The Last 299 Days of Humanity

However, Yu Qing and his group thought their actions were completely undetected, unaware that the other side had already noticed.

Shengtian Company's prized covert technology and information advantages have long been infiltrated and interpreted in some unknown shadowy realm.

The other party was like an experienced hunter, patiently observing the prey's every move, having already laid a deadly trap.

Moreover, they decided to launch a preemptive strike. This was not a hasty response, but a meticulously calculated and long-planned operation, intended to deliver a fatal blow and completely destroy Shengtian's central nervous system.

Their attack came faster and more fiercely than expected. It didn't even give Yu Qing and his men time to catch their breath or make any preparations. One second they were still immersed in the illusion of calm while waiting for reports from all sides, and the next, a storm of destruction had already swept in.

That day, Yu Qing was sitting in the control center, leaning back slightly, his fingertips unconsciously tapping the smooth control panel, leisurely gazing at the huge holographic screen in front of him.

On the screen, several split screens displayed stable geological signals transmitted by the desert "mole cricket" team, a tranquil energy field topology map formed by the "forest mosquito" sensors around the forest base, and a fluctuating data stream from the global financial market.

He was waiting for the dispatched teams to report their progress, and for a moment his thoughts even drifted to speculation about the possibility of synthesizing "Kido".

At this moment, a sudden change occurred!
The sub-window located in the upper right corner of the screen, which usually only displays blue sky, white clouds, and sparse air traffic, representing the monitoring of the airspace surrounding the headquarters, suddenly began to flash a glaring, constantly rotating red triangle warning symbol without warning!
Its appearance was so sudden and so fast that even the piercing alarm was a fatal beat too late!
"Unauthorized low-altitude, high-speed targets have been detected illegally approaching! Number twelve! Their trajectories exhibit a multi-node fusion evasion pattern! They have instantly breached the first line of air defense! This is determined to be an act of extreme hostility!"

A humanoid operator at the monitoring station suddenly looked up. Although her synthesized voice remained programmed and steady, her speech was extremely fast, revealing an inhuman urgency.

Her screams were drowned out by the ear-piercing, highest-level intrusion alarm that suddenly blared from the command center.

The leisurely expression on Yu Qing's face froze instantly, replaced by an incredulous astonishment. He stood up almost instinctively and in a panic, his heart clenching.

Frankly speaking, although he had experienced the danger of being ambushed before, this was the first time he had personally experienced such a modern, high-tech, all-out attack, especially a decapitation strike directly targeting the core of his power.

In some ways, this is more unsettling than being on a traditional battlefield, because you can't see the enemy, only the omnipresent threat of death represented by cold, hard data.

The holographic screen instantly switched to a massive half-body image of Chang Sheng. His expression was extremely solemn, but his tone remained forced and calm: "Activate the active defense protocol! Maximum power for the air defense array! Immediately launch 50,000 'Soundbirds' to intercept..."

Before he could finish speaking, the second wave of disaster had already arrived!
The lights in the entire Shengtian headquarters building suddenly flickered violently, like the spasms of a dying person, and then seemed to be abruptly cut off by an invisible giant hand, with more than 70% going out!
The space instantly plunged into a depressing semi-darkness. The remaining emergency red lights and a few devices operating on independent power sources emitted a dim glow, casting a bizarre, blood-red light on the astonished and terrified faces of everyone in the control center.

"It's an ultra-high intensity, broad-spectrum electromagnetic pulse attack! The enemy has used a strategic-level prohibited weapon!" a human technician screamed, his voice trembling with fear. "Part of the external electromagnetic shielding system has overloaded and burned out! The main power bus has crashed, and the backup power is switching, but it will take time!"

But this is just the beginning, a spicy yet deadly aperitif before the main course.

Almost at the same second that the lights went out and the crowd panicked, a series of muffled explosions, like the roar of a giant beast, came from deep inside the building, accompanied by a violent tremor from the floor beneath our feet, as if the entire building was being devoured by an invisible monster.

"Entrances B7, B5, and G2 were simultaneously attacked by high-intensity directional explosives! The enemy possesses heavy breaching equipment unknown to us!"

