Chapter 47: Impact on the Barrier

　　A codfish swims deftly through the clear stream water. To the east, the morning light leaps over the peaks, casting a golden glow into this stream, and the surrounding valley. The cod moves after the light, yearning for it, as is the instinct of life. However, as it swims to an area where the current is relatively gentle, a sudden warning sign arises. With a swing of its tail, the cod tried to swim away, but it was too late.

　　A sharpened wooden spear suddenly stabbed into the stream and nailed the codtail precisely. A white, slender palm gripped the wooden gun and easily picked the codtail up. The cod-tail was still alive and kicking when it was thrown to the bank. And next to it, another of its kind had long since lost its strength and was just barely spitting out blisters.

　　Lucy clapped her hands together and nimbly built a small stone base out of scavenged gravel. The stone base was hollowed out underneath so that dead branches could be stuffed in to make a fire. This way, the flames wouldn't be too visible. Moreover, the high temperature and heat would be mostly bound in the stone base, and then a wooden rack would be built on top of it, and the fish would be gutted, sliced into fillets, and placed on top of it to be smoked and roasted by utilizing the temperature of the stone base itself, which would not be a bad meal in the wild.

　　After placing the fillets on the grill, Lucy washed her hands in the stream. She went back to the fish and carefully turned the fillets so that they wouldn't burn. The cod smelled delicious, and Lucy, who would normally have been salivating, was now a little preoccupied.

　　That night's pursuit was supposed to go smoothly, and if nothing happened, even Anse could have been killed. But who knew that Anse had already constructed the circuit and activated the mark, which made them lose their mission. After withdrawing, they hid for a day. The continuous fighting had injured Alan even more. Especially in the end, Alan tried his best to break a crack in Anse's ability, which caused the wounds that the teenager had suffered from the battle with the storm wolves to be torn apart.

　　When Lucy re-cleaned his wounds, Allen passed out directly due to the severity of his injuries and the near exhaustion of his source power. He didn't wake up until 12 hours later. After Alan woke up, they immediately left the hiding place, and then rolled over to this stream valley to rest for another night. Now Allen's injuries had improved, and his source power had almost recovered, but they still had no chance of winning.

　　An engraver, even one who was just starting out, being able to use the ability of engraving already distinguished it from a source power user. That night, Ans proved it as well. That strange vortex of energy had restricted their movement, and the final explosion would have left them badly injured even if it didn't kill them, and that wasn't much different from blowing them up on the spot.

　　Originally, they were winning. Now, the future is becoming unpredictable.

　　Lucy sullenly flipped the cod fillet when the sound of footsteps came to her ears. She looked up and saw Allen putting back on his Defensive Light Armor and walking over with his Mad Butcher. The left chest piece of the defensive light armor had been dented and ruptured, the work of Lucien. The fat man had counterattacked from the brink of death, and his punches were incredibly powerful. If not for the protection of the light armor, Allen would have been seriously injured. From this, it could be seen that the fat man was tricky, and it was wrong that Allen had not made the right decision that night to take out Lu Sen first.

　　Otherwise, if they let Fatty and an Anse with an engraved mark join forces now, I'm afraid that the two of them, Allen, wouldn't even have a single point of victory.

　　"How are you hurt?" Lucy asked.

　　Alan moved his arms and nodded, "Almost done, are the fillets you baked ready to eat? I'm starving."

　　Lucy picked up one of the pieces with her dagger and handed it to Alan, watching him eat it with gusto, Lucy couldn't help but say, "It's hard for you to still eat it."

　　"Why can't you eat?" Alan had already devoured a piece of the fillet so quickly that he wasn't afraid of the heat and reached for another piece.

　　"Have you forgotten about Anse? He's an engraver now!" Lucy didn't have the heart to say.

　　Alan began to eliminate the second piece of fish fillet, eating with his mouth full of oil, but he didn't forget to say, "So what if it's a carving master, it's not like he's immortal, he can always be taken out. Right now we have to fill our stomachs and nourish our spirits before we have the strength to clean him up."

　　"Are you ever this optimistic?" Lucy rolled her eyes, this guy acted like he didn't have the slightest idea of how troublesome a figure the engraver was to them right now.

　　Ellen showed a row of snow-white teeth and laughed, "Before I realized that being pessimistic and sentimental wouldn't change the facts, I knew that optimism was the only option I had."

　　Lucy made a sign, she looked at Allen's smile, but inexplicably felt a tinge of sadness. Similar to his own age, what exactly did he have to go through to come to his current realization?

　　"Hey, I'm going to sweep it all up if you don't eat!"

　　Perhaps infected by Ellen's positive mood, Lucy also felt that Anse wasn't that much trouble. As soon as her mood changed for the better, the cravings in her stomach growled. Seeing that there were not many cod fillets left, the young girl suddenly let out a cry of surprise, and picked up a piece with her dagger and sent it to her mouth.

　　After a pleasant breakfast for both of them, they packed up and shifted again.

　　By mid-afternoon, a tall, thin figure appeared in the stream valley. Eventually, he stood at the place where the two Allens had dined in the morning. The stone barriers were still standing, and a faint afterglow remained in the cracked holes of the stones, Anse smiled, "How far can you guys get away?"

