Chapter 714 The Collision Begins

Fire Raven didn't even glance at Shadow Scorpion; he wouldn't be swayed by such a fool.

His gaze swept over the still-burning patch of grass around Iron Claw again. Apart from a few leeches that managed to escape into the deeper grass and quickly disappeared, he did not find any other enemies.

His gaze passed over the burning wall of fire, landing on the distant highway that resembled a gray ribbon, and his pupils contracted slightly again:

"Captain, a vehicle is approaching from the direction of the Second Prison. Target spotted in the back seat of the second vehicle, near the right window."

As soon as they finished speaking, they all looked towards the highway.

The captain glanced at it, then looked away, indifferently gazing in the direction of Iron Claw.

Even from miles away, with walls of fire radiating scorching heat all around him, Iron Claw felt a chilling, bone-deep coldness creep up his spine, making him shiver involuntarily.

He hurriedly explained:

"Captain... Captain! Something's gone wrong! A damned corpse thief stole the body I left in the car."

But he couldn't have gone far; he's hiding in these bushes! I can find him right away!

The target has already been identified, but Iron Claw's mind is still filled with thoughts of corpse thieves; he's utterly stupid.

Shadow Scorpion let out a sneer.

The captain glanced at the bushes with a deep look; the dense, lush grass almost reached above his head.

His mind raced, and then he gave the order:

"I don't care who's hiding in the bushes. Fire Crow, you're in charge of providing remote support and assisting Iron Claw. Find them and take them out."

Fire Raven nodded, slightly adjusting the angle of the snakeskin sniper rifle on his right arm, the dark blue patterns once again subtly swirling within it.

"Yes, Captain!"

The captain continued:

"Shadow Scorpion, Fortress, you two will carry out the interception operation against the convoy as planned. Remember what I told you before we set off..."

"Understood! / Received!"

Two voices rang out almost simultaneously.

The fortress's voice was deep and thunderous, while the shadow scorpion's voice carried a hint of eager cruelty.

The next moment, two figures ran one after the other towards the highway.

They moved incredibly fast, and the instant they disappeared into the tall grass, the optical camouflage on their bodies rippled, their forms quickly twisting and fading, as if they had become one with the swaying grass and the dim air.

The captain himself did not explain what he was going to do next.

He simply strolled into the bushes as if taking a leisurely walk, and in the blink of an eye, he too disappeared from the spot. It was unclear whether he had activated optical invisibility mode or was simply submerged by the sea of ​​bushes.

Slightly slower, several drones hovering above the grass, which were hiding, finally managed to capture a few figures that suddenly darted out of the abandoned gas station nearly 2 kilometers away.

Its high-precision multispectral sensor array under the fuselage simultaneously captured the abnormal peak value of the energy burst below.

"Warning! High-energy reaction detected, coordinates xxx, yyy region. Abnormal energy condensation rate, energy level assessment—Level B danger! Immediate evasive or defensive measures recommended!"

"Warning! An abnormal instantaneous generation pattern of a large-scale heat source has been detected, which does not conform to the characteristics of spontaneous combustion! A three-dimensional model of the fire wall's extension shape and heat distribution has been established and is being continuously monitored!"

"Danger: Unnatural, high threat, initially marked as enemy."

"Enemy count detection in progress: 3 unknown enemies detected!"

Simultaneously, the cold, electronically synthesized voice of the tactical AI brain, Xiaoyou, rang in the miniature bone conduction earpieces of all members of the Relief Studio.

Actually, there's no need for Xiaoyou to remind you at all.

A wall of fire suddenly rose from the ground, stretching straight for miles, acting as a beacon in the darkness and serving as the most conspicuous danger signal.

However, their professional combat skills and rigorous training meant that they did not rely solely on visual observation and instinctive reactions.

Almost as soon as Xiaoyou issued her first warning, the members of the Jieyou Studio team, who were hidden in various corners of the bushes, raised their hands almost simultaneously as if by conditioned reflex and quickly tapped the metal frame of their tactical glasses that covered half of their faces.

"Buzz—" soft

A slight vibration came from my temple.

The normal field of view displayed on the lens was instantly switched, and a light blue interface flashed by, quickly connecting to the real-time reconnaissance footage from the high-altitude drone.

