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

Three emergency lights were on, and two were broken.

The control room reeked of burnt insulation. The upper half of the control panel was completely black, with only the two small screens at the bottom still flickering. Su Yuan's forehead had hit the edge of the control panel, and blood trickled from his brow bone to the corner of his eye. He wiped it with his sleeve and sat up straight again.

Wang Hu lay face down on the floor, the metal buckle of his seatbelt embedded in his right rib. He coughed twice, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Where...are we?"

He propped himself up on the control panel and pressed his face against the car window. There was no light outside. Not black, but a granular darkness—extremely fine golden dust hovered around the car, so dense that even the headlights couldn't penetrate more than three meters.

Tang Lan unbuckled her seatbelt in the passenger seat, pulled the sniper rifle out of its slot, and cocked it to check the chamber. Her movements were swift and decisive, without a word.

Jiang Yu's one arm was gripping the metal ring of the mounting bracket tightly, his knuckles white. He stared at the radar screen—it was all static.

Muffled thuds and groans came from the direction of the 013 casualty pod. Tang Lan pressed the intercom inside the pod: "Tang Lan calling 013, casualty situation."

"Three minor injuries with bleeding, the seriously wounded are properly immobilized, no one has died," someone inside replied, their voice trembling.

Su Yuan didn't turn around. His fingers pressed six hardware detection switches on the control panel in sequence. The first one lit up, but the next five didn't.

On the small remaining display in the lower right corner of the main screen, the characters jumped three times, and then Xiao Huo's mechanical voice squeezed out from the speaker—with a severe background noise, in segments.

"Devouring Ship... Current location... Inside the palm wound of K-002... Depth... 13,400 meters underground."

It paused for two seconds.

"011 True Brain... Entered deep protective hibernation... Estimated recovery time... Unpredictable."

It stopped again.

"Planetary-level defense matrix module... physically damaged... beyond repair."

Wang Hu gripped the edge of the control panel tightly.

Xiao Huo's voice continued to push outwards, the intervals between each word growing longer: "'Concept Anchor Point'... Status: Cooling down... Three cracks... Cooling countdown... Nine hours... Fifty-eight minutes."

More than nine hours.

Wang Hu suddenly turned around to look at Su Yuan. Su Yuan's face was expressionless in the dim light of the emergency lights, only the bloody gash on his forehead was still oozing out.

No one speaks.

Outside the car, dark gold dust silently adhered to the surface of the windows, thickening layer by layer.

Just then, the light in compartment 005 came on.

It wasn't a sudden surge of red light, nor was it psychological pressure. It was a very faint, almost invisible, dark red glimmer seeping through the gap in the warehouse seal.

Everyone tensed up.

Wang Hu's hand had already touched the heavy machine gun. Tang Lan's gun muzzle turned fifteen degrees. Jiang Yu crouched down.

But the expected overwhelming force of will did not materialize.

Instead, a picture was created.

The images appeared directly in my mind, without passing through my eyes. They were excessively clear.

020 isolation box. Incandescent white. The last scene before the explosion.

The etched lines on the surface of the casing turned a bright blood red. The temperature reading reached the instrument's limit. The final 0.003 seconds before fusion criticality.

A stream of data is emitted from the communication port at the bottom of the casing.

Direction: Directly below.

The scene followed the data stream downwards, passing through the wreckage of the sky rails, through tens of thousands of meters of rock layers, and finally reaching the bottom of the abyss—the dark golden giant hand of K-002.

The data stream drilled into the cracks in the giant hand's cross-section.

Then text appeared on the screen. It wasn't Su Yuan who read it; K-001 "translated" the content, imprinting it word by word into everyone's consciousness.

"Highest priority instruction—"

"The old agreement is null and void."

"New target: Void Aberration. Biological code JY-003."

Execution method: Assimilation.

"Seizing the target: a conceptual anchor."

"Upon completion, you will inherit all Warden privileges."

