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

When the gate was raised to 1.5 meters, the metal wrinkles were revealed through the gaps.

It's not a structural component. It's not a cast panel. It's living flesh.

The metallic flesh—its dark gold surface covered with irregular wrinkles and protrusions, each groove bearing traces of the old Blue Star standard casting threads. These threads were not added later; they grew out along with the metal structure.

The gate is two meters long. Three meters long.

Su Yuan stood at the door of the driver's cab without moving.

The whole picture has been revealed.

Two compound eyes are embedded in a metal fold wall that is over twenty meters wide, behind which is an even larger structure. The dark gold metal mountain of flesh extends from the bottom of the reactor shell all the way to the depths of the dome, completely merging with the load-bearing walls, foundation, and reactor shielding of Station 58.

It's not parasitism. It's symbiosis.

Or rather, the foundation of Station No. 58 is its skeleton.

The reactor can still operate after 21 years without maintenance, not because of its superior design, but because it needs the heat from the reactor core to survive.

Its volume is impossible to estimate. The small fire's scan was reflected back onto the metal surface and could not penetrate it; it could only be inferred from the outer contour: it covered at least the entire rear half of the dome, spanning more than sixty meters.

The two compound eyes appeared small on that folded wall. The lens group, with a diameter of one meter, occupied only a small area on the twenty-meter-wide panel. However, the speed of light flow within the lens layer increased rapidly.

Focusing is complete.

It spotted the Devourer.

There was no broadcast. There was no voiceprint simulation. There were no lead words disguised as human language.

From station 55 to station 57, all the fake rules, fake broadcasts, fake medical vehicles, and fake Ji Yun's remains—were all means of the outer defense system.

It doesn't need those.

Quiet.

Utter silence. The hum of the reactor coolant circulation was gone. The low-frequency hum of the refining furnace during standby was gone. The clinking of vials inside compartment 013 was gone.

All sounds were silenced in the same instant.

It didn't disappear. It was covered up.

Infrasound.

The frequency is below the human hearing threshold. Twelve hertz, eight hertz, six hertz—continuously downward pressure. The air itself is vibrating, compressed back and forth at an amplitude invisible to the naked eye.

In compartment 013, the young wounded soldier's nose started bleeding first. It wasn't a ruptured nasal cavity—it was a ruptured capillary on the inside of his eardrum under infrasound pressure, causing blood to flow backward from his Eustachian tube.

Tang Lan's knees slammed onto the floor.

She wasn't kneeling. She couldn't stand. Her balance system had been shattered by the six-hertz frequency, and her vestibular system was completely dysfunctional. She braced herself against the edge of the stretcher with her hands, her nails digging into the metal seams.

"013—" she tried to shout, but no sound came out when she opened her mouth.

Inside the third life pod, the veteran mechanic and the three survivors lay sprawled on the floor. Not from fear. It was muscle paralysis; their entire bodies were spasming at a frequency of six hertz.

There was no sound coming from the 005 emplacement.

Home screen.

The data stream of Xiao Huo is all red.

This is not an attack warning—it's an underlying protocol overriding.

At the lowest level of the Devourer's control system, the protocol codes consistent with the old Blue Star Pangu Project are being forcibly overwritten and rewritten by external signals. It's not a hacker intrusion, nor signal interference. Something deeper—a backdoor pre-installed during the design phase—has been activated.

The braking system is being taken over.

Wheelset speed control is being taken over.

The linked lockout status is being taken over.

Once the coverage is complete, the Devourer will automatically drive to that thing, automatically deploy its armor, and automatically unlock 005's pod.

Xiao Huo's voice was extremely fast: "Underlying protocol coverage progress is eleven percent—fourteen—seventeen percent—"

Su Yuan's right hand was already on the knob of the Zhenshan frequency band spoofing device.

He did not touch the power lever. He did not activate any countermeasures.

Turn the knob with your finger until it's at its lowest point.

Cold furnace. Dead iron. Fire extinguished.

The core's output frequency dropped from 14 Hz to zero within 0.3 seconds. It wasn't a shutdown—it was a disguise. The disguise device rendered the core's electromagnetic characteristics as a cold iron. There was no power signal, no idling, and no active energy fluctuations.

A piece of scrap iron weighing three hundred tons.

The progress of underlying protocol coverage is stuck.

