The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

Su Yuan released his hand.

The communication terminal is broken.

Metal fragments slipped from between the fingers of the dark gold bone armor, landing with a "clink-clink" sound on the concrete floor littered with shards of glass and pools of blood. The sound was very soft. So soft that it was almost drowned out by the whistling wind overhead.

He raised his head.

The tricolored vertical pupils looked upwards along the vertical tunnel torn by vines. At the end, hundreds of meters high, a sickly purplish-red sky churned with low, dark purple clouds at the cave entrance.

Wasteland New Calendar 3042.

The Milky Way spiral arm.

It's not Earth.

It never has been.

Su Yuan's lips twitched. He didn't laugh. Nor did he show anger. His face, just reconstructed from bones, held only an unfathomable calm.

There was a three-second pause.

Then the air behind him exploded.

"Gah—ga ga ga ga ga—"

A sharp, piercing crack emanated from the rift where virtual and physical space met. The sound didn't belong to any known physical spectrum; it was so high that it could cause physiological spasms in the cochlea, and so low that it could make the internal organs resonate.

The body of the Emperor's Path Devourer was being squeezed through that crack.

Hard squeeze.

A brutal, savage, and unreasonable physical compression.

If the tricolored giant skull was merely "peeking out" just now, then this abyssal behemoth is now trying to cram its entire body into this door that is far too small.

The data barrier between the obsidian scales and the crack boundary made physical contact.

The spark is not an energy spark.

It's the physical debris that erupts when real source material and virtual code grind against each other at the molecular level. It's orange-red, with a pungent smell of ozone and burnt silica.

Debris splattered onto the laboratory walls, scorching black holes in the cement surface.

The crack is widening.

The tearing sound traveled from the laboratory hundreds of meters underground all the way to the surface.

The ground of the entire wasteland began to tremble.

First, there was a slight tremor. Like a heavy truck driving by in the distance.

Then came the violent tremor.

The cracks in the parched earth widened rapidly, and bits of grayish-yellow soil spewed up from the fissures. The massive mechanical wreckage scattered across the wasteland—rusted industrial robotic arms, collapsed transport vehicle chassis—collided with each other in the violent tremors, emitting dull, metallic thuds.

The low clouds beneath the crimson sky were stirred up by some unseen force.

Dark red lightning struck down from the depths of the clouds.

One. Two. Seven. More than a dozen.

This was not ordinary lightning.

The trichromatic law and the discharge phenomenon caused by atmospheric friction. Dark gold, pure white, and pitch black arcs of three colors intertwine in the purplish-red sky, illuminating the entire wasteland in a flickering light.

As the thunder rolled by, the rusted metal debris on the ground began to vibrate with a buzzing sound.

Resonance.

The frequency accuracy is down to the atomic level.

Monitoring room.

All four large screens were black.

But the sound is still there.

The backup audio pickup unit, embedded deep in the wall of Laboratory 001, wasn't completely dead yet, and was intermittently transmitting signals to the monitoring room.

Tearing sound. Grinding sound. Metal deformation sound.

There was also a very low, muffled sound of airflow, like the breathing of some enormous living thing.

The manager slumped to the ground. His crotch was already soaked. Blood was still seeping from the wound on the back of his head where he had hit the corner of the control panel, flowing down his neck and into the collar of his white protective suit, spreading into a dark red patch.

His eyes were straight.

The pupils were dilated to their maximum size.

His lips trembled at an extremely high frequency, but he couldn't utter any meaningful syllables.

The short researcher huddled under the control panel, his hands covering his head, his fingers digging into his hair until his knuckles turned white. He didn't speak. He didn't even utter the word "impossible."

He curled up into a silent ball of flesh.

The other two assistants were huddled in the farthest corner of the monitoring room. One was retching. The other had his eyes closed. Their hands were clasped tightly together, their nails digging into the flesh of each other's hands. Neither of them let go.

Then the manager made a move.

Suddenly.

Those unfocused eyes suddenly contracted. The pupils, which had been dilated to their maximum size, shrank sharply into two black dots.

Something gleamed in his eyes.

It's not rational.

That's madness.

When a person realizes that they are going to die anyway, there are two possible reactions.

One type is paralysis.

One way is to fry it.

The manager is the latter.

He sprang to his feet. The sudden movement startled his assistant, who was retching nearby, causing him to recoil and hit the back of his head against the wall.

"Get out of the way!"

He lunged at the control panel. Grabbing the short researcher by the collar of his protective suit, he dragged him out from under the panel like a chick and tossed him aside.

The short researcher's back slammed into the base of the swivel chair. His cry of pain was ignored.

The manager's ten fingers were frantically tapping on the keyboard.

His hands were trembling. But the trembling was rhythmic. It was a strangely efficient result of a mixture of muscle memory and mental frenzy.

password.

A 17-digit password with the highest level of access.

He made two mistakes in the middle. He got it right the third time.

The screen lit up.

It's not four large screens—those cameras have long been obsolete. What's lit up is a small, independent eight-inch screen on the left side of the control panel, powered by its own circuitry.