"020 Will Execution Agreement, non-repeatable."

The image disappeared.

There was a three-second silence in the control room.

Wang Hu was the first to explode.

"Damn it!" He slammed his fist on the car window frame, denting the metal. "That tin can is dead, but he still managed to rip us off!"

His eyes were bloodshot, and his chest heaved violently. Blood was seeping from the spot on his right rib where the seatbelt buckle had pierced, but he paid no attention to it.

"It was a brainless thing to begin with," Wang Hu's voice was hoarse. "Now 020 has drawn the map for it, marked the targets, and even written down what to eat and how to eat it—"

He turned his head and stared at Su Yuan with a livid face.

"Old Su. One above is playing dead, waiting for an opportunity; the other below has just been enlightened. Nine hours—"

He didn't finish speaking. Because the view outside the car window changed.

The suspended dark gold dust, which had been drifting aimlessly, suddenly took a direction—it converged towards the front of the vehicle, towards the thirty-meter-diameter piercing wound that the Devourer had just created.

The dark golden flesh at the edge of the wound was writhing.

It's not a passive tissue response like wound contraction. It's a highly purposeful, slow, and determined reorganization.

The shattered metal fibers were rewoven, and the broken structural layers gradually aligned. A cold blue light shone from the edge of the wound. That was a sign that the data stream sent by O020O had been executed—the protocol had been received and was running.

K-002 is no longer a severed hand that is twitching unconsciously.

It is thinking.

Wang Hu stared at the golden flesh and blood outside the window that was reconstructing, and his Adam's apple bobbed.

Su Yuan didn't look out the window.

His gaze fell on the faint, dark red glow in the direction of cargo compartment 005 on the rearview camera screen.

Why are you telling me this?

He didn't say a word; he asked it directly in his mind, pointing in the direction of 005.

There was a four-second silence.

Then came the will of K-001. There was no pressure, no weight. The voice was hoarse and deep, carrying a composure that only comes after a long period of time.

"The warden is dead."

It paused for a moment.

"The Forger is a stupid beast. 020 crams the rules into it, and it follows them. Once it devours you and eats the anchor, it will be the new warden."

It paused again.

"I don't want a new jailer on my head."

Wang Hu heard it—everyone heard it; K-001's voice was broadcast, without any concealment.

"Cooperate with me." K-001's will spoke again, the tone unchanged, but the amount of information increased. "I saw it clearly when your refining furnace swallowed the beacon. You have talent. But you don't understand anchoring. Nine-hour cooldown—that's because you don't know how to use it."

It paused for a moment.

"Swallow the forger. I'll teach you."

No one answered the call in the control room.

Tang Lan's gun barrel didn't move away from 005's direction. Jiang Yu's eyes darted back and forth between Su Yuan and 005.

Su Yuan's right hand rested on the conceptual anchor point—the gray cube on which three cracks still emitted a dim, colorless glow. Cooling down. Not to be touched.

He withdrew his hand.

"Prisoners have no right to negotiate."

Su Yuan's voice was flat, as if he were stating a fact that did not need to be discussed.

He ignored the 005 direction. He gripped the refining furnace main control lever with his left hand and pushed it directly into the red zone.

The alarm light came on. A furnace overload warning popped up, which he turned off.

Thirty-six dark gold conduits shot out from the side wall of the refining furnace, passed through the conduit slots reserved in the chassis, and pierced into the dark gold flesh and blood outside the vehicle that was writhing and reorganizing.

The tip of the catheter pierced the wound tissue of K-002.

The refining furnace begins extraction.

The furnace core temperature jumped directly from standby to 1800 degrees Celsius. The flame at the feed inlet darkened in color, and the molten metal flowed back along the guide tube, with the flow rate visibly increasing.

Wang Hu paused for a second.

Then he understood what Su Yuan was doing.

"You're crazy," Wang Hu said. But as he said this, he was already moving, reaching for the auxiliary control panel of the refining furnace and beginning to adjust the pressure parameters of the conduit.