"Warning! The underground pipeline tunnel on the third floor has been breached! Thermal signals indicate that more than twenty enemies have infiltrated through the abandoned maintenance tunnel and are rapidly moving upwards!"

On the three-dimensional tactical hologram in the control center, the blue grid model that originally represented safety was now being frantically eroded by countless red dots representing the enemy.

These red dots, like swarms of venomous bees emerging from a rift in hell, appeared simultaneously from three dimensions: the air (during the brief, fleeting window of time after the EMP paralyzed the defense system), the ground, and underground.

Their target was crystal clear, as if guided by an invisible baton, as they frantically rushed towards the core and most vulnerable heart of the building—the control and command center and the core data room!

Almost the instant the tactical map refreshed, the deathly silence outside the corridor, previously dominated by alarms, was shattered! Gunshots, explosions, and the distinctive buzzing and whistling of energy weapons suddenly erupted, merging into one loud bang!
That was the faint blue light emitted by the decoy weapon equipped by the Shengtian Security Force, which could cause the collapse of the microscopic structure of matter, and the sound of an unknown energy weapon with a sharper, more penetrating sound and an unstable pulse hum.

The pungent smell of melting walls and the smell of gunpowder have begun to seep into the command center through the ventilation system.

"Protect the Chairman! Ensure the Chairman's safety first!" Chang Sheng's holographic image flickered violently due to signal interference, but his roar pierced through the noise with crystal clarity.

He suddenly waved his hand, seemingly operating something on the virtual interface. At the same time, a security supervisor who was closest to Yu Qing in reality shouted and yanked the still somewhat dazed Yu Qing away from the central command console.

Almost at the same millisecond that Yu Qing was torn from his original position, the half-meter-thick alloy door of the command center, made of composite armor material and theoretically capable of withstanding the direct hit of a heavy laser cannon, emitted a deafening and terrifying roar far exceeding all the previous explosions!
The entire door panel twisted violently inward, with a shocking, molten, and terrifying dent in the center. The intense heat caused the surrounding air to refract! It was clearly a direct hit from some kind of man-portable heavy pulse energy weapon or miniature shaped charge!

"Sizzle—" The three combat-type humanoids, which had been in a dormant state, burst out from the wall disguise behind Yu Qing, and their optical sensors instantly lit up with a terrifying red light.

Their reaction speed is faster than human limits; they are activated almost as soon as the slightest hint of an attack on the gate is heard.

Their left forearm shells slid open instantly, and a miniature shield generated by a high-intensity energy matrix and flashing with honeycomb-shaped light patterns popped out, precisely blocking Yu Qing and the shock wave of the explosion;
At the same time, their right arms rose in unison, their arm structures deforming and reorganizing to reveal the hidden precision decoy gun muzzles beneath. A ghostly blue light rapidly converged, locking onto the collapsing door.

"The enemy is about to break through! Take emergency exit number seven! Quickly!"

The bodyguard captain's voice was hoarse. He used his compact pulse submachine gun to suppress the smoke-filled corridor while shielding Yu Qing with his body, guiding him to retreat through a hidden passage. A false wall slid open to reveal the entrance to the passage.

The passageway was now filled with smoke, and the pungent smoke alarms were blaring, mingling with the sounds of intense gunfire in the distance.

The dim light from the emergency lights struggled to cast blurry streaks through the smoke and dust, reducing visibility to extremely low levels. The bodyguard team and the combat-type humanoid girl formed a tight defensive formation, protecting Yu Qing in the center as they rapidly advanced.

However, they had only rushed out less than twenty meters when several inconspicuous red dots suddenly lit up on the ceiling of the passage ahead—those were the spots of the laser sights!
"There's an ambush!" Yu Qing shouted. "They've already infiltrated!"

As soon as Yu Qing finished speaking, the explosives pre-placed in the ceiling of the passage ahead were detonated with precision!
A violent directional blast! It was no ordinary explosive, but some kind of advanced shaped charge fragmentation device! Instantly, countless alloy fragments and concrete blocks, accelerated to extreme speeds and scorching hot, poured down like a death storm!

"Watch out!" A bodyguard who had been following Yu Qing closely behind him displayed amazing courage and reaction speed. He tackled Yu Qing to the ground, using his own body and reinforced tactical vest as a last line of defense.

