Chapter 400 After Dusk (Please give me a monthly ticket at the end of the month!)
Rumble.
The sky was overcast with heavy rain and thunder roared. Under the ruins of the Central City in the darkness, violent earthquakes began to occur. Searchlights shone over, and soon, in the shocked gazes of countless people, an oversized S-class creature with gray bone spurs all over its body and only some restraining armor left on its head slowly stood up. Its body was filled with blood and flesh steam, and the 24 EVA restraint locks on the back of its spine were completely broken!
The one who stood up was not the Gray Mist Messenger.
But... gray fog!
KIKI, who was far away in the air, looked at this scene with horror on her face. She murmured
"Lin Xian..."
Immediately, he rushed towards the ruins without hesitation.
There are still large pieces of colonial armor fragments left here, and the ground is covered with a blood mist!
Seeing this tragic scene, KIKI immediately used her telekinesis to blow away the smoke and dust, and then frantically searched for Lin Xian.
"Lin Xian! Lin Xian!"
At this moment, the towering S-level gray fog monster in front of him suddenly let out a dull roar. KIKI reacted and immediately prepared to use telekinesis to resist.
Who knew that at this moment, Lin Xian's voice suddenly came from the headphones.
"KIKI, get out of here!"
"Lin Xian?" KIKI asked in surprise: "Where are you?"
"I'm where I'm supposed to be..."
Inside the main cabin of the inhibitor device remaining on the head of the Gray Mist Messenger, Lin Xian lay quietly in the survival cabin. Before disconnecting the neural connection, he sent it the last command.
Rampage!
Gray Mist was now covered in boiling steam, its suppressed action brain now only had a violent desire to attack, and its gaze slowly turned to the... corpse chaser who was attacking the survivors and the army!
Ugh!!
Suddenly, this super-large S-class creature released all the mechanical restrictions on its body and rushed towards the corpse driver violently.
At this moment, the corpse driver who was shooting laser beams at Huo Jiang's Iron Guard Brigade sensed a strange presence. He turned around and was about to use the dark mark to detect, but what he was greeted with was a giant bone spur fist that was as powerful as a landslide!
boom!
The punch was so powerful that the collision between the two giants made a loud bang, and one could even clearly see a white shock wave with the naked eye.
The weird thing was that when the gray fog threw the punch, the corpse driver didn't activate any defensive force field or red fog, and half of his face was blown up by the punch. A large amount of tissue on his head was ejected, and blood plasma burst.
Gray Mist didn't stop after the punch, and immediately followed with a Zhengyang kick! The corpse driver staggered a few steps and crashed into several tall buildings. However, Gray Mist followed up with a third move, rushed up quickly, and once again hit the corpse driver with a knee strike in the air. The sharp bone spur directly penetrated the corpse driver's sternum, knocking him down head-on.
The corpse driver, who was hundreds of meters tall, fell backwards with a loud bang, instantly causing a violent earthquake and smoke and dust rising everywhere!
At this moment, all the soldiers and survivors in the city were stunned. This weird scene was not just about the S-level monster beating its own teammates. The most important thing was that this gray fog with bone spurs all over its body, like an alien creature, was actually using a set of... military boxing!
Inside the Twin Star Tower, all the Phoenix Society leaders were stunned. Just as Huo Jiang and Lu Tianye were about to direct all their firepower at the two giants, Ye Lan suddenly spoke.
"Adjust firepower to deal with other monster waves. The gray fog must be operated by Lin now!"
"yes!"
Above the sky, Shinji Mochizuki in the Silent City also discovered it at the first time. He immediately contacted Lin Xian through the communicator, but found that Lin Xian's voice was so weak that it was about to disappear, and what he heard more was... the sound of a giant fist hitting.
A strange scene appeared on a piece of ruins. The violent gray fog monster was punching madly at a corpse driver who was bigger than itself. Every punch caused the earth to shake and smoke and dust to burst out.
At this time, the corpse driver whose torso was almost broken seemed to be finally ready to fight back, buzz!
In an instant, four laser beams pierced through Gray Mist's sternum, leaving four huge blood holes. However, Gray Mist at this time seemed to be unaware of the pain, and there was no mental communication at all. He was only bloodthirsty and rampaging. Every punch he threw would smash the face of the corpse driver, and the corpse driver's torso was constantly recovering.