An interface popped up on the screen.

The interface background is black. In the middle, there is only a line of large red text and a start button that requires iris authentication.

[Zero Annihilation Heavy Artillery Array - Status: Standby]

The manager shoved his face right in front of the iris scanner.

Infrared light swept across his bloodshot eyes.

"Beep."

Authentication successful.

"Start! Start everything!"

His voice was extremely hoarse. Every syllable squeezed out of his throat sounded cracking.

"Virtual brainwaves are nothing in the face of absolute physical kinetic energy!"

He was roaring. Veins bulged from his forehead all the way down to his neck.

"What three-color law! What concept negation! It's all bullshit in the physical world!"

His fist slammed onto the control panel. The skin on his knuckles was broken. Blood trickled down his fingers. He felt nothing.

"The kinetic energy of a single annihilation bomb is 47 gigajoules!"

"Twelve firing simultaneously would generate 560,000 megajoules!"

"You are virtual! Your power is data! Data cannot withstand physical impact! It cannot!"

His eyes were twitching. His mouth was twitching. His entire face was contorted with extreme fear and madness.

"I'm going to blast you into molecules."

His voice suddenly lowered.

It was so low it was almost a whisper.

"Bombarded into atoms."

"Bombarded into quarks."

"I'll leave you without even a trace."

The start button was pressed.

Wasteland and barren land.

The ground cracked.

It's not the kind of natural crack caused by compression like before.

It is mechanical.

Standard.

Twelve equally spaced, straight cracks, with widths accurate to centimeters, simultaneously erupted within a three-kilometer radius of the sinkhole where Su Yuan was located.

The soil and rocks were propelled tens of meters high by the enormous air pressure.

Then comes the sound.

The sound of gears.

The sound of giant gears meshing. Each sound was deep and resonant, penetrating to the bone. It carried a raw, violent, mechanical beauty unique to the industrial age.

"Click—crackle—boom!"

The first annihilation cannon rose from the crack.

The hydraulic cylinder has a diameter exceeding five meters. It is a pure steel structure. The gray anti-rust paint on the surface has peeled off, revealing the cold-gleaming alloy underneath.

Cannon barrel.

A forty-meter-long cannon barrel.

The diameter is large enough for an off-road vehicle to drive in. The pipe wall is engraved with densely packed heat dissipation grooves, and the edges of each groove have changed color due to long-term high temperature scorching, presenting an uneven dark blue-purple color.

When the heat dissipation fins at the top of the gun barrel unfolded, they emitted short "bang" sounds as the metal plates bounced off.

The second one. The third one. The fourth one.

One after another.

Twelve annihilation cannons rose in succession across the wasteland surrounding the sinkhole. Each one was over eighty meters tall. In this desolate wasteland devoid of any tall buildings, they resembled twelve steel fingers piercing the sky.

The cannons all turned toward the sinkhole.

Twelve dark cannon muzzles were aimed at the same target.

The inside of the cannon barrel lit up.

It's not the cold light of an electric current source. It's the dark red thermal radiation emitted when the armor-piercing propellant on the warhead begins to preheat under the activation of the electromagnetic acceleration coil.

Each annihilation bomb has a warhead diameter of 1.2 meters.

The projectile body is composed of depleted uranium alloy and high-explosive composite charge.

It weighs 3.7 tons.

Its muzzle velocity is 4,000 meters per second.

This is physical.

A pure, unadulterated, and primal formula of violent mass-energy.

Twelve heavy cannons fired simultaneously.

The sound disappeared.

Because it's too big.

It's so large that the human cochlea simply can't handle it.

The scorching heatwave from the cannon ignited the ground within a 30-meter radius, turning it into a glassy state. Twelve white contrails traced straight lines against the purplish-red sky, like death lines connecting heaven and earth.

The warhead plunged into the sinkhole at a speed of four thousand meters per second.

The Devourer, its hull struggling to emerge from the crack, was met head-on by the first salvo.

Inside the train carriage.

Every obsidian scale on the Emperor's Path Devourer trembled violently at the same moment.

The virtual shield formed by the three-color law made contact with the physical warheads that were hurtling towards it at a speed of four thousand meters per second the moment it unfolded around the train.

"Sizzle—sizzle sizzle sizzle—"

The shield didn't break.

But it's flashing.

Flashing wildly.

Dark gold patterns of law flickered on the surface of the shield. In some areas, the patterns were even fading and becoming transparent.

It wasn't penetrated.

It is being "rejected".

The laws of physics in the real world do not recognize these things.

In this real universe governed by mass, velocity, kinetic energy, and the laws of thermodynamics, the word "law" is not on the periodic table. The word "concept" is not in physical formulas. The word "negation" cannot solve the kinetic energy of a 3.7-ton depleted uranium armor-piercing projectile.

Cracks began to seep out from the surface of the shield.

Xiao Huo braced his hands on the control panel. His golden vertical pupils were wide open in their sockets.

His body was trembling.

It's not fear.

It is a deeper rejection reaction, originating from the very foundation of existence.

He attempted to utilize the train's three-color law to enhance its defenses.

