his body had replaced oxygen. That was why he remained alive, for the life force in his body had activated itself in time.
This was not a coincidence. In the past when he was not as powerful, the same mysterious energy would awaken every time he almost died, taking on different roles to save his life.
This was the same.
“I’m still alive, I’m still alive…” Xia Lei repeated to himself subtly, faces flashing across his mind: Long Bing, Liang Siyao, Jiang Ruyi, Tang Yuyan, and Shentu Tianyin, Xia Long, Xia Jianghe, Xia Fan, Liang Jiayu and his younger sister Xia Xue, his father Xia Changhe…
Memories of the people he loved most gave him the strength to shake his head and feel his limbs. They were no longer numb. This discovery set his desire to live ablaze as he swam up.
He did not take the weapons attached to him off because with his newfound strength, the weight was nothing.
Very soon, a light appeared above him. He saw the hexagonal stone platform that Zhu Xuanyue was lying on, also Kestin and the two women Charlotte and Eva with him by the water.
Xia Lei switched course, slowly approaching the edge of the pool then slowly floated upwards. He did this very slowly and soundlessly so the surface did not even ripple…
By the pool, Kestin, Charlotte and Eva were all chatting casually.
“Now that Xia Lei is dead, is the Dragon Slayer Project still on?” came Charlotte’s voice.
“Of course, killing Xia Le was just part of the plan. How could that backwards country think that they could replace the Western world? Hmmph, they don’t even have a religion. If China becomes the most powerful nation in the world, it is to the detriment of this world. The Lord would not be happy either,” said Kestin as he drew a cross on his chest sincerely.
“We should take their technology back at least fifty years before,” said Eva.
“This world needs to change. China should not exist.”
“We only have to wait until Lockheed Martin’s Dragon Slayer super fighter jet is completed. Then China will have its tail between its legs,” said Eva with a smirk. “But that’s useless. America would never show mercy, the Pentagon was driven insane by the Chinese. Those warmongers would do anything to get back at them.”
She had just finished her sentence when a hand popped out of the water and grabbed her heel.