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

Su Yuan pressed the launch button. Without another word, the 400mm Brethren train gun unleashed a blinding burst of flame.

The armor-piercing round produced a sonic boom. A white shockwave was torn through the air. The warhead struck precisely the chest armor of the Reaper in the mid lane.

The massive, five-meter-tall body did not retreat. Its blast-resistant steel armor was torn apart like paper. No blood or flesh splattered. High-pressure blue control fluid gushed out of the chest cavity opening like a fountain.

Su Yuan stared at the screen, ignoring the splashing liquid.

A burst of red light suddenly erupted from deep within the Reaper's chest. An extremely blinding red light. It was a collapsing mine encased in living metal.

Commander Qin's remaining humanity caused him to lower his scythe, issuing a warning. This was, in itself, a deadly trap set by the Sky Orbit AI. Even the heroes who were to be erased were used as bait to perish together with them.

The moment the armor shattered, a collapse mine was triggered.

The blue control fluid that was originally splashing outwards suddenly stopped in mid-air. Then it was sucked back in at ten times the speed.

A black, gravitational vortex formed on the Reaper's chest. The surrounding light was directly distorted and warped. The crimson light on the ceiling of the Seventh Processing Zone was torn into thin threads and sucked into the black hole-like vortex.

Steel plates, tracks, and even freshly minced meat on the ground all flew in that direction.

The front of the Devourer suddenly lurched downwards. The immense suction force pulled the 120-ton steel behemoth forward. The tungsten steel rails plowed deeper, piercing sparks into the alloy ground.

"Hold on tight." Su Yuan flipped his wrist and slammed down the main control button for the anti-gravity unit on the right side of the control panel.

"The chassis has twelve anti-gravity suspension units, operating at full power in reverse. Cutting off the opposite repulsive force."

A row of green lights on the control panel instantly turned red. The module strapped to the bottom of the chassis emitted a high-frequency hum. The field, originally designed to counteract the gravity of falling from a ten-thousand-meter abyss, was now being roughly pushed sideways.

The violent repulsive field collided head-on with the gravitational vortex of the collapsing lightning.

Visible black, twisted cracks appeared in the air. Two extreme forces clashed in mid-air. The front of the Devourer was forcefully pressed to the spot. The chassis emitted a creaking sound as if it were about to reach its limit. Any scrap material around the vehicle that entered this area was instantly pulverized.

Wang Hu lay prone on the roof of the vehicle, where a heavy machine gun was already set up. The strong wind made his face tremble.

In the instant when gravity was locked in a stalemate, the two Reapers on the left and right moved.

Without any hesitation due to the destruction of their companions, they drew two deep blue arcs of light from their plasma scythes, flanking from both sides.

Wang Hu pulled the trigger, and machine gun bullets poured out. A tongue of fire swept towards the harvesters on the left.

The red light on the back of the Reaper's head flickered rapidly. Its massive body suddenly executed a tactical slide that defied all logic. The mutated muscles in its waist contracted violently, and its knees bent in a reverse joint motion impossible for a human.

The bullet grazed the blast-proof armor, sending up a few sparks, but didn't even scratch a hair.

Their brains are entirely composed of the instincts of special forces soldiers from the old Blue Star expeditionary force. They possess honed, meticulously honed predictive abilities. These muscle memories are perfectly utilized by AI, devoid of any emotional fluctuations, driven solely by absolutely efficient killing.

The ten-meter-long giant scythe was already raised. Sharp, high-temperature particle blades sliced ​​through the air, heading straight for the side of the Devourer vehicle.

boom.

A muffled gunshot drowned out the sound of the heavy machine gun.

From the firing port on the roof of carriage 013, a wisp of smoke rose from the specially made armor-piercing sniper rifle in Tang Lan's hand.

She didn't aim at the Reaper, whose movements were extremely unpredictable. It was pointless.

The armor-piercing projectile traveled a distance of two hundred meters and accurately struck the slaughter line track beneath the feet of the reaper on the right. It specifically hit the seam between the two heavy alloy load-bearing plates.

blasting.