The command has been issued.

The system has received it.

But the effect was halved.

No—it was 30% off. 40% off.

The laws that sweep across everything in the virtual universe, once they come into contact with the physical constants of real space, are like a kettle of boiling water at 100 degrees Celsius being poured into an ice cellar.

The temperature is dropping sharply.

Efficiency is plummeting.

"Master! The output of the laws is being suppressed!" For the first time, panic appeared in Xiao Huo's voice.

He exerted all his strength. But the energy reading on the control panel only jumped to 27 percent of the expected value.

"Our power... has been rejected by this world!"

Wang Hu had just poked half his body out of the carriage hatch when he was jolted back by the aftershock of an annihilation warhead that grazed the edge of the shield.

His robotic arm emitted a metallic screeching sound as it withstood the physical shockwave. The alloy barbs that could tear apart higher-dimensional hounds in the virtual world became dull and lifeless in that instant. Heavy. Like it was filled with lead.

"Hold!"

He spat out a mouthful of blood and slid down the inner wall of the carriage with his back against it.

"The boss's power is waning! My power is waning too!"

"This godforsaken place doesn't accept our way of doing things!"

Another volley.

Twelve shots.

The carriage shook violently. The cracks on the shield's surface grew from hair-thin to finger-wide. The dark golden law patterns were gradually darkening.

The carriage lights flickered twice.

Then it lit up again, but it was much dimmer than before.

The treasure-guarding spirit huddled deep inside the treasure chest. The chest lid was tightly shut, not even a crack.

The entire treasure chest bounced on the floor, swaying back and forth with the vibrations of the carriage.

The dull thuds of impact came in one after another.

Each wave caused Little Fire's core fruit to tremble.

Monitoring room.

The hit count on the backup screen is fluctuating.

Shockwave scattering. Shock wave peak value. Thermal radiation data.

The manager stared at those numbers.

The most crucial set of data finally brought a change to his face, which had been frozen for several seconds.

The corner of the mouth.

It's tilted upwards.

It wasn't sticking up very high, but it was enough for the short researcher who was still curled up on the ground next to it to see clearly.

"The target's shield strength is decreasing."

The steward's voice regained some of its normal rhythm, though it was still trembling. But at least it was no longer the screaming that came from the brink of a mental breakdown.

"The shield's effectiveness is reduced by 43% after the first volley."

"Seventy-one percent after the second round."

"Did you see that?"

He turned to look at the short researcher.

The madness in his eyes still burned. But something floated on top of that madness: the ecstatic joy of surviving a catastrophe.

"What did I say again?"

"What's virtual is virtual."

In the physical world, data is data, and code is code.

"You can blow up a planet with one punch in a game, try that in real life?"

He smiled.

Laughter rolled out of his throat. Hoarse. Broken. Like the sound of stepping on shattered glass.

"Round Three!"

He whirled around and slammed his finger on the confirmation button for continuous fire.

"Shoot that bug that crawled out of the data pile back into its server!"

Wasteland and barren land.

The trajectory of the third salvo drew twelve white death lines against the crimson sky.

The 3.7-ton warhead plunged into the sinkhole at nearly Mach 12.

The shield is still holding.

But it's already shaking.

Only a small fraction of the dark gold law patterns remained, struggling to hold on. The pure white creation circuits were attempting to repair the cracks, but the repair speed was far slower than the speed at which they were torn apart by the physical impact.

The warhead penetrated the weakest point of the shield.

The first shot went through.

The warhead struck the obsidian armor of the third carriage of the Devourer. Scales shattered. The sound of metal deforming was sharp enough to pierce an eardrum.

The train carriage shook violently.

Xiao Huo groaned. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

The second shot also went through.

It flew past the car roof, shearing off a row of scales. Debris and sparks scattered in the dark red light of the thunderstorm.

The gunfire hadn't stopped.

The fourth round is already loaded.

Bottom of the sinkhole.

Su Yuan stood still.

Covered in dust. The bone armor was stained with fragments and dried blood.

Broken glass pressed against the nutrient solution underfoot, along with iron filings. It was filthy.

He didn't look up at the trajectories.

He is feeling.

Through the resonant connection between the three-colored vortex on his chest and the Devourer, the physical feedback from each bullet hitting the vehicle was clearly transmitted into his senses.

shock.

Calories.

Metal deformation.

There's also the kind of stiffness that arises when laws are rejected by physical constants—like the sluggishness of two incompatible gears being forcibly meshed together.

He heard Little Fire's shout.

They heard Wang Hu cursing.

They also heard the sinister laughter of the manager in the monitoring room.

Su Yuan's tricolored vertical pupils spun halfway around behind the dust.

"Physical kinetic energy."

He spoke. His voice was still hoarse. His vocal cords hadn't fully recovered, and the words he spoke had a rough, grating quality.

"Forty-seven gigajoules."

"Twelve."

"Five hundred and sixty thousand."

He was repeating.

To reiterate what the steward just said.

Then he laughed.

The fangs were exposed.

"Your calculations are quite accurate."