Seventeen. Seventeen. Seventeen.

There was no further increase.

The infrasound was still there, but its intensity had dropped by half. Su Yuan felt the pressure in his ears lessen, but it hadn't completely disappeared.

The lenses of the two compound eyes exhibited violent contraction and dilation vibrations.

Focusing failed.

It targets the power source. It uses the unique 4.7-second idle rhythm characteristic of the Zhenshan core. When this rhythm disappears, its identification system determines the target to be—an invalid object.

Scrap metal does not need to be taken over.

The underlying protocol overriding was discontinued because no target system was running that could be overridden.

Su Yuan's hand was still on the knob. His breathing was steady.

Inside cabin 013, Tang Lan's vestibular sense had recovered halfway. She pushed herself up from the ground and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. The two wounded soldiers were still bleeding from their noses, but the spasms had stopped.

"Main screen restored." Xiao Huo's voice was slower than before. "Protocol overwrite interrupted. The other party is re-searching for valid targets."

The light patterns in the compound eyes have changed.

The scanning pattern changed from uniform to random fluctuations, like a nearsighted person squinting in the dark to find something.

It can't find the Devourer.

Inside the entire underground hall, the 300-ton battleship was parked less than fifty meters away. Its headlights were still on. The armor reflected the light. But in its identification system, all of this was invalid information. It only recognized the power frequency.

Su Yuan did not let go.

Seven seconds.

Twelve seconds.

Fifteen seconds.

The compound eye stopped twitching.

But it's not about giving up.

At the very bottom of the metal pleated wall, in the exposed structure after the gate has fully lifted, came the sound of mechanical engagement. It wasn't hydraulic; it was the ejection mechanism.

Four dark gold cables spring out from the bottom.

Each blade is thicker than an adult's thigh. The front end isn't a connector—it's a high-frequency vibrating cutter. The cutter spins at extremely high speeds, creating a sharp whistling sound as the air is churned.

The trajectory of the four cables is so precise it sends chills down your spine.

Two arrows shot towards the 005 emplacement.

Two beams shot towards the front beam of the Devouring Wasteland.

It abandoned identification. Direct physical connection.

"Eight cables!"

As Su Yuan shouted, his right hand left the camouflage knob and slammed onto the rail spike panel.

Forty-eight tungsten steel rail spikes simultaneously ejected and embedded themselves in the ground rails. Within 0.5 seconds, the Devourer transformed from a movable state into a fixed, impaled object.

Eight steel cables were launched from various anchor points. But this time they weren't attached to the anchor points—two were wound around the outside of the 005 hull's thrust shield frame, forming a physical barrier; four were crossed and tightened, binding the lead car and the third section into a single structure; and the remaining two were attached to the outer shell of the refining furnace.

Wang Hu acted even faster than he gave the order.

As Su Yuan shouted "Eight cables!", he had already pulled down the control lever of the heavy-duty crane arm. The crane arm rose from the right side of the Devourer, its jaws opening to their maximum angle, precisely clamping the thickest of the four dark gold cables in mid-air.

The jaws closed.

The instant the steel stranded boom contacts the dark gold cable sheath—

White light.

It wasn't a spark. It was an electric arc. The insulating coating on the surface of the crane boom burned through at the contact point, exposing the steel structure underneath. High-voltage current was conducted from the cable sheath into the steel of the crane boom, spreading along the metal structure towards the hull of the "Desolate Wasteland" vehicle.

But it's not just about electricity.

After the electric arc disappeared, a dark silver liquid seeped from the cable contact point. It wasn't splashing—it was active flow. The liquid metal crawled towards the Devourer at a visible speed along the scratches and welds on the boom's surface.

Living metal.

The cable was filled with living metal.

Wang Hu didn't let go of the control lever. He couldn't make a sound—the residual infrasound was still pressing on his vocal cords.

Su Yuan saw it.

"014".

There is only one word.

On the pipeline between the 014 backup cooling compartment and the refining furnace, the cryogenic discharge valve popped open. It wasn't Wang Hu who opened it—it was Xiao Huo who remotely activated the valve's electromagnet the instant Su Yuan shouted "014".

The liquid nitrogen mixture at -180 degrees Celsius rushed out of the conduit and flowed along the pre-set waste gas backflow pipeline to the base of the hoisting arm.