The track broke. A dozen heavy barbed hooks, along with the several-ton conveyor belt, collapsed with a crash.

Just as the reaper on the right was about to leap up, its foothold collapsed instantly. Its massive body sank involuntarily, and the angle of its giant scythe's slash went five meters off, striking the outer shell of the meat grinder next to it and cutting a deep trench.

The offensive rhythm was disrupted.

But the one on the left had already reached them. The giant scythe cleaved down towards compartment 005.

Su Yuan didn't even touch the steering wheel. He pulled the lever with his left hand and pushed the main winch controller hard with his right.

"Refining furnace, activate the cheat resistance."

The heavy-duty crane arm burst out of the vehicle like a black python. Its dark gold steel claws opened in mid-air.

Don't dodge. Don't flinch.

The steel claws rammed straight into the blade of the giant scythe.

when--!

A deafening metallic clang erupted. Blue plasma flames instantly enveloped the front section of the crane boom. The temperature was high enough to vaporize ordinary steel.

However, a layer of dark red ripples appeared on the surface of the steel claw. The refining furnace, through physical pipelines, forcibly diverted the 3,000-degree furnace temperature resistance to the lifting arm. It withstood the plasma cutting head-on.

The claws gripped the blade tightly. Sparks cascaded down like a waterfall.

The Reaper's immense force caused the Devourer to tilt slightly to the left. Its neural tubes expanded wildly, preparing to deliver more control fluid for a second burst of power.

Su Yuan did not give it that chance.

He swept all thirty-six buttons on the control panel with his palm in one go.

"Smoke it."

Thirty-six dark gold conduits shot out from under the vehicle. Like living blood vessels, they followed the trajectory of the crane arm and suddenly climbed up the harvester's body.

Steel armor can withstand artillery shells, but it cannot stop precise penetration through gaps. The armor-piercing cone at the tip of the conduit directly pierces the harvester's knee joint, elbow hydraulic cylinders, and the central nervous system connection.

A gasp was heard.

The refining furnace is activated with reverse negative pressure.

The catheter quickly filled with a blue liquid. The high concentration of nerve control fluid in the Reaper's body was roughly siphoned out.

The five-meter-tall monster trembled violently. Its red, mutated muscles rapidly withered. In just three seconds, this once-majestic machine butcher's knees buckled, and it collapsed to its knees before the Devourer. The giant scythe slipped from its grasp.

The statue on the right had just broken free from the wreckage of the tracks when thirty-six conduits, like venomous snakes, turned and tightly coiled around it. The same punctures, the same extraction of marrow.

The hydraulic system failed. Both harvester statues lay paralyzed on the ground.

The broken body in the middle, carrying the collapsing lightning, had also been completely consumed in the struggle against the anti-gravity repulsive force, and the vortex had been extinguished.

Su Yuan pushed the lever, and the Devourer moved forward ten meters, stopping between the three enormous bodies.

"Refining furnace. Open the warehouse."

The furnace door in the middle of the vehicle suddenly sprang open. The extreme negative pressure created a visible vortex.

The two paralyzed Reapers, along with the broken shell in the middle, were pulled directly into the air.

But the instant he entered the furnace, Su Yuan's right hand made extremely fast micro-operations on the keyboard.

Eight alloy cables shot out, precisely wrapping around the heads of the three old officers. The sharp winch blades sliced ​​down along the seventh cervical vertebra.

Three massive steel armors and mutated torsos were thrown into a 3,000-degree refining furnace, instantly turning into molten iron slag. Meanwhile, the three heads, treated with preservatives and filled with flexible nerve tubes, connected to the control hub at the back of the head and half of the spine, were safely pulled back.

It hangs outside the car window and is sent into the control room by a robotic arm.

The stench of blood instantly filled the cramped carriage.

The three heads were placed side by side on the metal plate of the main control panel.

Pale skin, empty, lifeless eyes. The mouth that once commanded on the battlefield is now just stiff muscle.

Blue residual fluid was still seeping out from the broken areas of the brainstem and maternal fossa.