Su Yuan didn't even turn his head: "There are no supply depots or material warehouses here. Three hundred thousand tons of living metal are right under our feet."

He stared at the feed readings for the refining furnace.

"It's a supply depot."

The refining furnace roared to life. Dark golden molten metal was drawn into the furnace chamber, where it was decomposed and recombined at a temperature of 1,800 degrees Celsius. Su Yuan could see from the feed composition analyzer that the living metal substrate was of extremely high purity, better than anything taken from the overhead rails.

It was pumped continuously for forty seconds.

Then something unexpected happened.

The dark golden dust particles suspended outside the car—those particles that were slowly converging towards the wound—suddenly changed direction.

They surged toward the hull of the Devourer.

It wasn't the kind of drifting that comes with the wind; it was a purposeful, uniform adhesion. Billions of tiny metal particles landed on the surface of the Devourer's armor, densely packed, like a layer of living metal dust.

The casing integrity reading started to jump.

98%. 97%. 95%.

The speed is increasing.

Wang Hu slapped the screen of the outer shell detection device: "What's going on? The outer armor is falling off?"

Su Yuan pulled up a magnified view. The metal particles adhering to the armor weren't corroding—they were drilling. Each particle was vibrating at an extremely high frequency, embedding itself into the molecular gaps of the armor.

Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.

Qin Yan's Morse code burst forth at this moment.

The small fire's mechanical voice, accompanied by electrical noise, laboriously translates: "Warning... Non-gnawing... Assimilation..."

It broke off at one end, then was reconnected.

"They...are rewriting...the underlying...molecular structure of the armor...the Devourer...is...becoming...a part of...K-002."

Wang Hu's expression changed.

The hull integrity figure is no longer accurate. It's not that the armor is "reducing," but rather that it's "deteriorating." The embedded metallic particles are rewriting the steel structure of the Devourer into an extension of K-002.

Su Yuan did not stop the extraction from the refining furnace.

He increased the power.

The guide tube was inserted deeper, and the extraction speed was faster. The refining furnace was running wildly under overload, with the furnace core temperature exceeding 2,100 degrees Celsius. The flame at the feed inlet turned a deep purple.

"Fight poison with poison," Su Yuan said, uttering four words.

The core function of a refining furnace is not smelting metals—it's decomposition and recasting. It can break down any material to the molecular level and then recombine it according to a new blueprint.

If K-002's "Forging Ants" can rewrite the armor of the Devourer, then the Refining Furnace can rewrite K-002's flesh and blood into what the Devourer needs.

It all comes down to who can rewrite it faster.

A crisp metallic clang rang out from the outlet.

Something was vomited out.

A palm-sized square module, with a dark silver surface and extremely fine etched lines along its edges, slides into the spare slot on the main control panel. Information automatically pops up on the only remaining small screen:

【Warden's Protocol - Interference Field Generator】

Su Yuan only glanced at it.

"Install. Start."

The module clicks into place.

An invisible wave emanated from the center of the Devourer vehicle. There was no light, no sound, but everyone felt as if something had gently tapped their eardrums.

Outside the car window, the blue light at the edge of K-002's wound flickered intensely.

It flashed three times.

Went out.

The golden flesh and blood that were writhing and reorganizing stopped. Not that they stopped growing—they lost their direction. They were still moving, but in a chaotic and disorderly manner, losing the unified rhythm that had been "purposeful" before.

The execution agreement for the will of 020 was disrupted.

The signal received by K-002 to "assimilate Soviet Yuan and seize the anchor point" was interrupted.

The metal particles that were assimilating the armor on the outer shell also stopped. They didn't fall off, but rather got stuck in place, losing their driving force.

The casing integrity reading settled at 89%.

It will not descend further.

Wang Hu let out a breath: "It works!"

But Su Yuan's expression did not relax.

Because the next second, K-002's physical reaction occurred.

