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Chapter 184 Retreat Battle
"Quickly!" Xiao Ran pressed the detonation switch with one hand, his face even more stern than the cold light in the room.

"Guard the back door, don't let those soldiers chase us into the passage!"

Behind him were two survivors, both of whom were key members honed in previous firefights. Their equipment consisted of only a few modified guns and grenades, with their spare ammunition relying entirely on the stockpile that Han Xue had secretly collected.

At the end of the corridor, military special forces were advancing slowly in two groups, their footsteps distinct, and someone was giving orders in low voices using tactical hand gestures.

Xiao Ran pointed to a hidden compartment in the corner, where a person bent down, pulled up the metal cover, and forcefully turned the red handle attached to the bottom.

Another person reached behind the overhead cable, pulled aside the camouflage cloth, and pressed the button with a snap.

"Wait three more seconds." Xiao Ran straightened up, gritted his teeth, and glanced at the stopwatch on his wrist.

Suddenly, a blinding flash pierced through the gap in the passageway. The next second, the smoke grenades detonated on the outer ring burst forth with white mist, along with the flashbangs, exploding on the stairs and windows on both sides.

Chaos erupted outside the compound in an instant, with explosions mixed with coughs and falls, and the military briefly lost its bearings.

The entire perimeter of the base was instantly swallowed by thick fog, and even the laser beams were no longer visible outside the windows.

"Now!" Xiao Ran waved his hand and led his men to retreat to the right passage.

He used a chair as cover to signal the survivor squad to follow.

One by one, soldiers from the rear ranks rushed in. As soon as they peeked out, they were forced back by the crossfire from Xiao Ran and the survivors.

Xiao Ran tossed a grenade down the corridor, the explosion and the smoke behind him completely shattering the special forces team's vision.

"Hurry! The second door on the left around the corner, don't fight them head-on!"

Xiao Ran growled in a low voice. The well-trained survivors split into two groups, dodging the incoming bullets.

The military clearly hadn't expected so many defensive measures to be in place at the base, and their offensive was temporarily hampered.

The third survivor raised his gun and fired a few shots towards the end of the corridor. When his magazine was empty, he immediately retreated to the back to resupply.

Xiao Ran called over another person to fill in, and they kicked away a loose metal plate on the ground. "Escape route, make sure no one is left behind."

Meanwhile, Lu Zhao, carrying hastily packed equipment, pressed himself against the wall of the underground passage.

He pulled out a spare communication terminal, with a listening device plugged into his ear. A string of encrypted information from the external network flashed by as a green bar through the decoding software.

"Reaper Squad, please be aware that the target, Apple of Eden, may be escaping into the underground passage. All personnel should be alert for targets with abnormal body temperature and must not harm living beings."

“Apple of Eden…” Lu Zhao’s hand trembled, and his heart skipped a beat.

He paused for a moment, copied the instructions into memory, and then intercepted another call.

“Target number X03, live subjects preferred – all data and serum can be processed later.”

As Lu Zhao hurried to keep up with Su Wanqing and the others, his heart began to pound.

The serum was clearly the focus of everyone's attention, but they weren't in a hurry to search for the drugs. Instead, they restricted the main access route at every turn, focusing on the girl with the child's voice rather than the drugs or equipment.

“They want him alive,” Lu Zhaochao whispered to Su Wanqing. “The target isn’t the serum, it’s Tong Yin herself.”

Su Wanqing frowned, remained silent, and quickened her pace, heading deeper underground.

The gunshots outside faded into the distance, while the clanging of metal echoed from behind the steel gate, only to be blocked by layers of cover.

Xiao Ran led the last squad, discarding the empty magazines. Observing the movement of the special forces soldiers, he led them to a corner of the small building.

Faint lights occasionally flickered through the smoke. The military began to restore order; the aftershocks of the flashbangs lasted only a dozen seconds.

"They also brought thermal imaging," the survivor following behind panted. "The smoke won't hold for long."

Xiao Ran glanced at the thermal probes on the ground and whispered, "Then let them chase the void; the real body must leave."

The squad retreated while firing. Two survivors marked the corner of the wall with marker rounds and then turned to crawl into a side alley.

The old buildings in the base had too many ventilation shafts and obstacles, so Xiao Ran had already drawn up an evacuation route.

The special forces soldiers followed up the stairs, but suddenly stepped on pre-set homemade ammunition, and the passage was forced to stop again after the explosion.

Lu Zhao restored the signal within the golden thirty seconds behind the fire door and continued listening.

Military report: "Heat source locked, area 7, target body temperature curve uploaded, automatic tracking mode activated."

The system then added: "The order reiterates—'Apple of Eden' must be captured first, serum second."

Behind Su Wanqing, Lin Che leaned against the wall, his face ashen. He was breathing heavily and trembling slightly, holding the girl with the childlike voice protectively against his knees.

The little girl's collar was soaked with sweat, and her face turned red and white intermittently.

Su Wanqing took out the USB drive left by Han Xue, found a secluded corner, and opened the spare laptop.

A system pop-up window asked for a long, special password. She thought for a moment and tried the first few encryption methods she knew, but they were all blocked.

Lu Zhao squatted down. "Passwords aren't like simple characters. Anything Han Xue leaves behind requires special verification."

Su Wanqing stared at the screen, then suddenly glanced at the little girl: "Can you say a sentence? Say it like I do." She pressed an audio command, pulled the girl with the childlike voice to her side, and whispered, "Try to read it along with me."

The little girl's lips moved, her voice hoarse. She uttered a few words indistinctly, and the USB drive's indicator light flashed green and then went out.

The system pop-up window redirected to the voiceprint acquisition interface, prompting "Secondary authorization is missing, target voiceprint needs to be supplemented".