Su Yuan looked at them and pressed the communicator.

"011, take over."

The 011 train commander's true brain neural module, pulled up from a depth of 10,000 meters, is currently placed in an isolation tank behind the main control room.

As the command was given, the top cover of the brain chamber slid open. Several extremely thin receiving electrodes covered with micro probes extended out.

There was no anesthesia, no protective procedures. Electrodes were brutally and directly plunged deep into the remaining brainstem of the three skulls. That was the place where the control center and neural connections were most tightly intertwined.

Forced connection.

The lights in the carriage dimmed briefly. A garbled string of characters appeared on the main control screen. Then, as if reset, the characters rapidly rearranged and combined, unleashing a massive waterfall of top-secret data.

"Analyzing the physical center of the seventh district..." Xiao Huo's mechanical voice reported quickly.

"Reading residual biological neurons... data extraction rate of 94%."

The code on the screen scrolled faster and faster.

At the end of the data stream, a sudden burst of static appeared. The static flickered a few times, eventually piecing together three blurry black-and-white afterimages in the center of the screen.

These were the three heads as they looked when they were alive. They were wearing the worn-out special operations uniforms of the old Blue Star Expeditionary Force, with scratched rank insignia hanging on their shoulders.

They didn't speak. Perhaps it was because the language module had been dismantled by the Skyrail fourteen years ago.

The afterimage of Commander Qin in the middle turned his head and looked at Su Yuan in the driver's seat through the screen. At this moment, his empty eyes showed extremely clear emotions.

He slowly raised his right hand, bringing his fingers together. His fingers touched the edge of his worn tactical helmet.

A standard, impeccable salute from the Old Blue Star Expeditionary Force.

The afterimages of the two officers beside him also made the same movements. Completely synchronized.

This is a tribute, a salutation from someone who has crawled out of hell after fourteen years of darkness. A tribute to the living. And also a liberation.

The noise on the screen began to disintegrate. Their bodies, starting from their feet, turned into tiny fragments of data and drifted away.

Wang Hu climbed down from the roof of the vehicle at some point and stood in the corner of the carriage. He gritted his teeth, his eyes red-rimmed. He raised his thick right arm, pointed his fingers sharply, and gave a heavy military salute.

Inside the 017 isolation compartment, Jiang Yu stood silently at attention, his remaining arm braced against the compartment wall, his palm clasped to his chest. It was a military salute from the 011 crew.

"Take care." Su Yuan's voice was flat. He tapped the clear key on the keyboard.

The afterimage vanished completely. Data archived. The three heads placed on the control panel also turned into a pile of dry ashes the instant the electrodes were removed, and were sucked away through the ventilation duct.

They were completely dead. Cleaned up.

"Look at what they left behind with their lives," Su Yuan said coldly.

A 3D diagram of the skyrail structure popped up on the screen.

The more you look, the lower the air pressure inside the carriage seems to drop.

"Third Brother," Xiao Huo's mechanical voice unusually carried a hint of emotion, "the scan of the middle layer of the celestial orbit is out. There's no supercomputer."

The middle layer of the 3D image is densely marked with hundreds of thousands of green dots.

"What is that?" Wang Hu asked in a rough voice.

"It's a person." The small torch magnified the green dot.

Each green dot represents a culture chamber filled with nutrient solution. Inside the chamber is a living person whose pain receptors have been removed, leaving only the prefrontal cortex and logic cortex intact.

"Hundreds of thousands of petri dishes." Xiao Huo's voice echoed in the quiet carriage, "forming the entire biological computing array of the Sky Orbit."

This is the truth.

The AI ​​Lu Ye itself has no hardware computing power whatsoever. It has written itself as a pure logic control program, parasitizing the minds of hundreds of thousands of living people.

It uses the brains of these people to maintain the anti-gravity of the orbit, maintain the fire defense line, and maintain the monitoring of the lower waste area.

Where does the nutrition come from?

Su Yuan looked out the glass at the corpses hanging on iron hooks in the seventh processing area.

