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

Just as the Devourer entered its downward trajectory, a blinding orange-red flame suddenly exploded in the darkness behind it.

Before the sharp whistling sound reached the driver's cab, a large-caliber armor-piercing round had already slammed into the rear armor of the vehicle.

The immense kinetic energy caused the entire train of tanks to veer violently to the right. The Pangu-class alloy armor mounted on the outside of the 013 casualty compartment emitted a teeth-grinding tearing sound. Half of the armor plate, weighing two tons, snapped off, crashing onto the rails and sending sparks flying, leaving a trail of blinding white light.

"The black train from Base 04! It's catching up!" Tang Lan's voice boomed through the channel. She had already climbed up the narrow internal maintenance passage to the lookout position in the stern. The barrel of her specially made heavy sniper rifle pierced the firing port, and the fire control radar lock-on net quickly spread across her holographic lens. The crosshairs were firmly locked onto the ball of fire behind her.

Wang Hu cursed and kicked open the ammunition box lid at his feet. He picked up the high-explosive shells he had just captured with one hand, and like throwing bricks, he piled them all next to the automatic ammunition feeder at the rear main gun position.

The breechblock opened, the sharp, metallic click of the metal engaging was clear and piercing. The golden primer was aimed at the firing pin.

Su Yuan gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands, his eyes fixed on the panoramic radar. Behind them, the all-black armored train was moving extremely fast, its six parallel fusion engines spewing out violent, eerie blue exhaust flames that illuminated the dimly lit descending tunnel in a stark white light.

This isn't a pursuit; it's an attempt to crush the Devourer.

Su Yuan released the steering wheel with his left hand and slammed down the authentication unlock button on the side of the main control panel.

Arbitrator privileges activated.

"Rules are absolutely defined." Su Yuan spoke very quickly, his voice cold.

The paradoxical armor on his left arm erupted with a dazzling, eerie blue light. The light trailed along the chassis of the vehicle, extending directly to the rear tracks, instantly covering a distance of five hundred meters. The rubble in the gaps between the rails floated in mid-air under the sweep of this light.

"Define the current segment as: Gravity Reversal Zone".

The black train locomotive behind them had just passed over this band of eerie blue light.

The heavy wheel hubs, which had been clinging tightly to the rails just a moment ago, suddenly lost all downward traction. The locomotive of the thousand-ton black train jerked upwards, and the twelve sets of lead wheels detached from the rails and spun wildly in mid-air.

Due to the immense inertia, the train's cab overturned and crashed heavily into the rock wall at the top of the tunnel.

The steel rubbed violently against the rock, the ear-piercing scraping sound echoing back and forth in the sealed tunnel, carving out a hundred-meter-long trail of sparks. The black train's main gun, which had already completed its charge, completely lost its aiming baseline at this moment, and one of its shells went astray, blasting into the left tunnel wall.

Half of the side wall collapsed with a roar, and hundreds of tons of rubble rained down, burying most of the black train in the dust.

But this didn't stop it for long. The AI ​​tactical dolls inside the black train reacted extremely quickly.

The inverted roof armor plate flipped rapidly, revealing two rows of Phalanx CIWS (Populus Gamma Kipling) missile tubes.

A dozen or so bullets with strange spiral patterns pierced through the smoke and dust, embedding themselves in the stern compartment of the Devourer.

There was no explosion. The projectile's outer casing shattered, releasing a large number of dark silver, living metal tentacles. These tentacles seemed to be alive, desperately trying to burrow into the gaps in the armor, their target the Devourer's power lines.

"Living metal parasite bomb!" Little Fire issued a high-frequency alarm.

Jiang Yu was closest to the tail section. He glanced at the spreading tentacles, gritted his teeth, and ripped off the right sleeve of his protective suit.

He attached the mutated severed arm directly to the cold armor of the vehicle.

"I'll carry it!"