"But you've fallen short in one aspect."

He looked up.

The vortex of his tricolored vertical pupils began to accelerate. Dark gold, pure white, and jet black—the three colors swirled wildly across his irises, like three snakes chasing each other.

"You've got my mouth shut."

The fourth round of volleys.

Twelve annihilation warheads descended from the sky, leaving white trails behind them.

One of them went astray.

The ballistic deviation is 0.7 degrees. At a muzzle velocity of 4,000 meters per second and a range of several hundred meters, a deviation of 0.7 degrees is enough to cause the projectile to deviate from its intended point of impact by about 20 meters.

This shot didn't hit the sinkhole.

It grazed along the edge of the sinkhole, corrected its trajectory downwards, and headed straight for the bottom of the sinkhole.

They went straight for Su Yuan's face.

A 3.7-ton depleted uranium alloy armor-piercing projectile.

Its muzzle velocity is 4,000 meters per second.

It carried the residual dark red glow of the armor-piercing propellant column after it had been preheated.

It filled the space at the bottom of the sinkhole in less than 0.02 seconds.

Su Yuan did not withdraw.

No flash.

He didn't even tilt his head.

He slowly raised his left hand.

His palm, covered in dark gold bone armor, opened forward. His five fingers were naturally spread apart.

It's like trying to catch a ball thrown by someone.

The bullet struck his palm.

No sound.

There should be a sound. Three and a half tons multiplied by four thousand meters per second squared and then divided by two, this kinetic energy acting on an area the size of a human hand, would generate a shockwave powerful enough to shatter all solid structures within a radius of fifty meters.

But nothing happened.

The warhead stopped.

It didn't embed itself in his palm. It didn't cause any deformation on his arm.

It just... stopped.

It stopped right in the center of his palm.

The dark red glow on the surface of the bullet began to change color the moment it came into contact with his skin.

First it changed from dark red to white.

Then it changed from white to transparent.

The molecular structure of the depleted uranium alloy was rewritten in Su Yuan's palm.

It's not a rewriting of the rules.

It is something more fundamental than laws.

The true source.

The drop of transparent liquid he extracted from the fingertip of the higher dimension, transcending the virtual and the real, was now seeping from the three-colored vortex in his palm.

A thin layer. Covering the palm of the bone armor.

The warhead disappeared in front of this thin film.

It wasn't shattered. It wasn't bounced away. It wasn't melted.

It has been redefined at the material level.

The uranium atoms in depleted uranium are broken down. The carbon, iron, and nickel in the alloy are separated. The chemical bonds in the high-explosive charge are extracted one by one.

The 3.7-ton warhead turned into a cloud of gray iron powder in 0.3 seconds.

Iron dust drifted out from between Su Yuan's fingers.

Light and airy.

It landed on the broken glass at its feet.

silent.

Wasteland and barren land.

Ironblood Heavy Industry's escort formation deployed three kilometers around the sinkhole.

One hundred and twenty-seven heavy diesel-powered armored vehicles were arranged in three rings of defense. Each one was fifteen meters tall. The broad-shouldered, thick-chested humanoid silhouettes were covered with heavy composite armor plates. The diesel engines on their backs roared, emitting thick black exhaust fumes.

The mech's cockpit is located in the chest area. Behind the slotted observation window are faces mostly covered by bulletproof masks.

The warlord's mecha stood in the very center of the first line of defense.

A custom-made model that stands a full three meters taller than other mechs. Two Ironblood Heavy Industries flags—an iron fist pattern surrounded by gears—are welded onto the shoulder armor.

The mech held a 50mm rapid-fire cannon in its right hand and a three-meter-high electromagnetic shield in its left.

The loudspeaker mounted on the outside of the cockpit hummed to life.

"Fuck."

The warlord's voice boomed from the loudspeaker. Deep and resonant, with a rough, diesel-engine-like quality. And there was a clear hint of schadenfreude.

"What exploded underground? A nuclear bomb?"

He was chewing on a piece of jerky he'd gotten from who-knows-where. As he spoke, his jaw moved up and down, and the grease from the jerky stained half of his mouth.

"Old Zhou, look—" He pointed with the cannon barrel at the white contrails crisscrossing against the purplish-red sky in the direction of the sinkhole. "Those are annihilation cannons. Old models. At least forty years old."

A reply came from a mech painted with red stripes next to them.

"Boss, that artillery position is a remnant of the government forces. It's marked on the blueprints; there's an abandoned research base underneath."

"Government troops?" The warlord scoffed. "Government troops have been dead for almost two hundred years. Are there still any survivors left?"

"It looks like an automated defense system is in operation. It's probably dealing with some kind of mutant..."

"Whatever." The warlord bit into the jerky. He chewed twice. Swallowed. Then he raised the mech's right arm, and the cannon barrel retracted from the sinkhole.

"After we've finished cleaning up the cannon fire, we'll go down and collect the bodies."

"The annihilation cannon's warhead is made of depleted uranium. The amount of uranium we recover is enough to feed us for six months."