It doesn't need O020O instructions to execute a physical counterattack. Pain is instinct.

Around the piercing wound, which was over thirty meters in diameter, enormous dark golden fingers began to close. It wasn't the slow, wriggling reassembly of before—it was a direct, violent physical crushing.

The five giant fingers contracted from the outside of the wound towards the center.

The vehicle of the Devourer emitted a metallic wail.

The pressure readings on the outer armor began to jump. Ten tons. Twenty tons. Fifty tons. And it kept rising.

Su Yuan pulled the segmented brake and then the fully loaded rail-pressing module—but there were no rails below, only the flesh and blood of K-002. These operations could only provide limited pressure resistance to the vehicle body.

"Everyone, hold on!"

The ceiling of the main control room creaked. The load-bearing beams were deforming slightly.

Just then, the dark red light of compartment 005 shone brightly.

An invisible force erupted from within 005. It moved outwards and was repulsive in nature.

Repulsive field.

K-002's clasped fingers stopped three meters from the Devourer's hull. Not a complete halt, but a deceleration. The repulsive field was counteracting some of the external pressure.

The pressure reading dropped from 120 tons to 70 tons.

The deformation of the roof stopped.

Wang Hu's eyes widened as he stared in the direction of 005.

K-001 is helping them.

"Don't be too happy yet," Tang Lan's voice came from the passenger seat. Her gun never left the direction of 005.

Su Yuan is already looking at the data.

The component analyzer in the refining furnace showed an additional reading—the repulsive field, while contacting the Devourer's hull, was scanning the entire train's internal structure at extremely low power. The scanning frequency was extremely low and highly concealed; if the refining furnace hadn't just swallowed K-002's flesh and blood and gained homology detection capabilities, it would have been completely undetectable.

The focus of the scan is gradually narrowing.

It narrows towards the main control panel.

It narrows towards the gray square.

It is looking for an anchor point.

Su Yuan's expression remained unchanged. His hand was on the switch of the interference field generator; without hesitation, he slammed it down.

It's closed.

The instant the interference field disappeared, the blue light at the wound on K-002 outside the vehicle re-emerged. The interrupted protocol resumed reception. The stagnant forging ants regained their drive and began the assimilation process on the Devourer's armor.

Outer shell integrity: 88%. 87%.

At the same time, K-002's physical crushing force doubled—because it was no longer just an instinctive reaction. 020's instructions were re-injected into its logic center: the target was in its palm. Crush it.

The repulsive field—K-001's "assistance"—disappeared the instant Su Yuan turned off the jammer. The dark red light in compartment 005 suddenly contracted.

K-001 stopped helping. Su Yuan turned off the jammer, meaning K-002 had reverted to a purposeful hunter. To K-001, a K-002 who "could potentially become the new warden" was more dangerous than a "brainless beast." But Su Yuan's actions just now also made it realize—this person had seen through its scan.

It chose to remain silent.

The pressure on the vehicle body jumped from seventy tons to one hundred and fifty tons.

A cracking sound came from the load-bearing beam on the ceiling of the main control room, and the weld on the left side cracked by two inches.

"Old Su!" Wang Hu roared.

Su Yuan didn't look at him.

"Refining furnace." Su Yuan's voice was unusually calm. "Stop all secondary processes. Withdraw the conduits from K-002's body. Transfer all energy to a single target."

His finger touched the status light next to the gray square. A pale yellow light, indicating it was cooling down. Countdown: nine hours and fifty-four minutes.

"Repair conceptual anchors."

Wang Hu stopped moving.

Tang Lan turned her head.

Jiang Yu lifted his face from the support frame.

The thirty-six conduits of the refining furnace were detached from the wounded flesh of K-002. Without the restraint of extraction, K-002's reorganization speed immediately doubled. The blue light became brighter and more stable. The assimilation speed of the forging ants on the shell accelerated.

Outer shell integrity: 85%. 83%.