White ice mist burst open on the surface of the crane arm's steel.

The dark silver, crawling liquid stopped the instant it touched the liquid nitrogen. Not solidified—it became brittle. The liquid turned into a solid, the solid into a brittle shell. The entire crawling trajectory transformed from a flowing snake into a lifeless, grayish-white tube, devoid of any luster.

one second.

From seepage to freezing to death, it takes a second.

Su Yuan's eyes never left the four cables. The boom had clamped the thickest one, but the other three were still moving.

Two cables had already pierced the eight-cable barrier outside the 005 hull. The high-frequency cutter tangled in the steel cable surface, sending metal fragments flying. The eight cables held out for two and a half seconds before the cutter cut three strands of the outer steel wire.

The fourth method bypassed the front beam protection and drilled upwards from the bottom, targeting the junction between the front beam and the core energy-conducting pipe of Zhenshan.

"Want to connect?"

Su Yuan's voice was very flat.

"Let it have its fill."

His right hand rested on the main control panel of the refining furnace.

Six dark gold conduits popped out simultaneously.

It wasn't a fan-shaped unfolding—it was six conduits inserted side-by-side into the frozen, dark gold cable's outer shell. The brittle, frozen shell shattered under the penetrating force of the conduit tips, revealing a complex, multi-layered internal structure: the outer shell was a dark gold alloy, the second layer was a living metal coolant pipe, the third layer was high-density data transmission fibers, and the core was an old Blue Star military-grade superconducting wire.

The refining furnace is started.

Full power.

The furnace temperature jumped from 800 degrees Celsius in standby mode to 1600 degrees Celsius in an instant. The negative pressure field formed by the six conduits was drawn from inside the cable.

First comes out the living metal coolant. The dark golden liquid is sucked into the refining furnace at an extremely fast speed—it is liquid itself, so there is almost no resistance.

Then there are the data transmission fibers. Superconducting wires. Sheath alloy.

Everything was decomposed, sucked in, and entered the furnace cavity.

The cable is shrinking. It is becoming thinner, flatter, and hollow at a speed visible to the naked eye.

A sound came from the metal folds fifty meters away.

It wasn't infrasound. It was high frequency. Extremely high frequency. Sharp vibrations beyond the limits of human hearing, but the metal structure responded. The Devourer's outer armor began to resonate, a subtle hum seeping from the gaps between each plate.

A metallic hiss.

The giant eye is calling out.

The light patterns in the two compound eyes began to flicker violently—no longer focused, but convulsing uncontrollably. The refining furnace was drawing matter from its body in reverse through its own attack cables.

It tried to cut it off.

At the base of the cable, the junction between the metal pleats and the cable contracted. The entire connection was rapidly closing, trying to sever the cable from itself.

Amputation to survive.

However, the refining furnace's extraction speed is faster than its closing speed. The conduit is no longer just something inside the suction cable—the negative pressure field extends along the cable towards the source, beginning to extract material directly from inside the folds at the connection point.

A large amount of dark golden liquid poured into the refining furnace. The furnace feed indicator light changed from green to yellow and then to red, and the temperature jumped from 1,600 to 1,800.

"The furnace temperature is approaching its upper limit," Xiao Huo said.

Su Yuan ignored him.

The six catheters continued to be drawn.

The giant eye's reaction changed.

No longer attempt to disconnect.

The massive mass behind the entire metal folded wall began to tremble. The dark red light seeping from the seams of the reactor shield suddenly brightened—from dark red to orange-red, and then to bright orange.

The temperature is rising.

It's not the ambient temperature. It's the temperature inside the cable.

It transmits heat from the reactor core via cables.

The core temperature of 382 degrees Celsius began to travel along the cable from the connection point towards the Devourer. The color of the metal surface changed from dark gold to dark red, spreading from the root towards the front beam.

The frozen, brittle metal shell of the living organism remelted under high temperature. The grayish-white color turned back to dark silver, the liquid regained its fluidity, and began to flow towards the conduit interface.

Surface temperature of the dark gold conduit in the refining furnace: 400 degrees Celsius. 500 degrees Celsius. 600 degrees Celsius.

The design limit for the dark gold conduit is 800 degrees.

"Catheter temperature 720-740-"

The sound of metal expanding came from the chassis of the Devourer. Heat waves began to spread from the bottom of the front beam, and blue smoke rose from the hydraulic mud on the ground tracks.