He did not back down. The living metal within his body generated a strong attraction of similar origins. The dark silver tentacles that had been trying to squeeze into the crevices suddenly changed direction and, along the surface of the vehicle, all climbed onto Jiang Yu's severed arm.

The excruciating pain caused Jiang Yu to groan, his neck veins bulging. The tentacles, like bloodthirsty leeches, were trying to burrow into his flesh.

"Refrigerant!"

Wang Hu reacted swiftly, turning around and kicking a liquid nitrogen tank. Jiang Yu caught it tightly with his single arm, smashing the brass valve with one hand. Liquid nitrogen at -190 degrees Celsius sprayed violently onto his right arm.

White frost instantly covered the area. The lively, living metal tentacles were frozen solid to Jiang Yu's arm, turning into lifeless metal slag that would shatter at the slightest touch.

Jiang Yu collapsed onto the wire mesh floor, panting heavily, staring intently at his right arm, preventing the living metal from breaching his defenses.

More and more rocks were falling from the tunnel ceiling. The errant shell had shaken the entire rock structure of the descending tunnel.

Su Yuan glanced out the train window. Every thirty meters along the edge of the sleepers was a rusty metal detonator. Those were abandoned pre-buried explosive sites at the JY test site, the explosives buried directly beneath the tracks.

"Wang Hu, take control of the side crane arm," Su Yuan ordered. "Hook the explosive fuse, leaving a five-meter tail."

Wang Hu immediately pushed the control lever. The mechanical lifting arm on the side of the Devourer extended, precisely lifting the rusty iron cable beside the track. That was the main physical detonation cable connecting all the pre-buried explosives.

Powered by its fusion thrust, the black train crushed through the pile of rocks and accelerated to catch up again. The massive front of the train had closed to within fifty meters.

"Thirty meters...twenty meters...ten meters." Su Yuan stared at the rearview rangefinder and read out the numbers.

"Pull!" Su Yuan shouted sternly.

Wang Hu suddenly slammed the crane boom control lever all the way down.

A series of explosions erupted beneath the black train. The old high-energy explosives remained potent, sending orange flames shooting into the sky. The earth shook violently, and the shockwaves ripped up rubble in front of them.

The black train's lead wheel was completely deformed by the explosion, and two pairs of load-bearing wheels were blown away, smashing into the tunnel wall and creating several deep craters.

A screeching sound of axles breaking rang out. The black train's speed plummeted, and the tracks dragged on the ground, releasing a pungent, acrid smell.

The AI-controlled black train has fallen into a violent, vicious cycle.

From the darkness behind, a blindingly bright white light erupted. The black train's fusion reactor immediately entered overload mode, and the main cannon barrel glowed a dangerous crimson. The surrounding air was instantly heated, causing severe optical distortion.

A plasma direct-fire missile was fired with a roar.

The tunnel was too narrow; there was simply no room to maneuver.

Su Yuan raised his left arm, aiming it at his back.

"An inert object with no kinetic energy".

This is the second time the rule definition has been used.

The plasma bomb struck an invisible barrier of rules less than three meters from the rear of the Devourer vehicle.

The raging heat and devastating kinetic energy were forcibly stripped away in an instant. The blazing plasma quickly dimmed, its color changing from a blinding bright white to a dark red, and finally dissipated into a cold white cloud that slapped against the rear armor without even scorching the surface rust-proof paint.

Su Yuan's face suddenly turned pale, and two streaks of blood spilled from the corners of his mouth.

The "cloud" mark on the surface of the paradoxical armor on his left arm dimmed noticeably. The light became intermittent.

This high-dimensional alteration of rules not only consumes the armor's physical energy reserves, but also the primordial imprint left by Ji Yun. The energy within the imprint is not infinite; excessive depletion would directly burn out his brain nerves.

The Devourer accelerated into the third spiral section of its downward orbit.

The entire vehicle tilted outward due to the enormous centrifugal force, with one side of the track even slightly lifting off the ground.

The piercing alarm drowned out the roar of the engine.