However, the refining furnace's entire capacity was no longer used to extract enemy materials or manufacture new modules. Instead, the furnace core temperature was decreasing—not because it was shut down, but because it was undergoing a highly precise low-temperature condensation process.

The outlet emitted a very faint sound of molten metal droplets hitting the ground.

A drop of liquid fell into the discharge tank.

Gray. Does not reflect light. Much heavier than mercury.

Xiao Huo's voice squeezed out from the background noise, containing only three words: "Concept... flux..."

Su Yuan didn't waste any words: "Wang Hu."

Wang Hu was already moving. He grabbed the operating handle of the precision robotic arm from the tool rack—this thing was usually used for welding and fine-tuning, but now, as he held it in his hand, his fingertips were trembling.

It wasn't fear. It was excitement.

He manipulated the gripper of the robotic arm, carefully picking up the drop of gray liquid. The liquid remained perfectly spherical on the gripper, without flowing or deforming.

Wang Hu extended the robotic arm toward the conceptual anchor point on the main control panel.

Three cracks are clearly visible on the surface of the gray cube.

The first drop of gray liquid landed on the longest crack.

At the instant the liquid comes into contact with the crack, there is no temperature change, no light, and no sound. The crack is "closing"—not the fusion of physical welding, but the "concept" of the crack itself is being repaired.

The status light flashed from a dim yellow.

The cooldown countdown changed from nine hours and fifty-four minutes to five hours and twelve minutes.

The refining furnace spat out another drop.

Wang Hu caught it and applied it to the second crack.

Five hours and twelve minutes - one hour and three minutes.

The third drop.

One hour and three minutes - fifteen minutes.

When the fourth drop fell, the countdown jumped directly to one minute and fifty-eight seconds.

Wang Hu's breathing became rapid.

But K-001 and K-002 also sensed it.

The dark red light inside compartment 005 went out instantly.

K-001 completely withdrew all external radiation. It curled up into a ball and lay dormant in the deepest part of the storage compartment. It was protecting itself—if the conceptual anchor point was repaired, Su Yuan's first target would be it. It had no intention of giving Su Yuan any further reason to "help" it.

Outside the vehicle, K-002's reaction was even more direct.

The speed at which the giant hand closed its five fingers suddenly tripled.

Pressure readings: 200 tons. 300 tons. 400 tons.

The load-bearing beam on the left side of the control room ceiling broke. Half of the metal beam fell down, and Tang Lan dodged to the side. The end of the beam grazed her shoulder and hit the floor, leaving a dent.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the right-side window under immense pressure.

Screams came from the direction of 013—something was squeezing the outer shell of the casualty pod.

Wang Hu's hands were trembling, but they didn't stop.

The fifth drop.

Countdown: 42 seconds.

The sixth drop.

Twenty-one seconds.

A piece of the car window was shattered. Dark golden dust rushed in. The temperature was icy cold.

Jiang Yu lunged forward, using his body to block the wound. The dust, upon contact with his skin, immediately began to seep into the old wound on his single arm. He groaned, clenching his teeth, refusing to back down.

Fourteen seconds.

The refining furnace emitted its seventh drop—the final drop. The furnace core cooled completely, and all reserve energy was exhausted. The refining furnace shut down.

Wang Hu placed the last drop of gray liquid at the end of the third crack.

All three cracks have healed.

The surface of the concept anchor point returned to that eerie state of "neither reflecting nor absorbing light." The status light changed from dark yellow to pure white.

Cooling countdown has reached zero.

Xiao Huo's voice squeezed out from the noise—only two words, but exceptionally clear.

"Repair complete."

Vehicle body pressure: 500 tons. 600 tons. Still rising.

The second load-bearing beam in the main control room began to deform, and the ceiling sank at a visible rate. The metal plate above the driver's seat had bent to within forty centimeters of Su Yuan's head.

