Queen's District, basement of the Eternal Night Tower. This used to be the Syndicate's stash for supplies, but Jill Young had it remodeled into Four-Eyed Kid's new lab. The gear here is way better than back in the Syndicate days, and the research materials are way more varied. After coming back, Jill gave Four-Eyed Kid two assignments: crack the Flame Tide Engine's specs, and find a more efficient way to purify the Original Liquid.
After Jill stamped her profile onto the Flame Tide, she just knew how to use it. Besides using it herself, she could give someone else secondary access—kind of like adding a user to a credit card.
And she could take it back whenever she wanted.
So, the other person Jill picked was Four-Eyed Kid.
"Boss, we've got some early results," Four-Eyed Kid said, waving a folder. "From our tests, the Flame Tide Engine is something weird—halfway between matter and spirit. We can't measure its mass, and you can't hurt it with bullets or anything physical. Poison and acid? No effect. Heating it up to three thousand degrees did nothing. But when we dropped the temp to minus one eighty, its spectrum shifted and it got dimmer. Lower it more, and the light fades even more. At minus two twenty, I think it’d really mess with it, but I didn’t dare go lower."
"Mm." Jill nodded, then asked, "So what does the Flame Tide need to work?"
"That's the craziest part," Four-Eyed Kid's glasses flashed. "It can't do anything alone—it needs to be hooked up to a mechanical power unit. Like, a car doesn't need gas, but it does need an engine and transmission, and both have to be working or the Flame Tide won't do a thing."
"So what about..." Jill pinched her chin, thinking. "A bicycle?"
"Nope, anything powered by muscles is out," Four-Eyed Kid shook his head. "The Flame Tide only recognizes 'engines'—specifically, things like engines or power furnaces that use heat for work. So it won’t hook up to electric vehicles either. As for nuclear-powered stuff, we haven’t tested it yet, but I bet it’d work."
Jill nodded, then asked, "What about weapons?"
"It can't directly power weapons," Four-Eyed Kid explained. "It can supply energy to energy weapons, like the Reverse Flow Tank's cannon, but it can't attach directly to the weapon itself. For example, with a missile, it can attach to the rocket booster, but not the warhead. The missile can travel much faster and farther, but it can't just blow up the whole world in one go. Also, whatever it attaches to has to be bigger than the Flame Tide itself."
Yeah, if a missile’s warhead had infinite energy, that’d be way too scary.
"The performance of anything it attaches to gets a boost. Like that Reverse Flow Tank—the armor got tougher, the cannon's range, firing rate, and charge speed all went up. And its heat resistance shot through the roof, which is why it did so well in the big fight. But remember, just because something's powered by the Flame Tide doesn't mean it's invincible."
Jill knew this herself, because after that big fight with Lucas in District Eight, the Reverse Flow Tank barely made it back to Eternal Night Tower. Once the Flame Tide was removed, the tank almost fell apart right then and there. If not for that, Jill definitely wouldn’t have stopped after chasing for just three streets—she'd have kept going all the way to the Rock District.
"What about output power?" For something like a perpetual motion machine, the biggest limitation is output power. If it can only run a radio, the only value is saving a few batteries at home. But the Flame Tide’s output is definitely not small, so that’s not much of a concern.
Sure enough, Four-Eyed Kid said, "Its output power is pretty impressive. We haven’t done the most thorough tests, but it should be able to drive three or four Reverse Flow Tanks at full power. Anything bigger might be too much. Like if you put the Flame Tide in a giant wheel, it might just make it a bit faster or more efficient. And if you tried a spaceship, the engine probably wouldn’t do much at all."
Mm… For regular machines, the Flame Tide is more than enough. Jill’s original goal was just to get a cool motorcycle, and with the Flame Tide, that’s already way beyond expectations. Still, she had to ask, "Is there any way to boost the output power?" Just in case she ever gets to pilot a Gundam—an infinite-energy Gundam burning with hellfire would be insanely cool.
"Uh…" Four-Eyed Kid scratched his head awkwardly. "No clue for now. There just aren’t many things that can affect something this weird, not much to experiment with. If we go by how it reacts to cold, maybe extreme heat could boost its output."
"Extreme heat?" Jill shot back. "Three thousand degrees did nothing—am I supposed to go to the sun? Besides, stable extreme heat is already a massive energy source. If I had that, why would I even need this engine?"
Four-Eyed Kid laughed awkwardly and quickly changed the subject. "But Boss, when I was taking apart the Reverse Flow Tank, I found something." He walked over to a test bench, where a metal sphere about half a meter in diameter sat. "The most famous thing about the Reverse Flow Tank is its energy furnace. Stable, powerful energy output is the basic requirement for cutting-edge energy weapons. While studying it, I noticed its special energy circulation structure has a lot in common with the Flame Tide."
As he spoke, Four-Eyed Kid opened the power furnace. With a buzzing startup sound, the metal sphere began to vibrate. As energy built up, bright lines appeared on its surface, arranged like latitude lines on a globe. At first glance, it really did look a lot like the Flame Tide.
