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Chapter 228 Race against time
The alarms inside the base were deafening, and each rotation of the red lights felt like a heavy hammer blow to Lin Che's nerves.

He carried Xiaoling as he moved through the cold metal corridor. The third core in his right palm was like a red-hot branding iron, its scorching energy constantly pouring into his body, resonating with that damned Orion sequence. Each resonance brought excruciating, tearing pain.

A heavy electronic door blocked his path. He had no time to think; his body was already braced for impact. But just before contact, the blue lines beneath his skin flashed, a faint electrical hiss came from the lock, and the heavy door slid open automatically.

The sequence was helping him, but also eroding him. He could feel his right eye flashing blue light uncontrollably, and a part of his consciousness was becoming blurred, as if he were looking at the world through frosted glass.

Around a corner, a squad of fully armed special forces soldiers blocked his way, their dark gun barrels instantly pointing at the two of them.

Before the shout of "Stop!" had even faded, Lin Che, without even thinking of resisting, instinctively raised his free hand.

A pure blue energy shockwave erupted from his palm, knocking the soldiers and their guns to the ground.

He looked at his hands in horror.

"No...this is not what I want to do..."

"Let it flow, but don't let it control you." Little Bell in his arms suddenly grasped his wrist lightly. Her voice was no longer that of a little girl, but carried an unusual maturity and calmness.

Her purple eyes gazed at Lin Che. "The core has recognized you. It knows you were once a vessel and now wants to reconnect with you... but you must become the dominant one."

These words struck Lin Che's chaotic thoughts like an electric current. The leader.

He gritted his teeth, suppressing the excruciating pain, and forced himself to focus all his attention on the escape route.

He recalled the base's structural diagram; the entrance to a maintenance access road was not far away.

He kicked open the iron gate at the entrance, slid down with Xiaoling in his arms, and finally arrived at the underground parking lot.

He spotted a military jeep. He pressed his finger on the authentication panel next to the door, and the sequence energy kicked in again, unlocking the door and forcibly starting the engine.

Just as several guards rushed into the parking lot and opened fire, he slammed on the gas pedal. The jeep, like an enraged beast, screeched as its tires slammed against the asphalt, crashing through the base's automatic gates and disappearing into the night.

During the escape, Xiaoling's condition was very unstable. Sometimes she would revert to that familiar little girl, curled up in the passenger seat, trembling with fear and confusion; but more often, she would fall into a strange trance, becoming unusually calm and uttering words far beyond her years.

“They come from a dimension beyond time,” she said, her voice unsettlingly calm as she gazed at the rapidly receding street scene outside the window. “The Weavers don’t collect life; they collect samples of time… Every civilization is part of their experiment…”

As Lin Che drove at high speed, avoiding obstacles on the road, he tried to understand these fragmented pieces of information.

Part of the experiment? As he was thinking, Xiaoling suddenly pointed to the rearview mirror.

"He's here, right behind us."

Lin Che saw in the rearview mirror that a striking blue streak of light was rapidly approaching in the night sky.

It was "night," and he arrived at full speed with the first core.
-
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, in the elevated bridge area.

The unidentified flying object that Su Wanqing and Lu Zhao had planned to use had now revealed its true form.

A massive metal container landed with astonishing precision in the center of the viaduct, the shockwave of which pushed the surrounding debris and dust outwards.

The container's surface shimmered with intricate geometric patterns, and then the top opened in a spiral shape, releasing a thick, silvery mist.

A tall, humanoid creature slowly emerged from it. Its entire body was covered in a layer of flowing silver metal, with no obvious facial features, only a glowing ring-shaped structure floating above its "head".

His every step caused a visible distortion in the surrounding air.

He was the pioneer.

The advance officer raised his arm and pointed in three different directions in the city. Three thin silver beams of light flashed by, as if tracking something.

Then, he gently pressed one hand against the ground.

An invisible wave of energy emanated from him. Wherever the ripples passed, everything changed.

Pedestrians on the road, vehicles on the road, and even birds startled in the air all suddenly moved abnormally slowly, as if they had been trapped in an invisible quagmire of time.

In the distance, Su Wanqing and Lu Zhao, who were rushing over at full speed, were also affected.

Thanks to the protection of the second core, they were not completely frozen, but their movements became sluggish, each step feeling like walking in deep water.

The advance officer turned in their direction, uttering a mechanical and cold voice, a composite of countless superimposed sounds:

"The three cycles have ended, and the final collection will begin."
-
"Head towards the viaduct! We'll meet you there!"

Inside the jeep, Lu Zhao's emergency communication suddenly rang, but immediately afterward, Xiao Ling let out a scream.

"No! We can't go there!" Her pupils dilated with fear, and her finger trembled as she pointed to the sky outside the car window, in the direction of the overpass.

"The vanguard landed there... the three cores cannot be grouped together!"

Lin Che's heart sank. On one side was the pursuing "Night," and on the other were his companions who desperately needed to reunite, but the only reunion point had become the most dangerous forbidden zone.

He had no time to hesitate and made a decision instantly in the face of a dilemma.

He jerked the steering wheel, and the Jeep almost fishtailed and drifted, turning around and hurtling towards the remote edge of the city.

"Lu Zhao, the situation has changed. The overpass may be a threat. Find a new rendezvous point!" he shouted into the communicator.

The only response he received was a piercing static crackling. The signal had been completely disrupted by some more powerful energy.

While driving, Lin Che heard only a static-like sound from his communicator.

