Chapter 34
Scorched earth, heat waves, twisted metal skeletons emitting smoke. The aftermath of the explosion at S-114 Base shattered the swamp's dead silence, only to be quickly swallowed by a deeper silence. The air was filled with ozone, scorched flesh, and some... indescribable, sweet, fishy smell that seemed to come from another dimension.
A slender figure stood silently on a piece of half-melted alloy wreckage.
Chu Li.
She wore a gray suit that was too large and clearly ill-fitting, as if it had been stripped from a fallen soldier. The cuffs and trouser legs were rolled up several times, revealing her thin, pale wrists and ankles. Her small face was stained with a hint of black dust, but it couldn't hide the coldness and... playfulness that was completely inconsistent with her age.
She looked at the newly formed ruins beneath her feet, at the huge, bottomless charred pit. There was no fear or shock in her glass-like eyes, only an almost cruel scrutiny.
"What a... grand fireworks display," she whispered to herself, her voice clear and crisp, yet tinged with cold sarcasm. "To open a broken door, so many lives were lost, and in the end... bang! Nothing left."
She tilted her head, as if listening to a sound that didn't exist.
"You say, is she dead?" she asked, to the air.
There was a brief pause, as if he was actually waiting for an answer.
"Hmm... I don't think it's that easy either." Chu Li curled his lips, as if he was a little disappointed, but also as if he had expected it. "The scourge will last for thousands of years. Especially for someone like her..."
Her gaze darted toward the center of the explosion. Space remained unstable there, the remaining energy twitching like transparent tentacles, emitting a dangerous aura. Any ordinary person approaching would likely be torn apart in an instant.
But Chu Li just narrowed his eyes slightly.
She could "see" more. She saw the scattered energy tracks that ordinary instruments couldn't detect, saw the fragile "scars" left after space was violently torn apart and then barely healed, and even... vaguely sensed the aftermath of an extremely faint, yet extremely familiar spatial imprint.
The mark belonging to Chen Mengzhou was faint, but it had not completely dissipated.
"I'm so lucky." She sneered, jumped off the wreckage, and stepped on the still warm scorched earth with her bare feet (she seemed to never wear shoes), but she didn't notice it at all.
She began to wander through the ruins, like a child picking up snails in a garden after rain, leisurely, even a little curious. But wherever her eyes swept, she saw charred body parts, broken instruments, and twisted metal.
Occasionally, she would stop, crouch down, and extend her slender fingers to touch certain areas where the energy residue was particularly strong. As her fingertips passed over, the restless energy would strangely calm down, as if tamed.
"What an ugly way of eating," she commented on the still sizzling remains of a spool of energy, as if she could sense the energy plunder and devouring that had taken place there. "Is this the reincarnation of a starving ghost?"
She continued to move forward, her direction clear, which was exactly the direction indicated by the remaining spatial mark.
The swamp's mud and radioactive wastewater seemed to automatically avoid her feet, unable to touch her at all. To her, that daunting environment seemed like an insignificant backdrop.
After walking for about ten minutes, she stopped after passing through a patch of reeds that had been flattened by the shock wave.
Not far ahead, a charred figure was half-buried under the flying soil and broken bricks, motionless, with only an extremely weak breath of life like a candle in the wind.
It’s Chen Mengzhou.
She was seriously injured, unconscious, and her breathing was so weak that it was almost unnoticeable.
Chu Li slowly walked over, squatted beside her, held up his chin, and looked at Shen Mengzhou's miserable condition carefully and almost harshly.
"Tsk, what a mess," she commented, her tone unclear whether it was concern or gloating. "Isn't he a good fighter? How did he turn into a roasted sweet potato?"
She stretched out her finger and poked Chen Mengzhou's burnt shoulder, neither lightly nor heavily.
Chen Mengzhou didn't react at all.
Chu Li's fingertips rested on the charred skin, and an extremely weak, pure and gentle spiritual energy, like the thinnest silk thread, penetrated into Chen Mengzhou's body.
After a moment, she withdrew her hand and curled her lips.
"A lot of his internal organs are shattered, and his energy core is about to shut down... He's not far from death."
She stood up and looked around. In the distance, she could faintly hear the roar of helicopter engines—Foundation reinforcements were approaching.
A hint of impatience appeared on Chu Li's face.
"Really...you only cause me trouble."
She squatted down again, this time with a slightly more serious expression. She stretched out her hands and placed them lightly on top of Shen Mengzhou's body.
Close your eyes.
A spiritual power that was far stronger and vaster than the previous exploration, yet still gentle, flowed out of her body like moonlight and slowly poured into Chen Mengzhou's broken body.
It's not a treatment, it's more like... nourishment and awakening.
The nearly exhausted spatial energy core in Chen Mengzhou's body, like a seed that had been thirsty and finally found rain, began to greedily absorb the pure spiritual power, and repaired and reignited itself at a speed visible to the naked eye!
The necrotic tissue on her charred body began to fall away, revealing new, tender skin beneath. The broken bones made subtle creaking sounds as they began to connect and heal.
This process seems slow, but it is actually very fast.
Chu Li's face turned slightly pale, obviously he was exhausted.
When she felt that Chen Mengzhou's life breath had stabilized and began to absorb energy on its own, she immediately withdrew her hand and patted it as if in disgust.
"That's enough, you starving bastard, you can handle the rest yourself." She muttered and stood up.
The roar of the helicopter was getting closer.
Chu Li glanced at the still unconscious Chen Mengzhou, then glanced at the sky, and a trace of extremely complicated emotions flashed in his glass-like eyes.
There is hatred, dependence, ridicule, and a barely perceptible hint of... worry?
In the end, all these emotions settled into a bottomless indifference.
She pulled something out of her wide pocket—a small, ancient compass made of some kind of black metal. The compass needle didn't point north or south, but instead spun madly and irregularly, its surface covered in distorted symbols she had never seen before.
If Chen Mengzhou was awake at this moment and had seen the information in the "Prophet" shelter, he might be able to recognize that the style of this compass is surprisingly similar to the symbol of Kronos!
Chu Li gently placed the compass on Chen Mengzhou's chest.
"Here, a gift."
"You said... they 'took' this from you a long time ago? Now it's back to its rightful owner."
Her tone was nonchalant, as if she was simply returning a borrowed pencil.
"Although... it doesn't seem to be of any use now." She added with a hint of inexplicable irony.
After doing all this, she did not stop, turned around, walked barefoot across the scorched earth, and walked in the opposite direction of the helicopter.
The figure flashed a few times and then disappeared without a trace as if it merged into the mist of the swamp.
As if it had never appeared.
Only the unconscious Shen Mengzhou was left, with the strange black compass spinning wildly on his chest.
And, in the distant horizon, the roar of death is getting closer and closer, representing a new round of hunting.
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