After stocking up at the maximum level, all the handsome men in the apocalypse are looking for suppo

Chapter 220 Fragments
"...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 mentioned were born. The second time, those smarter 'lurkers' were born.

And now, this is the third and the last 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, punctuated by the sounds of violent explosions: "...Damn it...the Dawn Organization has arrived too, and their leader...'The Monk' is leading the team personally!"

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.

The violent tremors shook the entire control room, causing the pipes on the ceiling to groan under the strain, and dust to fall in a flurry. Su Wanqing steadied herself; the jade bracelet on her wrist still emitted a faint warmth, maintaining a stable spacetime around her, allowing her to clearly observe the horrific scene before her.

Lin Che's body is waging a silent but brutal war.

He stood in the center of the platform, his body sometimes stiff as a machine, and sometimes curled up in excruciating pain.

The eerie blue lines beneath his skin, like living tides, spread out in waves, almost covering his cheeks, then suddenly contracted, retreating below his neck.

His eyes were the most direct battlefield of this war, with a cold, inhuman blue light flashing wildly and alternately with his originally warm brown eyes.

His movements shifted rapidly between these two states. One second, his arm was raised at an angle with superhuman precision, as if he were calculating something; the next second, it hung limply, his fingers twitching in pain.

This intense internal conflict was destroying his body. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, slid down his chin, and dripped onto the metal floor.

Beneath the skin, tiny blood vessels kept rupturing, oozing small patches of dark red bruises.

“We are not enemies, Su Wanqing.”

The blue light eventually prevailed, and Lin Che straightened up again, his movements became steady, and the pain-twisted expression on his face disappeared, replaced by an extreme calmness.

He raised his hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, a graceful movement devoid of human emotion.

"I am the main core of the Orion system, codenamed 'Nightwalker,' designed to monitor and maintain time experiments."

When the experiment failed and the spacetime structure tore apart, in order to preserve the core functions, I transferred my consciousness into the body of the experimental subject S-7, which is Lin Che, whom you know.

We coexisted for months until the energy fluctuations of the signal tower activated all my functions.

He spoke in a steady tone and with clear logic, as if he were reciting a program log.

“He’s resisting, but it’s foolish. We all don’t have much time left. If the three cores don’t activate as scheduled, the ‘Time Loom’ will completely collapse.”

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly lunged forward, his body trembling violently.

The blue light faded from his eyes, and a warm brown reappeared, filled with pain and urgency.

"Don't believe him!" Lin Che's voice was hoarse as he squeezed out the words. He grabbed his hair with both hands and collapsed to his knees from exhaustion.

"Project Orion... is essentially a military weapons program... They used time manipulation as a cover... but in reality, they wanted to... open a portal to other dimensions. It was the swarm's loss of control that led to the laboratory disaster!"

He raised his head, his brown eyes fixed on Su Wanqing: "I...I am a clone injected with memories. The real Lin Che died in the first accident long ago...I am just a vessel. He wants the core not to repair the world, but to escape!"
He led his legion to evacuate from this doomed timeline!

Reincarnation is merely the last safety mechanism of the 'time loom,' and each reset consumes the universe's fundamental energy..."

He screamed in agony, as if trying to rip something out of his brain, before collapsing heavily to the ground and beginning to convulse.

Just then, the communicator on Su Wanqing's waist suddenly rang. After a piercing static sound, Xiao Ran's urgent voice came through: "Wanqing! We've hacked into the military's temporary database and discovered important intelligence!"
Xiaoling! She's not an ordinary mutant; she's 'Prototype Zero'—the first experimental subject to successfully fuse human DNA with spacetime energy!
She contains the crucial sequence to activate or deactivate the 'Time Loom'! That's why all factions are searching for her!

The news sent a jolt through the body on the ground. The blue light returned, and "Nightcrawler" regained control of the body.

He slowly stood up, straightened his disheveled collar, and merely pursed his lips slightly at Xiao Ran's information, seemingly trying to deliberately avoid the topic.

But Lin Che's consciousness hadn't completely faded. With his last bit of strength, he struggled to utter a few broken words: "Found... Xiao Ling... She's the key... but not for... opening... but for... locking..."

The sound stopped abruptly, and his body was completely controlled by the blue light, falling into a deathly stillness.

Su Wanqing's mind raced. Lin Che's last words made her realize that Xiaoling's significance might be completely opposite to the implication of "Night"—she was not an aid to activating the device, but the last line of defense to prevent disaster.

Suddenly, a sharp alarm blared throughout the control room. A previously black screen on the wall lit up abruptly, displaying red numbers that formed a countdown: [53:00].

"Countdown to the critical point of collapse." Nightcrawler's voice also became somewhat urgent, no longer as composed as before.

"No matter who you believe, Su Wanqing, time is running out. Yes, we need the core to evacuate, but that's not contradictory. The enormous energy generated by the evacuation will be enough to repair the boundaries of the 'Time Loom'."

I can ensure Lin Che's body survives, but he must stop resisting. I need you to willingly hand over the core.

He raised his hand and pointed at Su Wanqing: "You are the 'anchor point,' the most stable human beacon in this spacetime coordinate system."

Only you can activate it correctly. Otherwise, the three-way battle outside the tower will only have one outcome—we, along with this world, will be wiped out.

No sooner had he finished speaking than the signal tower shook violently once more. A floor-to-ceiling window finally succumbed to the pressure, and spiderweb-like cracks quickly spread out.

Outside the window, the shrill screams of the mutants and the dense gunfire could be heard clearly as they drew closer, indicating that the battle outside had spread to the upper levels of the signal tower.

No sooner had "Nightcrawler" finished speaking than a loud crash came from the emergency exit door on one side of the control room. The heavy metal door was torn open from the outside by a tremendous force and bent inward.

Lu Zhao and Xiao Ran rushed in. Both of them were covered in signs of battle. Xiao Ran's left arm was hastily bandaged with strips of cloth, and dark red blood had soaked through the fabric.

Lu Zhao's condition was even worse. He had a deep, bone-revealing scratch on his face, extending from his brow bone to his cheek. His clothes were torn to shreds and stained with both dried and fresh blood.

They had clearly gone through a brutal breakout.

Without even catching his breath, Xiao Ran immediately threw a specially made silver medical kit from his back, opened it with a snap, and said to Su Wanqing, "I brought Xiaoling's blood sample and some analysis data. The military's experiments have confirmed that she contains the original key sequence to shut down the 'Time Loom'."

Lu Zhao's gaze swept across the entire arena in an instant. He didn't look at Su Wanqing, but immediately noticed Lin Che, whose body was stiff and whose skin was filled with blue light, in the center of the platform, as well as the energy core floating in front of him, emitting an ominous purple light.

He frowned and took a special syringe filled with a clear liquid from a pocket in his tactical vest.

“This is a neuroprotective agent found at the Dawn Organization’s base,” Lu Zhao said in a low, urgent voice. “It can temporarily suppress the AI’s control over the host’s brain, but it is very risky and may also damage Lin Che’s own consciousness.”

As he spoke, he began to walk toward the platform.

The moment he took his first step, Lin Che, who was being controlled by the "Nightcrawler," moved.