This earth-shattering fight brought up violent energy, with flesh and tissue flying everywhere. The corpse chaser launched a white shock wave, peeling off Gray Mist's tissue layer by layer. In the main control cabin of the colony suppressor, Viola sensed the crisis and immediately released all the links. Just before she was about to completely blow up Gray Mist's torso, the suppression device on Gray Mist's head suddenly opened, and a dancer robot equipped with thrusters suddenly flew out with two survival capsules.
At this moment, Gray Mist suddenly stopped moving, stood still, and maintained his punching posture.
Buzz! Buzz!
Huge shock waves came one after another, destroying Gray Fog's skin, burning his tissues, and blowing away his internal organs. Finally, Gray Fog was blasted into a skeleton by the corpse driver's shock waves and fell down with a loud bang.
On top of a damaged high-rise building, Viola brought out two survival capsules.
Chi.
One of the blood-stained survival capsules was opened, and Lin Xian struggled to climb out and lay on the ground. He was breathing rapidly and trembling all over. The severe mental overload caused him to begin to have hallucinations and his vision was blurred.
“Viola…” Lin Xian looked weak and shouted in a very low voice: “Is she alive…”
【No life response.】
[Start the second AED procedure]
Sizzle!
A bright light flickered. Inside another cryochamber, Chu Yan's face was pale, blood was constantly flowing out of her mouth and nose, but she still had no reaction. At the last moment, he took Chu Yan's cryochamber out of the Black Star Forge and tried to save her consciousness, but the result did not develop as he expected.
Lin Xian sighed softly and tried to stand up, but found that his body was completely out of control and his head was splitting. He could only let Viola drag him up from the ground and let him lean against Chu Yan's freezer, looking at the Dawn City that was already in ruins.
"This is the West Street position of the 7th Division of the Garrison Army. Our air defense array's energy source has been cut off and our ammunition has been exhausted! I repeat, the ammunition is exhausted!"
"Chen Weiguo, Zhao Gang, immediately move your Fourth Division and Eleventh Division to the riverfront in front of City Wall No. 2!"
"All special operations teams, gather at the starport and central tower to protect the city ring!"
"Central Street urgently needs a medical team, hurry, the injuries here are serious!"
"The convoys of the Dawnwatch Alliance and Iron Wall were dispersed in the Upper South District. Everyone, retreat to the East District!"
"Don't give up, the city ring of Dawn City is still shining!"
"Lin Xian, Lin Xian, can you hear me? Our train is surrounded, and now we need..."
"Lin Xian, where are you?"
"Captain Lin!"
In the headphones, the sounds from various channels are noisy, with commands, shouts, roars, cries, and requests for help. The human voices converge in the radio wave frequencies, like a symphony from a desperate civilization engraved on a phonograph.
16:45, the sky is still dark.
The dark tide hangs over Dawn City like a never-ending haze.
The once prosperous smart city, Night City, has now turned into a purgatory on earth. The brilliant holographic sky has long been extinguished, replaced by billowing smoke, like a pot of boiling asphalt, thick and suffocating, covering the entire sky. It has been drizzling above the sky for two days and two nights. Occasionally, the wind will tear apart a piece of the smoke, revealing not the blue sky, but blood-red thunderclouds. The burning dust reflects the flames in the distance that have not yet been extinguished.
High in the sky, the wreckage of several crashed airships was still hanging between the skyscrapers, with broken steel cables and tilted hulls, like giant beasts nailed to a cross.
On the other side of City Wall No. 2, the direction of the inner city was still filled with flames, artillery fire lit up the sky, and the entire Dawn City's battle line was divided into two, and the human line was still shrinking.
Beneath the ruins, there are young corpses lying, and in the flames, there are immortal ashes burning.
There were dark clouds in the sky, flashing thunder and fire all over the sky. The outline of a terrifying giant snake in the clouds was faintly visible under the lightning, and its scale was even larger than that of Silent City.
All the strange creatures were becoming more violent. In the darkness, it seemed as if endless creatures were crawling out from the three star abysses, devouring humans and the Dawn City.