The 014 cooling water tank issued a boiling alarm. The liquid nitrogen backfill just now consumed most of the reserves, and the remaining cooling capacity is insufficient to combat the core heat flowing in from the cables.

"Catheter 810—"

It's at a critical point. If it goes any further, the dark gold conduit will soften, and the negative pressure field will collapse. The refining furnace will turn from hunter into prey.

The temperature inside cabin 013 jumped from 24 degrees to 38 degrees. Tang Lan opened the cooling cabinet door and pressed all the ice packs onto the two wounded soldiers.

Su Yuan's fingers gripped the power lever.

A knock came from 005.

Extremely fast. Three short and one long. Three short and one long. Three short and one long.

urgent.

Qin Yan's iron sheet slammed onto the panel at the same time.

It's not about smashing it one by one. It's about scratching it continuously—the metal tip scraping the words out of the panel.

The handwriting is ugly, but it's clear.

"Drill the left eye"

He paused for half a second.

"Exhaust valve"

Pause for another half second.

"Fourteen years ago"

Su Yuan's eyes swept over these words.

Left eye. Exhaust valve. Fourteen years ago.

He turned to look at the two compound eyes. The one on the left—the one whose light pattern had weakened after the material was extracted by the refining furnace—had an irregular weld seam on the outermost ring of its lens layer.

Unlike the surrounding monolithic cast structures, this was welded later. It was repaired.

It was repaired fourteen years ago.

The 011 crew of Jiyun once came here. This thing was already here then. 011 had a confrontation with it.

My left eye was damaged in a previous attack. It was later repaired, but the repair involved welding a patch plate to it – behind the patch plate was the location of the old Blue Star standard exhaust valve.

The exhaust valve is connected to the main cooling circulation pipe.

To puncture it is to puncture the blood vessels of this thing.

Su Yuansong released the power lever.

He turned and climbed onto the top hatch of the cockpit. The hatch had been dented during the descent, but the manual opening mechanism still worked. As the hatch opened, a rush of 40-degree Celsius air, mixed with the smell of burning metal and alkali, rushed in.

Railway gun.

The train guns captured and assembled at stations 45 to 47 had their bases welded to the second platform on top of the lead car. They included three real gun barrels, three sets of real toothed rails, and a real sight from station 48.

There is no linkage with the fire control system.

The fire control tower chip captured at Station 44 was installed in the radar module, not on the gun emplacement. The railway gun itself was a purely manual machine – loading was done by hand, aiming was done by eye, and firing was done by hand.

Su Yuan climbed to the gun position.

The target was less than fifty meters away. The left eye's lens assembly, over a meter in diameter, occupied a large portion of the center of the field of vision at this distance. The dark golden light patterns were still flowing inside, but the frequency was slower than before—the refining furnace was drawing in energy, causing it to dissipate.

Adjust the gun elevation angle manually to horizontal firing. The azimuth angle doesn't need to be changed—the muzzle is almost directly facing that folded wall.

ammunition.

Inside the external magazine, the armor-piercing projectiles recovered from Station 44 and the propellant charges matching the actual gun barrel from Station 46 had already been pushed into the chamber by the ammunition feeder from Station 9. The breechblock safety—the one captured from Station 09—was locked in place.

No distance measurement. No lead measurement. No wind deflection correction.

Fifty meters. Horizontal shot. Target with a diameter of one meter.

Su Yuan pulled the firing brake.

The sound is wrong.

The sound of the train gun firing wasn't a bang—it was a dull thud, like the entire train being kicked from behind. The recoil was transmitted to the car body through the toothed rail engagement sleeve, and all forty-eight rail spikes simultaneously bore the lateral shear force. The Devourer didn't move. It was nailed shut.

Su Yuan didn't know how long it took for the armor-piercing projectile to travel from the barrel to its impact. Fifty meters was practically nothing in the face of a high-velocity armor-piercing projectile.

What he saw was this: in the very center of his left eye's lens, at the core of dense dark gold light patterns, a black dot appeared.

The black spot is expanding.

It wasn't an explosion. The armor-piercing projectile didn't have a delayed-action fuse. It was purely kinetic energy. It penetrated through a hard core.