"That's not surprising," Jill mused. "The Flame Tide belonged to the previous overlord, so it's been around for at least a hundred years. If scientists couldn't figure out anything in a century, they'd be pretty useless. Anyway, since we can't do much with this engine for now, let's talk about the Original Liquid. Four-Eyed Kid, biochemistry is your specialty—surely you've made some progress there?"
At the mention of this, Four-Eyed Kid looked even more awkward. "Uh, Your Majesty..." he stammered, sweating nervously and waving his hands. "I still haven't figured out how to purify it to your level. Filtering out all the harmful and unstable stuff and leaving only the good nutrients—what you made is probably the most perfect extract imaginable. Can I ask how you did it?"
Nope," Jill frowned, annoyed. "So after all this, besides measuring a few simple parameters, you haven't done much at all!"
"I did do something!" Four-Eyed Kid quickly defended himself. "Thanks to my efforts, I found a new purification method. With this, I can remove 80% of the harmful stuff from the Original Liquid. As for the last 20%..." He scratched his head, embarrassed. "It's too stubborn—I can't do it, so I'll have to leave that to you."
Lately, Jill had been working hard to extract Original Liquid, but her efficiency was pretty low. She brought back hundreds of liters, but there wasn't much meat moss. If Four-Eyed Kid could do some preliminary purification, it would be a huge help. As for the purified liquid, after tasting it herself, Jill gave it to her subordinates first. With the pure Original Liquid, the first to reach Titan Spirit Method: Fourth Level was Sophie.
If you go by the rules for experience potions, this Original Liquid felt to Jill like a "low-level experience potion with extra XP." Like stuffing a bunch of low-level potions into one bottle—for lower-level folks, it works just like a high-level potion. Ten times a thousand is the same as a thousand times ten. But for higher-level characters, with experience reduction, it’s more like a thousand times five, or even a thousand times two—way less effective than a real high-level potion.
Hundreds of liters of Original Liquid, but it gets halved during purification, so there’s not nearly enough pure stuff for Jill to level up. So she decided to boost her subordinates’ levels first. She also had to arm her elite fighters, because the Steelbull City chaos—was kicking off.
The first place to descend into chaos was the Rock District. A few days ago, Lucas’s army moved south, aiming straight for District Two, launching his campaign to unify the city. With Kimberly dead, the remaining forces in District Two were leaderless and scattered, unable to resist Lucas’s powerful army. Now, the northern half of Steelbull City is in total chaos—even in Sun City, you can see gunfights and brawls everywhere. The police are basically useless; any cop who tries to stop the gangs gets shot.
Lucas had already started reaching into Sun City.
Faced with this situation, the army in District Seven was completely stuck. Their main connection to the outside world was two bridges—one new, leading to District Eight, and one old, leading to District Six. But after the District Eight bridge was blown up, the old bridge to District Six was badly damaged too. It hasn’t collapsed yet, but it’s basically unusable. Now, their Reverse Flow Tanks are just scrap metal, stranded on an island.
Knowing Lucas, if he had a nuke, he probably would’ve dropped it on District Seven by now.
But Jill wasn’t making any moves. Even as her lieutenants urged her not to sit and wait, Jill just stayed calm. She didn’t seem worried at all, letting Lucas take territory after territory. Pierce and Sophie didn’t get it, but they tried to reassure the others. "You all know what our Queen is like—has she ever let us down? Just hang tight, you’ll get your chance to fight!"
Ten days later, Lucas had fully occupied District Two. With Jill refusing to attack, surrender, or make any statements, Lucas was clearly uneasy, but he decided to press on. He gathered his elite troops and a patchwork army from District Two, leading a full-scale assault himself—determined to take Unruly District as quickly as possible.
If Lucas took Unruly District, District Eight was already his in secret; the soldiers in District Seven were stuck at home, and any helicopter that took off would get shot down, so they couldn’t do much; the Fourth District’s Devil Director was a bit of a concern, but how much trouble can one director be? The biggest threat was Queen’s District, but even if they were strong, District One couldn’t stand against his four districts. As for the shut-ins in District Six, he didn’t even bother thinking about them.
So he had to take Unruly District fast—capture the biggest arms market, and Steelbull City would be his for the taking!
But in Unruly District, Lucas ran into way fiercer resistance than he expected. There’s no unified gang here, but the thugs are the toughest in all eight districts. With the best firepower around, these scattered gangs gave Lucas a huge headache. They brought out all the heavy weapons—cannons, grenade launchers, you name it. The fighting here is even worse than the bloodiest city wars on Earth. Every second, explosions light up the sky, and people die nonstop.
The huge impact of Kimberly’s death was starting to show. When Kimberly kept the peace, no riot ever caused the currency to drop. With her black-market financial skills, she could use wartime spending to stabilize currency value. But after Kimberly died, nobody did that job. The legendary financial tool, Brain of Strategy, disappeared, and the financial chaos swept through Steelbull City.