　　He clapped his hands together and circled around, finding some tracks on a nearby grassy slope. Tracking further, he found two more pairs of footprints. Then the scattered traces led Anse all the way to a forest a few hundred meters away from the stream valley. The forest was quiet, the afternoon sunlight left tiny specks of light in the forest, and the scent of grass and trees wafted through the air.

　　Anse tracked the trail left by the two Allen men and hit a tree hole, which seemed to have the sound of long, drawn-out breathing ringing out from it. Anse sneered, pulled out his revolver, and fired several shots into the tree hole.

　　The sound of the gunshot startled the birds, and there were even more loud noises coming from the tree hole. Then two spots of fluorescent light lit up, and just when Anse felt something was wrong, a violent wolf violently rushed out of the tree hole, barking furiously and lunging at Anse.

　　"Damn, fell for it!" Anse screamed angrily, nimbly dodging the Storm Wolf's lunge before putting it down with a single point-blank shot to the head.

　　Just after taking a breath, suddenly the low roar of a wild beast sounded behind him. Ans turned back and his face became a bit ugly, at least seven or eight saber-toothed storm wolves burrowed out from behind the forest trees, they were obviously attracted by the cries of their own kind. There must be a wolf den in this neighborhood, otherwise there wouldn't be so many storm wolves appearing at the same time. Hatefully, after 24 hours, the nanomachines used to expel the dangerous species had been expelled from the body. Now, these tyrannical wolves wouldn't be afraid of Anse and only wanted to tear him apart!

　　"Like a gunshot?" Lucy looked up and listened.

　　Alan grinned, "Looks like my little setup worked, now Anse is probably heading headlong for the storm wolf's den."

　　"I wish he'd give a bite." Lucy said sincerely.

　　"That's not going to happen, at best we'll create a bit of trouble for him. It's still up to us to take him out. Well, here it is." Alan kicked away a few pieces of rubble, and before him was a deep cave.

　　This was a mountainous area to the south of the stream valley, with rolling slopes, complicated mountain passes, and extremely many forks, like a maze. Allen deliberately chose this place, and even Lucy didn't know what his intentions were.

　　Alan had drilled into the cave, which was long and claustrophobic, ten meters deep. It was dry inside, and the sunlight left beams of light here and there through the cracks in the mountain above. Alan circled around at the end of the cave, and after confirming that it wasn't the lair of some dangerous species, he sat down on his butt.

　　"Are you going to hide here?" Lucy asked.

　　Alan nodded and said, "At least for now, we have to hide. Also, what I'm going to do next can't be disturbed by Anse, so I'll have to hide for a while."

　　"What do you want?" Lucy asked in a good-natured crouch.

　　Pointing at himself, Allen said, "I'm going to try to construct the circuit as well. If it goes well, I'll be able to activate the engraving as well, and then I won't have to be afraid of Anse even if I fight him head on."

　　Lucy was delighted at his words and reached out to hammer a mark on his shoulder, "You already have nine vortexes? Good fellow, and didn't tell me, had I known that I wouldn't have to worry so much."

　　Alan laughed bitterly, "I didn't realize it until this morning either. It seems Anse stimulated me enough that night to create a vortex of raw stimulation."

　　"That'll do, with nine source vortices, you can build the first circuit. Go ahead and do it, I'll keep an eye on you." Lucy fumbled for her automatic pistol and waved it around.

　　"I'll do my best." Alan said, he could be different from normal people. Even though he already possessed nine vortexes, he still had to break the first barrier of source power confinement, or else he wouldn't be able to construct a genetic circuit.

　　Lucy, however, didn't know he had this hurdle, and patted him on the shoulder as if he were happy and said, "Do a good job."

　　With that, she walked out of the cave to give Ellen a heads up to go.

　　Alan took a deep breath, and even though Hughton had said it would be best not to use that method, it was now no longer a choice for Alan, so he had to go for broke and throw his weight around!

　　He closed his eyes and relaxed his entire body. As he had done that day when he lit the fire, he used his breath to calm his mind and felt the source powers within him with his heart. Soon, Alan felt them. The source power vortexes were like a tiny nebula that kept rotating, and it radiated light and heat. When the end of the will swept past them, Alan could feel the warmth.

　　He began to catalyze the vortexes, letting them circulate and push through the blood vessels in his body first. After nine rounds of this, Alan could feel a faint swelling in his entire body, that was the phenomenon of the blood vessels being stimulated by the source power and already stretching. This was just a warm up, after the warm up, he entered the main event. He began to consciously push the source power vortex to chase and collide with each other, when these vortexes were flying, the tail pulled out a faint light tail, like a small meteor.

　　Under the urging of Alan's will, the source power vortices began to collide. Each time they collided, Allen's entire body would lightly vibrate. When the vibrations were nine times in a row, the vortexes almost resisted each other, and the small meteor transformed into a comet wrapped in light flames, pushing out a long flaming tail at the end, and whistling towards the heart's location.

　　The critical moment has finally arrived.

　　When this source power comet crashed into the heart, Allen instantly felt the presence of the invisible barrier. When the two crashed into each other, it was like a raging giant wave crashing into a hard and unrivaled reef. Although the reef was shaken by the giant wave, it did not shatter immediately.

　　As for Alan, there was a sudden pain in his chest, and he opened his mouth and sprayed out a mouthful of blood!