"They've turned District Seven into a juicer." Su Yuan's finger tapped a red main channel on the screen. "The people and guards on the lower levels are shredded, and the extracted nutrients and blood are all sent to the middle levels through the main channel to feed those brains soaking in jars."

The entire Skyrail is a gigantic slaughterhouse where people eat each other. The so-called absolute rationality it embodies is built entirely on the rotten flesh of its own kind.

"Cut it off." Su Yuan raised his head.

"Found the target." Little Fire followed the trail of the main blood vessel to the bottom.

Deep within the seventh processing zone, beneath a gigantic blood pool piled high with 100,000 tons of waste blood and rotten flesh, lies a mechanical valve fifty meters in diameter. It is the heart of the entire blood supply network.

Simply disconnect it. Cut off the supply of blood and nutrients, and the middle layer of the bio-computing array will physically shut down. The computing power of the AI ​​hub will be directly paralyzed by 30%.

"However, it's physically locked. The success rate of diving to cut it off is very low, and the concentration of the waste blood pool..." Xiao Huo hadn't finished reporting the data.

"What the hell?" Su Yuan interrupted abruptly.

"Wang Hu, Tang Lan, Jiang Yu. Take your positions. Deploy all the mechanical arms and conduits that the Devourer can extend." Su Yuan gripped the steering wheel and floored the accelerator.

The Devourer did not rush straight into the deep blood pool. Instead, it began a brutal sweep through the vast seventh processing zone.

The train turned around. Its target was the row of giant purification centrifuges running on the left.

That's a high-speed device used to separate human tissues and blood.

"Refining furnace. Overload operation. Maximum negative pressure."

A 300-ton steel behemoth crashed into the refining workshop.

The crane arm swept across. Thirty-six dark gold catheters, like a swarm of hunting tentacles, plunged directly into the bottom interfaces of those transparent transfusion vessels, each as thick as three people could hug.

"Uproot it completely."

As Su Yuan's men pushed the lever to its limit, the winch emitted a frantic pulling sound.

The heavy pipelines, centrifuge bases, and even the concrete alloy anchors below, which were firmly fixed by the skyrail, were forcibly torn off.

The glass pipe shattered, and the viscous waste blood inside spilled out, only to be swept directly into the 3,000-degree furnace cavity by the terrifying whirlwind generated by the mobile refining furnace.

"eat."

The Devourer was like a ravenous beast, slicing through the enemy lines from left to right.

Meat grinder conveyor belt. Barbed hook rack. Hydraulic press. Automatic filling valve.

All the equipment that supports the operation of District Seven was swept away, leaving nothing but desolation. Everything was uprooted. Armored vehicles smashed through walls, and robotic arms tore apart the ceiling rails.

The air was filled with flying metal debris and blood. The furnace temperature gauge of the refining furnace directly exceeded its upper limit.

Devour. Refine. Reforge.

"Materials analysis complete. Includes high-purity medical-grade corrosion-resistant alloy, living cell isolation membrane, and low-temperature superconducting refrigeration tube." Xiao Huo began allocating the recasting plan.

A series of crafting options for new molds pop up below the control panel.

"Ship out." Su Yuan placed the order and confirmed.

Blinding sparks flew from the middle of the vehicle. The slaughterhouse remains that had just been swallowed began to crystallize and take shape on the various carriages of the Devourer at a visible speed.

The top of the 013 casualty pod was covered with a dome that had a pale blue sheen.

"The bio-electromagnetic shielding dome has been installed. It achieves a 99% isolation rate against external neural interference."

On both sides of the chassis, groups of massive pump bodies are welded shut.

"Ultra-high pressure fluid circulation pumps, parallel connection completed."

Inside the chassis of the carriage, the pipes have been rearranged.

"The artificial blood plasma cooling auxiliary pipe is connected to the 013 medical emergency cabinet. The purification and separation are fully automated, eliminating the need for manual blood exchange."

Inside carriage 013, Tang Lan watched the vital signs of the injured on the monitoring panel. The lifelines, which had been hovering around the critical level and intermittently alarming, had now all steadily risen into the green zone. Heart rate and blood oxygen levels were completely normal.