"And those glowing...things. Who cares what kind of mutant they are." His eyes narrowed behind his bulletproof mask. "Dead things are valuable too. What's the most valuable thing in the wasteland? Rare materials. Whether it's metal or organic matter, if you've never seen it before, haul it back and sell it to those businessmen. One ton for three tons of purified water."

He patted the inside of the cockpit.

"Brothers, stay alert. When you go down to collect the leaks later, be careful of the radiation levels. Same rules as always: anything below 300 is fine, anything above 300 requires a lead apron. Don't touch anything over 500—leave it to those idiots in the research department."

A chorus of responses came from the loudspeaker.

The pilots of over a hundred mechs were chatting animatedly in the channel. Some were betting on how many volleys the mutant could withstand. Others were calculating the profits from uranium recovery. Still others were discussing which outpost to go for drinks after collecting the corpses.

No one was nervous.

Why be nervous?

The Annihilation Cannon is the highest known firepower in the wasteland. Let alone mutants, even the thickest-skinned S-class mutant, the "Iron-Shelled King," would be shattered into parts by a single salvo.

This is physics.

Physics doesn't lie.

The warlord leader leaned back in the driver's seat, one leg crossed over the other. His knee rested against the guard of the control lever.

He is waiting.

Wait until the cannon fire stops.

We'll get rich later.

Then an image appeared in his optical sight.

At the bottom of the sinkhole. In the gaps between thick smoke and rubble.

A single figure.

It's very small. From the perspective of the 15-meter-tall mech, it's as small as an ant.

The figure was spreading its five fingers.

Something stopped in front of his palm.

The autofocus system of the optical sight frantically adjusted, trying to get the image clear.

Focusing complete.

The picture is clear now.

An annihilation bomb.

A 3.7-ton depleted uranium armor-piercing projectile.

It stopped in front of a human hand.

Then it turned into iron powder.

The loudspeaker was turned off.

It wasn't closed voluntarily by the warlord leader.

His finger twitched and touched the switch on the panel.

There were still people talking on the channel. But he couldn't hear them anymore.

The bits of jerky in his mouth fell onto the control panel. He didn't chew them. His jaw was stuck in halfway.

The voice of the pilot in the red-striped mech next to me changed.

"Boss, boss..."

"That man caught the shell with his bare hands..."

The laughter on the channel stopped.

In the cockpits of 127 mechs, 127 pairs of eyes saw the same image through their respective optical systems.

Iron powder.

It's floating.

Light and airy.

They drifted out from between the fingers of that hand. Like dandelion seeds.

The hydraulic joints of all 127 mechs creaked and groaned simultaneously.

The drivers' hands unconsciously tightened around the control levers.

Someone was speaking on the channel. The voice was very soft, but with a sharp, almost shrill quality that was being desperately suppressed.

"Physical weapons... are ineffective against it?"

"How is that possible...? That's a physical warhead... purely kinetic energy..."

"What is it...?"

Bottom of the sinkhole.

Su Yuan shook his hand.

There was a little bit of gray iron powder on my palm.

He glanced down at it.

"The taste is just average."

His voice was hoarse and flat, as if he were commenting on a dish that wasn't flavorful enough.

Then he withdrew his left hand. His right hand was placed on his chest.

Three-color vortex.

The core of the endogenous universe.

The core, which had expanded to an indescribable extent after devouring the "King," the fingertips of the high-dimensional harvester, and countless fragments of laws, was churning wildly deep within his chest cavity.

The true source.

That transparent substance that is more "real" than any law.

Su Yuan pressed his right hand against his chest, the knuckles of his bone armor digging into the skin. The tri-colored vortex accelerated, accelerated, and accelerated again under his pressure.

The true source matter was squeezed out from the center of the vortex.

It's not just a drop anymore.

It is one.

A river flowing with transparent liquid light.

It surged from Su Yuan's chest, spreading outwards along the law patterns on the surface of the bone armor, flowing downwards, and seeping into the ground beneath his feet.

Then, following the underground network of pipes that the vines had already dug through, it rushed towards the roots of the vines.

It charged toward the Emperor's Path: Devourer of the Wasteland.

"Small fire."

Su Yuan's voice came into the carriage through the resonance connection.

Xiao Huo was panting, leaning against the control panel. His golden vertical pupils were bloodshot.

"arrive."

What's here?

Xiao Huo didn't have time to ask.

Because he sensed it.

An enormous, incomprehensible surge of energy suddenly poured in from the roots of the vines at the bottom of the train.

It is not the energy of laws.

It is not flesh and blood energy.

It's not metal, and it's not a core fragment.

It's something that causes his core fruit to undergo a dramatic transformation the moment it comes into contact with it.

The true source.

A large quantity of purified, real source matter processed by Su Yuan's internal universe.

Every obsidian scale on the Devourer lit up at the same moment.

It's not dark gold.

It is transparent.

It is a transparency that transcends the boundaries between virtual and reality, a transparency that makes both the laws of physics and the laws of virtuality tremble.

The crack no longer repels it.

Because it is no longer purely virtual.

The true source material grants it the right to exist legally in the physical world.