Wang Hu roared at Su Yuan, his voice mostly drowned out by the noise of the metal deformation, but Su Yuan still heard it.

His palm landed on the conceptual anchor point.

Outside the car window, K-002's five giant fingers had come together to within two meters of the vehicle. The dark gold fingertips were engraved with the tattered insignia of the expeditionary force, shimmering in the darkness of the abyss.

Su Yuan's target parameters are switching.

Not outside the car.

It's not K-002.

His eyes were fixed on the rearview camera screen. Cargo compartment number 005. The one that had just extinguished all its light, curling up in a ball to protect itself.

Wang Hu saw Su Yuan's intended course of action.

"Old Su?!"

Su Yuan did not answer.

The conceptual anchor was activated beneath his palm. That indescribable vibration reappeared—not a physical vibration, but a loosening at the causal level. For a moment, the entire train emitted a kind of extremely high-frequency hum that was not metallic.

Target locked: Exists inside compartment 005.

K-001.

Su Yuan's lips moved.

The sound was faint. It was almost inaudible amidst the creaking of metal deformation, the cracking of the car window, and the screams coming from 013.

But every word is clear.

"Conceptualization".

There was a pause.

"Target: K-001."

There was another pause.

"Giving a concept—"

Deep within compartment 005, the dark red entity, dormant to the extreme and almost nonexistent, suddenly erupted. The will accumulated over millennia burst forth like a flood, instantly filling the entire control room with mental pressure.

Wang Hu's knee slammed into the floor, blood spurting from his nose. Jiang Yu, his body pressed forward against the broken window, slammed his forehead against the iron frame. Tang Lan braced herself against the armrests of her chair, her knuckles cracking, her whole body trembling violently.

K-001 is trying to save itself.

It used all its power to launch a mental suppression, with only one purpose—to interrupt Su Yuan's consciousness and cause the "granting" process to collapse midway.

Su Yuan's temples throbbed with veins, and the edges of his vision began to turn white. The conceptual anchor point beneath his palm continued to output; the program had started and was irreversible. However, "assignment" required the operator to maintain a continuous flow of consciousness until the concept was fully written.

K-001 knew this. That's why it risked its life.

Su Yuan's lips were moving.

White spread across my field of vision. My ears were filled with the throbbing of blood vessels.

He didn't stop.

"--'key'."

As the last word was squeezed out from between his teeth, the colorless halo on the surface of the concept anchor suddenly expanded, penetrating the carriage wall, the insulation layer, and all the protective structures on the 005 shell, reaching the core of the cargo compartment.

A piercing shriek, not of a physical nature, emanated from inside compartment 005.

It's not anger.

It is fear.

Pure, primal, fear stemming from the instinct of existence.

The dark red light didn't surge at that moment—it changed color. It transformed from dark red into an extremely unnatural grayish-red, as if something had been forcibly written into its underlying logic of existence.

"key".

K-001 is now a key.

It's not a metaphor. It's not a symbol. It's a fact at the conceptual level. Its very existence is anchored to a new attribute.

Immediately afterwards—

Outside the car.

The closing action of K-002 stopped.

It's not the effect of a jammer. The jammer was turned off a long time ago.

It's instinct.

K-002 sensed a "key" appearing in its palm. 020's will execution agreement clearly stated—"Seize the anchor point and inherit the warden's authority." And the "warden's authority" required a key to unlock.

It needs this key.

The five giant fingers stopped less than a meter from the Devourer's hull, refraining from further crushing it. The blue light flashing on the dark golden fingertips increased in frequency.

It is in the "look" 005 direction.

The mental pressure in the control room suddenly subsided.

K-001 withdrew all its power, no longer wasting it on suppressing Su Yuan. It struggled—not physically, but trying to resist the "key" concept that had been written into it. But the assignment of the conceptual anchor was irreversible. It was welded shut.

Wang Hu got up from the ground, wiped the blood from his nose, and gasped for breath.