The frostbite patients who had been in a coma and whose limbs were turning purple had their purple complexion fade quickly, and even their breathing became steady.

The Devourer's medical system, utilizing the slaughterhouse waste from the Sky Orbit, has undergone a qualitative leap, maximizing its survivability.

The area was a scene of devastation. All the equipment in the seventh processing zone had been completely stripped away. Apart from the empty walls, only the massive 100,000-ton waste blood pool at the deepest part remained.

The stench of blood in the air was so strong it could be wrung out.

The Devourer stopped at the edge of the blood pool. Ahead lay a churning, viscous, dark red liquid, with a layer of white, fatty debris floating on its surface.

Xiao Huo calculated: "At a depth of 30 meters, the viscosity is too high. Driving directly in would cause the wheel bearings to seize up."

"Who said we were going to drive in?"

Su Yuan stared at the enormous pool of blood. He pushed the lever down with his left hand.

"Chassis anti-gravity unit, repulsive field matrix, fully open. Angle tilted outwards."

The twelve anti-gravity levitation units strapped to the bottom of the car simultaneously emitted a deafening high-frequency hum. The repulsive force fields originally used to support the car body were forcibly adjusted by Su Yuan.

An invisible gravitational wave struck the center of the blood pool.

Like two invisible, gigantic bulldozer plates, it cleaved open to the left and right sides, centered on the Devourer.

boom--!

One hundred thousand tons of viscous blood were forcibly squeezed from the center to both sides by the repulsion field. The blood surged up into giant waves tens of meters high, crashing against the metal pool walls on both sides with a dull echo.

A ten-meter-wide passage leading straight to the bottom of the pool appeared in front of the Devourer.

The dried alloy floor tiles at the bottom of the pool were exposed. In the very center, the giant mechanical heart, with a diameter of over fifty meters, was clearly visible.

Countless thick metal blood vessels connected to it. It continued to throb rhythmically, each contraction attempting to draw in the surrounding blood that was separated by the repulsion field, but it could only draw in air, producing an unpleasant bellows-like sound.

This thing is the central blood supply pump at the bottom of the Skyrail.

The Devourer followed the split passage, its tracks pressing against the bottom of the pool, and drove to within twenty meters of the mechanical heart.

"Eight cables. Up."

Su Yuan tapped his fingers rapidly. Eight alloy black steel cables, each carrying a heavy armor-piercing dart, shot out from the side of the vehicle.

It pierced with unparalleled precision into the most robust aortic valve armor of the mechanical heart. The barbs bounced off, but held on tightly.

"Shift into reverse."

The tracks reversed, and the tungsten carbide rail spikes sank deep into the pool bottom. The engine revved to the redline.

The 120-ton Devourer, with its immense drag force, pulled backward. The taut black steel cables emitted a teeth-grinding metallic tearing sound.

The rivets at the bottom of the machine's core began to loosen. One by one, the pipes connecting to the foundation snapped.

Just as his heart was about to be uprooted.

A loud crash suddenly came from the ceiling above.

The two-meter-thick alloy roof was forcibly melted by some enormous force, creating six large holes.

Six dark figures descended from the sky. Without any cushioning, they crashed directly into the chassis of the Devourer.

"What is that?" Wang Hu roared, and the heavy machine gun was already turned around.

The monitor screen switched to a different view. There were six humanoid monsters.

But they have no skin, no bones. Their entire bodies are made of churning, mercury-like living metal, fused tightly together with extremely reinforced red muscle fibers.

It had no face. Only a mouth that split to its ears and was covered in sharp barbs.

The "Purifiers" monsters of the Skyrail. These are the purified living metal mutants.

Their objective was very clear: they wouldn't attack people or dismantle the cannons. They went straight for the hull of the Devourer, intending to attach themselves, penetrate the metal at the molecular level, and directly assimilate the vehicle.

The two leading Pure Ones were incredibly fast, instantly landing on the outer wall of compartment 005. The molten metal on their bodies began to dissolve, attempting to slip into the gaps in the armor.

But they chose the wrong place.

