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Chapter 320 Premonition
"I...I'll go upstairs and change my clothes! They got dirty during the evacuation..." she coughed twice.

"Really?" Chen Xuan couldn't see any dirt on her. The explosion was caused from the bottom of the building, and because of the layers of floorboards, she wasn't exposed to the strong light.

"Yes!" Lin Qing ran upstairs as if fleeing.

Back in her room, she still felt unsettled.

"Your heart rate and condition are not matched. We recommend adjusting the throttle valve," Xiao Lü reminded.

"Shut up!" Lin Qing ordered fiercely.

What happened to you just now?
No… she knew what was wrong with her, but the point was, she shouldn’t have acted this way.

She's a future warrior, a warrior who traveled from the future a century ago—a final chance for humanity to save itself, granted by the god of destiny. From the moment of her birth, she was destined to dedicate everything to this goal.

Just like her comrades who never returned.

Compared to the rebel leaders who could help the resistance achieve this goal, she herself was insignificant.

Therefore, she should have felt angry when Chen Xuan chose to save her first instead of Honglian.

When undertaking such an important task, emotion must never override reason.

But Lin Qing had to admit that her first reaction upon hearing this was happiness. In the more than ten battles she had participated in, she and the other soldiers had always been merely weapons to achieve their objectives. As long as the mission was completed, no superior cared how many sacrifices were made.

Even if they were the elite of the resistance, it didn't matter.

She had a secret she hadn't told Chen Xuan.

Actually, she didn't have a name. Lin Qing was an identity she fabricated during the raid on Crystal Palace; only in this way could they pass through the security checkpoints. She also didn't remember what other identities she had fabricated before, because there was a risk of leakage if this data was stored in a memory chip. Therefore, she would delete any residual information related to the mission after each return to the base.

She had only one common call sign and one secret number in the resistance.

Although the raid on the Crystal Palace failed, she returned to a hundred years ago, which means the mission is not over yet, and she can continue to use the identity of Lin Qing.

This was the first time in Lin Qing's memory that she had received such attention.

"Anyway, being happy isn't illegal, right?" she muttered to herself.

no respond.

Oh right... Little Green was muted. "You can speak now."

"It's not illegal," the AI ​​immediately said in my mind. "As long as Honglian is alive, you have done nothing wrong."

“I think so too.” Lin Qing raised the corners of her mouth, completely relaxing.

Optimism is her greatest strength.

Even in dire straits, she was confident she could calmly munch on the potato chips she'd grabbed from the store manager's shelf. Besides, this wasn't a desperate situation at all; she could easily adjust her emotions after the dramatic fluctuations.

“Let me think… Assuming the Dimensional Agency didn’t consider the execution team a disposable pawn, then they should be in a safe place right now. Once it’s past midnight, Chen Xuan can use his summoning ability again to bring Honglian to the shop.”

“The logic is sound,” Xiao Lü echoed.

"Then show her the video recording of the meeting, and she'll see the true face of the organization and become that insurgent in history..." Lin Qing suddenly paused here, "But how exactly did Honglian become the leader of the resistance?"

She had assumed that this person held a high position in the organization, and if not a senior manager at headquarters, then at least a branch manager. But after getting to know her, she realized that Honglian was merely the head of the executive team at the Jiangcheng branch.

Can such a person really cause division within the organization in the future and spark a wave of resistance against the company's technological dominance?
In fact, she had considered similar ideas before.

However, there is still a long time to go, and Honglian has enough room to grow.

At the current pace, a major transformation may be on the horizon.

Major changes?
Lin Qing looked up and stared at her reflection in the window, momentarily stunned.

……

After finishing his coffee, Chen Xuan suddenly had an idea – something big must have happened at the Cui Ting Building, and even his newly established branch was wiped out, but he still had other branches!

With that in mind, he immediately went to his computer and set the branch office as a rental property in Paris.

As expected, other stores were unaffected, and the app showed that the setup was successful. This meant he wouldn't have to wait foolishly in his store until tomorrow; he could immediately check on the situation in Jiangcheng.

Chen Xuan had originally planned to call Lin Qing, but finding that she hadn't come down yet, he decided to enter the elevator first. He figured that once Lin Qing came down and didn't see him, she'd be able to guess where he'd gone.