"Han Xue had already prepared a backup plan," Lu Zhao said in a low voice, pulling the laptop. Su Wanqing's face tightened, and she put the USB drive back into her pocket. She turned to stare at the girl with the childlike voice, and could only put it down for now, preparing to think of another way.

Lin Che then bent down to draw the child's voice closer, his breathing a little unsteady. He raised his hand and placed it on the girl's forehead; a tiny blue-green light entered her temple, and the little girl suddenly trembled twice, her breathing quickening.

Lin Che gritted his teeth, his vest was soaked with sweat, and his left arm twitched slightly, but he refused to let go.

The girl with the childlike voice twitched her fingers, and her face gradually regained its color from its paleness.

Lin Che's voice was low: "It's okay, I'll be fine after a while."

Lu Zhao, clutching the laptop, turned to look at their hiding place and whispered, "Can you still hold on?"

Lin Che didn't speak, but blinked twice. His blue and green eyes had dimmed, as if he was forcing himself to stay awake.

Su Wanqing looked at the tremors felt on the surrounding walls and estimated the delay caused by the explosion.

She pulled her backpack up higher and said to Lu Zhao, "They must be carrying thermal imaging tracking equipment. It won't be long before we find out everything."

Lu Zhao pointed to the terminal map, "The team needs to spread out; they can't all follow the same route."

He handed the small controller to Su Wanqing, "Turn right at the next alleyway, and meet up again in front of the old elevator shaft."

Xiao Ran and his men then crossed another section of abandoned corridor. At that moment, special forces soldiers located them using infrared sensors in the secondary passage, and a gun fired at them.

The survivors crouched low and fought back, but Xiao Ran used an iron bar to knock over the corridor barriers and retreated.

Lu Zhao's voice came through the communicator intermittently: "'The Reaper' has taken over the highest command. All satellite and thermal images are for capturing X03 bodies with abnormal body temperatures, which is to put it bluntly, the child voice in your hands."

Xiao Ran paused for a moment, then gestured to the people behind him: "Be careful and take cover. Don't look at the heat source probe. There are spare cover items in the gas supply pipeline. Use them if you can change the temperature."

The survivor team shut their mouths and took a deep breath, using the remaining underground pipes to create a safe distance of more than ten meters.

The soldiers who followed later found that the temperature difference between the front and back had disappeared, and they were temporarily unsure of their direction.

The complex underground pipe network gave a few people a chance to catch their breath.

Su Wanqing led Lin Che and Tong Yin down to the lower level, and when they reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, they encountered Lu Zhao again.

He was holding the bag with both hands, and hadn't even had time to wipe the sweat from his brow.

"The route is clear. The third explosive point outside will solidify in ten minutes. If we delay a bit longer, it should distract them a lot."

Lu Zhao wiped a stain off his face.

As Xiao Ran approached the last corner, he instructed one person to stay behind and guard the entrance.

Over the radio, the military reported: "Outer perimeter targets lost; residual images of the base's heat source are present; we are re-comparing them."

He threw out his last flashbang, hurling it forcefully into the nearest corner of the wall to further delay the military convoy.

The team split into two groups and retreated to their respective pre-designated safe points. On the way, Xiao Ran muttered to himself, "In terms of equipment, they're all much better than us. As long as the devices for locating children's voices are still effective, we can hold them off for a few minutes at most."

Su Wanqing brought up the plan again in the corridor: "Lin Che, how much longer can you hold on? Tong Yin's condition is not stable yet, we must persevere for a while longer."

Lin Che lowered his head and gripped Tong Yin's shoulders tightly. Energy surged from his palm into the girl's body; Tong Yin felt hot and her body was visibly trembling.

Lin Che shielded her from the cold wind with his body, his voice low and hoarse: "We can push it a little longer."

Su Wanqing bit her lip and looked at the dilapidated security door beside her.

"Lu Zhao, are there any spare rescue kits near the exit?"

Lu Zhao nodded, threw out the last roll of first aid bandage from his arms, and stuffed in two water bottles.

Tong Yin opened her eyes, looked at Lin Che for a while, her voice soft and sweet, without saying a word.

The team retreated step by step into the deep tunnel. The smell of medicine in the air was fading and almost disappeared, but a sense of anxious oppression swept down from above.

Occasionally, military commanders could be heard checking the location of heat sources over the radio, and the Reaper's orders were repeated: X03 must be captured, it must not be damaged, and there must be no mistakes.

Lu Zhao reorganized the information in his hands. Since the target was not the serum, the characteristic of the child's voice and body temperature became their only clue.

He whispered to Xiao Ran, "They're using thermal imaging rather than facial recognition to locate children's voices. The equipment is too new; we've never used it before."

Xiao Ran responded by taking out his personal infrared countermeasure device and throwing it into the corner, briefly disrupting the instrument.

“These people had done their homework beforehand; they clearly didn’t come in a hurry.”

Ten minutes later, the dispersed evacuation team successfully disappeared into the outer perimeter of the base.

Su Wanqing, along with Lin Che, Tong Yin, and Lu Zhao, met at the exit. Amidst the chaotic panting and the pursuing footsteps of special forces soldiers, large searchlights swept across the ruins, but it was no longer possible to distinguish which parts were the real bodies.

The girl with the childlike voice calmed down, and her little hand gripped the cap of the medicine bottle that Lin Che handed her.

Lin Che's forehead was covered in sweat, and his voice was hoarse: "Get the fever down quickly, don't let anything else happen."

Su Wanqing pointed ahead, "The safe point is still two hundred meters away, speed."

The chaos created by the smoke and flashbangs gradually dissipated, and the shouts of the pursuers could be heard from afar.

Ahead lay the final security checkpoint. The team quickened their pace and rushed into the safe house outside the base.