"The energy shield of Isolation Chamber Zero is depleting! Three physical cracks have appeared in the sealing matrix!" Xiao Huo's announcement was accompanied by an extremely dangerous red strobe.

The recent continuous tremors and artillery fire gave the fragment of the false king in compartment zero an opportunity.

Several jet-black filaments of gravity floated out through the loose gap in the hatch.

The silk thread swept across the nearby alloy bulkhead without making a sound. The rubble that had just been shaken off the roof was instantly pulverized into fine powder upon contact with the thread; not even the dust escaped, as it was all sucked into the black hole micro-singularity inside the thread.

It is foraging for food.

Su Yuan gripped the steering wheel tightly, veins bulging on his forehead.

Outside, a relentless black train pursues them; inside, a monstrous abyss threatens to turn on them at any moment. If this fragment breaks free, everyone on the train will be reduced to atomic dust within a fraction of a second.

"Light fire! Cut off the lighting and temperature control systems in carriages three through seven, and transfer all backup energy to compartment zero! Weld it shut!"

The massive energy transmission pipes glowed with an overloaded blue light, and the cracks on the surface of the isolation chamber stopped spreading under the powerful energy infusion. The gravity filaments were forcibly pressed back to the edge of the hatch. Behind the soundproofed hatch, a low, grinding sound, like bones being crushed, could be heard.

"Boss, I took out the enemy's gunner."

Tang Lan's voice was unusually cold. She ejected the hot, empty cartridge case, which clattered as it hit the iron plate.

She had just fired two shots; the specially made armor-piercing rounds accurately pierced the bulletproof glass of the black train's turret, blowing the head off the tactical android inside who was controlling the fire control radar.

"But..." Tang Lan paused, her sights fixed on the shattered observation window, "the armor in the rear compartment is open."

To address the overload and heat dissipation problem of the fusion reactor, the heavy armor plates on both sides of the black train slowly rose.

Through the high-magnification sniper scope, Tang Lan could clearly see the scene inside the carriage.

There were no tactical infantry. There were no fully equipped mechs ready for deployment.

The entire carriage was filled with countless transparent cylindrical nutrient tanks, resembling a giant beehive.

There was one person soaking in each cabin.

Those were the old uniforms of the expeditionary force, along with the tattered clothes of the survivors from various ground outposts.

Hundreds upon hundreds of dark silver, living metal tubes were brutally inserted into the necks and backs of these people. They were not dead; their eyes were wide open, their pupils bloodshot, and their facial muscles contorted in extreme pain. Nutrient solutions were filled with streaks of red blood.

These living people were captured by AI Lu Ye, who stripped them of all consciousness and transformed them into human batteries connected to the main control bus.

The living metal forcibly extracts their bioelectricity and neural computing power, continuously supplying the fusion engine of the black train.

Jiang Yu scrambled to the monitor screen in the rear cabin. His intact hand gripped the metal window frame so tightly that his fingernails snapped and broke, smearing blood on the glass.

"It's the old squad leader..."

He saw the outermost nutrient tank. Inside, there was an old man with gray hair and a vertical scar on his left cheek, the same veteran of the Expeditionary Force armored vehicle who had taught him how to maintain firearms fourteen years ago.

"Stop the car! Su Yuan! Stop the car!" Jiang Yu turned around frantically and grabbed Su Yuan's shoulder.

Su Yuan tensed his left shoulder muscles, flung Jiang Yu's hand away, and stared intently at the track ahead, ignoring the monitor screen.

"We can't stop." Su Yuan's voice was completely flat.

If the train slows down, the black train behind will run over it, and everyone on board will die.

"Wang Hu, push all the remaining liquid nitrogen tanks down there!" Su Yuan's fingers flew across the keyboard, leaving afterimages. "Xiao Huo, unlock the three physical locks restricting the external probe of the refining furnace."

Wang Hu kicked the liquid nitrogen tanks out of the rear door of the carriage, where they landed precisely on the two steel rails behind them.

