A Trip to the Outer City

In the desolate expanse of land, Clarke Higilton stood amidst a scene of carnage, the chilling wind howling across the barren landscape, whipping his bloodstained collar against his neck. As he surveyed the fallen enemies at his feet, a wave of realization crashed over him.

For the first time, Clarke understood the true proximity of death. It had always seemed an abstract concept, a distant shadow, never quite touching his reality. Even his journey across realms felt like a mere slumber, never brushing the chilling hand of mortality. But in that moment, the grim scent of blood and fire filled his nostrils, and death whispered a cold truth.

The blade's deadly dance had grazed his cheek, a fleeting touch that left an indelible mark of mortality in his soul. In that fleeting instant, Clarke had teetered on the edge of the abyss.

He pondered the varied human responses to death's embrace, despair, numbness, panic, surrender. Some, however, met it with an eerie calmness, a fierce madness. Before, Clarke had never known which path he'd choose. Now, he understood.

Exhausted, Clarke collapsed to the ground, his breaths ragged and desperate. His throat burned as he fought for air, his mind racing.

"My bad," he muttered, his voice a raspy whisper, eyes clouded with pain and realization. "When I sensed Alex's ill intentions, I should've acted decisively, eliminated the threat at its inception. This mistake... I won't repeat."

As Clarke closed his eyes, he sensed the formation of thirteen soul cocoons in the depths of his mind, each a mirror to a life taken. But something was amiss. Not all were accounted for.

His mental sweep of the imaginary space revealed an anomaly: three points of light. Two he recognized, but the third, a flickering flame, was the unseen adversary, Falcon, the hacker.

In the stark wilderness of Credence, with no soul for miles, this elusive light was his target. Clarke remembered the name Falcon, murmured amidst the chaos earlier. Channeling a wisp of psychic energy into his consciousness projection, he prepared to confront this hidden foe.

The invasive nature of hacker prosthetics, those neural electrodes fused with electronic brains, offered no defense against Clarke's psionic assault. As he directed his energy, the blue light representing Falcon flared like a dying star, then faded into oblivion.

The hacker's brain, overwhelmed by the unnatural current, was instantly seared. In Clarke's mind, the brain exploded, then died, its consciousness violently ripped away. Another soul cocoon formed, marking the fourteenth conquest.

In the eerie silence that followed, Clarke Higilton remained still, the wind of Credence whispering secrets of life and death around him.

After ensuring that all his assailants were lifeless, Clarke Higilton exhaled a heavy sigh of relief. His gaze shifted to the battered floating car behind him. Peering through the twisted metal, he confirmed that Zamba and Daniel, though unconscious, were still alive.

"They're lucky," Clarke muttered to himself. Their survival meant their consciousness hadn't transformed into soul cocoons, a process he was all too familiar with.

He spared them no further thought. They were collateral damage, not his intended targets. His ability to summon help was crippled; the hacker had seen to that by destroying his light brain chip.

Clarke's eyes, enhanced by psionic energy, swept over the remnants of his foes. Samurai long knives, short blades, and numerous firearms lay scattered, useless now. Their advanced tracking systems had been disabled by his psionic energy, reducing them to primitive, almost useless weapons.

Selecting the sharpest short blade from the debris, Clarke began retracing his steps. He estimated the distance back to Wujiang City, calculating the time and speed of his journey before the ambush. "Roughly thirty to fifty kilometers," he concluded, his voice barely audible against the howling wind of the desolate wasteland.

Avoiding the magnetic levitation tracks overhead, Clarke moved cautiously. The sky was a canvas of dark clouds, devoid of stars. This cloak of darkness had been his ally, allowing him to neutralize the fourteen mercenaries undetected. Without it, evading that first lethal shot would have been nearly impossible.

The wasteland was a barren, uninviting place, devoid of life and paths. Clarke's psionically enhanced vision kept him from stumbling over the rough terrain. This was no place for the faint of heart; only wanderers and mercenaries dared to tread here, and Clarke had no desire to encounter either.

After hours of solitary trek, the lit silhouette of a city emerged, piercing the midnight darkness. Clarke knew it wasn't Wujiang yet, just its outskirts. Unperturbed by the cold, he shed his blood and mud-stained suit, discarding it into the darkness. With deliberate motions, he scuffed his expensive leather shoes and trousers with stones, blending in with the rugged environment.

The outer city was a stark contrast to the urban heart of Wujiang. It lacked the artistic skyscrapers and aerial loops, replaced by crumbling concrete structures and uneven stone roads. Clarke's entrance into the city was marked by the sight of seedy bars, nightclubs, and the pervasive presence of trash and homelessness.

The homeless were like shadows, huddled in filthy rags in the dark corners of alleys and garbage heaps. Their eyes, though hidden, betrayed a desperate, animalistic hunger.

As Clarke navigated through the outer city, a gust of night air brought with it the pungent odors of alcohol, vomit, and decay. Two scantily clad women leaned against a building, their suggestive glances directed at Clarke, but he paid them no mind.

His journey led him through a dark alley where the source of the putrid smell lay, a corpse, long dead, a silent testament to the harsh reality of the city's fringes. Clarke continued forward, his resolve undeterred, his mind focused on navigating the complexities of this gritty, forgotten part of Wujiang.

In the dimly lit alleyways of Credence's outer city, Clarke Higilton came upon a grotesque sight: a corpse, its flesh severely decomposed, rendering it impossible to distinguish gender. An arm was missing, and the chest cavity brutally disemboweled. It was unclear whether the assailants had scavenged for prosthetics or organs.

This scene represented a macabre ecological chain of survival: the murderer claimed the weapons and prosthetics, scavengers pillaged whatever organs might be of value, and finally, wanderers stripped the body of its clothing. In stark contrast to the opulent excesses of Borderless area, this place embodied a more sinister reality.

As Clarke ventured deeper, the presence of mercenaries and gang members became more pronounced. Their watchful eyes followed his every move.

"Yo, is this a newcomer?" a voice sneered.

Startled, Clarke felt a heavy thud against his shoulder. The impact was forceful, causing him to grimace and instinctively cover the spot.

The perpetrator, turning to face Clarke, scrutinized him with a predatory gaze. "Boy, you dare to bump into me?" he challenged, his voice laced with mock surprise.

"Hey, check out his leather shoes. Looks like he just got kicked out of the inner city, huh?" another voice jeered.

Rubbing his shoulder, Clarke sized up his confronters. Three figures stood before him, two men and a woman, each adorned in garish attire that screamed individuality. Their colorful hair and exaggerated prosthetic limbs were reminiscent of characters from a mercenary film he had once seen.

"The kid's pretty easy on the eyes," the woman remarked, stepping forward with a leering grin. Her hand, reeking of cheap perfume, grasped Clarke's shoulder, subtly nudging him toward a nearby dark alley.

The surrounding onlookers, initially tense, shrugged off their concern. In the unspoken hierarchy of the outer city, these three had claimed their 'two-legged sheep.'

Clarke, maintaining his composure, scanned his surroundings. The air was thick with a mix of apprehension and lawlessness. The city's neon lights cast long, ominous shadows, while the distant sounds of raucous laughter and clinking bottles underscored the sense of danger that pervaded the area.

He knew he needed to tread carefully, his every word and action potentially tipping the scales between conflict and escape in this lawless enclave.