The bullet tore through the first lens. The second. The third. The nested composite lenses were physically ripped apart, fragments flying to both sides. The dark golden light extinguished from the cracks, like a pool of water quickly drying up after being punched by a stone.

The armor-piercing projectile did not stop inside the lens layer.

It penetrated.

The structure behind the left eye was exposed. It wasn't solid metal—it was a pipe. A giant cooling circulation main pipe, more than half a meter in diameter, with walls covered in a dark gold alloy, inside which flowed a mixture of high-temperature, high-pressure steam and living metal coolant.

That weld from fourteen years ago. Ji Yun's 011 crew damaged it back then. They welded it shut with a patch, sealing the exhaust valve inside. But the pipe is still there.

After the armor-piercing projectile passed through the lens layer, its kinetic energy was reduced by more than half, but the remaining penetrating power was sufficient—the projectile eventually stopped on the wall of the main pipe, deforming the patch plate from fourteen years ago from the inside.

It did not penetrate the pipe wall.

Almost.

Su Yuan stared at the deformed protrusion for half a second.

A dark red light seeped from the cracks at the raised edge. The high-pressure steam inside the pipe had found its outlet. The cracks expanded at an extremely rapid pace—the strength of a welded repair was far inferior to that of a single, cast iron. Fourteen years of high-temperature cycling had fatigued the weld metal to its limit.

Armor-piercing rounds were the last straw.

The pipe wall ruptured.

Dark red, high-pressure steam mixed with scalding dark golden liquid gushed from the left eye. It wasn't a leak—it was a burst pipe. The mixture of hundreds of degrees Celsius was ejected at extremely high pressure, its fan-shaped spray covering an area of ​​several meters in front of the gate.

The hydraulic slurry on the ground evaporated instantly, turning blue smoke into white mist. The thermometer went mad.

All of the giant eye's movements stopped.

All four dark gold cables were slack—not voluntarily, but because their hydraulic power system had lost pressure. The bursting of the main cooling pipe meant that the hydraulic circulation had stopped.

The light pattern in the right eye of the compound eye was flashing wildly.

The gate moved.

It wasn't continuing to rise—it was falling. The three-meter-thick gate began to press down at a rate of fifteen centimeters per second. The hydraulic rods on both sides of the gate frame emitted a dull hiss as all the remaining pressure was concentrated on the closing mechanism.

It wants to block the passage.

Lock the Devourer in this hall. With it.

Su Yuan slid down from the gun position, landing on top of the driver's cab, and stepped back to the control panel. He slapped the power lever with his right hand.

He turned the disguise knob back to the standby position with his other hand.

The core of the mountain-suppressing system awakens from its dead state. Idle speed is restored. Power output jumps from zero to sixty, eighty, one hundred, and one hundred and thirty.

Full power.

The front wheels of the Devourer turned. Forty-eight rail spikes were pulled out of the ground, and the sound of the chassis popping back was as dense as drumbeats.

Ahead. The left eye, spewing high-pressure steam. A descending gate. The gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground is narrowing at a visible rate.

Three meters. Two meters eight. Two meters six.

The roof of the Devourer—including the base of the train gun—is 2.4 meters high.

There's still enough space.

But it's shrinking.

Su Yuan did not bypass the steam jet.

Push the power lever all the way down. 130.

The 300-ton train set accelerated from a standstill. The friction between the wheels and the rails erupted again after a period of silence, sparks shooting out from beneath the chassis. The front of the train aimed at the closing gate gap, at the bursting left eye emitting steam, and accelerated in a straight line.

The high-pressure steam exceeded 300 degrees Celsius. The paint on the front beam armor surface carbonized the moment it came into contact with the steam. The alloy beneath the heavy deck began to change color—from grayish-black to dark red edges.

But the heavy armor plate held up. The heavy armor plates looted from Station 12, the heavy armor plates from the military trains at Station 30, and the alloy plates recovered from the artillery emplacements at Station 44—the total thickness of these three layers exceeded eighty millimeters.

Steam can't burn through it.

The Devourer crashed into the gap in the gate.

The front beam is harder than the bottom of the gate. The base of the train gun on the roof of the lead car rolls over the bottom of the door that is being pressed down, and the sound of metal friction is transmitted from the lead car all the way to the 009 carriage.

The gate was being pressed down. The Devourer was moving. Three hundred tons of mass plus one hundred and thirty units of thrust were resisting the closing force of the gate's hydraulic system.