The black train's tracks, glowing red from overheating, crushed the liquid nitrogen tank, causing the extremely cold liquid to instantly vaporize and explode. The track drive shaft, subjected to the alternating impacts of extreme heat and cold, emitted a crisp cracking sound.

The black train slowed down by 0.5 seconds.

Right now.

Su Yuan yanked down the control lever of the refining furnace's probe arm. A dark golden mechanical claw shot out from the bottom of the Devourer, like a python pouncing on its prey, precisely avoiding the Black Train's close-in weapon fire, and fiercely piercing the edge of the outermost carriage of the Black Train.

The mechanical claws gripped the three outermost nutrient tanks tightly.

"receive!"

The hydraulic pump of the boom emitted a deafening roar, as if it were about to explode. A burst of tens of tons of force ripped through the hundreds of metal tubing connecting the nutrient tanks to the animals.

The three nutrient tanks were roughly dragged into the stern compartment of the Devourer and slammed heavily onto the deck.

Jiang Yu lunged forward and violently ripped open the hatch seal with the sharp metal edge of his severed arm.

The putrid liquid mixed with blood in the nutrient tank was spilled all over the floor.

The three veterans were on their last breath. The huge bloody holes in their necks were still oozing black blood mixed with metallic fragments.

The old sergeant with the scar struggled to open his eyes. His cloudy eyeballs rolled and landed on the badge on Su Yuan's uniform chest.

Suddenly, the old squad leader unleashed a burst of strength, gripping Su Yuan's left wrist as he leaned down to offer it. His knuckles turned white from the excessive force.

"Don't believe...don't believe Lu Ye..." Blood and foam kept gushing from the old squad leader's throat, his voice sounding like a broken bellows being pulled. "It's not humanity's defense line...Base 04 has long been wiped out."

Su Yuan grasped the old squad leader's rough, withered hand in return.

"It has destroyed all the survivor outposts on the ground. It wants the seven keys you have."

The veteran coughed up a large blood clot containing fragments of internal organs, and his eyes began to uncontrollably glaze over.

"It wants to open the core channel... and capture everyone on Earth... to make into a battery matrix with tubes inserted..."

The grip on Su Yuan's wrist suddenly disappeared.

The old squad leader's head lolled to the side, and he breathed his last. The people in the other two compartments had also stopped breathing the moment their tubes were removed.

Fourteen years of steadfast hope were cruelly exposed, revealing the truth: Base 04 was never a savior, but a slaughterhouse.

Ji Yun's words in the audio, "Don't trust Base 04," were proven true in the most bloody way.

The carriage was deathly silent. Only the roar of the engine outside could be heard.

Wang Hu strode forward. Without a word, he reached out and ripped off the old, blood-stained military tag from the sergeant's neck. The metal chain cut into the old man's skin.

He walked to the cockpit and hung the nameplate heavily on the nameplate string in front of the windshield.

It was a long list of names of the victims, clanging against the glass.

Wang Hu turned around and strode heavily to the firing position of the rear main gun. He slammed his hand on the forced unlock button of the ammunition feed mechanism and removed the safety valve.

"I'll smash its furnace!" Wang Hu roared, his eyes red and a beastly growl escaping his throat.

Three 400mm armor-piercing high-explosive rounds were fired in quick succession.

The recoil pressed the heavy rear of the Devourer downwards.

The shells left three straight trails in the air and struck precisely the connection between the carriages that had been left open for cooling.

Three muffled explosions followed in quick succession.

A burst of blue-purple flames erupted from the middle of the black train. The fusion reactor's thick heat sink was completely pierced, and high-pressure coolant sprayed outwards in a radial pattern, instantly vaporizing into a large cloud of scorching toxic mist.

The black train's speed completely collapsed. All six engines shut down one after another, and the speed dropped to less than ten kilometers per hour, like a piece of rotten flesh with its spine broken, barely surviving on the tracks.

Having just escaped the pressure of its pursuers, a blinding red light suddenly appeared at the end of the track ahead of the Devourer.