In the distance, the corpse driver whose upper torso had been shattered by the raging gray fog was now surrounded by black fog. Under the desperate gazes of countless people, he returned to his original state. This time, the corpse driver did not go towards the direction of city wall No. 2, but walked towards the ruined building where Lin Xian was under the artillery fire.
Boom, boom, every step shook the earth and mountains, carrying with it a destructive and oppressive aura.
"Don't let large strange creatures into the city, the corpse chasers will use them to restore their vitality!" In the cockpit of the Suzaku, which was currently engaged in a bloody battle with the Sutured S-class, Bai Ye and Su Rui saw the corpse chaser walking towards Lin Xian, and shouted while waving the plasma diffraction sword.
At the west side of the city wall, the dark blue Xuanwu used a sword to split the abyss worm that drilled out of the ground. Then the two brothers Qin Yue and Qin Chuan raised their heads and looked at the strange creatures pouring in from the gap in the city wall like a tide and the various large-scale strange creatures in the darkness behind. The two brothers' bloodshot eyes met.
"elder brother!"
"bring it on!"
Empty! As the Qin brothers shouted in anger, the nuclear power center in the chest of the Xuanwu burst into a sharp buzzing sound, and plasma beams erupted crazily. Then the two of them waved their right arms at the same time, took a few steps forward, and directly crossed the gap in the wall of the strange tide with an unstoppable force!
…
"Teacher Ye."
Ye Lan, who had been standing in the command center of the Twin Star Tower for a day and a night, heard a weak voice in his earphone.
"Lin Xian, where are you?" Ye Lan's voice still sounded calm, and it seemed that everyone could feel an unyielding strength from this old and firm voice.
"Teacher Ye, can darkness really be afraid?" In the ruins, Lin Xian felt the S-level chaos after the rampage. Looking at the corpse-chasing man who was coming, he knew that his mental power might have attracted some attention from this dark creature.
Ye Lan heard Lin Xian's voice and replied, "We cannot use human thinking to understand a civilization. From the macroscopic perspective of the universe, whether it is ants or humans at the top of the food chain, they all have survival crises. This is the same for both high and low civilizations."
"But the resistance we can offer seems insignificant in front of such a civilization. Does that mean we don't have the power to resist at all?" Lin Xian looked at the towering shadow approaching. Although he was weak, he did not seem to have much fear of death. He was more unwilling and angry.
Ye Lan responded patiently, "The chain of suspicion between civilizations cannot be broken. This is a basic axiom of cosmic sociology. Just like a hunter lurking in a dark forest, every civilization has to regard other beings as threats - because survival is the first need of civilization, and the total amount of matter in the universe remains unchanged. The difference between high civilization and low civilization is nothing more than the difference in the range of a hunting rifle. Ants cannot understand why humans want to destroy anthills, and we cannot understand why dark creatures want to destroy human civilization in this way, but one thing is certain."
"What?" Lin Xian asked.
"They cannot effectively and completely destroy us, at least not in the short term. Or maybe they have some purpose, but all this just shows that they don't have a God-like understanding of us."
Lin Xian listened to Ye Lan's words, looked at the corpse-drivers approaching, and responded weakly leaning against Chu Yan's freezer.
“That makes sense…”
Lin Xian's consciousness gradually blurred. He tried his best to open his eyes, and saw the Silent City burning in the sky and the Iron Guard Brigade's aerospace battleship falling.
He saw above the Twin Star Towers, the last fleets and soldiers of the Iron Guard Brigade and the garrison army were coming one after another to protect the shining city ring.
He remembered what he said when he said goodbye to Chu Zhaonan.
“When I was young, I worked as a mechanical engineer.”
"I remember when I first entered Star City and saw the city ring, I thought humans were truly great. They could actually create such a gorgeous mechanical structure. As a beautiful landmark, it can not only drive in the air, but also send signals to planetary spacecraft for space orbit positioning. It's a pity that I will never see such a civilized project again."
He remembered that when the human leader spoke these words, his tone contained not only a hint of reminiscence, but also a vigorous and positive vision.
But at this time, he saw a large number of strange creatures wantonly destroying and slaughtering in the city. The Star City Orbital Station became a ruin, the aerial track completely collapsed, millions of humans fought desperately in the city, and countless convoys disappeared and died in the strange tide like bubbles. Humans were like ants in front of these creatures.
