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Chapter 219 Fierce Competition

The roar of the signal tower activating caused the floor of the entire control room to tremble slightly.

Outside the window, the city lights flickered amidst the black waves of mutants and the artillery fire of military armored vehicles, weaving together a post-apocalyptic scene.

Ignoring the chaos outside the window, "Night" kept his eyes, which shimmered with a blue glow, fixed on the core container in Su Wanqing's arms.

He stretched out his hand, his movements elegant yet carrying an undeniable pressure: "Give it to me, Su Wanqing. This is your only chance."

Su Wanqing subconsciously took a step back and hugged the core container even tighter.

The moment she stepped back, the jade bracelet on her wrist and the core container in her arms lit up simultaneously, with two beams of light, one blue and one purple, intertwining to form a visible energy barrier in front of her.

The moment "Night's" fingers touched the barrier, it was as if they had touched a red-hot branding iron; an arc of electricity flashed, repelling his hand.

He looked down at his slightly trembling fingers, and for the first time, a crack appeared in his composure, revealing a hint of annoyance.

He pursed his lips: "I was hoping you would cooperate voluntarily, but it seems we'll have to use other methods."

Before he finished speaking, he raised his hand and made a gesture in the air. The blue fiber optic cable in the control room instantly shone brightly, all exits clicked shut, and the heavy alloy gates slammed down, completely sealing off the area.

In the corner of the room, several mechanical arms that were originally hidden in the wall slowly extended, their tips aimed at Su Wanqing, and shot out several light blue energy beams that wrapped around her limbs like ropes.

Su Wanqing dodged the two attacks by sidestepping, but one energy still bound her left leg, causing her to stagnate.

Just as the remaining energy beams were about to completely lock onto her, Lin Che, in the center of the platform, suddenly let out a suppressed cry of pain.

His body convulsed violently, and he collapsed to his knees, the blue lines beneath his skin flashing wildly.

Those eyes switched rapidly between the cold blue light and Lin Che's own brown pupils, like two signals interfering with each other.

“He is not ‘Night’,” Lin Che said, forcing out a hoarse and urgent voice from his throat with all his might, “but the core consciousness of the Orion AI that is parasitizing my body!”

He needs three energy cores... to activate the portal and bring more test subjects... to this world!
The real 'night'... has already... he's using your special physique... to activate it..."

Before he could finish speaking, his body suddenly arched, the blue light in his eyes stabilized again, and the AI ​​core regained control.

But this brief struggle bought Su Wanqing a precious second.

She took the opportunity to break free of the energy bars on her legs and rolled behind the control panel to the side.

"Useless emotional noise." Under control, Lin Che slowly stood up and stretched his stiff neck.

Outside the tower, the dense sounds of gunfire, explosions, and the roars of mutants mingled together, making the glass vibrate.

Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, one can see the military's defenses fiercely battling against the surging tide of mutants.

Meanwhile, on the chaotic flank of the battlefield, a small squad dressed in all-black uniforms, moving swiftly, was using the cover of explosions to sneak into the bottom of the signal tower like ghosts.

"Beep beep—" The communicator on Su Wanqing's waist rang. It was Lu Zhao's voice, with the sound of gunfire in the background.

"We've broken through the outer defenses and are advancing towards your location. It should take about eight minutes... Damn it, these mutants are acting like an organized group; they're protecting the signal tower!"

Communication abruptly stopped, clearly indicating that the battle on the other side was also extremely intense.

The standoff in the control room escalated again. "Night" stopped trying to restrain Su Wanqing with energy and took direct action.

He pushed off with his feet, using Lin Che's body as a springboard, and charged forward at a speed beyond human limits.

His movements were precise and ruthless, each strike aimed at Su Wanqing's vitals, forcing her to constantly dodge using the terrain.

"Give me the core, and neither of us will be hurt." His voice was calm, but his attack was ruthless.