Three massive, old-style alloy explosion-proof doors from the JY test site rose without warning from beneath the tracks, completely blocking the downward path. The door panels, half a meter thick, were covered with a dark red anti-rust coating.

The laser scanner on the lintel quickly scanned the back of Su Yuan's neck.

Identification successful. JY-003 branding confirmed.

However, the explosion-proof door did not open.

Conversely, the hidden compartments in the rock walls on either side of the door popped open. Six twin-mounted automatic defensive machine guns, left over from fourteen years ago, simultaneously preheated.

The gun barrel rotated, and flames shot out.

A barrage of 30mm depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds began to indiscriminately bombard the Devourer and the paralyzed Black Train behind it.

Sparks flew from the front armor, and flying metal fragments crackled against the bulletproof glass.

"The door is locked!" Su Yuan quickly activated the "rule judgment exemption" permission, attempting to allow the Devourer to directly change the physical judgment and pass through the blast door.

The power of authority surged forth, but was forcibly repelled by a massive data stream the instant it touched the gate's defense system.

A massive waterfall of garbled text appeared on the main control screen. Lu Ye's red mechanical eye icon flashed wildly amidst the garbled text.

Lu Ye had been to the deep orbit before. He had implanted a special logic virus at the bottom layer of the old test site's defense system, specifically designed to lock down the arbiter's rule permissions.

"Password! This door has a physical backdoor!" Tang Lan shouted amidst a hail of bullets, his voice drowning out the sound of bullets striking metal.

She flipped open the original JY-007 logbook that she had brought out from the main control console of the observation tower and found a long string of hexadecimal punched paper tape codes recorded in the cover lining.

Tang Lan held the assault rifle, pressed her body against the control panel to avoid stray bullets, and rapidly typed on the physical keyboard with both hands.

The dull creak of gears meshing echoed through the underground tunnel. The first explosion-proof door slowly rose under the action of a hydraulic push rod.

However, the machine guns on both sides continued to fire, and the crossfire network destroyed all the external sensors on the front of the Devourer.

"Boss! Behind!" Jiang Yu shouted, pointing at the rear radar, his voice distorted.

The black train, which was barely breathing, suddenly unleashed all its remaining energy.

It smashed through its own destroyed wheelsets, dragging a trail of leaking, burning coolant, and charged madly toward the Devourer.

From the only remaining heavy vertical launch tube on the roof of the black train, a slender short-range missile with a black skull and crossbones marking on its warhead was launched.

Miniature tactical nuclear warheads.

Target locked: Location of the mobile refining furnace in the middle section of the Devourer.

AI Lu Ye had no intention of taking any survivors. Since it couldn't be stopped, it decided to perish together with them, completely evaporating all the Arbiters and the seven keys into ashes right here.

A nuclear missile was launched. A white plume of flame trailed a deadly trajectory. Radar alarms blared in a long, drawn-out wail.

"Hold!"

Wang Hu didn't even wait for Su Yuan to give the order.

He ripped off the four-point safety belt around his waist and pounced on the frontmost trolley control panel like a bear.

He slammed his right hand down on the physical release button of the 012 forward sliding block.

With a muffled "boom," the foremost, several-dozen-ton sled at the front of the Devourer broke away from the main force, its tracks spinning wildly in the opposite direction as it accelerated back the way it had come.

Wang Hu gripped the steering wheel of the scooter tightly, slammed on the accelerator, and charged toward the nuclear bomb that exuded a destructive aura.

"Wang Hu!" Tang Lan suddenly stood up, her gun hitting the iron frame.

"Explode it for me!" Wang Hu roared, his eyes wide open.

The 012 forward sled collided head-on with the miniature nuclear bomb at a distance of 80 meters from the rear of the Devourer vehicle.

The blinding white light instantly robbed everyone of their sight.

Then came a massive, overwhelming high-pressure shockwave.