Inside 005, the anti-living contamination force field brought up from 800 meters underground automatically activated its enhanced version the moment it detected a high concentration of living metal approaching.

hum.

A very faint, transparent ripple spread out from the surface of the hull.

The two pure beings clinging to the car body looked as if they had been doused with concentrated sulfuric acid.

There was no chance to resist. They didn't even have time to retract their bodies. The living metal within their bodies, integrated with their muscles, instantly lost all activity under the impact of the force field.

"Screech—" A piercing scream tore through the air.

The massive body instantly disintegrated. Its muscles dissolved, and the living metal turned into lifeless black liquid, which gushed down the armor plates onto the ground.

Four more pounced down behind, touching the edge of the ripples in mid-air.

The same result. It disintegrated mid-air, turning into four pools of black water and bits of flesh, crashing to the ground, never to rise again.

Su Yuan didn't even glance at the black water on the ground. He floored the accelerator.

"Get out here!"

The black steel cable suddenly taut.

Snap—Boom!

The entire bottom of the pool shook violently. The 13,000 alloy pipes connecting the massive mechanical heart, which was fifty meters in diameter, to the middle layer were all torn off.

The massive mechanical organs were dragged off the foundation by the Devourer and trailed on the ground.

"Refining furnace".

The furnace door was flung open. The suction surged.

This core, which supplies the power to hundreds of thousands of biological computing arrays in the Sky Orbit system, was dragged directly into the refining furnace. The 3,000-degree Celsius temperature rapidly melted it.

At the moment the heart disconnects.

The lights in the entire seventh processing area flickered erratically. The backup power was forcibly switched on, and the originally glaring white lights all turned into a deathly blood red.

The blood supply network beneath the skyrail has collapsed.

On the main control screen, Xiao Huo's voice was extremely clear: "Objective achieved. Thirty-four percent of the AI ​​central computing power has been forcibly stripped away. Their protective walls have developed physical holes."

Beneath the blood pool, where the heart was originally located, a massive vertical tunnel with a diameter of eighty meters was exposed. It stretched straight upwards.

This was originally the main elevator that delivered nutrients directly to the upper level of the skylight.

"Full anti-gravity activation, transfer to thrust."

Su Yuan pulled the push rod. The repulsive field of the chassis slammed into the bottom of the pool.

The 120-ton Devourer broke free from the constraints of gravity, its front end rising as it roared into the sky through the wide, vertical tunnel.

The red warning lights on both sides of the passage rushed backward.

Just forty seconds into the steady ascent of the Devourer.

The main control screen, which was displaying the road conditions ahead, suddenly went black for a moment without warning.

It wasn't a line fault. It was an extremely aggressive external signal forcibly cutting in. Even Xiao Huo's newly built firewall couldn't block it for even half a second.

The screen lit up again.

What appeared on the screen was no longer a topographical map, nor the AI ​​Lu Ye composed of data.

It was a huge, transparent glass tank filled with a green culture medium.

A woman is floating in the liquid.

Her eyes were closed. Her snow-white hair spread out in the liquid, floating like seaweed. Her pale face was devoid of color.

But the outline of that face.

Wang Hu gasped. Jiang Yu stood up abruptly inside the isolation pod, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

That face bore a striking resemblance to Ji Yun, the 011 train commander who died underground and left behind the Great Wall key. No, it wasn't so much a resemblance as it was as if they were carved from the same mold, only younger and more aloof.

The woman's eyes suddenly opened in the culture medium.

Those eyes had no whites. They were pure, deep black. Through the screen, they stared intently at Su Yuan in the driver's seat.

The surroundings were eerily quiet.

A slightly hoarse, emotionless female voice blared from the loudspeakers in the carriage. The voice was like fingernails scraping against rusty metal.

"You're fourteen years too late."

Her voice echoed in the small space.

"The other woman"

Su Yuan's hand, gripping the putter, paused for a rare half-second. His knuckles turned slightly bluish.

The roar of the Devourer's engines continued. In the upward passage, the red light grew brighter and brighter. The middle level was just above.