<h4>Chapter 245: It Does Not Look Good</h4>


    Trantor: EndlessFantasy Trantion Editor: EndlessFantasy Trantion


    When the Aerymian elves first built the floating ind, it was with proper long-term nning in mind; the city’s zoning was symmetrical and its streets were straight. You would not find yourself unable to find direction, like getting lost in a dark alley. With help from the locals, Hao Ren was able to quickly find the ident scene. He was certain that he was going in the right direction, because as he went forward, the streets had less and less people. He asionally bumped into a few elves but they were travelling in the opposite direction with shock in their faces. That meant the location of the explosion was not far ahead.


    “What can we do? There’s just a few of us.” Running happily beside Hao Ren, Lily finally came to her senses. Hao Ren did not look at her. He said loudly, “With your strength, Vivian’s magic, Y’zaks and myself, we should be able to do something. Firstly, we have to be there to see what we can do.”


    As they ran farther towards the scene, the streets began to be deserted, with only dim streetmps lighting up the area. It was not just the street that was deserted. Buildings along the street seemed to be lifeless and vacant just as Vivian had observed. It was obvious that the residents in this area had been evacuated. It was not the first time Aerymian elves encountered such an incident. They already knew the drill before disaster struck. Meanwhile, Lily frowned as she sniffed around. She could smell the stench of ionised air.


    A loud noise coupled with whistling sounds could be heard from afar while a few light beams swept across the sky. The city guards were probably rushing to the scene at this point.


    “There. Ahead!” Lily ran ahead of the team like she was doing ground reconnaissance. She gestured to the team happily at one of the street corners. Hao Ren, Vivian and Y’zaks moved quickly ahead as they could also see the light of fire behind the buildings far away.


    As they got to the corner, they felt a sense of weightlessness. Before Hao Ren could figure out what was happening, he found himself a few metres up in the air. Then, he came back down slowly. “What happened?”


    “It seems like the artificial gravity in this area has failed,” the MDT sneaked out and said, “I think the elves have a bigger problem than this. Look up!”


    Everyone raised their heads. At the edge of the floating ind, the protective shield was low enough to reach by hand when one stood on the top of a steeple. But now, the protective shield facing the hoop side was glowing abnormally. Arge amount of static-like noise like those snow screens on a CRT TV was spreading rapidly across the shield of life reminiscent of deadly hoar frost.


    “It’s an energy vortex. The shield’s simply built using arge number of shield generators. Some of the shield generators went offline all of a sudden and caused the energy vortex. It could quickly ‘pollute’ and tear the entire dome down,” said the MDT as it flew forward. “Follow me. Maybe I can do something.”


    Hao Ren and Vivian followed the MDT closely, “space-walking”. “It’s not as easy as you described it to be! The gravity in this ce is virtually gone!”


    As his voice trailed off, he felt someone grabbing him from behind. Vivian was flying and carrying them in the air. The vampire maiden could still adapt to the microgravity environment, which did not affect her flying ability. Meanwhile, Y’zaks, the ferocious demon never ran out of resources; first, he made sure that the ground was solid, then a violent gas was expelled out of his butt—meburst—whichunched him up into the air. He was now flying a lot faster than Vivian.


    They came to the site of the explosion. It was bright. The atmosphere was in total contrast with the quiet city streets.


    The hoop at the edge of the ind and city area was separated by a one-kilometre-wide opennd. The area was strewn with various maintenance passages and operation rooms for instations on the ind. The explosion had urred at one of the maintenance points. Arge number of personnel, who looked like city guards and magic-guidance schrs, were already on-site when Hao Ren arrived. The centre of the explosion looked horrible and particrly eye-catching: it was at the seam between the hoop and the foundation. The hole caused by the st was 100 metres wide and several hundred metres high. The grey ground and wall were torn open by the st, leaving behind a terrifying hole of jagged edges as well as energy sparks, which indicated that some important power lines had been damaged.


    No less than 10 elves, d in white robes were seen around the breached area, trying frantically to seal the leaks. They were floating in the air, carrying a strange, disc-shaped magical device. A powerful energy could be observed surging under their skin. The light shining through from within their bodies made them look like terrifying humanoid torches. These elven magic casters had formed ayer of a milky-white transparent shield that shrouded the breach. It barely prevented any air form escaping.


    Clearly, they had no way to stop the affected instations from deteriorating.


    This was just the damage directly caused by the explosion at the hole. Surrounding equipment were also affected. Pipes rising up from the hoop were smoldering, some small buildings that looked like operation rooms were still on fire, and cracks were visible on a few stretches of wall near the breach. These cracks may not have been until the core, but as a precaution, there was an elven mage standing near each crack. They were ready to use their magic shield to stop any leaks.


    The arrival of Hao Ren and his team had caused a scene. In fact, it was Y’zaks who stole the limelight as a series of mebursts were particrly eye-grabbing. Therefore, the elves at the scene had quickly noticed the presence of the uninvited guests. Under the effects of the microgravity environment, an elf in short robes ranboriously towards Y’zaks. “Who are you—”


    Without waiting for the elf to finish, Hao Ren interrupted him. “What’s the situation? We’re here to help!”


    The elf looked at Hao Ren in surprise. Several other guards nearby were on alert. Clearly, not all Aerymians knew what the guests their queen brought back looked like—some did not even know such guests existed. After all, Hilda had just been back for half a day.


    Hao Ren had no time to exin. He saw that many people were lying on the ground, injured. These people had been badly hurt by the explosion, and some of the injured were suffering from severe burns on their bodies. Seeing that, Vivian frowned. “It would be handy if Nangong Wuyue was here. She could treat burns.”


    At that moment, an elven guard, who looked a little like a mage stepped out from the group. He asked loudly, “May I know who is Hao Ren?”


    “Me.”


    “The queen has instructed us to cooperate with you.” Although the elves were confused, they obeyed the decree of the queen to the letter. “If you can do something, please hurry up. We are running out of time.”


    “You’ve got to let us know about the situation first,” said Hao Ren. He sped the MDT in one hand while he pointed the other hand at the crack on the wall. “Also, please brief us about the structure of this thing. I’ll find a way to restore the shield.”


    The elves were manually containing the cracks on the wall, but the real danger was over their heads—the dome was cracking open. Once this thing gave way, the city would be gone, and then it would be toote!


    Meanwhile, the snow screen on the dome had spread several kilometres across and it was still rapidly spreading to other parts of the dome. The elven mages looked up in fear before saying, “Once the crack opens, there will be nothing between it and the space outside. Beneath the crack was where the propulsion unit sat, but it was blown away by the explosion. There’s probably no way to fix it now. The upper part of the crack has a broken power line, which links up to a shield generator. We’re still finding a way to re-route it to a back-up energy storage. However, the back-up energy storage doesn’t have enough capacity and it can’t be activated. At the same time, the crack has severed a few underground air-flow ducts, so from there, the air is leaking out of the city…”


    “The ducts have been sealed!” An elf whose face waspletely covered in ashes and dirt suddenly emerged—or rather floated out—from the crowd. “All gates in Section 22 have been closed. A gate in one of the air-flow ducts malfunctioned. Master Mha Buno has sealed it by melting the surrounding foundation using a scorching ray.”


    “Leakage is less of a problem for now.” The elven mage breathed a sigh of relief. “But, the severed power lines…”


    Hao Ren shook the MDT. “Why are you keeping quiet at such a critical time?”


    The MDT suddenly lit up brightly. “Bring your plug to me! I can supply the energy! I was downloading the energy conversion plug-in just now.”