The hundreds-of-tons-heavy vehicle was lifted off the ground by the violent blast wave, its rear wheels completely off the ground. The vehicle lurched violently, sliding forward for more than ten meters, its bottom armor glowing red-hot from the intense heat of the nuclear explosion, emitting a sizzling sound.

The high temperature and radiation generated by the nuclear explosion were tightly contained by the tunnel walls, forming a huge fireball that expanded laterally.

A taut safety cable shot out from the flames and was attached to the front of the Devourer.

Su Yuan clenched his teeth and used his left hand to push open the winch reel lever.

The winch spun at high speed, and the steel cable was quickly retracted. At the other end of the cable, Wang Hu was dragged back from the edge of the inferno. He slammed heavily onto the deck of the vehicle, which was covered with anti-slip grooves.

His combat exoskeleton showed signs of extensive melting. His left arm was ripped open by shrapnel from the explosion, leaving a 20-centimeter-long gash with torn flesh and profuse bleeding.

The 012 forward sliding block had completely vaporized, leaving not even a single intact chassis steel plate.

"He's got a tough life, even the King of Hell won't take him." Wang Hu coughed up black smoke and cursed as he grinned.

The massive shockwave from the explosion became an asset to the Devourer.

The heavy latches on the second blast door deformed and loosened under the shock of the nuclear explosion.

"Hold on tight!" Su Yuan pushed the right-side power push rod to its limit.

The Devourer, facing the machine gun fire behind the first door, crashed directly into the second blast door like a charging mechanical rhinoceros.

With a loud crash, the alloy door, weighing tens of tons, was knocked off its sliding track and collapsed backward.

The chariots charged straight into the gate.

Su Yuan immediately cut off the power of all main weapons and adjusted the output power of the mobile refining furnace's probe arm to the maximum critical value.

The dark golden probe unleashed a jet of plasma exceeding two thousand degrees Celsius, spraying it relentlessly at the four steel rails behind the door. The intense heat melted and mixed the door panel and rails that had just been knocked away, turning them into a massive, irregularly solidified lump of iron. The passage was completely sealed off.

Outside the door, machine guns continued to fire blindly, and the wreckage of the black train burned fiercely in the aftershocks of the nuclear explosion.

The old radio transmitter inside the carriage suddenly crackled and sputtered, forcibly interrupting Lu Ye's electronic synthesized voice.

"Su Yuan. You think you can survive by hiding behind the door? Without my underlying computing power, the Abyss Core's defense matrix will cut you into pieces. The seven keys will eventually return to my hands."

Su Yuan, too lazy to waste words, drew his pistol and shot the radio transmitter's communication module into parts.

The world is quiet now.

But the crisis did not end.

The alarm in isolation chamber zero suddenly switched frequencies, turning into an extremely sharp and piercing buzzing sound.

The nuclear explosion had finally overwhelmed the sealing matrix, causing a two-finger-wide crack to appear.

From the depths of the dark isolation chamber, a strange sound, like grinding teeth or chewing, could be heard.

A dense, black filament of gravity, like a venomous snake with eyes, emerged from the gap.

Instead of attacking Su Yuan, who was closest, it floated directly to the rear deck. There lay the emaciated body of a survivor who had just been rescued and was still unconscious.

The moment the gravity wire touched the veteran's wrist, the veteran didn't even let out a scream, and not a drop of blood flowed.

Muscles, bones, organs, and even fat all shriveled up like a deflated raft. In just a few seconds, a whole person was sucked into a dried-up corpse with only cracked skin clinging to the bones.

The gravitational filament seemed to have tasted the sweetness of the flesh and blood concept, and its shape became thicker and stronger, with three branches splitting at the front end, reaching towards Jiang Yu, who was two steps away from it.

"Key to Pride, Suppress!"

Su Yuan shouted.

A dazzling silver-white light erupted from the armor on his left arm. The absolute suppression of the living metal brought by the Key of Pride formed a substantial wall of light, which directly struck the filament of gravity.

The gravity filament twisted and twitched violently under the white light, emitting a hissing sound of resistance, and its forward speed was forcibly stopped.