He glanced at the motionless giant fingers outside the window, then at the direction of 005, and then at Su Yuan.

Su Yuansong released the conceptual anchor point. No new cracks appeared on the surface of the gray cube. Single use, cost manageable.

He leaned back in his chair, half his face covered in blood from the gash on his forehead and the capillaries ruptured during their mental struggle. But his eyes were clear.

"Now," Su Yuan began, his voice hoarse, "they have things to do."

Tang Lan was the first to react.

"You turned K-001 into what K-002 wanted."

Su Yuan did not deny it.

Wang Hu was a beat slower than Tang Lan, but he still figured it out: "K-002 wants to be the warden—to be the warden you need a key—the key is in 005—"

His eyes lit up.

"It's going to rob 005!"

Su Yuan nodded.

"But K-001 won't surrender easily," Tang Lan added.

Su Yuan nodded again.

Two isomers. Natural enemies. One is forced to become a tool that the other must acquire.

K-002 wants to steal the keys. K-001 doesn't want to be robbed.

They will fight.

The changes outside the train had already begun. K-002's clenched fingers reopened—not to abandon its attempt to crush the Devourer, but to change its target. The enormous fingertips bypassed the Devourer's lead car, middle section, and refining furnace, reaching precisely towards carriage 005.

A second shriek echoed from inside compartment 005. This time it was sharper and more desperate. A dark red light surged, and the repulsive field erupted once more—but this time it wasn't to "help" the Devourer, but purely in self-defense.

K-001's repulsive field collided with K-002's outstretched fingertip.

The moment the dark gold metallic surface came into contact with the dark red energy field, a muffled sound echoed from the bottom of the abyss—not a sound, but a tremor in the material realm. The dark gold dust was propelled hundreds of meters away by the shockwave.

Su Yuan is already making a move.

"Sectional unlocking. 005 trailer car is detached in an emergency."

Tang Lan turned her head abruptly: "Are you going to throw 005?"

"It's not throwing it away," Su Yuan said, pulling down the emergency release rod. "It's releasing the bait."

A loud bang was heard from the connecting beam between car 005 and car 013 as the latches popped open. The hydraulic buffers were vented. Car 005, the tail anchor car, detached from the end of the train and lost traction from the main body of the Devourer.

It stopped right there in the wound in K-002's palm. The main body of the Devourer began to move slowly forward—the refining furnace had stopped, but the Mountain-Suppressing Core still had some power left. The tracks rolled over the dark golden flesh, inching closer and closer to the edge of the wound.

K-002's attention was no longer on the Devourer.

Its entire perception was locked on 005. On that "key".

Around compartment 005, a dark red repulsive field and a giant dark gold finger were engaged in a material-level struggle. K-001 was doing everything in its power to maintain the barrier, and every inch K-002's fingertip advanced was repelled by half an inch—but only half an inch. The difference in size was too great. K-001 had been sealed for ten thousand years, and its main body was extremely weak. K-002, on the other hand, was supported by a physical mass of three hundred thousand tons.

But the fiercer they fight, the more space Su Yuan has.

The right track of the Devourer rolled over the edge of the wound. Ahead lay the gap between the giant hand's fingers—a gap more than ten meters wide leading to the outer side of the back of the hand.

"Everyone hold on tight." Su Yuan pushed down the power lever.

With the last of its power remaining, the Devouring Desolation Ship squeezed out from between its fingers.

My field of vision suddenly opened up.

No longer was it a closed space with a wound in the palm of my hand. Before me lay a vast graveyard of debris at the bottom of the abyss—the remains blasted apart by the last impact, scattered over a radius of several kilometers. In the darkness thirteen thousand meters above, the remnants of the Skyrail's bottom structure were still slowly falling.

Su Yuan immediately looked at the rearview camera.

Carriage 005 was about two hundred meters behind. K-002's entire giant hand had completely enveloped that small section of the carriage. The dark golden fingers intertwined and collided with the dark red repulsive field, generating waves of energy that swept over in bursts, making the rear armor of the Devourer rattle loudly.

