Chapter 228 Race Against Time

The alarm inside the base was deafening, and every rotation of the red light was like a heavy hammer hitting Lin Che's nerves.

He held Xiao Ling in his arms and shuttled through the cold metal corridor. The third core in his right palm was like a red-hot iron. The scorching energy continued to pour into his body, resonating with the damn Orion Sequence. Every resonance brought a tearing pain.

A heavy electronic door blocked his way. He had no time to think, his body was ready to hit it, but just before the contact, the blue lines under his skin flashed suddenly, a slight electric sound came from the door lock, and the heavy door slid open automatically.

The sequence was helping him, but also corroding him. He could feel his right eye flashing blue light uncontrollably, and part of his consciousness became blurred, as if he was looking at the world through a layer of frosted glass.

At a corner, a team of fully armed special forces soldiers stopped him, and the black muzzles of their guns were instantly pointed at the two of them.

“Stop!” The roar had not yet fallen, and Lin Che had not even thought of resisting, but his free hand was instinctively raised.

A pure blue energy shock wave burst out from his palm, knocking the soldiers to the ground with their guns.

He looked at his hands in horror.

"No... this is not what I want to do..."

"Let it flow, but don't let it control you." Xiaoling in his arms suddenly held his wrist lightly. Her voice was no longer as naive as that of a little girl, but carried a strange maturity and calmness.

Her purple pupils stared at Lin Che, "The core has recognized you. It knows that you were once a container, and now it wants to connect with you again... but you must become the leader."

This sentence struck Lin Che's confused thoughts like an electric current.

He clenched his teeth, suppressed the heart-wrenching pain, and forced himself to focus all his attention on the escape route.

He remembered the structural diagram of the base and knew that the entrance to a maintenance passage was not far away.

He kicked open the iron fence at the entrance, slid down holding Xiaoling, and finally arrived at the underground parking lot.

He picked out a military jeep. He pressed his finger on the authentication panel next to the door, and the sequence energy took effect again, unlocking the door and forcibly starting the engine.

Just as several guards rushed into the parking lot and opened fire, he stepped on the accelerator to the bottom. The jeep was like an angry beast, with its tires rubbing against the asphalt road, making a sharp scream. It directly crashed through the automatic gate of the base and rushed into the night.

During the escape, Xiao Ling's state was very unstable. Sometimes she would return to the familiar little girl, curled up in the passenger seat, trembling with fear and confusion; but more often, she would fall into a strange trance, become unusually calm, and say things that were far beyond her age.

"They come from a dimension outside of time," she said, looking at the rapidly receding street scene outside the window, her voice unsettlingly flat. "The Weavers don't collect lives, they collect time samples... Every civilization is part of their experiment..."

Lin Che drove at high speed, avoiding obstacles on the road, while trying to understand these fragmented information.

Part of the experiment? He was thinking when Xiaoling suddenly pointed to the rearview mirror.

"Here he comes, right behind us."

Lin Che saw from the rearview mirror that a striking blue light was approaching rapidly in the night sky.

It was "Ye", and he was chasing at full speed with the first core.

——

At the same time, in the viaduct area on the other side of the city.

The UFO that Su Wanqing and Lu Zhao had planned has now revealed its true appearance.

A huge metal container landed in the middle of the viaduct with amazing precision, and the shock wave of the impact pushed the surrounding debris and dust outward.

The surface of the container shimmered with complex geometric patterns, and the top then spiraled open, releasing a thick silver mist.

A tall humanoid creature slowly walked out. His entire body was covered in a layer of flowing silver metal, with no obvious facial features, only a glowing ring-shaped structure suspended in the "head".

Every step he took caused the air around him to visibly distort.

He is the pioneer.

The pioneer raised his arm and pointed in three different directions of the city. Three tiny silver beams of light flashed by, as if tracking something.

Then he gently pressed the ground with one hand.

An invisible energy wave spread out from him. Wherever the wave passed, everything changed.

The pedestrians on the road, the moving vehicles, and even the startled birds in the sky, all suddenly became extremely slow, as if they were trapped in an invisible quagmire of time.

In the distance, Su Wanqing and Lu Zhao, who were rushing over at full speed, were also affected.

Thanks to the protection of the second core, they were not completely frozen, but their movements became slow, and every step was like walking in deep water.

The pioneer turned in their direction and uttered a mechanical and cold voice composed of countless voices:

"Three cycles have ended, and the final collection will begin."

——

"Head towards the viaduct! We'll meet you there!"

Inside the jeep, Lu Zhao's emergency communication suddenly rang, but then Xiao Ling let out a scream.

"No! We can't go there!" Her pupils dilated with fear, and her fingers trembled as she pointed at the sky outside the car window. That direction was the overpass.

"The Forerunner landed there... The three cores can't be together!"

Lin Che's heart sank. On one side was the pursuing "Ye", and on the other side were his companions who needed to reunite urgently, but the only reunion point had become the most dangerous restricted area.

He had no time to hesitate and made an instant decision in the dilemma.

He slammed the steering wheel, the jeep almost drifted, turned the front of the car, and rushed towards the remote edge of the city.

"Lu Zhao, the situation has changed. The overpass may be threatened. Find a new meeting point!" he shouted into the communicator.

All he got in response was a piercing burst of static. The signal was being completely disrupted by some more powerful energy.

As Lin Che was driving, the communicator beside his ear was filled with dead static.

His connection with Lu Zhao was cut off.