His contact with Lu Zhao was cut off.

He could feel the pressure, like a car plunging into the deep sea, the air thickening. Ahead, towards the viaduct, the sky seemed covered by an invisible layer of jelly, the light distorting eerily within it.

A silver scanning beam swept in from that direction, incredibly fast.

Before Lin Che could react, the blue lines on his right arm lit up on their own, and an invisible barrier seemed to form on the surface of his skin, pushing away the invisible pressure slightly.

“The sequence within you has been activated and reprogrammed by the third core,” Little Bell, curled up in the passenger seat, explained in a calm tone, looking at his arm. “It is no longer a tool of ‘Night,’ but has become a weapon to resist the Weaver.”

Lin Che tried to concentrate and guide the power of that sequence outward.

The air around the car seemed to ripple, and the dust that had been stagnant due to the slowing of time began to slowly fall again.

A "safety bubble" several meters square. He began to understand that, through his contact with Xiaoling, the originally chaotic fragments of information belonging to the "weaver" became clear in his mind.

"The Weavers are not a single entity, but a collective consciousness composed of countless fragments of spacetime... They collect time samples from each civilization, attempting to construct an eternal model... The Orion civilization was originally their research subject, but fled to Earth seeking refuge... Now, they have found this place and will conduct their final collection on Earth..."

Xiaoling clutched Lin Che's wrist in anguish: "They won't destroy us, but they'll take away our 'time'... A world without time will be frozen in a single moment forever..."
-
Meanwhile, near the overpass.

Each step Su Wanqing took felt like pushing away a viscous liquid. Lu Zhao beside her was the same, his movements slow and laborious.

The world around them had become a surreal still painting.

Raindrops hovering in mid-air, the frozen expressions of astonishment on the faces of passersby, a car that had lost control and crashed into the guardrail, its wheels still spinning at high speed, yet motionless.

Lu Zhao struggled to raise his wrist and read the data on the tactical terminal.

“The energy readings are above the gauge limit,” he gasped, speaking slowly. “This technology far surpasses Orion’s, even 'Night’s' capabilities. The second core is battling this energy, but our shield is shrinking.”

They hid behind the ruins of an office building that had been cut in half, only their eyes peeking out to observe the direction of the viaduct.

The silver creature, known as the Pioneer, stood motionless in the middle of the bridge.

But the glowing ring-shaped structure on his head was slowly rotating, occasionally emitting tiny scanning beams.

Suddenly, three beams of light shot out from the halo at the same time, pointing in three completely different directions.

One beam shot straight towards the building where they were hiding. The second beam shot towards the edge of the city where Lin Che had fled.

The third one locked onto a blue streak of light rapidly approaching from the other end of the city—it was "Night".

Almost the instant the beam locked on, the jade bracelet on Su Wanqing's wrist vibrated violently.

The semi-transparent system interface in front of her was flashing red warnings frantically.

[Unknown time manipulation technology detected; system stability drops to 59%... Core energy is being interfered with...]

Immediately afterwards, the warning message disappeared, and after a period of garbled text on the interface, a completely new image appeared.

It was a semi-transparent humanoid figure with white hair and beard, dressed in clothing similar to that of an ancient scholar, and with a serious expression.

[Emergency protocol activated, Guardian interface initialized...]

“Time stability is collapsing,” the AI, which calls itself the “Guardian,” said in a hurried and ancient voice. “The Weavers’ early arrival has disrupted our defenses.”

The three cores must be reassembled within 48 hours, or the entire city's timeline will completely collapse.

Su Wanqing asked in her mind, "Who are you? Another AI from Orion?"

“I am not a product of Orion,” the Guardian replied, “but rather a defense mechanism that you created yourself in the previous cycle.”

Each time the Weaver arrives, they collect time samples to construct a 'model of eternity,' and humans are merely test subjects. This is the third cycle.

Lu Zhao didn't see the shadow in front of him; he simply raised the pulse rifle in his hand, seemingly trying to interfere with the scanning beam.

"Do not come into direct contact with the beam!" The Guardian's warning rang in Su Wanqing's mind. "That will upload your time information directly to the Weaver's main network!"

“Follow my instructions,” the Guardian’s voice rang out again, “along this route, the distortion of the flow of time is relatively small.”

A "safe passage" appeared on the system interface, weaving through solidified vehicles and building ruins.

Su Wanqing grabbed Lu Zhao, and the two of them used the seemingly eternally still objects as cover to move with difficulty toward the outer edge of the overpass.

Just then, a piercing sound of metal breaking and a violent impact came from afar.

A military jeep, like a rampaging bull, forcefully broke through the edge of the time deceleration field and appeared in their field of vision.

The front half of the vehicle was severely deformed and billowing thick smoke, but it was still charging forward.

On Lin Che's right arm, which was in the driver's seat, the blue Orion Sequence pattern was dazzlingly bright.

The vanguard in the center of the overpass reacted immediately. It slowly turned towards the jeep, raised its arm, and shot a beam of condensed silver energy towards Lin Che.

Lin Che raised his glowing hand, palm facing forward. An unstable blue energy barrier appeared out of thin air and collided with the silver beam of light.

The barrier shattered in less than a second, but the fatal blow was blocked.

"Get out of here!" Lin Che shouted in their direction, "He's locking onto the core!"

Before the words were finished, another blue streak of light roared in from the other side of the city, breaking through the deceleration field with even more ferocity and hovering in mid-air.

It was "night." The three forces, centered on the overpass, finally converged.