Armored train in the apocalypse

Chapter 126 Anger
The thing that had worried the train conductor for a month finally happened.

With a violent tremor, several railway lines leading to Changli exploded simultaneously.

The explosion twisted the steel rails, weighing over ten tons, into a grotesque shape. Sleepers flew into the sky, while rubble flew in all directions like fragmentation grenades. A mine-clearing drone in mid-air was blasted into a pile of electronic waste by the rubble.

Even the ground beneath the railway tracks was blasted into a large crater.

The dust settled with a whoosh, and whispers and sneers could be faintly heard.

"Look, someone blew up his railway tracks."

"Only a brainless person would think of driving a train in the apocalypse."

"Because they simply don't understand that railway tracks need maintenance, and who will maintain them in the apocalypse..."

However, a 300-meter buffer zone is enough for a slow-moving train to stop before the broken track.

The clanging rhythm was interrupted.

The camera switched to the car's own perspective, and Su Huan stared blankly at the large crater on the screen.

The first thing to be heard was Xiao Zhao's report: "The drone line has been completely recovered, and the backup drone is ready. It will take three minutes to switch on."

Professor Ma stood up with a smile, "I never expected that the first use of my ability would be to repair railway tracks. It's quite interesting."

Various flying rubble and sleepers floated up as if they had lost their gravity, hovering in mid-air about a meter off the ground.

Although the rails did not float, their weight was greatly reduced.

The boy in the corner's eyes instantly turned metallic. The steel rails, like mutated sea urchins, suddenly pierced out thousands of soft steel wires, filling the clods of earth and gravel suspended in mid-air back into the pit. The surrounding iron fences and utility poles, like molten liquid, were drawn together by gravity and turned into pure metal sleepers, which fell onto the backfilled pit.

With a crisp "crunch, crunch," the straightened rails fell back down.

Even without screws, the two newly repaired rails are stronger and more reliable than the original ones!
The two 25-meter-long rails lay quietly back in place, and if it weren't for their brand-new appearance, one wouldn't even be able to tell that anything had changed.

The whole process took only five minutes.

Su Huan's lips curled up. Without knowing that Xiao Ba existed, no one would choose to blow up every rail and sleeper for dozens of kilometers.

Even if you placed explosives at every node, the amount of explosives needed to blast through tens of kilometers of railway tracks would be equivalent to the height of a football field filled with family cars. Even the most imaginative novelists before the apocalypse wouldn't do that.

What kind of extraordinary wisdom must a person possess to come up with such a great idea?

Su Huan had survived the apocalypse for four years and had seen hundreds of thousands of zombies attack human settlements, but he had never seen hundreds of thousands of zombies attack two steel rails.

Even a butcher known for his mischievousness wouldn't dare to damage this thing.

Along the route from Dongpyeong to Changli, the armed train has already discovered two ordinary landmines and one general-purpose bomb.

As the train conductor, no one knew the weaknesses of the armed train better than him.

Those are the railway tracks beneath our feet.

Before he could get the nearly 10,000-ton steel train flying, he had to do everything he could to ensure its normal operation. No one would put more effort into these two tracks than him, because it was his life!
Liang Kuan started the train again, and just then, a dilapidated SUV rushed over and blocked the tracks.

A neatly dressed man stepped off the train and waved his hands toward the front of the train. The zombies attracted by the explosion in the distance had already set their sights on the man.

They surged in from all directions.

Thanks to the high-definition camera, you can even see the beads of sweat on the man's face from nervousness.

This scene was projected onto the screen by the newly replaced drone.

"Train conductor, that man said he wants to talk to us."

Xiao Zhao controlled the drone, listened to the information transmitted from above, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.

Su Huan sat on the sofa behind the driver's seat, crossed his legs, and looked at the screen above his head, laughing, "Why can't I see anyone on the screen?"

Xiao Zhao felt a chill run down her spine when she saw the smile on Su Huan's face, and dared not utter a sound.

Professor Ma continued to absorb the polymorphic crystal in his hand with his eyes closed, as if he hadn't heard their conversation.

Liang Kuan was already used to Su Huan's style. Without asking any questions, he pushed the lever all the way down, and the train slowly started moving.

When a massive, blood-stained steel cone, over four meters long, came hurtling towards them, no one could remain unmoved.

The man shouted until his throat was hoarse, but the train didn't stop. He tried to get back into the train behind him, but the train kept going faster and faster.

Looking at that huge, pointed cone, beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

With a determined look, he abandoned the car and ran directly off the tracks.

"Oh!"

The steel spikes pierced the vehicle's chassis, and with the increasing power, the man could only watch helplessly as the vehicle was flipped over.

But his bigger problem is the increasing number of zombies around him.

He gritted his teeth and ran to the side of the train, grabbing onto the metal outside and trying to climb up.

Suddenly, two sharp claws pierced his chest.

The powerless corpse fell to the ground, and a night demon began to devour the fresh flesh, its armpits open, its scarlet eyes fixed on the departing train.

But Su Huan, inside the car, paid no attention to any of this.

At this moment, he was controlling the cockpit screen, constantly switching between monitoring cameras.

He asked with great interest, "Who controls these drones?"