He could feel the pressure, like a car diving into the deep sea, and the air became sticky.

In the direction of the viaduct ahead, the sky seemed to be covered by a layer of invisible jelly, and the light was strangely distorted in it.

A silver scanning beam swept over from that direction at an incredibly fast speed.

Before Lin Che could react, the blue lines on his right arm lit up on their own, and an invisible barrier seemed to form on the surface of his skin, pushing away some of the invisible pressure.

"The sequence in your body has been activated and reprogrammed by the third core," Xiao Ling, who was curled up in the passenger seat, looked at his arm and explained in a calm tone, "It is no longer a tool of 'Night', but a weapon to resist the Weaver."

Lin Che tried to concentrate and direct the power of the sequence outwards.

The air around the car body seemed to ripple, and the dust that had been stagnant due to the slowing down of time began to slowly fall.

A "safety bubble" several meters square. He began to understand that through contact with Xiaoling, the originally chaotic fragments of information belonging to the "weaver" became clear in his mind.

"The Weaver is not a single entity, but a collective consciousness composed of countless fragments of time and space... They collect time samples from each civilization and try to build an eternal model... The Orion civilization was originally their research object, but they fled to Earth to seek refuge... Now, they have found this place and will conduct the final collection of Earth..."

Xiao Ling grabbed Lin Che’s wrist painfully: “They won’t destroy us, but they will take away our ‘time’… A world without time will be forever frozen in a moment…”

——

Meanwhile, near the viaduct.

Every step Su Wanqing took was like pushing away a sticky liquid. The same was true for Lu Zhao beside her, whose movements were slow and laborious.

The world around them has become a surreal still painting.

Raindrops suspended in the air, expressions of astonishment frozen on passers-by's faces, a car that lost control and crashed into the guardrail, its wheels still maintaining an afterimage of high-speed rotation, but motionless.

Lu Zhao raised his wrist with difficulty and read the data on the tactical terminal.

"The power readings are above the upper limit of the scale," he panted, speaking each word slowly, "This technology is far beyond the capabilities of Orion, and even Night. The second core is fighting this energy, but our protective shield is shrinking."

They hid behind the wreckage of an office building that was cut off in half, with only their eyes exposed, looking in the direction of the viaduct.

The silver creature called the Forerunner stood in the middle of the bridge, motionless.

But the glowing ring-shaped structure on his head was slowly rotating, emitting tiny scanning beams from time to time.

Suddenly, three beams of light shot out from the halo at the same time, pointing in three completely different directions.

One shot straight at the building they were hiding in. The second shot towards the edge of the city where Lin Che was escaping.

The third one locked onto a stream of blue light approaching at high speed from the other end of the city - it was "night".

Almost at the moment the light beam locked onto her, the jade bracelet on Su Wanqing's wrist began to vibrate violently.

The translucent system interface in front of her was flashing red warnings frantically.

[Unknown time manipulation technology detected, system stability dropped to 59%... core energy is disturbed...]

Then, the warning message disappeared, and after a burst of garbled text on the interface, a brand new image emerged.

It was a translucent human figure with white hair and beard, wearing clothes similar to those of an ancient scholar, and with a serious expression.

[Emergency protocol activated, Guardian interface initialized...]

"Temporal stability is collapsing," the AI ​​that calls itself "Guardian" said in a rapid and ancient voice, "The Weaver's early arrival disrupted the defense preparations.

The three cores must be reassembled within 48 hours, otherwise the time of the entire city will be completely collapsed."

Su Wanqing asked in her mind: "Who are you? Another AI of Orion?"

“I am not a product of Orion,” the Guardian replied, “but a defense mechanism you created yourself in your last reincarnation.

Every time the Weaver comes, he collects time samples to construct the 'eternal model', and humans are just experimental subjects. This is the third reincarnation."

Lu Zhao didn't see the shadow in front of him. He just raised the pulse rifle in his hand, as if trying to interfere with the scanning beam.

"Don't touch the beam directly!" The guardian's warning sounded in Su Wanqing's mind, "It will upload your time information directly to the Weaver's main network!"

"Follow my instructions," the Guardian's voice sounded again, "Along this route, the distortion of the flow of time is relatively small."

A "safe passage" appeared on the system interface, shuttling between the solidified vehicles and the ruins of the buildings.

Su Wanqing grabbed Lu Zhao, and the two of them used those objects that seemed to be eternally still as cover and moved towards the outer edge of the viaduct with difficulty.

At this moment, a sharp sound of metal breaking and a violent collision was heard in the distance.

A military jeep, like a wild bull, broke through the edge of the time deceleration field and appeared in their sight.

The front half of the car was severely deformed and emitting thick smoke, but it was still rushing forward.

The blue Orion Sequence pattern on Lin Che's right arm, who was sitting in the driver's seat, was dazzlingly bright.

The pioneer in the middle of the viaduct responded immediately. It slowly turned in the direction of the jeep, raised its arm, and shot a concentrated silver energy beam towards Lin Che.

Lin Che actually raised the glowing hand, palm forward. An unstable blue energy barrier appeared out of thin air and collided with the silver beam.

The barrier lasted less than a second before it shattered, but the fatal blow was also blocked.

“Get out of here!” Lin Che yelled in their direction, “He’s locking onto the core!”

Before he finished his words, another blue stream of light whizzed in from the other side of the city, broke through the deceleration field with a more violent attitude, and hovered in mid-air.

It was "night". The three forces finally converged with the viaduct as the center.