mud falling painting beam empty

Chapter 1063 Burning Crossroads

At 4:17 in the morning, the New Era base collapsed in the explosion.

Zhao Wuji was thrown onto the asphalt road by the heat wave, and his ears were filled with sharp buzzing sounds. He opened his eyes and saw the sky dyed a sickly orange-red, and the burning debris of the building fell like a meteor. Thirty seconds ago, this was an underground base disguised as an abandoned chemical plant; now, twisted steel bars pierced through the concrete, like the ribs of a dissected mechanical behemoth.

"Get up!" Lei Yan's voice came from the flames.

A burning hand grabbed Zhao Wuji by the collar and dragged him into the ventilation duct that had not yet collapsed. The hot metal burned his back, but what hurt more was the key pattern on his chest - since it was activated three hours ago, it was embedded in the skin like a branding iron, flashing a dark red light with every breath.

Deep inside the pipe, Lin Xiaoyu leaned against the leaking wall, her left shoulder soaked in blood. The electric light dancing on her fingertips was much dimmer than before, but she still outlined the escape route on the holographic map. "Leng Feng used quantum interference bombs..." She coughed and pointed to a certain place on the map, "The drainage system on the east side has not completely collapsed."

The flames on Lei Yan's body flickered. He broke off a ventilation pipe, and the molten metal condensed into a dagger shape in his palm: "The Supervising Bureau doesn't know about the key. Wilson wants a living sample, and they will use non-lethal weapons." The flames suddenly surged, "But don't get caught, Doctor. The transformed awakened... will become something else."

Zhao Wuji thought of the sealed cabins in the laboratory. Three days ago, he thought they were medical equipment, but now he knew that each cabin held an awakened person who had been stripped of their abilities, and their gene chains had been artificially edited to become docile, programmable biological weapons.

The vibration of the drainage pipe became more and more intense. Lin Xiaoyu suddenly froze. Her electromagnetic induction detected the danger before anyone else—"Drone swarm!"

The concrete ceiling exploded.

It wasn't a bullet, but some kind of silver gel. It spread out in the air like a net and solidified immediately when it touched the metal. Zhao Wuji instinctively built a barrier, but saw the gel suddenly become transparent when it touched the metal he was controlling, wrapping around his arm like a jellyfish. In the severe pain, the key pattern burst into a dazzling red light, and the gel was actually decomposed into elementary particles, forming a shimmering mist in the air.

"Quantum Binding Net!"

“They’re forcing you to use your abilities!”

Leng Feng's figure appeared in the smoke and dust. He was not wearing a uniform this time, but some kind of biological armor, with pale nerve cords connecting from the back of his neck to his spine. The most terrifying thing was his eyes - the pupils were split into six lenses, each of which was rotating independently.

"Sample No. 307." Leng Feng's voice carried a mechanical echo, "Director Wilson greets you."

Lei Yan's flames exploded. He turned into a human torch and rushed towards Leng Feng, but was intercepted by an invisible force field in mid-air. Zhao Wuji saw that Leng Feng just raised his hand, and some kind of wave distorted the surrounding air - mental control, but more than ten times stronger than the archive records.

"They transplanted abilities into him!" Lin Xiaoyu dragged Zhao Wuji into the drain, "Lei Yan can't hold on for long!"

Burning debris floated in the sewage. When Zhao Wuji looked back, he saw Lei Yan's body being squeezed and deformed by the force field, and Leng Feng's six eyes slowly turning around. Something cold followed his sight and crawled into his brain, prying open his memory like a scalpel -

(At midnight in the laboratory, Wilson took off his gloves, revealing his mechanical fingers. Those hands were entering code on the console:

Project Number: Prometheus

Stage: Gene Harvest

Countdown: 72 hours

"Antarctica..." Zhao Wuji murmured in the pain of the mental invasion. The key pattern suddenly became hot, and the decomposed gel particles regrouped to form a protective shield around him. Leng Feng's expression fluctuated for the first time. He took a half step back, and blue blood oozed from the seams of his armor.

Lin Xiaoyu's electromagnetic pulse hit the main circuit of the drainage system at this time. At the moment of darkness, she dragged Zhao Wuji into the depths of the sewer. In the darkness, only the key pattern flickered like a heartbeat, illuminating her pale face: "They transformed Leng Feng to deal with Lei Yan... and activated you to open something in Antarctica."

The sewage was knee-deep. Zhao Wuji touched the lines on his chest, which were resonating with some distant existence—something under the Antarctic ice was responding to this key.

"Seventy-two hours," he said hoarsely. "Wilson has three days to launch Prometheus."

There was a muffled sound of concrete collapsing in the distance. Lei Yan might be dead or captured. In any case, the flames could no longer protect them. Lin Xiaoyu wiped the blood off her face and pulled out two ID cards from the waterproof bag: "The old watchmaker's relics. He prepared a helicopter in the underground black market."

The card was printed with the logo of the Antarctic Research Station. Zhao Wuji suddenly realized that this escape was never for survival, but a run towards a deeper trap - Wilson knew they would go to Antarctica, just like knowing that a moth will eventually fly into a flame.