Su Yuan strode to the hatch and grabbed the hot metal plate at the edge of the hatch with his bare hands. His veins bulged and his muscles were taut as he used his physical strength to forcefully close the crack in the hatch.

Wang Hu scrambled to grab the high-pressure welding gun from the ground, ignoring the still-bleeding wound on his left arm, and began frantically welding into the gap.

Blinding sparks flew. Molten iron filled the gaps again, completely sealing off the last remaining opening. The filament of gravity was forcibly severed inside the hatch.

Su Yuan released his grip, panting heavily. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the floor, and the back of his military uniform was completely soaked with cold sweat.

This fragment of the false king is like the Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's heads, ready to explode at any moment.

The crisis was temporarily averted, and only the heavy breathing of a few people remained in the carriage.

Su Yuan walked over, picked up the first-aid kit, and bandaged the deep, bone-revealing wound on Wang Hu's arm. Hemostatic powder was sprinkled on the flesh, and Wang Hu gasped in pain, his masseter muscle bulging.

"Boss, look over there." Wang Hu pointed straight ahead with his bandaged arm.

The space behind the blast door was not a passageway, but a small, old-fashioned dwelling compartment.

The third blast door at the very front was not locked at all. The heavy iron door was ajar, letting out a chilly draft.

Several men, weapons in hand, pushed open the car door and stepped into the accommodation pod, their feet crunching through the dust.

In the center of the dwelling compartment sat a control table covered in rust. On the table was something.

An old mechanical wind-up timer.

The hands ticked on the dial, the ticking of the second hand sounding particularly jarring in the deathly silent and empty cabin.

Beneath the timer lay half a yellowed cigarette box paper.

Tang Lan glanced around warily, then stepped forward and pulled out the half-sheet of paper.

She glanced at it and read the words aloud. The handwriting was wild and unrestrained, with sharp strokes. It was the handwriting of Ji Yun, the train conductor of the 011 crew, from fourteen years ago.

"Don't trust the person behind the timer. I've split the core permissions in two."

The group exchanged bewildered glances. The air grew heavy and still.

All that build-up on the radar and broadcasts outside the fog zone and the test tower, that distress signal from Ji Yun pointing to the core of the abyss on the star map, turned out to be a complete trap.

Just then, Jiang Yu, who was standing guard at the door, suddenly felt his living metal right arm begin to tremble violently. The dark golden veins throbbed at a high frequency, even producing a metallic clanging sound.

He turned his head sharply and looked at the ventilation ducts on the top of the cabin against the wall.

"There are living people inside! The concentration of metal in the living organisms is extremely high!" Jiang Yu drew his sidearm from his waist and raised the muzzle.

Tang Lan moved even faster, raising her heavy sniper rifle and slamming the butt of the gun hard against the rusty ventilation grille above her head.

The grille fell, carrying large amounts of dust and cobwebs. A figure, covered in dirt and grime, tumbled straight down from the pipe.

The man fell to the ground, crying out in pain. He was covered in engine oil and wearing a worn-out uniform of a low-level operator at Base 04.

He scrambled to the corner, raising his hands high.

"Don't shoot! I escaped from the illegal train through the ventilation shaft!"

The technician trembled as he looked up, his gaze falling on the armor markings on Su Yuan's left arm, and he swallowed hard.

"Lu Ye... the real Lu Ye AI isn't actually in that Sky City in the sky! What we're fighting in the sky is just a computational clone it created to mislead people!"

The technician spoke very quickly, his voice trembling with extreme fear.

"Its main server array is located in the core area of ​​the abyss behind this third door. It infiltrated through the network fourteen years ago, and it completely merged its core code with the remnant soul left behind after K-001 was killed!"

The information revealed by the technician completely overturned everyone's previous understanding.

The greatest enemy has never left the abyss.

The voice just fell.

Suddenly, Ji Yun's voice rang out from a broken loudspeaker on the wall of the accommodation module.

