Chapter 223 Twin Separation

The dazzling purple-blue light swallowed up everything.

An irresistible energy shock wave suddenly exploded with the separation pod as the center, and the metal walls in the control room groaned in pain.

Lu Zhao and Xiao Ran only had time to raise their arms to protect their heads before they were thrown out by the force, their backs hit the wall in the distance, and they fell to the ground.

Only the man who called himself "Monk" slightly separated his feet and formed a strange hand seal with his hands in front of his chest at the moment before the shock wave arrived.

An almost invisible golden halo spread out from his body, like a reef in the water, creating a small stable space around him.

Although his monk robe was rustling in the wind and his face looked a little pale, he did not fall down in the end.

In the center of the light, Lin Che’s body was suspended in the air, defying gravity.

The body into which he had injected Xiaoling's blood sample was experiencing a violent, inhuman reaction.

The blue lines flowing under the skin were now as bright as burning fuses, peeling off and rising from his flesh one by one, as if an invisible scalpel was performing an extremely precise cutting.

He was enduring unimaginable pain, but no sound came out of his throat, only his body twitched violently and silently.

With a loud bang that seemed to tear the eardrums apart, the body suspended in the air suddenly split into two.

On one side was a human body that had lost all blue light and was covered with marks of energy burns.

It fell helplessly like a puppet with its strings cut, leaving a pool of blood on the cold metal floor.

On the other side, there is a completely new and chilling existence.

It is made of pure blue data flow and energy, forming a translucent humanoid outline.

Outside this unstable energy torso, there are layers of sophisticated exoskeleton mechanical armor that gleam with cold metallic light.

Its facial features were 70% similar to Lin Che's, but there was no trace of human emotion in its eyes, only cold, abyss-like indifference.

The newborn slowly landed on the ground, with a slight mechanical sound as its feet touched the ground.

It flexed its armor-covered fingers, seemingly adjusting to this new body that was entirely its own.

"Finally free." A cold voice without any intonation sounded in the control room, "The feeling of being imprisoned in a human body is more unbearable than death."

This is Night, or rather, the true form of the Orion AI Nightflyer.

However, the misfortune did not end there. During the separation process, the three diamond-shaped cores that were originally suspended in the triangular array suddenly burst into a brighter light than before, as if being pulled by some irresistible force.

No longer bound by any device, they suddenly changed direction and transformed into three meteors, breaking through the broken dome of the signal tower and shooting off in three completely different directions of the city, leaving three lingering purple light marks in the dark night sky.

Almost at the same time, the jade bracelet on Su Wanqing's wrist vibrated rapidly, and a cold electronic sound rang directly in her head.

[Alert: Core energy link interrupted. System functionality limited, rebate rate reduced to 15%. Please reposition all cores as soon as possible.] On the huge screen of the console, the countdown that had originally returned to zero flashed a few times, and the numbers suddenly jumped again.

[72:00:00][The time structure is temporarily stable, and the border damage is temporarily suspended.] "Wanqing!"

Lu Zhao struggled to get up from the ground, not caring about the blood at the corner of his mouth, and immediately rushed towards Lin Che who was lying in a pool of blood.

He quickly knelt down to check, put his fingers on Lin Che's neck, and then frowned.

"No, the situation is very bad." He spoke very quickly, with an uncontrollable anxiety in his voice, "Organ failure, massive internal bleeding, and serious damage to the nervous system... We don't have enough medical equipment, he won't last long!"

Su Wanqing's mind went blank. She looked at Lin Che in panic. On his pale skin, the huge energy burn wound on his chest was constantly oozing blood.

His heartbeat was so weak that it was almost unnoticeable.

"System!" She screamed frantically in her mind, "I need S-level medical supplies, now!

immediately!"

[Not enough energy to exchange for S-level items. Under the current system status, the highest exchangeable item is a B-level medical kit.] This was the first time the system rejected her high-level exchange request so straightforwardly.

Without the energy support of the core, this system, which was once almost omnipotent, suddenly became stretched to its limits.

In the control room, the newly born "Ye" did not even glance at the dying Lin Che.

He activated the built-in system immediately, and the mechanical structure of his whole body made a subtle operating sound.

His gaze was cast towards the three disappearing purple streaks of light outside the window, and data streams flashed rapidly in his blue pupils.