The roof armor began to deform. The streamlined roof cast at Station 43 changed from an arc shape to a flat surface under the pressure of the gate, and the welds broke at the stress points, sending fragments flying into the steam.

The space was filled with a teeth-grinding cracking sound.

The refining furnace did not stop.

As the lead vehicle slammed into the gate, the six dark gold conduits adjusted their direction. They were no longer secured to the cables—the cables had loosened. The conduits were now aimed at the ruptured left eye and attached themselves.

The gushing high-pressure steam and scattered lens crystals are intercepted by the negative pressure field of the duct and directly drawn into the furnace cavity.

At this point—with the roof cracking, steam scorching, and gates being cut in half—the refining furnace begins casting.

The first finished product is ejected from the discharge port: a crystal coated plate with a special structure on its surface after being quenched by high-temperature steam, resulting in extremely high reflectivity.

The second piece: a dark golden fragment of a fiber bundle, solidified by the furnace temperature into a sheet-like structure—a fragment of the main control brain nerve bundle. It wasn't material, but a part of the other party's body, solidified and preserved.

The moment the two finished products were pushed out by the dark gold conduit, Xiao Huo's control program attached the crystal coating plates to the outer walls of the 013 and 005 cabins respectively.

The coating covered the surface of the protective compartment. The temperature inside compartment 013 began to drop from forty-one degrees Celsius. Thirty-eight. Thirty-five. Thirty-two.

The heart rates of the two wounded soldiers dropped from 120 to 90.

Half of the Devourer's hull has already passed through the gate. The third section is currently passing through. 013 is about to enter the area below the gate.

However, the speed at which the gate is pressed down is increasing.

Right eye.

The last remaining dark gold compound eye stopped flashing. The light patterns began to rotate at a constant speed—concentrating all remaining energy into the gate's hydraulic system.

The distance between the bottom of the door panel and the top armor of the Devourer: six centimeters.

The top of 013 is three centimeters higher than the lead car—the wounded ward is equipped with the purification tank and medicine cabinet from station 32.

Three centimeters of clearance.

The pressure from the gates caused the roof of the entire trainset to creak. It wasn't a cracking sound anymore—it was a continuous, low, muffled metallic crawling sound.

Su Yuan's fingers turned white. The power lever had reached its limit; there was no more power.

005.

The 005 emplacement is passing through the gate.

Just at this time.

The black sealant on the surface of the 005 hull has been moved.

It wasn't being squeezed and deformed—it was actively moving. The layer of black condensate at the edge of the seal, the layer that had been still since station 58, suddenly began to boil violently.

It's not boiling caused by temperature. The temperature under the sealant is only 26 degrees Celsius. It's the black liquid itself releasing energy.

a drop.

Only one drop.

The pure black condensate shot out from the gaps in the seals of the 005 compartment.

The trajectory of the ejection was not random. The drop of black liquid flew forty-seven meters, landing precisely—without any deviation—in the very center of the lens of the compound eye on the right side of the giant eye.

Su Yuan saw that moment.

A tiny black dot appeared on the dark gold lens surface.

The black spots are spreading.

It wasn't a diffusion process like liquid seepage. It was infection. It was erosion. The dark gold streaks turned black the instant they touched the black spot, then extinguished. From the center outwards, they covered the entire lens assembly in less than a second.

The dark golden light in his right eye vanished completely within a second.

It turned pure black. No light. No reflection. No flow within the lens. Like a deep well.

Gate hydraulic system - short circuit.

It's not a short circuit due to a power outage. It's a physical jam. The hydraulic oil has solidified inside the pipes—or rather, it's been frozen in place by some force. The piston is immobile. The valve is immobile. The gate is stuck in its current position.

013 Distance between the roof and the bottom of the door panel: 4 centimeters.

enough.

噬荒号一百三十功率持续输出。编组从闸门下方完整通过——头车、第三节、013、014、精炼炉挂架、012、009纪念架、005。

Each section squeezed through that four-centimeter gap.

005 was the last to pass. The black sealant on the surface of the compartment had returned to normal. The layer of condensate had returned to the edge of the seal, hanging quietly, as if nothing had happened.

However, the pure black color in the right eye did not fade.