There was a faint light at the end of the drainpipe. In the morning light, the city skyline was covered by countless holographic notices, and every screen was playing Wilson's speech. His mechanical finger pointed at the camera, and behind him was a satellite map of Antarctica:

“Evolution requires sacrifice.”

Zhao Wuji held the ID card tightly. The key pattern looked like a bleeding wound in the sunlight.

The Antarctic wind blew across Zhao Wuji's mask like a knife.

He stood on the edge of the glacier, with a bottomless abyss under his feet and the burning wreckage of the scientific research station behind him. Three hours ago, when the transport plane they hijacked made an emergency landing in this white desert, Lin Xiaoyu's right leg was cut by flying metal fragments, leaving a ten-centimeter-long wound. Now, she leaned on a protruding ice rock, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, and her electromagnetic ability became intermittent in the extreme cold. "How far is it?" Her voice came through the communicator, mixed with static noise.

Zhao Wuji looked down at the locator on his palm. The key pattern glowed under his skin, like a red snake awakening, pointing to a coordinate deep in the ice. Since entering the Antarctic Circle, this mark has become hotter and hotter, as if it was going to burn through his chest.

“Two kilometers.” He adjusted his breathing mask. “Just below that ice dome.”

In the distance, the hemispherical ice cap glowed with a faint blue light in the aurora. It was not a naturally formed structure - its curvature was too perfect, and its surface was too smooth, like a carefully polished crystal cover. Even more bizarre was that some black substance was frozen in the ice, radiating outward like blood vessels.

Lin Xiaoyu suddenly grabbed his arm: "There is signal interference." Her electromagnetic induction discovered the abnormality before the naked eye, "Something is working under the ice."

They moved forward in knee-deep snow. With every step, Zhao Wuji could feel the pulse of the key pattern increasing. When they were still 500 meters away from the ice dome, Lin Xiaoyu suddenly threw him to the ground in the snow.

A blue light passed over their heads.

Thirty meters away, three guards wearing white optical camouflage emerged from thin air. They held strangely shaped weapons, and their eyes glowed unnatural red under their masks. The guard in the front tilted his head, and a mechanically synthesized voice came out of the speaker: "Identification code: Prometheus-307. Welcome home, Doctor."

Zhao Wuji's blood froze. These were not human guards - their movements were too precise, and the angles of joint rotation exceeded biological limits. What was even more terrifying was that when the guard took off his mask, he revealed a face that looked exactly like his.

"Clone" Lin Xiaoyu's breath formed white frost on the mask, "Wilson, use your genes"

There was no time to think. Zhao Wuji instinctively raised his hand, and metal fragments within a hundred meters rose up from the snow, forming a swirling death storm in the air. But the clones just stood there calmly until the moment when the metal storm was about to tear them apart -

The key pattern suddenly burst into sharp pain.

All the metal stopped in midair, then turned around like a tamed swarm of bees, all pointing towards Zhao Wuji's throat. He knelt in the snow, watching the same red lines light up on the clone's chest.

"Connection established," the clones said in unison, "starting boot sequence."

The ice dome began to shake at this moment. Countless cracks spread across the surface, and black matter oozed out of the cracks, crawling towards them like a living thing. Amid Lin Xiaoyu's screams, Zhao Wuji saw a huge metal structure emerging from under the ice - it was not a building, but a spaceship half-buried in the glacier, and its shape was very similar to the alien signal map sent from the direction of Centaurus A.

The most terrifying discovery came the next second. When the hatch of the spacecraft slowly opened, Wilson's figure appeared at the door. His mechanical right arm had been integrated with the control console of the spacecraft, and in his left hand was a beating, glowing crystal.

"You're just in time, No. 307." Wilson's voice echoed across the ice field through the spacecraft's loudspeaker system. "The harvesting program requires the native key to activate." He held up the crystal, and the patterns on Zhao Wuji's chest immediately resonated with it - it was another, more complex key, pulsating at exactly the same frequency.

Lin Xiaoyu suddenly understood something. She struggled to get up, electromagnetic arcs crackling at her fingertips: "That's not an alien spacecraft." Her voice was distorted by fear, "That's a gene harvesting device! Wilson wants to use your ability to activate it!"

The shadow under the ice suddenly rose up. Zhao Wuji pushed Lin Xiaoyu away at the last second, and his legs were entangled by the black substance. The moment the thing touched his skin, the light of the key pattern suddenly became brighter, forming a beam of light connecting with the crystal in Wilson's hand.

In the severe pain, Zhao Wuji saw the truth——

(Centaurus A has never emitted radiation.

It was the device under the Antarctic ice that actively sent out the calling signal.

Wilson was not a traitor, but the chosen first reaper.

The so-called awakening is just a test for alien civilizations to select suitable hosts.)

“Now you understand.” Wilson’s voice became inhuman. “Evolution is not a gift. It is cultivation before harvest.”

The moment the ice dome completely shattered, Lin Xiaoyu's electromagnetic pulse and the flames left by Lei Yan erupted at the same time. Zhao Wuji raised his hand for the last time in the dazzling white light - not to manipulate the metal, but to decompose the key pattern on his chest.

If this is the end of evolution, he chooses to let everything return to ice and snow.