He saw the center of the neon district, in a huge sinkhole, where Bai Ye and Su Rui were driving the Suzaku and fighting a desperate battle with the stitched S-class. Fire was burning, and the earth was shaking. The battle went until the plasma diffraction sword of the Suzaku broke. The couple resolutely started their mecha and jumped onto the strange body, using full-pressure diffraction incineration to completely burn the strange body to ashes, along with the Suzaku and themselves.
He saw the gap in the No. 1 city wall in the west of the city. The one-armed Xuanwu was holding a high-frequency blade chain sword and kneeling on one knee to block the gap in the city wall. In front of this giant mecha, there were countless A-level special-level weird body corpses. The two nuclear-powered engines on the chest of the Xuanwu had long been extinguished. The golden coolant in the metal frame of the chest armor kept dripping, and it gathered with the blood of countless sacrificed soldiers, like an unshakable steel Great Wall...
He heard the voices coming from the headset, Chen Sixuan's shouts, KIKI's questions, Jian Xuwei's instructions, Shi Diyuan's roar, Jiang Yun's rescue...
He heard Ding Junyi saying something, along with the voices of Xiaoyuan and Miao Lu, and heard the engine of the Infinite Train Giant Whale 03E heavy gas turbine locomotive roaring in his ears.
Or maybe he couldn't hear clearly and there was a buzzing in his ears.
Lin Xian's bloodshot eyes slowly focused at this moment. He saw that the dark evil god that blocked out the sky had arrived at the ruins in front of the tall building, and his empty, abyssal gaze was fixed in his direction.
At this moment, endless darkness invaded, and Lin Xian's mental strength was like a flickering candle flame. Facing this mountain-like dark creature, Lin Xian was so small that he was almost not worth mentioning.
Cough cough.
Lin Xian looked calmly at the corpse driver who made the whole city despair, blood foam kept flowing from the corners of his mouth. After passing through the gray fog and Chu Yan, he seemed to be able to sense that staring gaze.
He couldn't interpret the meaning of the gaze, just like he couldn't peek into the dark thoughts even after the nerves were connected, but Lin Xian could feel it.
There was a strong sense of doubt in that look.
In the command screen of the Twin Star Tower, Ye Lan looked at the crumbling building where the corpse chaser and Lin Xian were, and said, "In the vast universe, civilization is both the brightest light and the most dangerous shadow. We are both hunters and prey."
"The attack is accompanied by testing. They are using higher-level creatures to test the range and power of human hunting rifles step by step. Does this behavior also mean that they are afraid of unknown forces?" Lin Xian responded slowly: "Just like what you told me, a bite from an insect, or a poison dart frog with deadly toxins."
"That guy from the Crimson World said that dark creatures are perfect life forms, they are angels." Lin Xian looked at the corpse driver: "I wonder if angels... can feel pain and fear."
Buzz!
In the smoke of the ruins, four scarlet lights slowly lit up, aiming at Lin Xian and the entire area where he was.
Lin Xian looked up and tried to say something, but he had no strength left. Everything in front of him became blurry and the red light seemed to be the last dusk.
Viola stood in front of Lin Xian.
[I will do my best to protect you. It is a pleasure to cooperate with you, Mr. Lin.]
Sizzle!
A bright light flickered and a faint AED sound rang out behind him. At this moment, Lin Xian suddenly felt a weak mental force like a gentle hand, gently lifting up his heavy brain.
Lin Xian opened his mouth, then looked in the direction of the corpse driver, with the corners of his lips slightly raised.
He regained some strength, so he shouted.
“Grace.”
This wasn't really talking to the communicator, it was more like shouting into deep space.
After a brief silence, a familiar voice rang in Lin Xian's ears.
【I am here.】
At this moment, located at an altitude of 52,660 km in the blue planet's geostationary orbit, the 12-kilometer-diameter near-Earth planetary defense platform is quietly rotating in the dark deep space.
A brain-computer consciousness transmission device invented by Shinji Mochizuki was wrapped in a flashing bullet and connected to Grace's communication interface. This forbidden object born in the darkness broke the signal transmission blocked by the sky curtain of the same energy frequency, allowing Lin Xian to successfully contact Grace and making Lin Xian the only person who could control this near-Earth planet defense platform on the ground.