The engines of the Devourer roared.

The primal roar of an ancient behemoth as the cage door opens.

But this time, the roar didn't come from the virtual dimension.

It comes from physical space.

Sound waves. Real sound waves. Longitudinal waves generated by the compression of air molecules. Spreading outwards at a speed of 340 meters per second.

The ground is shaking.

The sinkhole is expanding.

The Devourer's hull stopped its "squeezing" motion.

Because it no longer needs to be squeezed.

The boundaries of the crack melted before it. The virtual barrier softened under the influence of real source matter, like butter being sliced ​​by a hot knife.

The car body slid out of the crack inch by inch.

The front half of the vehicle is shaped like a train. Obsidian scales. Dark gold patterned lines. Tricolor toothed teeth.

But the second half...

The latter half changed as it slid out of the crack.

The train's shell began to twist. The metallic texture faded, replaced by a new material that was more primal, more raw, somewhere between metal and muscle.

Dark golden flesh and blood.

Dark gold flesh with mechanical barbs.

The connections between the carriages were no longer joints. They were vertebrae. Huge vertebrae covered in obsidian scales, each segment connected by ligaments formed by the laws of three colors.

Spikes sprouted from the roof. One row. Two rows. Three rows. Each spike was over ten meters tall. The tips were so sharp they could reflect the dark red lightning in the wasteland sky.

Several kilometers.

From the tri-colored giant head at the front of the car to the forked tail at the rear.

A colossal living beast, several kilometers long, burst forth from the ground above the horizon.

Fragments of soil, rocks, and metal debris flew out from both sides of its body like shrapnel. It blasted a trench three hundred meters wide into the ground.

Then it stood up.

It wasn't "opened" out.

It's a station.

Forelimbs—these giant forelimbs, transformed from the first two carriages of the train, braced themselves against the ground. Dark golden claws pierced the parched earth. Each claw strike created a crater fifty meters in diameter.

Then, support yourself on your hind legs.

The waist and abdomen are arched.

The three rows of thorns on its back point straight to the sky.

The Emperor's Path Devourer stands in the wasteland in the form of a giant beast.

Its body, several kilometers long, obscured the sickly purplish-red sky.

The massive shadow cast covered the entire sinkhole, the twelve annihilation cannons, and the entire area where the 127 mechs were located.

The warlord's mecha appeared smaller than an ant in the giant shadow.

He slumped into the driver's seat.

The megaphone switch wasn't even touched.

The channel is now completely silent.

There was a five-second silence.

Then someone said something in the channel. The voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.

"Damn it, run!"

Su Yuan stood atop the giant beast's head.

It's very windy.

The wind from the wasteland, carrying sand and the smell of rusted metal, filled his nostrils.

The real wind.

He closed his eyes briefly.

When it opened again, the vortex in the tricolor vertical pupils had reached its maximum speed.

"Eat."

Two words.

The belly of the Devourer had split open.

From the lower jaw to the tailbone, a rift over two thousand meters long tore along the midline of the behemoth's abdomen. Inside the rift were not internal organs; it was an abyss.

The three-colored teeth closed and opened from both sides of the crack, and thick, real source material mist gushed out from between the teeth.

Thousands of dark golden vines cascaded down from the abyss.

Each one is as thick as an adult's waist.

Each one is covered with obsidian scales and a thin, transparent film of true source matter.

They burrowed into the ground.

Piercing towards those annihilation cannons. Piercing towards those mechs. Piercing towards everything still functioning, a creation of the real world made of metal and gunpowder.

The first vine pierced the barrel of the nearest Annihilation Cannon.

An 80-meter-high pure steel structure.

A forty-meter-long cannon barrel.

A hydraulic cylinder with a diameter of five meters.

Rust-resistant alloy. Heat dissipation fins. Ammunition supply rails.

The vines pierced through the wall of the cannon barrel.

Steel is no different from paper in the face of true source matter.

After penetrating, the vines began to swell. The transparent membrane on the scales seeped into the molecular structure of the metal.

The heavy artillery began to change color.

It changed from gray to dark gold.

It's not paintwork.

It is the metal itself that is changing.

Atomic rearrangement. Lattice rewriting. The carbon-carbon bonds in carbon steel were broken and rearranged into a completely new alloy structure that does not exist in nature—a dark golden living metal with tricolor patterns.

The heavy artillery is being absorbed.

To be digested alive.

The cannon barrel was the first to soften. It transformed from a straight cylinder into curved, aerial root-like dark golden tentacles. Tiny scales grew on the tentacles.

Then comes the base. The high-pressure oil in the hydraulic cylinder is pumped out. The metal casing is wrapped, decomposed, and absorbed by the vines.

ten seconds.

The first Annihilation Cannon transformed from an eighty-meter-tall steel behemoth into a writhing, dark golden tumor, before being swallowed whole by the abyss in the beast's belly.

The second one. The third one. The fourth one.

The vines are growing faster and faster.

Twelve heavy cannons.

Forty seconds.

It's all gone.