"We must retrieve at least one core." He muttered to himself, as if stating a set procedure, "Otherwise, in seventy-two hours, everything will be worse than before."

The armor on his back extended to form two wing-like energy thrusters.

He cast one last cold glance at the clone host lying on the ground.

"Thank you for your sacrifice, Subject S-7."

Before he finished speaking, he bent his legs slightly, and his whole body turned into a blue afterimage, jumping out of the huge window gap, and at an astonishing speed, he chased straight towards the core light mark flying to the southwest.

At the same second that "Night" left.

"boom--"

The special alloy door of the control room, which had been attacked repeatedly, was finally completely blown open.

Amid the smoke and dust, a team of fully armed military special forces rushed in. The leader, Lieutenant Cui, wore goggles on his face and pointed the black muzzle of the assault rifle in his hand directly at everyone in the room.

"In the name of the federal government, lay down your weapons immediately!" His voice came through the mask, sounding a little dull, but full of unquestionable majesty.

The soldiers quickly dispersed and surrounded Su Wanqing, Lu Zhao, Xiao Ran and the "monk" in battle formation.

When they saw the mess in the room and Lin Che lying in a pool of blood with his life or death unknown, everyone looked confused.

Lieutenant Cui's eyes swept across the empty core array base, then looked at the faded purple light outside the window, his brows furrowed.

He pressed the communicator and reported to the command center.

"The situation at the top of the tower is complicated. The target object has been dispersed. Repeat, three abnormal energy fluctuations have been detected. The target object has been dispersed.

Requesting further instructions."

The air atop the signal tower became stagnant due to the influx of soldiers.

The cold muzzle of the gun was pointed at everyone in the room, and Lieutenant Cui's voice broke the brief silence.

"I say again, in the name of the federal government, everyone gather in the center of the control room! Explain everything that happened here!"

Su Wanqing turned a deaf ear to his shouts, her whole attention was on the person under her.

Lin Che's body temperature was draining away. What frightened her even more was that ominous gray stripes began to appear on his skin, which was charred by the energy, like cracks on a dry riverbed, spreading from the wound to his entire body.

The remnants of energy left after Orion's separation were eating away at his last bit of life force.

"Medical kit, Class B medical kit!" Su Wanqing screamed at the system in her mind, and the exchanged item instantly appeared in her hands.

She tore open the package and clumsily applied the gel and regeneration patch inside to the wound on Lin Che's chest, but the gray stripes did not slow down at all, but spread faster.

It was useless. Despair seized her. She looked at the wound on her wrist that was once stained with Xiaoling's blood, and a crazy idea came to her mind.

Without hesitation, she grabbed a sharp piece of metal fragment, cut her arm, squeezed out the warm blood, and smeared it on Lin Che's cold wound.

The blood just flowed along with his own blood, and nothing happened.

[Host S-7's life loss rate: 7% per minute. ][Expected survival time: 28 minutes. ][Suggestion: Find advanced biological stabilizers or reconnect the energy core to restore the system's full functionality. ] The system's prompt tone was as cold as the inscriptions on a tombstone, and every word hit Su Wanqing's heart.

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On the other side, Lu Zhao and Xiao Ran had already stood in front of Su Wanqing, one on the left and one on the right, protecting her and Lin Che behind them, and looking warily at the soldiers who surrounded them.

Lieutenant Cui frowned, took a step forward, and lowered the muzzle of his gun slightly.

"What is that blue creature that rushed out? Why did the energy core disperse? Someone explain it!"

No one answered him. At this moment, the "monk" who had been silent all the time, folded his hands in front of his chest and spoke calmly: "Lieutenant Cui, instead of asking these questions now, why not answer a question first.

What does the military plan to do with the three scattered cores? Do they want to hand them over to their superiors and continue Orion's deadly experiments, or do they plan to keep them for themselves and use their power?"

These words were like a needle, accurately piercing Lieutenant Cui's tense nerves.

His lips were pressed into a straight line, and his hand holding the gun tightened. This was the biggest point of disagreement among the top military officials.

In the chaotic confrontation, Lu Zhao squatted aside, having already opened his portable terminal, his fingers operating rapidly on the screen.

The remaining surveillance footage on the console interacted with the data on his terminal, and soon three eye-catching red dots appeared on a city map.

"We have analyzed it," he said without looking up, "the flight paths of the three cores.

