The spell's range covers the entire territory of China? Hand it over to the state.

Gray Fog Town.

It is 35 kilometers from the border.

This place seems to be a land abandoned by the gods.

An eerie gray fog lingers year-round, severely distorting the laws of physics.

The sodium lampposts along the roadside, like candles scorched by high temperatures, were twisted and hung limply on the ground, with varnish dripping from their original locations onto the asphalt. The manhole covers were nowhere to be seen, and the murky black water defied gravity, gathering into large water spheres that floated silently in mid-air.

Zhao Tiezhu raised his hand and waved away a piece of broken brick floating in front of him, and the hydraulic rod of the exoskeleton armor emitted a slight mechanical hum.

"Company commander, the gravity here is wrong. My stomach is churning. In just a short while, my lunch has gone back and forth between my throat and my buttocks three times."

On the radio channel, the voice of the new recruit Li Erniu sounded a little unsteady.

"Then keep your sphincter tighter." Zhao Tiezhu opened the safety cover of the assault rifle, and the readings on the tactical goggles jumped wildly. "If you poop in your pants pocket, you'll have to wash the exoskeleton lining yourself when you get back."

This is the third search team.

Ever since the golden gate opened, Zhao Tiezhu felt like he had inexhaustible energy. Not only him, the whole company was like they'd been injected with chicken blood. The order from above was to advance thirty kilometers outwards, but these seasoned soldiers were so caught up in the action that they managed to sneak forward an extra five kilometers, ending up in this godforsaken place.

The fog grew thicker and thicker.

Directly in front was an abandoned church, its original spire and cross now stuck upside down in the mud beside it, like a drunkard who had fallen headfirst.

"There's movement." Deputy Captain Li gestured.

The entire team fell silent instantly.

Through the broken stained glass windows, one could see more than a dozen people lying haphazardly in the church hall. To be precise, they were people wrapped up like dumplings.

Dark red vines sprouted from the cracks in the floor tiles, tightly binding the survivors, their sharp thorns piercing their veins and sucking at them with each thud.

They are refugees.

There were men and women, and even two children who looked to be under five years old. Their faces were as white as paper, and they looked like they were about to turn into dried corpses.

"Should we save him or not?" Old Li asked in a low voice, his finger on the trigger, his knuckles white.

Logically, the most sensible thing to do at this point is to retreat.

This is a heavily polluted area, all communications are cut off, and there is no support whatsoever. Carrying a bunch of burdensome creatures who can't even walk, in this monster-infested land, is basically like delivering takeout—the packaged kind, no less.

Zhao Tiezhu didn't say anything, he just stared at the child whose eyes were rolling back in his head from being strangled by the vines.

The child was still clutching half a rotten apple tightly in his hand.

In an instant, Zhao Tiezhu felt a fire burning in his heart. The fire wasn't scalding, but it made him unable to be cold-blooded, unable to watch his fellow human beings turn into fertilizer right before his eyes.

It felt like my ancestor slapped me on the back of the head and scolded me: "You dare to stand by and watch someone die? You don't even deserve to be a soldier of Longxia!"

"Damn it," Zhao Tiezhu spat, "Get to work!"

He had barely finished speaking when he dashed off.

Bang bang bang!

Three shots were fired precisely to break the vines wrapped around the child's neck.

"Erniu, cut the vines! Lao Li, keep watch! The rest of you, carry people!"

The team moved with lightning speed, their daggers flashing, and in no time they pulled the man out of the pile of vines.

As soon as the refugees landed, before they could even cry out, the soldiers covered their mouths and hoisted them onto their backs.

"Go! Don't look back!"

Zhao Tiezhu brought up the rear, keeping a watchful eye on the depths of the church.

No monsters chased after them.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

just.

The moment the team withdrew from the church, the surrounding air suddenly became viscous, as if they had fallen into a bucket of glue.

Zhao Tiezhu felt a chill run down his spine.

Six dark figures, as if growing out of a crack in the air, silently surrounded them.

They were six humanoid creatures dressed in fully enclosed black armor, their bodies shrouded in a pale blue aura of energy. The weapons in their hands were neither guns nor knives, but some kind of buzzing particle cutters.

"Ark Alliance, Scavenger Squad".

The leader of the black-armored men didn't even speak; his voice was an electronic tone synthesized through an external speaker, cold and arrogant.

His tactical goggles were displaying a rapidly updating data stream.

[Scan complete. Target: Dragon Summer Patrol Team.]

Average energy level: C level.

[Equipment Level: Outdated exoskeleton.]

Threat Level: 0.