After the Devourer rushed through the gate, the formation entered the rear passage. Darkness. The headlights illuminated a straight main passage leading down, eight meters wide and five meters high, standard for old Earth military specifications.

Su Yuan reduced the power from 130 to 70. Braking was gradually engaged.

The car's speed decreased to three meters per second. Two meters. One and a half meters per second.

cruise.

Inside cabin 013, Tang Lan sat on the floor, leaning against the medicine cabinet, her right hand still pressing on the young wounded soldier's shoulder. Their nosebleeds had stopped, but dried blood still clung to their faces.

She didn't say anything.

In the third section, the veteran mechanic got up from the ground and stood for three seconds while holding onto the wall before regaining his balance. He glanced at the small crack in the bulkhead—it wasn't deep and hadn't penetrated the inner wall.

Wang Hu rolled back into the cab from the side of the front beam. The outer layer of his protective gloves was burned through by steam, and there was a burn the size of a fingernail on the back of his right hand, which had already formed blisters. He didn't look at it.

"005," he said.

Su Yuan shook his head. He didn't explain further.

No one can explain that drop of black liquid. Starting from Chapter 289, the creature in 005's pod acted on its own three times: first, it coordinated with the heartbeat to unlock the lower-level door; second, it knocked a warning not to slow down; and third—just now.

Every time it made a move, it was at the very moment the Devourer was about to be destroyed.

But nobody knows what it is.

"Refining furnace status," Su Yuan said.

"The furnace temperature is 1,420 degrees Celsius and is cooling naturally." Xiao Huo's speech returned to normal. "Newly acquired materials: eight square meters of overheat-resistant crystal coating, three sets of main control brain nerve bundle fragments, seventeen liters of dark gold alloy liquid, and four hundred meters of high-density data transmission fiber."

"A fragment of a nerve bundle." Su Yuan paused for a moment. "Is it active?"

"None. It has been cured by furnace temperature. Its physical form is stable. No signal output."

"Separately archived. Not connected to any system."

"Executed".

The Devourer moved at a steady pace through the dark main passage. The passage walls were made of standard military-grade cast concrete, with an extinguished embedded emergency light every fifty meters.

Two hundred meters.

When the headlights illuminated the objects on the tracks, Su Yuan stepped on the brakes.

It's not an obstacle. It's not a collapse. It's not a trap.

It's an arm.

A human arm.

Below the elbow joint, it lies diagonally in the center of the track. The cross-section is irregular—not cut, but torn. Muscle fibers and blood vessels flare out from the cross-section, dark red in color but not yet fully coagulated.

The blood was still warm.

The severed arm was wearing an old Blue Star Expeditionary Force standard inner sleeve—gray-green, severely worn, with the cuff seams reinforced by hand.

The severed hand was clutching something.

His fingers clenched tightly. His knuckles had turned white from the force. What he was holding was thin—a piece of metal.

Wang Hu jumped out of the car.

He crouched beside the severed arm, not touching it. He first observed the direction of the bloodstains—the blood had splattered from deeper into the passage towards this location, sliding about a meter after hitting the ground. Blood was still slowly seeping from the severed arm.

"It's still hot." Wang Hu looked up at Su Yuan.

Su Yuan walked to the edge of the front beam. The headlights illuminated the passage in a stark white light. Apart from the severed arm, there was nothing within a thirty-meter radius. No other body parts. No signs of struggle. Only this severed arm and the thin piece of metal it was clutching.

"Take a picture and see."

Wang Hu gently tapped the back of the severed hand with the wrench handle. The fingers didn't loosen. Even a dead person's hand wouldn't be this tight—this is the state a living person would be in when gripping something with all their might in the last moments before bleeding out.

He tapped it twice more. On the third tap, the edge of the metal sheet was visible through the gap between his index and middle fingers.

Engraving.

The lettering is faint, but it's clearly visible under direct headlight light.

Thin steel sheet. Grayish-white material with a matte finish. Dimensions are exactly the same as the steel sheet for the 009 road sign.

The tooling of the engravings is consistent with the engravings on all the steel plates in 009.

Same knife. Same force and technique. Same pressing angle.

Wang Hu's expression changed.

He slowly pulled the steel sheet from between his severed fingers. Blood from his fingertip smeared onto the metal surface, obscuring part of the writing. He wiped away the blood with his glove.

Six characters.

"Don't stop. There are people behind us."