However, the image that appeared in their glasses startled them slightly.

The scene shows only a dilapidated abandoned gas station with mottled walls, rusted oil pumps, and an empty roof with only a few clumps of tenacious weeds swaying in the wind.

All around was a vast expanse of lush grass, like a yellow-green ocean, swaying in the wind; apart from that, there were no other moving objects.

The walls of fire, burning fiercely and with eerily neat edges, danced intensely at the edge of the image, distorting the air, yet they seemed to appear out of nowhere, like fire without a source, with no trace of the person who set the fire.

Where did the enemy go?

Fortunately, the fact that it cannot be detected by the naked eye and conventional optical sensors does not mean that the AI-powered Xiaoyou, which integrates multiple cutting-edge detection technologies, is also helpless.

"Enemy tracks detected."

Xiaoyou's voice rang out again, a monochromatic electronic tone devoid of emotion, yet exuding an unparalleled sense of security and trust.

"Enemy unit confirmed to be in advanced optical mode stealth mode. Physical visual capture has been confirmed to be ineffective. Attempting to initiate multi-spectral scanning and stealth mode decryption procedures."

Inside a makeshift command center in a single-story building a few kilometers away.

Zhang Shenyi took his hands off the keyboard, crossed them in front of his chin, leaned forward slightly, and stared intently at the "empty" area on the screen.

On the screen, instruction codes are flowing like a waterfall and data processing progress bars are jumping around rapidly.

On the adjacent sub-screens, complex energy spectrum diagrams, real-time monitoring of environmental parameters, and the load status of various sensors on the drone are displayed.

This is the AI ​​Xiaoyou working hard to analyze battlefield environment data, trying to "dig out" the enemy hidden behind the light and shadow from nothingness.

The first step is switching to thermal imaging mode.

The drone's high-sensitivity thermal imaging camera instantly activates, covering the area below at the highest scanning frequency, and the image on the screen instantly transforms into a color block map representing different temperatures.

However, the orange-red and bright white outlines that were expected to represent the heat emitted by the human body or machinery did not appear.

Only that wall of fire, in the thermal image, resembled a roaring, bright yellow dragon, standing out starkly.

"The thermal imaging scan failed, indicating that the target exoskeleton or protective equipment has a thermal insulation layer and an internal thermal circulation system. The surface temperature is highly synchronized with the environment, and the internal heat source is completely shielded or absorbed."

Xiaoyou's report was concise and objective.

Attempt to initiate high-precision acoustic positioning analysis... failed.

The background noise in the field is too complex (wind, grass rubbing, crackling of distant flames), the interference intensity is too great, and the target moves silently, so no effective sound wave vibration is generated, making this method ineffective.

Attempt to initiate micro-dust disturbance morphology capture... Abandon.

The distribution of dust in the air in the wild is extremely uneven, and the data background is chaotic and disordered, making it impossible to extract regular disturbance patterns caused by the movement of invisible targets from randomly drifting dust.

Attempting to initiate a high-sensitivity magnetic field anomaly scan... the signal is too weak to pinpoint.

The target also appears to be equipped with advanced antimagnetic detection coatings or jamming devices, which greatly suppress the magnetic field signal it generates, making it almost blend into the ambient geomagnetic background noise and impossible to effectively separate and locate.

A series of counter-stealth measures that had been highly effective against the stealth technology of most elite troops failed at this moment.

Clearly, the exoskeleton armor equipped by this white-masked team possesses a level of sophistication and comprehensiveness in stealth technology that far surpasses ordinary optical camouflage.

Zhang Shenyi's brows were tightly furrowed, and fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

He could hear his heart pounding heavily and rapidly in his chest, and with each passing second, the danger to the team ahead increased.

His voice had a slight, almost imperceptible hoarseness, but the instructions were crystal clear:

"Activate the environmental dynamic capture algorithm, call up all available drone sensor data, and allocate computing power from all non-essential computing devices in the studio, including the backup server cluster, to perform overclocked collaborative computing!"

Priority: Highest, I need results, the sooner the better!

"Command confirmed. Environmental dynamic capture algorithm is starting... calling all available sensor data streams... linking and requisitioning available computing resources... computing resources are being allocated... overclocking mode has been activated."