Xiao Zhao replied, "They are all pre-written programs. Because the space is limited, the role of these drones is to act as fixed cameras and keep up with the speed of the train. There is no need for many changes."

Looking at the map in the lower left corner, Su Huan realized that it was still half an hour's drive to Changli County, so he turned on the car's in-car monitor.

"...It moved, it moved, it seems the problem is solved."

The data collector wearing the ring unconsciously turned the ring on his hand, his eyes devoid of any light, in a gloomy state, as he looked out the window.

Another young man glanced at the miniature map on his watch, frowned, and asked, "Did you see anything?"

"The rails flew up and grew back on their own. It must be from the realm of manipulators, like metal affinity or telekinesis. What kind of weird profession is this? It's so complicated."

The man wearing the ring was muttering to himself.

A thoughtful look flashed in the young man's eyes. "Perhaps it's a combination of multiple abilities. According to current research, a manipulator can generally only manipulate one thing, unless the other party is a genetic prototype with a cross-domain profession, but the probability of that is too small, really one in ten million."

The ring-wearing man's eyes regained their light, but his doubt remained. "I also saw someone who was trying to stop the car get knocked away."

"survivor?"

"It doesn't seem likely, and armed trains don't refuse to let survivors board."

"The train is heading in a strange direction right now..."

"What a strange method?"

"It seems to be Tokorashi Prefecture of the Steel Council."

The man with the ring was stunned for a moment. "No way, could you be mistaken? You've seen the information the company gave you. The armed train just had a minor clash with the Steel Council before coming to Dongping City. The Steel Council's new city plan is in full swing right now. What would he be doing going back?"

"……revenge?"

The young man gave a reason that even he himself found untenable.

Are there hatreds between major powers?
This is obvious.

Hatred only exists between individuals; the only thing that can maintain relationships between groups is self-interest.

"There's no benefit to that. The Steel Council has its eyes on Changli County. The Armed Train can't get its hands on it. If it intervenes rashly, it will only break ties with the Steel Council and end up with both sides suffering losses. Besides, I don't think the Train can defeat the Steel Council. It's probably because the two have some kind of cooperation plan."

The man with the ring analyzed.

"That's true. Everyone's focused on development right now, avoiding conflict... Wait a minute, the cameras are watching us."

The young man instantly resumed a slouching posture, just like the other passengers, slumped in his seat.

In the upper right corner of the carriage, a miniature camera rotated and scanned the two people.

Inside the cockpit, Su Huan squinted slightly as he looked at the two men.

He discovered the two data collectors from Deep Blue Data on their second day on the bus.

Because he would inspect the entire vehicle every morning.

Although I won't walk inside the carriage, I will walk around outside the carriage or on the roof to scan the area with my all-encompassing senses to see if there are any suddenly evolved passengers or anything that threatens the safety of the train.

When the all-encompassing energy sensor scans other people, even ordinary passengers will experience a slight energy fluctuation, albeit a very weak one.

But both of them had a completely blank answer.

When Su Huan first went over, he was also stunned for a moment. He circled around the two of them several times. The two of them were clearly there, but the area just disappeared.

Then, combining this with the transaction with Deep Blue Data a few days ago, he vaguely guessed the identities of the two people.

They work in pairs, one responsible for concealing themselves and the other for collecting data; this is the standard configuration for data collectors.

This proves that Deep Blue Data has noticed the armed train, but has not shown any hostility towards it.

Collectors only gather information related to evolution; they do not engage in combat, assassination, or intelligence gathering.

If they are discovered, they should surrender immediately, and Deep Blue Data will spend a large sum of money to redeem them.

Once a major war breaks out, these resource gatherers will be the first to disappear.

Over time, DeepBlue's data collectors became like goldfish in a well or rats in a mine, and all the major powers tacitly accepted their existence.

Any faction that doesn't have at least two Deep Blue data collectors wouldn't dare call itself a major faction.

Even the Mechanicus wouldn't kill them.

In their past lives, there was a powerful faction that had a shady tactic: they discovered the data collectors but kept quiet until they were short of money, then arrested them all and exchanged them for money from Deep Blue Data.

Then other major powers followed suit and began treating data collectors as a kind of foreign exchange reserve.

When they're short of money, they crack down on internal traitors and conduct internal purges.

It has even become a trend.

In order to save on ransom costs, DeepBlue Data had to reduce the size of its data collectors.

In addition, the emergence of the wilderness profession system has led more data collectors to the wilderness and small settlements.

Su Huan was thinking about how to make use of these two people.

After all, they are two first-tier evolvers. It would be a waste to leave them unused. Now that they're on his roster, they should be put to his use.

Half an hour later, the train entered the territory of Admiralty.

There is a county between Changli and the other side.

The clouds on the horizon resembled a thick, rust-colored carpet, dark and grimy, while a fierce wind, carrying wisps of moisture, crashed against the bluish armor of the armed train.

Using two fingers to zoom in on the screen, an armed helicopter bearing the logo of Qinggang Industry roars in through the high-definition camera.

Even from a distance of more than ten kilometers, Su Huan could almost feel Li Tao's overwhelming rage.

(End of this chapter)