But K-002 did not crush 005.

It dared not. If the key broke, it would be gone.

It is trying to "open" 005. In a physical and structural way, it is peeling away the outer shell of the compartment layer by layer to reach K-001 inside.

K-001 is putting up a desperate fight.

Su Yuan withdrew his gaze.

Wang Hu stood beside him, his face covered in blood, his voice hoarse: "005... are we just going to abandon this?"

"Conceptual anchor point cooling complete, refining furnace shut down, 011 true brain into hibernation." Su Yuan reported one by one, "The current Devouring Wasteland can't defeat any of them."

He looked up at the vast waste graveyard at the bottom of the abyss ahead.

"The car needs to be repaired."

Wang Hu followed his gaze. The waste graveyard was piled high with the remains of the old Blue Star Expeditionary Force—tanks, mechs, transport planes, ammunition boxes, building materials. All the garbage dumped from above by the space orbiter over the decades was here.

Su Yuan's hand rested on the refining furnace restart button. The furnace core temperature reading was zero. It was cold.

"Manual preheating." He turned to Wang Hu, "Go to the rear cabin and bring over the last barrel of waste brine collected from Station 46."

Wang Hu turned and walked away. After taking two steps, he turned back: "Old Su, that thing in 005... after it was written as a key, how long can it survive?"

Su Yuan did not turn around.

"Let's see what it can do."

Wang Hu is gone.

Tang Lan was changing the magazine in the passenger seat; her fingers had stopped trembling. "You're betting that the K-001 can hold out."

"It has lived for tens of thousands of years," Su Yuan said, "but only for a few hours."

Jiang Yu retreated from the broken window, blood still seeping from the wound on his arm where the casting ants had burrowed into him. He looked at the cluster of dark gold and dark red light behind him, and his throat bobbed.

"What happens after they've finished fighting?"

Su Yuan did not answer.

He bent down and pulled the interference field generator out from under the seat, then flipped it over to look at the parameter label on the back.

Warden's Agreement. Interference Field.

The generator was only used once and then turned off. It still has power.

Su Yuan put it back on the main control panel and clipped it into the spare slot.

From behind, in the direction of carriage 005, came a shockwave—larger than any before. K-002's third finger had finally torn through the first protective plate of 005's outer shell. Dark red light erupted from the breach, scorching large swaths of living metal on the giant finger's surface into ashes.

But K-002's fingertips continued their advance through the ashes. It didn't care about the losses. What did burning a few hundred tons of fingertips matter compared to a body weighing three hundred thousand tons?

The frequency of K-001's shrieking has increased.

Su Yuan closed her eyes, then opened them again.

He pressed the intercom: "Tang Lan, 013 wounded personnel status."

"Alive," Tang Lan replied.

"Okay." Su Yuan stood up and walked towards the rear cabin. "The refining furnace needs forty minutes to preheat manually. After preheating is complete—"

He pushed open the isolation door leading to the rear cabin and glanced back at the increasingly bright red light in the direction of 005 on the rearview camera.

"I'm going to eat them both."

The isolation door was closed.

Only Tang Lan and Jiang Yu remained in the control room.

Jiang Yu stared at the direction where Su Yuan disappeared for several seconds, then turned to look at Tang Lan.

Tang Lan is checking the ammunition inventory. She's counting them one by one.

"Is he serious?" Jiang Yu asked.

Tang Lan didn't look up.

"How long have you been with him?"

"Just got on the bus."

"Then remember one thing." Tang Lan put the last bullet back into the magazine, pushed the bullet into the chamber, and locked it with a click.

"Every word he said was sincere."

In the abyss behind, K-002's fourth finger pierced 005's second layer of armor. K-001's repulsive field began to flicker intermittently—it was weakening.

The preheating indicator light on the Devourer's refining furnace lit up to the first level.