At this time, Grace had completed the system takeover of the near-ground defense platform, restarted all subsystems, and was waiting for Lin Xian's call.
"Since the Day of Revelation, humanity's space power has been silenced."
In Dawn City, on the rooftop of a ruined high-rise building, Lin Xian struggled to stand up with the help of the freezer compartment, looking unyieldingly at the four scarlet eyes of the corpse driver.
"So, you must have never tried... the most powerful destructive force condensed by human industrial civilization."
Buzz!
The corpse driver's scarlet eyes lit up violently, and he was coldly ready to kill Lin Xian.
At this moment, Lin Xian's eyes became fierce, and he shouted defiantly with the strength deep in his throat!
"Nantianmen, open fire!"
Above the no-man's sky, a 12-kilometer-diameter annular energy storage array suddenly lit up with a dazzling blue arc of light. 24 "Zhulong"-class confined particle beam arrays were like unfolded wings of judgment, silently turning their muzzles in the vacuum, and turning the high-energy particle muzzles that were originally supposed to be aimed at the deep space of the universe to destroy asteroids towards the direction of the Asia-Pacific region of the blue planet. The deep space radar synchronized the coordinate parameters to the sight, and the particle acceleration ring burst into a bright white light like the birth of a star.
In an instant, the core of the Nantianmen high-energy particle cannon burst out with a light strong enough to tear the retina. A plasma torrent with a diameter of more than 500 meters gathered in the space into a spear of divine punishment that pierced through the sky and the earth. The atmosphere was ionized at the moment of contact, forming a red vortex with a diameter of several kilometers. The clouds were not penetrated but directly vaporized, and the thunderstorm clouds along the way were like cotton wool torn into pieces by invisible giant hands.
When the concentrated torrent hit the surface of Dawn City, time seemed to stand still for a moment.
The entire Dawn City seemed to be illuminated by the sun. The billions of strange tides in the sky and on the ground, the muzzles of the guns of the soldiers fighting back desperately, and the faces of the survivors who joined the war were all swallowed up by the white light. The dark shadow covering the entire city was torn apart in an instant, and the shadow was infinitely stretched.
What followed was silent annihilation. With the corpse driver as the center, all matter within a radius of three kilometers was instantly evaporated into elementary particles. The shock wave spread in a perfect spherical shape, and high-rise buildings along the way were shattered like sand castles. Those huge strange entities, whether they were A-level or special-level, with trunks of hundreds of meters or kilometers in length were decomposed into carbonized fragments. The ground melted into a glassy state at a temperature of billions of degrees, and the boiling silicate magma was lifted into crystallized waves hundreds of meters high by the shock wave.
The energy aftermath lasted for a full 17 seconds.
All communication bands in the city were interrupted, and the shock wave caused countless people to temporarily lose their vision and hearing.
When the light beam dissipated, only a meteorite crater with a diameter of five kilometers remained on the earth. The corpse-driver who could recover infinitely gathered all the remaining red fog and defense force fields, but now even the ashes had disappeared. Also disappearing were the ruined building and the two survival capsules.
In the city, crimson plasma flames covered the sky like the aurora, illuminating the endless darkness.
On the command ship, when Lu Tianye rushed out of the glare and looked outside the bridge, all the artillery fire between heaven and earth stopped at this moment.
The soldiers on the front lines and the city walls who were fighting desperately put down their arms that were blocking the light and struggled to look. They only heard dense rustling sounds in their ears, which sounded like the tide receding. When they looked with searchlights again, all the strange creatures had disappeared into the darkness and fled. Only mountains of monster corpses were left inside and outside the entire city.
Twin Star Tower, Ye Lan came to the observation deck outside the city ring. The thunderclouds in the sky dissipated, the smoke cleared, and the three dark tides of the sky quickly receded.
To the west of Dawn City, where the war was most intense and brutal, the golden sunset was like a sharp sword, splitting the smoke that enveloped Dawn City all night. The light was not dazzling, but instead had an almost gentle cruelty, dyeing the ruins of Dawn City amber. The broken glass curtain walls reflected thousands of tiny points of light, like an embellishment of a brilliant elegy.