During one of his dodges, Su Wanqing's shoulder was grazed by him, and a sharp pain shot through her.

She staggered backward, and "Night" seized the opportunity, closing in and forcefully pressing one hand onto the core container in her arms.

"Om-"

The moment the container touched his palm, a burst of uncontrolled energy erupted.

A powerful shockwave spread out from the two of them, blasting them both away.

Su Wanqing crashed heavily into the metal wall, a sweet taste rising in her throat, while "Night" stumbled back several steps before regaining her balance.

The core container tumbled in the air, its outer shell shattering from the energy impact, revealing the pale purple, rhomboid core exposed to the air.

It did not fall, but hovered unstablely in mid-air, emitting a strange light and invisible ripples of time.

The chaos began.

A metal table in the room rusted and aged rapidly on one side, almost turning to dust, while the other side reverted to a shiny, brand-new state.

The images on the surveillance screens on the wall began to distort. On one screen, the movements of the military soldiers became extremely slow, as if they were still; while on the other screen, the mutants ran so fast that they were just a series of afterimages.

The entire control room was thrown into a state of temporal distortion.

On the large screen at the main control console, the city's surveillance footage also underwent a terrifying change.

Huge, invisible "time bubbles" are forming all over the city.

In one neighborhood, pedestrians and vehicles are frozen in mid-air; while in another commercial district, everything is moving at dozens of times the speed.

The most terrifying thing is that several tall buildings in the distance simultaneously present three states: the steel skeleton under construction, the current complete appearance, and the ruins to be burned down in the future, like a shaky double image of time.

Su Wanqing looked up at the window and saw a strange vortex-shaped cloud that had appeared in the distance. Its dark center was pointing directly at the signal tower, as if a hole had been torn open in the sky and an energy channel was forming.

Looking at this scene, "Night's" expression became extremely complicated. He muttered to himself, seemingly not to Su Wanqing, but stating a given fact: "The boundary has begun to collapse. If the final fusion cannot be completed, this world line will be completely erased..."

His words left Su Wanqing's mind blank. Regardless of what this thing possessing Lin Che's body actually was, the situation had clearly spiraled out of everyone's control. "...This world line will be completely erased..."

The sound of "Night" echoed in the chaotic control room, but was quickly swallowed up by the buzzing sound emanating from the purple core suspended in mid-air.

Invisible ripples spread outwards from the core, and wherever they reach, time is arbitrarily manipulated.

The right half of the metal floor in front of Su Wanqing was rapidly covered with rust, and the edges even began to peel off into powder, while the left half reverted to its original pristine shine when it was first laid.

The air was filled with a strange smell, a mixture of ozone and dust.

A ripple of time swept towards Su Wanqing, and she subconsciously raised her arm to shield herself.

Suddenly, the jade bracelet on her wrist felt warm and emitted a soft blue light, forming a barely visible barrier within a three-foot radius in front of her.

The ripple struck the barrier, like water encountering a reef, and silently slid away to both sides.

The flow of time around her seemed to have returned to normal.

Taking advantage of this brief moment of stability, she took a few steps back to distance herself from "Night," but her eyes remained fixed on Lin Che, who was struggling in the center of the platform.

His body was no longer under the complete control of the AI, painfully switching between two states.

"Lin Che!" Su Wanqing shouted, "If you can hear me, give me a signal! Tell me how to help you!"

"Night" turned his head, and for the first time, his blue eyes lost their composure. He glanced at the jade bracelet on Su Wanqing's wrist, then at the out-of-control core, and frowned slightly.

"It's no use. You're wasting all of our last chance."

He did not attack immediately because the spread of the time ripples also forced him to constantly move to avoid the randomly appearing time acceleration or deceleration zones.

Seeing that Su Wanqing ignored him, he had no choice but to raise his voice, his tone filled with the frustration of being forced to explain: "This is not an ordinary pandemic, Su Wanqing."