Upon arriving at the branch, Chen Xuan quickly turned on the television—after all, the rent included internet fees and television program fees.

"Just an hour ago, a catastrophic explosion occurred in Jiangcheng."

"An abnormal rise in radiation levels has been detected in nearby cities."

"This is Fax News International, and our reporters are risking their lives to get into Jiangcheng."

No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the incident.

Chen Xuan switched between several channels and found that without exception, they were all about Big Bang. At this moment, it seemed that the eyes of the entire world were focused on Jiangcheng.

To be honest, during the ten or so minutes that Chen Xuan was sent back to the store, he still felt a sense of unreality, like a bubble floating in his mind. Both the sudden turn of events and the dazzling white light that could project a person's image onto the wall happened in the blink of an eye, making him wonder if they had really occurred.

Now, the doubts have been confirmed.

Through the cameras on the hovercraft, he could see the city below—where the Cui Ting Building once stood, a huge crater had appeared, with flames and thick smoke billowing from it, turning the clouds above a dark red. The houses and streets surrounding the crater were all destroyed by the shockwave; even reinforced concrete structures could hardly survive at such close range, and the ruins spread out in a radial pattern, like a pile of collapsed building blocks.

The place he rented no longer exists. If Liuli had left a step later, she would probably have turned to ashes along with the branch.

A large number of medical and firefighting hovercrafts gathered here to search for survivors in the building ruins.

In areas less affected by the blast, injured people could be seen lying on the ground everywhere.

From time to time, people covered in smoke would jump out of the windows of those burning buildings.

"This is too tragic..." Chen Xuan murmured.

The city before us has become a living hell.

This is the future ruled by demons—the people living here are merely chips in their gamble, and when their own interests are threatened, the demons don't care how many people will be sacrificed for them.

Although they both have the same name, Jiangcheng, the two places are quite different.

"If we don't overthrow the system, our world won't be any better." A familiar voice came from behind.

Chen Xuan turned around, and there was Lin Qing.

She had indeed changed her clothes, switching from the blazer she wore to the hotel to the combat outfit she wore when they first met. Chen Xuan was slightly surprised, because Lin Qing preferred to wear loose-fitting casual clothes when she was at the store, saying it gave her a more homely feel. He had even bought her several oversized T-shirts.

However, he couldn't very well advise his partner on what to wear, "Surely the Limits Agency isn't as ruthless as the Demons, is it?"

“Of course, after all, most ability users joined the organization with the intention of protecting the world.” Lin Qing nodded. “But at that time, the real enemy was no longer the organization itself, but the nanobot plague caused by its abuse and complete loss of control. From the moment they gained consciousness, they were preparing to exterminate humanity.”

"Don't worry, history won't repeat itself this time," Chen Xuan said confidently.

"Mm." Lin Qing smiled, her eyes full of trust.

"But where are Xiao Kanong and the others now?" He looked at the TV. "The entire hotel has turned into a huge pit. They shouldn't still be in the pit, right?"

If the task force returns to the Wuhuan Machinery Factory, both Honglian and Jiang Siqi's mobile phones will send them their location information.

"Wait!" Lin Qing suddenly pointed at the television.

"what happened?"

"Change the channel!"

Chen Xuan did as instructed, and what appeared on the screen was a scene filmed on the ground. Compared to the perspective from the hovercar, the ground view was much narrower, but the atmosphere was even more somber. The large crater was not visible in the shot, presumably because the photographer was far from the Cui Ting Building; all that could be seen was a collapsed building and hundreds or thousands of wailing residents.

"What's wrong?" Chen Xuan couldn't see anything amiss.

“These collapsed buildings look... kind of familiar.” Lin Qing stared at the screen for a while, then took out her phone and found the picture she had sent to Chen Xuan before—an old woman wearing heavy protective clothing standing in front of a city reduced to ruins.

This is also the only surviving photo of the rebel leader, Honglian.

After comparing the photos several times, Chen Xuan was astonished. Despite the slight difference in angle and the stark contrast between the billowing dust and the ruins covered in vines in the photo, he could still recognize that this place was in the same location as the scene in the photo!
(End of this chapter)