On the city wall, a soldier from the Iron Guard Brigade released his gun. The blood on his face dried up into a brown map, and he looked towards the setting sun silently.
Everyone stood quietly in place. Inside the underground shelter, refugees covered in dust began to walk out of the passages one after another. They saw countless cold corpses covered in dust on the streets, in the ruins, and under the city walls. At this moment, they seemed to be caressed by the warm sunset, bringing comfort to those lost souls.
17:02.
In the dawn center of the Tianjiqionggu Strait, the European Storm Alliance in Reykjavik, the Phoenix in Ushuaia in South America, the Alaska United Front in North America, the Noah and Republic Shelter Islands in Oceania... as well as the survivors' shelters struggling to survive all over the world and the countless convoys driving towards the dawn, a frequency sounded in all corners at the same time.
“Sizzle…”
"This is the highest command center of Dawn City. I am Ye Lan."
"On behalf of the Order of Phoenix, I officially announce to all human civilization that after 25 hours of hard fighting, the defense of Dawn City ended at 16:57 today. With the fearless bloody battle of 5 million survivors including the Garrison Army, the Iron Guard Brigade, the North American United Front, the Infinite Alliance, the Dawn Watchers Alliance, the Common Alliance, and the Iron Barrier, we successfully repelled the offensive attempts from the Star Abysses No. 5, 7, and 8, and annihilated four S-level creatures including the Star Abyss Corpse Driver No. 5, Creature No. 11 [Earth Surge], Creature No. 16 [Sky Touch], and Creature No. 18 [Wanderer]. We also annihilated countless special-level and A-level weird bodies, and successfully pushed the expansion tide of the Star Abyss back to its original position..."
"At the same time, in this battle, we have successfully mastered the dark energy conversion technology that can completely block the invasion of darkness. This will allow humans to survive in the darkness, and we will regain survival resources such as planting and water. For this, the Phoenix Society, on behalf of all survivors around the world, would like to thank the pioneers such as Colonel Chu Jing of the [Civilization Pioneer], Lin Xian of the Infinite Alliance, and Chu Yan of the North American United Front for their outstanding contributions to mankind."
"This is a war of milestone significance for mankind since the Day of Revelation. It means that we have gained the opportunity to break the active balance in the fight against darkness for the first time, and it has bought precious time for all mankind to deal with darkness..."
“In the vast universe, civilization is both the brightest light and the most dangerous shadow. We are both hunters and prey. Peace between civilizations is always based on the possibility of mutual destruction.”
"And next, let us follow the dawn, remain silent in the darkness, accumulate flames, and seek the ultimate power that human civilization has not yet broken, launch a struggle against this destructive crisis, and start..."
"The Era of Deterrence!"
The flames of the ruins of Dawn City burned for several days and nights. Under the surveillance of the Night Walkers, the expansion speed of Xingyuan slowed down significantly and returned to the initial expansion speed of the Apocalypse. As a central city, the Phoenix Society did not give up Dawn City. Lu Tianye took the initiative to lead the garrison to guard it personally.
In the days that followed, the survivors evacuated to the north and east, while some stayed behind to join the garrison or move into the city to help rebuild it.
Thousands of construction vehicles shoveled through the ruins, dust drifted on countless cold corpses, and headed to the northern fields. The number of Dawn Watchers Alliance almost doubled, with a lot of women and children added, including most of the members from the Iron Barrier. Xu Yufei, who was regarded as a fence-sitter, fled Dawn City first, but was the first to embark on the journey back to Dawn City for support, and died on the eve of sunset.
There was also Lei Zhen, the captain of the Common Alliance who had a bad temper and loved to curse, Luo Heng, the leader of the Windtalkers team who liked to travel light, and the arrogant Jian Zeyang and his Steel Sun team, which was formed by the poor survivors of the outer city. They were all buried under the city wall...
Ten days later.
At Yongcheng Port Orbital Station, the renovated Infinity towed 10 improved deep-sea compartment carriages, equipped with ocean tractors and storm detection devices manufactured by Silent City, and led a team of dozens of elite people, roaring their engines along the direction of the ocean section of the circumstellar orbit.
Heading towards the Pacific Ocean!
(End of Volume 4)
(End of this chapter)
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