Meanwhile, a combat-type humanoid made the most ruthless and effective tactical choice—it did not choose to dodge, but instead calculated the core area covered by the shrapnel and charged forward towards the center of the explosion without hesitation!

Its body was instantly engulfed by intense flames and thick smoke. Its high-strength alloy body was blasted into twists and shatters, but it also successfully absorbed most of the impact and deadly fragments with its own structure. The wreckage of the machine crashed to the ground like a shield.

The deafening explosion instantly deafened Yu Qing, leaving only a persistent, high-frequency buzzing. He was pulled up by the surviving bodyguard, his face covered in a sticky liquid mixed with dust, whether it was someone else's blood or his own sweat, he couldn't tell.

His vision was blurred by the tremors and smoke, but he could still see several figures dressed in jet-black combat uniforms with sharp lines and helmets sprayed with that eerie "Cracked Sphere Red Eye" logo, rushing out silently like ghosts from the lingering dust ahead!
The weapons in their hands were not the standard equipment that Sheng Tian was familiar with, but a pulse rifle with a more ferocious appearance and an unstable orange-red energy flashing at the muzzle. At this moment, it was spitting out deadly high-energy particle beams that were enough to melt through armor!

"Fire!"

Intense close-quarters combat erupted instantly in this narrow, dark, obstacle-filled, and smoke-filled death tunnel!
The faint, almost silent blue light unique to decoy weapons when they are fired clashed, flashed, collided, and annihilated wildly with the blinding, shrill white beams of the enemy pulse rifles.

Every flash of light is accompanied by a brief shadow and the cruel consequences that follow:
Or the black-clad attacker's body instantly stiffened, his microstructure collapsed, and he fell to the ground silently.

Or perhaps the tactical armor of Shengtian Security personnel was melted through and their bodies were carbonized;

Or the walls and pipes were eroded by the terrifying aftershocks of energy, leaving pits and hissing sounds, and splashing out scorching molten metal droplets.

Yu Qing was pinned down by his bodyguards in a bunker behind a load-bearing pillar. His heart pounded like an out-of-control war drum, violently pounding against his chest. His gun-wielding arm trembled uncontrollably due to the adrenaline rush and extreme tension.

Out of curiosity and on a whim a couple of days ago, he got this latest compact decoy gun with an intelligent aiming system from the equipment department. He never expected it to become his life-saving weapon.

He almost instinctively raised his arm and roughly aimed, and the gun's intelligent system automatically completed the fine-tuning, locking, and firing.

With each burst of fire, the gun vibrated almost imperceptibly, and a beam of dark blue light shot out. An enemy in the distance paused, then collapsed as if his bones had been removed, his body quietly disintegrating at the particle level.

However, their cost was heavy. The enemy's attacks were precise, ruthless, and well-coordinated, completely disregarding their own casualties.

When they finally paid the price of several bodyguards being killed, two combat-type humanoids being completely destroyed, and everyone being injured.

They forced their way through this less than fifty-meter-long, hellish passage, staggering as they retreated into a deeper security hub.

At this moment, only two bodyguards, their battle robes stained with blood and covered in wounds, and another humanoid body with its left arm completely melted, its walking system damaged, and only able to move with a staggering gait, remained by Yu Qing's side.

The heavy security gate slammed shut behind them, temporarily shutting out the gunfire and death of the pursuers.

Only their heavy, suppressed breathing remained in the passage, along with the faint, continuous sounds of explosions and gunfire in the distance, reminding them that the battle was far from over and the hunt continued.

Yu Qing gratefully grasped the hands of the two bodyguards, even though he felt their hands were different from his own, covered in thick hair like tiger claws. At that moment, he couldn't utter a single word.

The two combat-type humanoid beauties left Yu Qing completely dumbfounded. One of them even looked exactly like Chang'e...

Yu Qing asked in a trembling voice, "You are...?"

The humanoid beauty replied, "It's me, my lord, I am Chang'e... I was just transformed into a combat-type humanoid beauty. This time, there may be no hope..."

Just as Yu Qing was about to walk over and hug her, she lost her vitality, fell to the ground, and broke into more than a dozen pieces, scattering all over the place.

Yu Qing reached out and lifted her head, stroking her still beautiful face. (End of Chapter)