Money just wasn’t money anymore—stuff that used to cost a few cents now cost several bucks (don’t forget, currency here is super strong). It wasn’t just the working class, even the rich suffered. Not even the government could guarantee currency value, so when people couldn’t afford things, they just started robbing. On top of that, the war in Unruly District made supplies hard to get. Robbery rates shot up, every store got smashed and looted. War brought out the worst in people—even the saints would lose their minds, and Steelbull City was a den of villains to begin with.
Every crime you could imagine was happening, but only one district managed to stay stable—Queen’s District.
Under Jill’s iron rule, all signs of instability were ruthlessly crushed. Anyone who dared cause trouble in Queen’s District was executed without mercy. With such harsh measures, Queen’s District became the most desirable place to live. Every day, countless families crossed the bridge to get there—even if they had to sleep rough, it was better than living in fear elsewhere. The once-empty district filled up, and as the population grew, No One Under Heaven’s power skyrocketed. Sick of the chaos, people flocked to join No One Under Heaven, determined to protect the last place you could sleep in peace.
"Damn it, so that’s your plan!" Lucas slammed the table in frustration, shattering it to pieces. "I knew nobody should mess with Kimberly—who the hell did something so stupid?" With the battle dragging on, Lucas was getting anxious. If he couldn’t take Unruly District soon, he’d need another strategy.
Two days later, Lucas went in disguise with a small elite squad, heading straight for the Ye family mansion. This time, he wanted to use the emperor to command the nobles. Night Yi Shui might not be an emperor, but her extraordinary status was higher than any "exiled prince" in history. In these chaotic times, she could be a shining banner. He needed a puppet to boost his public image.
"That bastard Bloodthroat isn’t saying anything useful lately, making things hard for me. When I take the Fourth District, I’ll tear that fat idiot to pieces!"
Bang! Lucas punched open the Ye family’s front door, and his men stormed in like wolves. After ransacking and searching everywhere, the elegant mansion was left a total wreck. But no matter how hard they looked—even digging up the floor—the answer was always the same: not found.
Night Yi Shui had already evacuated.
"Damn it! I sealed off every possible escape route—how did that brat from the Ye family get away? Unless…" With such a tight blockade, only a few people could’ve pulled off the rescue. "Was it Mr. Reliable, or Jill? Either one could do it, but Jill’s got more motive. And she’s a bigger threat to Lucas, too."
"If No One Under Heaven raises the Ye family’s banner, I’ll be in real trouble." No One Under Heaven hadn’t done much—they just held their ground and kept things stable. But Lucas felt overwhelmed anyway. He hated that feeling, so he gave the order: "Go to District Eight and gather all the troops you can. In three days, I want Unruly District dancing in my palm!"
The elite guard took the order and left, but came back soon after. As Lucas’s top soldier, he should’ve been calm no matter what, but now his face was white as flour. "Sir, after double-checking, District Eight…" He hesitated, then finally said it: "Doesn’t exist anymore."
What did you say?!
It was like heaven was punishing and judging this city of sin. In just half a month, Steelbull City went through assassinations, explosions, war, famine, and riots—everything. But just when people thought things couldn’t get any worse, reality slapped them in the face: if you think it can’t get worse, you’re just not imaginative enough.
Very few people really knew what was going on in Steelbull Dungeon. Even after the big adventure, most info was just rumors, and everyone treated those mutant creatures and undead as dinner-table gossip and jokes. "Oh, there’s all kinds of stuff down there." "Yeah, I’d love to see it." Nobody took it seriously.
But today, every channel run by Bloodthroat broadcast the same message: "Citizens of District Eight, run for your lives! The undead—have leaked out!"
Nobody knows where it started, but soon the undead poured out of the dungeon, swinging their arms and staggering into the streets, biting anyone they saw. A drunk punk mistook a zombie for a fellow punk and went up for a fancy handshake. Three minutes later, he’d joined the undead horde, marching into the darkness. Panic spread everywhere.
If it were just zombies running wild, Steelbull City wouldn’t be so easy to break. People here aren’t American farmers defending their land—they’re real fighters. They can handle living people, and they can handle undead. But when mutant beasts started flooding the streets too, District Eight finally collapsed.
Mutant bugs, mutant beasts, undead—District Eight had turned into a monster playground. Millions fled in panic, but there was nowhere to go—someone had blown up the last bridge out of District Eight!
Nobody knew who did it, but when the burning, collapsing bridge appeared on TV, everyone felt complicated. Some were relieved—maybe the undead were trapped in District Eight and couldn’t spread. Some wondered who could be so ruthless. Some just stared, unreadable. Some were hopeless, feeling what the mayor felt that day. Others were bizarrely excited.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this dungeon creature leak was apparently caused by Madman Ghostplay’s ‘Madman Carnival’ event.” The fat guy, Ershuang, shrugged. “Well, this is one crazy event. According to Ghostplay, all survivors in District Eight will get rewards beyond imagination.”