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Chapter 216 Crossing the Ruins
Su Wanqing climbed out of the subway ventilation shaft, her boots making a crisp sound as they stepped on the cracked asphalt.

A pungent smell, a mixture of burnt, rotten, and some kind of chemical odor, filled her nostrils, causing her to frown.

The sight before her made her stop in her tracks. This place, once the city's most bustling commercial district, was now nothing but a concrete and steel graveyard.

The skyscrapers, like bones broken by giants, lean against each other at bizarre angles, forming dark and dangerous passageways.

The street beneath my feet was divided by a huge, bottomless crack, like a gaping wound in the earth.

Beyond the ruins, on the distant horizon, a towering signal tower stands alone, its blue light flashing rhythmically at the top, the only source of light in this desolate landscape, and also the end of her journey.

She didn't linger for long, and began to move along the edge of a relatively intact building.

She had walked less than 500 meters when a low buzzing sound came from above. Su Wanqing immediately dodged behind a toppled stone pillar and looked up.

Three black military reconnaissance drones, arranged in a triangular formation, were hovering at low altitude. The probes on their fuselages flashed red lights as they systematically scanned every inch of the land below in an crisscrossing pattern.

Their goal is very clear: themselves, or rather, the core of energy within themselves.

She needed to find a place to hide. Her gaze swept around and finally landed on a half-collapsed department store on her left.

The glass doors of the mall were completely shattered, revealing a dark interior.

Su Wanqing crouched down, quickly crossed a small open space, and slipped into the mall.

The situation inside was worse than outside. The ground was covered with a thick layer of broken glass and dust, and every step made a teeth-grinding "crunch".

Collapsed shelves, scattered merchandise, and mannequin mutilations intertwined to form a complex maze.

She carefully avoided the clutter that might make noise and walked deeper into the mall.

Just then, she noticed something unusual between the ceiling and the walls.

Those were spiderwebs that emitted a faint glow, as if woven from fluorescent fibers.

They covered most of the ceiling, exuding an eerie beauty in the darkness.

Su Wanqing stopped in her tracks, remembering a mutant mentioned in the information.

As she was about to back away, several enormous spider-like creatures crawled out from a web overhead.

Their bodies were like a mixture of metal and flesh, with red light flashing at the joints of their eight legs, reacting to the slightest tremor beneath her feet.

The drone was outside, the mutants were inside. She was trapped.

What to do? Su Wanqing leaned against a row of collapsed cosmetics counters and brought up the system interface for the jade bracelet.

The remaining points are pitifully few, only enough to redeem a basic smoke grenade.

Without hesitation, she exchanged it immediately. A gray cylinder appeared in her hand.

Throwing it out directly might temporarily confuse the spiders, but it wouldn't solve the problem of the drones outside.

She looked down at the warm core emanating from her chest, then at the smoke bomb in her hand.

An idea flashed through her mind. She fastened the pull tab on the smoke grenade to her finger, pressed her other hand against the core container in her arms, closed her eyes, and focused her mind to guide a wisp of energy from the core into the smoke grenade in her hand.

This was a risky attempt, and she didn't know what would happen.

The core energy flowed like a warm current down her arm and onto the smoke grenade.

The smoke grenade's casing began to heat up, and the metallic texture on it seemed to gleam for a moment. Without further hesitation, she pulled the tab and forcefully threw the smoke grenade into the open space in the center of the mall.

"puff--"

The smoke grenade did not explode; instead, it emitted a large plume of thick smoke.

But the smoke wasn't gray; instead, it had a peculiar pale purple halo.

The smoke quickly spread, instantly enveloping the entire mall lobby.

The drone's external probe was immediately interfered with, and the image transmitted back to the operator turned into static.

The spider mutants, upon contact with the purple smoke, reacted as if burned, retreating restlessly into the depths of their webs,不敢近近 (不敢近近 - a phrase implying they dared not approach).

She succeeded. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Su Wanqing bent over, quickly crossed the mall along the wall, and squeezed out through the opening at the other end.

Having shaken off her pursuers, she continued towards the signal tower. After walking for about an hour, the jade bracelet on her wrist suddenly flashed with an unusual light—not the warning red light, but a gentle white, as if guiding her.

Following the jade bracelet's guidance, she turned into a small alley and stopped in front of an abandoned pharmacy.

The entrance to the pharmacy's basement was carefully concealed by an overturned medicine cabinet.

She struggled to move the cabinet, revealing a downward staircase. Below was a small medical point, with "Dawnwatcher Outpost 17" scrawled in red spray paint on the wall.

The locker was unlocked and contained several unopened first-aid kits and several vials of different colors, labeled as being for different variant viruses.

At the very bottom, she found a hand-drawn map. The map was very detailed, clearly marking the locations of several military outposts around the signal tower, and even using dotted lines to indicate a route considered safe for infiltration.

In an empty medicine box under the medicine shelf, she found a hidden digital diary.

After opening it, there was only one record inside:
"This is the third time already. After each reset, some survivors always show signs of 'memory retention'."

Some people dream of dying in different ways, some can accurately predict certain small-scale events... The scariest thing is that after each reset, those mutants become more adapted and intelligent, as if they 'remember' the lessons of the previous round..."

Su Wanqing closed the diary. The multiple cycles that "Night" had mentioned before no longer seemed to be unfounded.

She packed up the map and supplies and continued on her way. As she approached the area where the signal tower was located, a huge obstacle stood in her way.

A giant crack, hundreds of meters wide, split the city in two, with darkness below.

The only passage was a partially collapsed suspension bridge in the distance. The bridge deck had broken, leaving a huge gap, which could only be crossed by climbing the tilted steel cables.

Worse still, through her binoculars she could see a makeshift military outpost on the other side of the bridge, with several soldiers moving about behind cover.

Forcing her way in was out of the question. Su Wanqing found a collapsed building as cover and waited patiently.

Time passed second by second until the sun completely set and night enveloped the entire city.

She touched the core in her bosom and once again connected its energy to the jade bracelet on her wrist.

This time, she tried to create a visual disturbance.

An invisible energy emanated from her. In the air in front of her, the light began to distort slightly, like the scorching sun on a summer road.

In the pitch black of night, this distortion is enough to make it impossible for the naked eye and basic optical equipment at a distance to focus accurately.

She took a deep breath and stepped onto the rickety bridge.

The steel structure beneath her feet groaned unsettlingly in the night wind, and she had to be extremely careful with every step, for any loose steel plate could send her tumbling into the abyss.