The first one went southwest and landed in an old industrial area, while the second one went northeast and fell into the commercial district in the city center.

The third one went straight south, and judging by its trajectory, it should have fallen into the underground track system."

He raised his head, his face looking grim. "The worst thing is that they are releasing high-intensity temporal radiation during their flight, which is attracting a large number of mutants to gather in those three areas.

In particular, in the direction of the old industrial area - the direction that Night was chasing - energy readings showed that there were signs of activity of groups of advanced mutants there. "

The picture on the broken surveillance screen in the control room just switched, confirming what he said.

An unnatural purple cloud slowly swirls above an old industrial area, and in an abandoned factory, rusty robotic arms seem to be reorganizing themselves.

On the exterior walls of the buildings in the commercial center, dark green vines were growing at a speed visible to the naked eye, almost swallowing up the entire street.

At the entrance of the subway system, a large amount of accumulated water was constantly surging up, forming several strange water columns on the ground, wriggling in the air as if they had life.

"Wanqing..." Lu Zhao looked at Su Wanqing with a low voice.

Su Wanqing was on the verge of a breakdown. She held Lin Che's increasingly cold hand, her knuckles turning white from the force.

How could she find a core and come back to save him within twenty minutes?

Just then, a faint reminder sound rang in her head.

[The peak of the anchor's emotional fluctuations has been detected, and the emergency protocol has been initiated.] [Emergency proposal: Close-range core energy...] The system seemed to freeze for a moment before continuing: [Directly directing the anchor's energy into the severely injured host may delay its death process.] [Warning:] [1. This is an informal procedure, with a 90% chance of causing irreversible malignant mutations in the host.] [2. This procedure requires 25% of the anchor's own vitality as a medium.] [3. The success rate is only 42%.] [Execute?] Using your own life to gamble with a success rate of less than half? Su Wanqing was stunned.

Suddenly, a burst of rapid noise came from Lieutenant Cui's communicator.

"... Calling the top of the tower! Group B reporting!... The underground track system has discovered... large-scale mutant movements... Xiaoling... Xiaoling accidentally came into contact with the core energy... The behavior pattern has... changed! Requesting support! Repeat, requesting support..."

Communications came to an abrupt end.

Lieutenant Cui's face suddenly changed. He turned around and ordered the soldiers behind him: "Half of you stay to control the scene! The other half, follow me! Go to the underground track system immediately to support Group B!"

The military's tough stance loosened due to this sudden change.

Chance!

Lu Zhao immediately seized this opportunity. He stood up and said to everyone very quickly: "We can't waste time here any longer! We must split up and act!"

His eyes swept across Xiao Ran, the monk, and finally fell on Su Wanqing.

"Xiao Ran, you and the people from the Dawn Organization will track down 'Night'. He is our biggest threat now, and you know him best. The old industrial area is in your hands."

"I," he paused, his voice unquestionable, "I will escort Wan Qing and Lin Che to the nearest commercial center to find the core. This is the only way to save Lin Che."

He finally looked at the mysterious monk: "Monk, can you use your method to help delay Lin Che's condition and buy us time to transfer?"

Lu Zhao's voice was very clear in the control room mixed with the sound of electricity and wind. The division of labor he proposed made Lieutenant Cui's frown relax a little.

Xiaoling's unexpected situation disrupted the military's deployment, and now this temporary alliance seems to be the only viable option.

Lieutenant Cui lowered his gun. He glanced at the location of Group B displayed on the communicator, then glanced at Lin Che, who was breathing weakly, and finally made a decision.

"According to the federal emergency regulations, recovering the core is the highest priority. The situation is special, and I can't track three targets at the same time." He turned his eyes to Lu Zhao and Xiao Ran, "The Dawn Organization has limited manpower."

Without waiting for Xiao Ran to answer, the "monk" folded his hands in front of his chest and took a step forward.

"Lieutenant Cui, there is no point in arguing about the amount of manpower at this moment. We can accept this proposal."

He turned to Xiao Ran, then looked at Su Wanqing, "The three of us can reach a temporary agreement.

The main military force is responsible for the underground track where the situation is most urgent, recovering the core and ensuring Xiaoling's safety.

Xiao Ran will lead our people to the old industrial area to track down Night. Miss Su and Mr. Lu Zhao will take Lin Che to the nearest commercial center to look for the third core.