Even the foundation was drained. The deep pit where the gun emplacement was originally buried was now just bare rock layers, glassy from being burned by real source matter.

The mechs are faster.

The 15-meter-tall heavy diesel mech was powerless against the vines of the Devourer.

The first mech was pierced simultaneously by three vines: the chest plate, the left shoulder, and the right leg. Three points of penetration.

The composite armor plate changed color from the point of penetration. It softened. It turned into a dark golden liquid.

The pilot in the cockpit felt his seat deforming. The instrument panel was melting. The control stick turned into a warm, metallic paste in his hand.

He opened his mouth as if to shout.

I didn't shout it out.

Because the mech's outer shell had completely disintegrated.

The fifteen-meter-tall metal giant was disintegrated into a pile of writhing dark golden metallic powder by the vines in two seconds. The powder was then sucked back into the beast's abyssal maw by the vines.

Second. Third. Fifth. Tenth. Twentieth.

Vines swept across the wasteland.

Dark golden tentacles rained down like a storm. Each one struck the ground, creating a crater several meters wide.

Metal fragments. Diesel fuel fumes. Hydraulic oil mist.

It was mixed with something wetter.

It permeates the air.

The screams on the channel peaked at the thirteenth second.

Then they all disappeared in the twentieth second.

Because there are no more mechs that can make a sound.

One hundred and twenty-seven heavy-duty diesel engine armors.

Thirty seconds.

Only the sound of the wind as the vines retracted and the sizzling of the remaining heat remained on the wasteland.

Su Yuan stood atop the giant beast's head.

The vibrations coming from beneath my feet weren't an attack. They were from eating. From digestion. From the low-frequency resonance of my stomach's peristalsis.

The Devourer is eating.

Deep within its belly, molten metal and decomposed hydrocarbons are being rewritten by the Tricolor Law and True Source Matter, transforming into the purest physical-level + law-level dual energy.

Energy flowed back along the law-conduit channels within the behemoth's body.

It flowed to Su Yuan.

It flowed into his bone armor. It flowed into his bones. It flowed into every muscle fiber.

Dark golden light seeped from the patterns on his bone armor.

It's getting brighter and brighter.

It was so bright that even the dark purple clouds churning in the wasteland sky were tinged with gold.

He sensed the change.

The physical body is getting stronger.

It's not an increase in virtual data. It's an increase in real muscle density, bone rigidity, and nerve conduction speed.

At the physical level.

It's real.

It will not disappear due to a server power outage.

Most of the thousands of vines have receded from the ground.

But two were not collected.

They penetrated the underground with precision.

A blade lifted the wreckage of the custom-made mech belonging to the warlord leader of Ironblood Heavy Industries. The cockpit was found.

The cockpit armor had melted away most of it. The man inside, still clutching the remnants of the control stick, had his ankle wrapped around a dark golden tentacle.

Hanging upside down.

In mid-air.

It is about 30 meters above the ground.

The wind whistled past his ears.

The jerky fell off. The shoes fell off too. The bulletproof mask was blown up by the wind, revealing a face covered in dust and cold sweat.

His eyes were darting around.

I wanted to speak. I opened my mouth three times, but couldn't utter the first syllable.

Another vine burrowed into the ground.

Heading downwards.

We passed through the building structure, which had been rewritten by the tri-color pulses. We passed through corridors and pipes filled with dark gold patterns.

We found the monitoring room.

The explosion-proof top cover looked like a biscuit in front of the vines.

It shatters with a single poke.

The steward was covered in debris and dust.

He was still sitting on the ground. His posture was exactly the same as before. Even his expression hadn't changed.

Mouth agape. Eyes wide open. Pants wet.

The vines wrapped around his waist.

They dragged him out.

As he was being dragged, his back scraped against the edge of the shattered blast shield. His protective suit was torn. His skin was scraped. But he didn't feel it.

He was brought up.

The earth's surface was mentioned.

It mentioned the wasteland.

It mentioned a position alongside the warlord leader.

Two people.

A person wearing a tattered military bulletproof vest.

A person wearing a white protective suit with a cut on the shoulder.

They were suspended upside down, side by side, thirty meters in the air.

Above their feet.

From this angle, the Emperor's Path Devourer's behemoth form appears boundless. Its dark golden flesh is covered with obsidian scales and tri-colored law patterns. Each scale is as large as a classroom.

The gaping maw of the abyss had not yet fully closed. Molten metal, still clinging to its teeth, dripped slowly.

Each drop that falls to the ground creates a molten pit emitting white smoke.

The steward looked at the scene.

I looked at it for three seconds.

Then he started laughing.

Laughter rolled out of his throat. Crumbled. Dry. Like crushing a handful of withered leaves.

"Hahaha……"

"Physics... no longer exists..."

His voice grew softer and softer. More and more fragmented.

"I designed a seven-layer physical firewall..."

"Three layers of electromagnetic shielding..."

"Two independent power supply systems..."

"Physics no longer exists..."

This was the last complete sentence he ever spoke in his life.

The vines tightened.

Two voices rang out at the same time.

Short and abrupt. Muffled and hoarse.