The A-rank powerhouse, codenamed "Black Mamba," let out a sneer from beneath his mask.

Ever since Long Xia made a series of big moves and even sent people out of the Golden Great Wall, the higher-ups of the Ark Alliance have become restless. Their original intention in infiltrating was to capture a few prisoners to study Long Xia's secrets.

Unexpectedly, I ran into a bunch of small fry.

"These are the soldiers from the Eastern Kingdom?" Black Mamba's voice was full of mockery. "Primitive people without even energy shields dare to wander around like this?"

Zhao Tiezhu narrowed his eyes and threw the assault rifle in his hand aside.

The enemy has a blue energy shield; bullets hitting it will only make a sound.

"Company commander, these bastards look pretty flashy." Li Erniu, carrying his child on his back, actually had the mind to laugh. "Are those LED light strips? They look like internet cafe computer cases."

"A swift and decisive victory."

Seeing that they still had the leisure to chat, Black Mamba's face darkened and he said coldly.

He raised his hand and made a "clear" gesture.

"Three seconds. Send them on their way."

Swish!

Two B-level assassins clad in light armor vanished from their spot in an instant.

This is the Ark Alliance's proud optical camouflage combined with short-range jet propulsion. To the average person, it's practically teleportation.

The next second, two high-frequency vibrating daggers were already pressed against Zhao Tiezhu's carotid artery.

too fast.

If it were the old Zhao Tiezhu, his head would have already been chopped off by now.

But now.

Just as the dagger was about to touch his skin, the world in Zhao Tiezhu's eyes suddenly changed.

It's as if someone pressed the 0.5x speed play button on time.

No, it's not that time has slowed down.

His mind has become faster.

The [Passing on the Torch] buff bestowed by Su Yun exploded in his mind with a buzz. A cool current instantly washed over every neuron.

Overclocking your thinking.

In that instant, Zhao Tiezhu felt that he was no longer a roughneck, but a sophisticated supercomputer.

The angle of the stabbing, the resistance of the airflow, and even the frequency of the dagger's vibration were all transformed into the most intuitive data in his mind.

[Target on the left, weight shifted 15 degrees to the right, old meniscus injury in the knee joint.]

[Target on the right, attack speed 0.12 seconds, 3mm gap in armpit armor.]

[Suggestion: Beat him up.]

The thought came out of nowhere, but Zhao Tiezhu's body had already reacted first.

He didn't turn around.

He just casually swung a punch backhand, as if swatting away a fly.

This seemingly ordinary military-style punch, however, produced a terrifying sonic boom the moment it was thrown.

Snapped!

It started with the sound of fists colliding with high-tech armor.

But what followed was a sickening cracking sound.

"What?!"

The assassin on the left felt an overwhelming, unreasonable force slam into his chest. His nanotech armor, strong enough to withstand heavy machine gun fire, dented as if it were made of paper.

He was thrown back more than ten meters as if he had been hit by a train, and crashed hard into the brick wall of the church, where he could not be pried out.

The assassin on the right fared even worse.

Zhao Tiezhu's other hand had been raised at some point, and his palm gripped the assassin's wrist firmly like an iron clamp.

With a little force.

"Click."

His wrist shattered, and the dagger fell to the ground.

Before the assassin could even scream, Zhao Tiezhu kicked him in the stomach.

boom!

This kick shattered the energy shield, sending the assassin bouncing seven or eight times on the ground before finally hanging motionless on a lamppost.

The entire room fell silent.

The Black Mamba, who had been so arrogant just moments before, now had his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets behind his mask.

His tactical goggles were frantically flashing warnings:

[Warning! Warning! Target energy level burst! Data error! Data error!]

How is that possible?

These are just a bunch of low-level, C-rank soldiers!

Even if the burly, dark-faced man at the head of the group is a B-level, he shouldn't be this powerful.

These are two elite B-rank assassins! They could hold their own against even A-rank experts, so how could they be so easily killed by someone of the same rank?

"this one?"

Zhao Tiezhu flicked his wrist.

"With all this fancy light bulbs, can't we get something practical?"

He had built up his confidence; the enemy in front of him was full of weaknesses, and he could win no matter how he attacked.

"court death!"

The Black Mamba is enraged.

No longer overconfident, he drew a particle battle blade more than a meter long from his back, activated his thrusters to the fullest, and transformed into a black lightning bolt, rushing straight at Zhao Tiezhu.

A full-force attack from an A-level expert.

This strike is enough to split a heavy main battle tank in two.

The air was distorted and deformed by the high-temperature particles, emitting a sharp whistling sound.