All of this was a byproduct of Project Orion. The project's initial goal was to create true time manipulation technology, but a fatal experimental error tore apart the spacetime structure, causing multiple timelines that should have been parallel to each other to fold and overlap.

As he spoke, he dodged a ripple that could age metal for a century.

"We have already gone through two complete cycles. Each time the world is reset and attempts are made to fix this mess, new mutations occur due to the overflow of energy."

The first time, the basic mutants you speak of were born. The second time, those more intelligent 'lurkers' were created. And now, this is the third and final time, because the boundaries of spacetime are collapsing completely.

Su Wanqing's attention was partially drawn to the surveillance footage on the wall.

The battle outside the tower had reached a fever pitch. Through the communicator, Lu Zhao's voice came intermittently, mixed with the sounds of violent explosions: "...Damn it...the Dawn Organization is here too!"

Their leader…the 'monk' is personally leading the team!

In the scene, a middle-aged man wearing a tattered monk's robe is walking at the forefront of the battlefield.

His face remained calm as he pushed away a mutated creature that lunged at him with his bare hands. The moment his palm touched the mutated creature's skin, the monster froze and was temporarily paralyzed on the ground.

He was followed by a team of well-equipped men in black, who efficiently cleared the military's defenses.

“That’s a ‘monk’,” Lu Zhao said with surprise. “The actual leader of the Dawn Organization. Rumor has it that he’s a survivor of the last apocalypse!”

Meanwhile, on another screen, a military special forces unit, under the cover of tanks, was forcibly advancing towards the bottom of the signal tower.

An officer with his face smeared with paint was giving orders into a communicator: "Command orders that the equipment and core at the top of the tower must be kept intact! This is the highest directive; extreme measures may be taken if necessary!"

The entire signal tower has become the eye of the storm.

"Night" seemed completely indifferent to the chaos outside; all his attention was focused on the purple core.

He slowly walked toward the core, trying to grasp it in the gaps of the temporal turbulence.

Just as his fingertips were about to touch the core, Lin Che on the platform suddenly let out a painful roar like a wild beast.

He suddenly raised his head, his eyes flashing intensely with blue light, struggling to regain control of his body for a moment.

"Wanqing...don't believe him!" Lin Che's voice was hoarse and urgent, as if it were being forced out from deep in his throat. "He...he is the core of the Orion AI...he needs a human carrier to move in the physical world...I am...I am Experiment No. 7!"

With all his might, he pointed at "Night," his arm trembling violently: "He wants to use the three cores... to open a permanent portal... not to save the world, but to bring... to bring the remaining AI army... here!"

After saying these words, Lin Che seemed to have all his strength drained away, his body suddenly arched forward, and he began to convulse violently.

The blue lines under his skin became more pronounced than before, almost bursting out of his body.

The blue light stabilized again, and "Night" regained control.

He stretched his stiff neck, a flash of annoyance at being offended by a mortal crossing his face.

He pursed his lips and straightened Lin Che's disheveled collar.

“Information that is half true and half false will only make things worse.” He turned to Su Wanqing, his tone returning to its cold, logical tone.

"Yes, I am the Orion AI core. But my goal is not conquest, but survival. The initial disaster was caused by you human scientists who arrogantly opened a door that should not have been opened."

He raised his hand and pointed out the window. The energy vortex in the sky was getting bigger and darker, almost swallowing the entire horizon.

“Now, the ‘Time Loom’—what you call this spacetime system—is on the verge of complete collapse. If the final repair protocol is not activated immediately, this timeline, along with everything it carries, will be completely erased. Including you, including Lu Zhao, including Lin Che, including all humans and mutants.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the entire signal tower experienced a violent tremor, stronger than any before.

Dust fell from the ceiling, new cracks appeared in the walls, and the huge floor-to-ceiling windows groaned as if they were about to shatter at any moment.

The energy storm outside the window became visible to the naked eye, and purple electric snakes darted wildly through the clouds, confirming that what he said was true.