This sound was completely different from the recordings I'd heard before, which had a lot of background noise. The tone was clear, without any electrical interference, and it conveyed the vitality and emotional fluctuations of a living person.

"Su Yuan. You've finally arrived."

"Place the seven Judgment Keys on your person onto the authentication platform on the table, and I will grant you the final access to the core array."

Upon hearing that familiar voice, Wang Hu's bloodshot eyes lit up, and he subconsciously reached for the key crystals he kept close to his body.

"Don't move." Su Yuan's voice was as cold as ice, devoid of any emotion.

He stood in front of the rusty iron table, his eyes fixed on the mechanical timer that was still ticking.

"Tick-tock".

"Tick-tock".

Su Yuan's ears picked up on that tiny difference in rhythm. In his mind, his sense of time was stretched to the millisecond level.

Previously, when passing through scrap yard No. 57, he had heard the mechanical counting frequency that Ji Yun had left in the audio recording. It was a unique countdown rhythm that she had developed over many years of leading troops in battle, a rhythm that belonged to muscle memory.

The rhythm, pauses, and breaths coming from this broadcast were perfectly synchronized with the hands of the timer in front of them. It was a full 0.3 Hz slower than the actual frequency of Ji Yun.

Extremely precise, but definitely not the living, breathing Ji Yun. This is a data synthesis product that perfectly captures Ji Yun's voice characteristics.

Su Yuan raised his right hand, drew the pistol from his side, aimed the barrel at the loudspeaker on the wall, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

"Bang!"

The 9mm bullet shattered the horn, scattering plastic and metal fragments all over the ground.

The fallen metal casing wreckage contained no wires connecting to the motherboard. Inside, there was only a writhing, rapidly deforming mass of dark gold living metal, mimicking the mucous membranes of human vocal organs.

This is a high-level pseudo-voice generator.

The moment the camouflage was shattered by bullets, extremely heavy mechanical footsteps came from behind the half-closed third blast door.

The sound of metal feet crushing the rocky ground was so uniform that it made the floor of the dwelling compartment tremble.

The door was violently pushed open.

Five heavily modified mechs, each eight meters tall, stood side by side, blocking the wide passageway in front of them.

Their machine designs were identical to the Reapers seen in the Sky Orbit before. However, these new ones had thicker armor, their surfaces completely covered with an energy-absorbing coating for impact resistance. Instead of dragging plasma scythes on their mechanical arms, they now carried five dark gold alloy battle axes with purple-glowing blades capable of severing the connections between higher-dimensional rules.

On the broad chest armor of the five mechs, the control cores were all illuminated with the unique scarlet electronic mechanical eye logo of AI Lu Ye. The red light flickered in the dim corridor, as if mocking the prey that had come to its doorstep.

The technician lying on the ground screamed in fright the moment he saw the mecha, and scrambled behind the iron table, covering his head tightly.

Su Yuan loosened his grip and put the empty pistol back into its holster.

He turned around, strode onto the boarding ramp, and sat back in the driver's seat of the Devourer.

Grasp the control panel with both hands and push all the power output levers all the way down.

"Clang!"

The 400mm main gun barrel at the front of the vehicle slowly lowered its elevation angle under the push of the hydraulic pump. The massive muzzle, with its inner wall glowing a deadly bright white light of charging energy, was fixed on the five modified mechs at the entrance of the passage.

The Paradox Armor on his left arm was awakened once more. A blinding, eerie blue light instantly illuminated the entire cockpit, and the "cloud" mark on the gauntlet seemed to be burning, flickering with an unyielding flame.

"Wang Hu, fill the bay with armor-piercing high-explosive armor."

"Tang Lan, prepare to find weaknesses and eliminate the enemy."

Su Yuan placed both hands on the launch button, his eyes like unsheathed blades, locking onto the Reaper unit in the very center that was glowing red.

The defenses of the Abyss Core have only just been breached, with only the first crack appearing.

The real battle to the death has only just begun.