Then, dark red mist drifted in the wind of the wasteland.

There was no more chattering or gossiping.

The entire wasteland fell silent.

Only the wind.

The wind swept across the still-warm craters.

Scrape away the remaining debris of mecha parts on the ground.

The annihilation artillery position was swept away, leaving nothing behind.

It made a whimpering sound.

Low and drawn-out. Like the earth weeping.

Su Yuan closed his eyes.

The three-colored vertical pupils disappeared into the shadow of the dark gold bone armor.

He is feeling.

The first meal in the real world.

smell……

It's not good.

But it's very real.

It's the kind of substantial feeling that you get when you chew it.

Each sample represents physical mass. Each sample represents real atoms and molecules. It will not disappear after a server restart. It will not cease to exist simply because the code is deleted.

This feeling eased something that had been tense in his chest.

I only relaxed for a moment.

Because in the next second, fragments of memory that he had casually plundered in the fraction of a second before the steward was crushed by the vines flooded into his consciousness.

The video is fragmented. The sound is intermittent.

But one part is very clear.

It is a conference room.

A long table. A dozen or so people in dark uniforms. A data model is projected onto the screen.

The manager stood in front of the projector, holding a laser pointer in his hand.

He is giving a report.

"...Project Zero was never positioned as a cutting-edge project from the beginning..."

"...Essentially, it's a dumping ground. All the test subjects are from the abandoned population list—unidentified residents from Zones One to Seven, war orphans, missing persons..."

"...Brainwave data has extremely low commercial value; even the Level 3 database under the Truth Alliance Council wouldn't bother including it..."

"...The only output is low-purity consciousness source matter, used as a supplement for basic research in the upstream 'Rainbow Bridge Project'..."

"...Annual funding has been cut for five consecutive years, and this year's operating funds are 47 percent less than last year's..."

"...To put it bluntly, we're just a dispensable dumping ground in the lower levels of parliament's budget...it's only a matter of time before we're shut down..."

The video cut out.

Su Yuan's tricolor vertical pupils snapped open.

The vortex in his pupils paused for a moment.

Waste recycling station.

Abandoned population.

It's optional.

His lips twitched. A sliver of fang protruded from beneath his lip.

Then the convulsions stopped.

Expressionless.

What's more frightening than anger is a blank expression.

He had no time for sentimentality.

Because the weather has changed.

The crimson sky cracked open above his head.

It wasn't struck by lightning. It wasn't torn apart by vines.

It was forcibly torn apart by some kind of physical gravitational field that was so vast it was absurd.

The clouds rolled outwards from the edge of the crack. The dark purple low clouds were pulled into long, swirling vortices by gravity.

The cracks are getting bigger and bigger.

The light shining through the crack was not sunlight.

It is a cool, metallic white.

It is the standard color temperature for ship lighting systems.

Su Yuan looked up.

The three-colored vertical pupils looked straight ahead.

A ship.

It slowly, very slowly rolled down from the crack in the sky.

It's too big.

It was so large that Su Yuan's field of vision could not contain its outline.

He could only see the bottom.

Grayish-white. Flat. A base plate covered with densely packed heat dissipation grids and thruster nozzles.

Each thruster nozzle is larger than the diameter of a city.

The ship is marked with an emblem.

Two scepters are crossed on a golden shield-shaped base. The point where the scepters cross is an open eye.

A line of text was written in tiny characters on the ribbon below the eyes.

Su Yuan's tricolor vertical pupils magnified the focal length.

I see it clearly now.

"Truth Union Council - Fourth Division of Planetary Cleansing".

The cold, mechanical sound of broadcasting poured down from the sky.

It's not a speaker.

It is a full-frequency signal modulated by gravitational waves. It directly generates vibrations in the molecular structure of every object, transmitting sound to every corner of every inch of space in the atmosphere.

"A digital permeate leak has been detected in isolation chamber ZR-0017 of the Zero Project."

"The leaked material has become illegally entangled with physical space."

"Classification: Parasitic type virus."

"Initiate planetary-level vitrification cleaning."

"Countdown: 180 seconds."

Su Yuan stood on the head of the Devouring Wasteland.

The wind was stronger than before. The Star Destroyer's gravitational field had disturbed the planet's atmospheric circulation.

His bone armor was covered in rusty dust and deep red mist residue.

A sliver of metal still clung to its fangs.

He stuck out his tongue.

I licked it.

It smells of rust. It smells of copper. And there's a slight pungent odor from the residual sulfides after the high-explosive charge burned.

The taste of the real world.

He didn't back down.

His back was straight.

The three-colored vertical pupils gazed up at the colossal vessel that obscured half the planet.

The corners of his mouth slowly cracked open.

All the fangs were exposed.

Laughed.

Very light. Very low.

So low that only the three-colored giant skull of the Devouring Ship beneath their feet could hear it.

A low growl responded from the giant skull's throat.

"This dish is a bit too big."

Su Yuan clenched his right fist. The knuckles of the bone armor struck each other, producing a short, metallic clanging sound.

"But I've been hungry for a long time."