Xiaoyou's response remained cold, but the data stream on the screen suddenly started scrolling at an alarming rate, and the screen began to flicker wildly.

Xiaoyou abandoned directly probing the "enemy" itself and instead began analyzing the most subtle changes in the "environment" caused by the enemy's presence, changes that could not be completely eliminated.

Heat can be shielded, vibration can be silenced, and optics can be used for camouflage, but collisions with the environment during operations are inevitable.

Because forces are interactive, even though there are some evil or strange things in this world that are difficult for science to explain, physics still stubbornly exists.

Xiaoyou activated the drone's high-definition camera, frantically capturing the unnatural swaying angles and frequencies of every blade of grass below at an astonishing speed of thousands of frames per second.

Meanwhile, the drone's onboard miniature high-precision anemometer was fully deployed, analyzing the vector flow in the air in real time.

The powerful algorithm began to run, detecting the unnatural bending trajectory of each blade of grass, the tiny ripples of airflow disturbances, and the nanoscale refraction differences in background light caused by the movement of invisible objects...

All these massive, seemingly chaotic observational data are incorporated into a huge dynamic physical calculation model.

This is an extremely computationally intensive "brute-force" process, equivalent to forcibly "calculating" the disappearing "shadows" in a dynamic, chaotic, and noisy ocean full of interference.

In front of Zhang Shenyi, several specially modified tactical computers began to roar desperately, their fans instantly reaching their maximum speed.

The temperature monitoring bars for the CPU and GPU spiked to red at a visible speed, glaring warning signs flashed incessantly, and the air was filled with the distinctive scorching smell of electronic components operating under high load.

Not only the computer in front of him, but also the core server room of the underground base of the Relief Studio, 24 kilometers away, saw the temperature soar as if it were on a rocket, with the cooling system roaring at full power.

The technician in charge of maintenance was sweating profusely as he looked at the alarming red numbers on the control panel.

If it were a regular commercial or even military-grade computer, it would probably have already crashed, frozen, or even burned out under such a terrifying computing load.

Fortunately, the combat computers and servers equipped in the Relief Studio were high-end products obtained from the black market and special channels at great expense.

In particular, the core processing chip was a laboratory-grade product smuggled out of the strictly controlled science park in Shangcheng at great risk.

7 seconds.

For an ordinary person, it's just a matter of a few breaths.

But for the fully powered AI Xiaoyou, it had already completed a massive amount of calculation that an ordinary person could not even imagine in a lifetime.

finally!

"Crack complete. Dynamic contour modeling in progress... Data rendering to tactical eyepiece terminal."

As Xiaoyou's voice rang out, the real-time view on the tactical glasses worn by every member of the Relief Studio, which had previously been "empty," suddenly changed.

On the roof of an abandoned gas station, a humanoid "shadow" has appeared.

That wasn't a real image; it had no color or texture details. It was just a rough human figure outlined by countless semi-transparent light blue data lines based on environmental disturbance data.

Its outline has a wavy, constantly swaying shape, with blurred and unstable edges, as if it were a fragile phantom composed of flowing water and distorted, refracted air.

Because there is no physical color and texture support, it can only outline the "shape" of the shadow occupying the space and the "trajectory" of its movement.

However, this simple, somewhat crude, and even slightly abstract data outline was enough for the experienced warriors of the Problem Solving Studio to "see" the enemy's movements and layout.

A relatively still "shadow" silhouette rests on the roof of the gas station, its body in a standard half-kneeling sniping posture. The unusually long weapon with a coiled tubular structure on its right arm is particularly eye-catching, with the muzzle faintly pointing into the depths of the grass.

The other two silhouettes were rushing out of the gas station, speeding away at an astonishing pace, heading straight for the distant highway.

One of the shadows was in a strange, crouching posture, on all fours, moving as swiftly as a crawling creature. Behind it, based on air disturbance data, a tail with a sharp tip was simulated, constantly swaying.

The other was exceptionally large and burly, running like a moving hill.

Despite being just a transparent outline, its unique biomechanical fusion form and the exoskeleton visible as it runs clearly share a similar aesthetic with the white spider.

Everyone was startled, a chill running from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads.

Almost simultaneously, they lowered their voices and spoke in unison over the encrypted communication channel:

"Three more! More white-masked figures have appeared!!!"

(End of this chapter)