The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

Five hundred meters away, inside that five-story building, the atmosphere was so heavy it seemed like it could drip water.

When Li Shichu crawled out of the cave, he was covered in dirt, his face, hair, and clothes were all dusty. His hands were trembling, not from fear, but from the lingering fear of surviving a disaster.

"Wang Kehua is dead," he said.

The room fell silent for a moment.

Wang Chen's face darkened. He walked up to Li Shichu, stared into his eyes, and asked, word by word, "How did you die?"

"Killed by that man." Li Shichu's voice was a little dry. "It was too fast, I didn't see anything clearly. Captain Wang used a detector to track him, then turned and ran, and then that man chased after him and shot... just one shot."

Wang Chen tapped his fingers on the table.

Wang Kehua was someone he had personally promoted. A Level 3 Trial Warrior with 45 combat points, he was among the top five fighters in the Salvation Guild. Just like that, he died? Shot dead by some random nobody who appeared out of nowhere?

"What did the detector detect?" Zhang Qiang walked out from the corner and pushed up his glasses.

"I didn't see it." Li Shichu shook his head. "After Captain Wang finished the test, his expression changed, and then he ran away."

Zhang Qiang pondered for a moment and glanced at Wang Chen.

Wang Chen's face was grim. His combat strength was assessed at over 60 points, less than 20 points higher than Wang Kehua's. If that man could kill Wang Kehua with a single shot, killing him wouldn't be too difficult.

"Is it possible," Zhang Qiang slowly began, "that person possesses some kind of mental attack ability? Wang Kehua has a strength-based talent, and his mental resistance has always been low. What if the opponent first used a mental attack to render him unable to resist, and then attacked..."

Wang Chen's eyes lit up slightly. He liked this speculation. Not because it was true, but because it gave him a way out.

Mental attack. There just happens to be someone in their team... a psychic talent, specializing in defending against mental attacks. If that man truly won through mental attacks, then he has nothing to fear.

"Have Zhao Tiezhu come over," Wang Chen said. "Take Xiao Liu with him."

Zhao Tiezhu was that burly man with a face full of scars, a level three trial participant with a strength-type talent, and a combat power rating of 45 points, which was comparable to Wang Kehua.

Xiao Liu is a mental power talent, level two, with a combat power assessment of only 18 points, but her ability is not combat, but defense... She can sense the fluctuations of mental attacks and can also resist them to a certain extent.

The two arrived quickly. Zhao Tiezhu's face twitched slightly after hearing Li Shichu's description, but he didn't say anything. Xiao Liu, however, a girl who looked to be in her early twenties, turned pale after hearing the story.

"I can't guarantee I can defend against it," she said softly. "If the opponent's level is much higher than mine, my abilities might be useless."

Wang Chen remained silent for a moment.

"Don't go looking for that person for now," he finally said. "Let's figure out how to solve the problem here first."

He walked to the window and looked at the blood-red vine in the distance.

This is their biggest problem. They've been trapped here for almost four hours now, since morning. If this continues, they won't be able to reach the evacuation point before dark, let alone get out of this area.

Moreover, that thing is getting stronger.

Wang Chen could sense it.

With each corpse it consumed, the vines darkened in color. Having nearly exhausted the bodies in the square, it began to extend its reach, dragging corpses from several surrounding streets into its path.

At this rate, its coverage area will at least double before nightfall.

"Are the explosives ready?" Wang Chen asked.

"All ready." Zhang Qiang nodded. "The explosives collected from three directions are all loaded onto a truck. High explosives, enough to collapse a building."

"Where is the driver?"

"We picked one from among those we took in. A contract has already been signed."

Wang Chen nodded and said nothing more.

He stared at the blood-red vine outside the window, his eyes as cold as ice.

He didn't believe that this thing couldn't be blown up.

.......

Su Mu stood on the roof of the three-story building, holding the binoculars that had been thrown from the group of people, and aimed them at the five-story building in the distance.

The main purpose of letting Li Shichu go was to find the location of the group of people behind him.

Li Shichu did not disappoint him, easily helping him find the location of that group of people.

Then he saw the truck.

A red van pulled out of the parking lot behind the building and slowly drove along the street toward the square. It moved at a slow pace, about twenty miles per hour, like a clumsy metal box crawling through the ruins.

There was a person sitting in the cab of the truck.

The face was obscured, but the man was trembling from his posture. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and his body leaned forward, as if he were using all his strength to nail himself to the seat.

He saw that the truck door had been welded shut from the outside. Two long weld lines stretched from the door seam all the way to the door frame, gleaming with a blinding metallic sheen in the sunlight.

Su Mu put down his binoculars.

He showed no anger, no sympathy, and no superfluous emotions.

This wasn't the first time he'd seen something like this, and it wouldn't be the last.

In this apocalyptic world, human life is the cheapest thing. Especially for ordinary people who have no power, no resources, and no background, even the right to live has to be bought with charity in the face of the powerful.

He didn't care how those people died. What he cared about was whether their deaths would bring him the result he wanted.

The truck drove into the square.

The truck slowed down, not because the driver braked, but because the road surface was riddled with potholes from the vine roots, causing it to bounce violently. It wobbled and lurched toward the blood-red vine, like a staggering drunkard.

Eighty meters.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

The blood-red vines moved. They shot up from the ground like dozens of giant snakes, lunging at the truck. The first vine lashed the hood, denting it and sending sparks flying. The second vine struck the roof, collapsing a section and scattering shards of glass everywhere.

The truck was still moving forward.

Twenty meters.

ten meters.

Su Mu stared intently.

Then......

"boom......!!!"

Flames shot skyward, a massive fireball rose from the ground, thick smoke and debris billowing into the heavens. The shockwave from the explosion tore the surrounding vines to shreds, scattering dark green sap and charred fragments everywhere.

A deep pit, more than ten meters in diameter, appeared on the ground, and the cement ground around the pit was cracked into a spider web pattern.

Su Mu's ears were ringing from the noise, but he didn't look away.

He stared intently at the ball of fire, at the severed vines, and at the open space behind them.

aisle.

It exploded.