The youth walked away, his figure stretching long under the white lights.
After a brief internal struggle, Tang Xin finally spoke up. "Yuzu, don't you get the feeling that this guy is a bit strange?"
"Ever since we entered the basement, I’ve felt something was off about him. Don’t you feel like..."
Tang Xin lowered her voice. "His expressions are a bit stiff? They don't look like the expressions of a normal person."
"You're overthinking it. Compared to Lin Xing, I think that guy Chen San is weirder. He wanted to take the lead and dominate the whole team the moment we met. Who knows what’ll happen when things actually get dangerous."
Hearing this, Tang Xin was stunned for a moment, but she quickly reacted. As Xu Xiaoyou spoke, she was making subtle gestures, using sign language to convey a different message.
'Silence.'
Tang Xin glanced around. Did she mean that someone in this team was a problem?
Suppressing her thoughts, she followed the girl out of the room and met up with the others in another modification room.
A modified off-road vehicle was currently parked in the center of the room. Its headlights glowed red, and its steady, low-profile black paint made it look like a metal beast lurking in the dark night—wild and heavy.
This off-road vehicle was fitted with an exoskeleton metal frame, as if it were draped in a layer of indestructible armor. The alloy bumper at the front of the vehicle had protruding spikes, as sharp as the fangs of a beast. The scratches and corrosion upon it silently depicted the past years this metal beast had spent racing across the snowfields.
"Hah, this thing... it must be older than my grandfather, right?"
Lin Sheng remarked. He kicked the tires and tapped on the car window; a dull thud echoed from the bulletproof glass, which was covered in fine scratches.
"I thought the Dawn Agency would provide us with a float-car."
"The core technology for float-cars is held by Skywing Spacetime," Chen San said, adjusting his glasses. "They’ve regulated it so that float-cars can only operate normally within the boundaries designated by the Hive City. Outside the city, those float-cars are no different from scrap metal."
"Even high-grade fixers heading into the badlands to handle commissions have to apply for unlocking permissions from Skywing Spacetime at least half a month in advance."
Core technology was the foundation upon which the megacorporations rooted themselves in the world and drained the wealth of the people. It was like a sunless, dark forest where megacorporations with core technology confronted and checked one another. Because everyone held a lethal shotgun in their hands, they were usually polite and seemed to get along well, collectively oppressing the unlucky souls at the bottom of the world.
But everyone knew what leaking one's core technology meant. It was no different from exposing one's fatal weakness to the sight of every hunter in this dark forest; only savagery and plunder would follow.
History was full of incidents where megacorporations collapsed because their core technology was leaked. Every Hive City within their sphere of influence would fall, plunging into endless war and chaos, resulting in untold suffering before the corporation was eventually dismantled and its flesh and blood devoured by the others.
"Speaking of which, do you think that top-secret document might be related to Universal Heavy Industries' core technology?" Lin Xing suddenly asked, having thought of something.
As soon as those words were uttered, the expressions of everyone present changed.
Xu Xiaoyou and Chen San's faces darkened instantly.
Lin Sheng even slapped Lin Xing on the head, frustrated by his lack of common sense. "You dare to ask anything!?"
"Don't ask things you shouldn't ask, and don't say things you shouldn't say. As a shadow, do you really not understand even this much?"
"If you want to die, don't take us with you." Chen San snorted coldly before pulling open the car door and getting in.
Curiosity is human nature, but it is also a fatal flaw.
There are some things where merely becoming curious will cause one to fall into a bottomless abyss.
The vehicle soon drove out of the city and deep into the outskirts. The sights of civilization gradually faded as if thousands of years had passed; the soaring steel buildings slowly turned into dilapidated ruins, relentlessly eroded by overgrown weeds, their former glory gone.
Within the city ruins, the massive glass curtain walls of skyscrapers were surrounded by a sea of green. In the corners shrouded in shadow, tiny buds stubbornly pushed through the cracks in the steel, silently testifying to the strength and resilience of life.
A century ago, this had also been a bustling city. A hundred years of wind, frost, and the power of nature had stripped away its colors, turning it into this state.
Everything had returned to its most original form. The steel skeletons of the city coexisted with nature, desolate in the afterglow,
yet possessing an indescribable beauty. It reminded Xu Xiaoyou of post-apocalyptic scenes from movies and games—civilization vanished, and a world of nature and lush greenery was born, like a whale fall giving rise to ten thousand things, where everything humanity took from nature eventually returned to it.
On the ice, a magnificent river-crossing bridge spanned across, propping up the sky. It was mottled with cracks, standing firm despite the passage of time. Abandoned vehicles were stalled everywhere; before the arrival of disaster and war, the panic of the end times had spread here, and the hopes people held had been shattered amidst chaos and madness.
The vast and desolate grayish-white world flashed by. Through the open car window, the biting cold wind blew in freely, accompanied by dancing snowflakes. A golden line descended upon the distant horizon, bathing the entire snowfield in a golden glow.
The vehicle roared past, and the birds it startled flew away as black dots in the final afterglow.
The endless wilderness blew gusts of free wind, making one's heart feel light and airy, as the depression and restraint of the steel torrent drifted away with the wind.
Tang Xin leaned quietly against the car window, her blue eyes reflecting the racing wilderness and the pale golden light. The free wind blew over, gently lifting the strands of hair by her face.
"It's never been like this before," she said softly, turning her head. "This feeling is wonderful."
Xu Xiaoyou saw a sense of longing in the other girl's eyes. She thought it made sense; how could a girl who grew up in the greenhouse of an orphanage and matured in a restrictive, oppressive city not feel a sense of longing upon seeing such a sight?
After traveling another dozen kilometers deep into the snowfield, the sky gradually darkened. When the three radiant stars on the horizon completely set, the vehicle stopped in front of an ice lake.
Everyone got out of the car and started a campfire on the spot, preparing to face the long night.
"Phew, I suddenly feel like I can breathe again," Lin Xing remarked. "Staying in the city was stifling me to death."
"Don't let your guard down. We are already over a dozen kilometers deep outside the city. No one knows when danger will arrive," Lin Sheng warned.
"Brother, don't keep your nerves so tight. We finally managed to get out; we should at least relax our spirits a bit," Lin Xing said.
Seeing the bright smile on his brother's face, Lin Sheng didn't say much more, only repeating his warning once.
Beside the off-road vehicle, Chen San took a sniper rifle out of the trunk. After adjusting and checking it, he pulled the bolt, aiming at a figure in the distant woods.
It was a vigorous dog, its thick, light gray fur dusted with snow that glittered faintly. It stood quietly beside a sparse thicket, its dark, shiny eyes revealing innocence and agility. Its pointed ears twitched slightly, and the horn on its head moved with them, capturing the surrounding sounds with a hint of alertness.
It looked carefree, trotting through the woods as if it could keep running like that all day long. Until the muffled sound of a suppressed gunshot rang out, and it could run no longer, tumbling over and falling to the ground, motionless.
Rate on N.U.
