The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

The veteran's eyes bulged outwards in extreme terror, his pupils fixed on the back of the young, wounded soldier's neck in the corner of the medical bay. A dark red glow shone through a thin layer of skin, a grotesque color identical to that of the giant eye in outer space.

The veteran instinctively opened his chapped lips, his vocal cords straining as he tried to shout a warning.

No sound.

Even the faint sound of his rapid, gasping breaths vanished from the carriage. The veteran clutched his throat in horror, realizing the air around him had solidified. The physical laws governing air movement had been brutally disregarded.

At the control panel, Su Yuan didn't even turn his head. The "cloud" mark on his left arm was flashing a faint, eerie purple light at an extremely slow frequency. The rules of the higher-dimensional paradox directly enveloped the area where the veteran was located, cutting off all sound wave transmission there.

"Quiet down." Su Yuan looked at the tactical glass directly in front of him, his tone cold and hard.

On the main control screen, Xiao Huo had switched the internal monitoring footage of the medical pod to the forefront. A row of wildly beating red waveforms popped up on one side of the screen. That was the heartbeat frequency of the young, wounded soldier.

120. 150. 180.

The heartbeat rate had long exceeded the limits of human physiological function, yet it continued to rise. What was even more chilling was that, accompanying this out-of-control heartbeat, an extremely dull physical knocking sound was coming from behind the heavy metal door of the Zero Pod, which had been welded shut by the high temperature.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Xiao Huo's synthesized voice echoed in the cockpit: "Heart rate band comparison complete. The target's vital signs and the unknown high-dimensional resonance source inside Isolation Chamber Zero have reached a frequency synchronization rate of 99.99%. The error is within three decimal places."

Wang Hu's hand, gripping the main gun control stick, bulged with veins. He whirled around to look at the medical bay, his teeth grinding together: "That son of a bitch has been mistaken for a signal transmitter by that eye in the sky! He's waking up the thing in pod zero!"

Without wasting words, Tang Lan grabbed a short-barreled Gauss rifle from his side, aimed at the remaining soldiers in the surveillance footage with one eye, and pressed his index finger on the trigger.

"Don't start a fire." Su Yuan's cold command interrupted Tang Lan's actions.

Instead of ordering the removal of the traitor inside the carriage, he grabbed the power lever of the Devourer and pushed it all the way down.

"Remove all silence and concealment coatings, and unlock the global engine output limit to 120%."

On the silent, icy plains of the Abyss, the Devourer, which had been completely integrated into the wind and snow thanks to its conceptual suppression field, suddenly tore through its camouflage. Blazing engine exhaust flames erupted from its black-gold armor. A violent roar, like a thunderclap, as the massive black chariot relentlessly crushed dozens of meters of ice before it, like a maddened prehistoric beast, crashing straight into the colossal steel ruins at the edge of the horizon.

Asia's No. 01 Dead City.

The tracks kicked up a cloud of ice shards as the tank plunged into the outer streets of the dead city.

The moment it broke through the outer barrier of wind and snow, the environment outside the carriage underwent an extremely bizarre change. All the wind and snow were completely isolated by an invisible force field. There was not a sound inside the dead city; the silence was chilling.

The tactical searchlights were shone forward.

Wang Hu gasped.

The laws of physics had completely collapsed. Thousands of dilapidated steel skyscrapers, each weighing tens of thousands of tons, were not standing on the ground, but rather suspended vertically in the dark air, their bases facing upwards. The broken overpasses and rusty, decommissioned heavy military vehicles lining the streets all displayed a gravitationally distorted posture.

Xiao Huo's interface rapidly refreshed the data: "Gravity constant anomaly. The current surface gravity in the area is only one-third of the standard gravity, and there is a strong gravitational field inversion phenomenon three thousand meters above."

The water on the ground defied logic and flowed upwards, turning into fine droplets that floated in the air. The massive vehicle of the Devourer even experienced a slight sense of floating in the low-gravity environment. Su Yuan expressionlessly pressed the chassis counterweight lock button, and the gravitational deflection field firmly pinned the vehicle to the broken asphalt road surface, the tracks carving two deep grooves in the ground.

Just as the chariot penetrated three kilometers into the dead city.

The resonance inside the medical pod reached a critical point.

On the monitor screen, the young, wounded soldier, who had been in a deep coma, suddenly sprang up as if electrified. He abruptly opened his eyes. The whites of his eyes and pupils had completely disappeared, replaced by boiling, churning dark red viscous fluid.

With a sickening ripping sound, his expeditionary force uniform burst open. Subcutaneous muscle tissue bulged and distorted like an inflating balloon, and thick, black bone spurs pierced his skin and grew out from both sides of his spine. The medical life support tubes inserted into his veins were violently severed, and blood mixed with green nutrient solution splattered onto the cabin walls.

The veteran, deprived of his voice, could only cower back in terror, watching helplessly as his former comrade transformed into a monster utterly devoid of reason.

The mutated survivor did not attack the veterans and other unconscious wounded soldiers in the corner. He landed on all fours, his joints making eerie, reverse-breaking sounds, and with an extremely contorted and swift, spider-like motion, rushed out of the medical bay and sprinted toward the welded-locked door to pod zero at the end of the passage.

A shrill roar, not belonging to a human, emanated from its throat. The remnant soldier's arms rapidly dissolved and deformed as it ran, the tips transforming into two dark red plasma cutting blades radiating temperatures of thousands of degrees.

He lunged at the Zero hatch, his two cutting blades slashing furiously at the alloy-reinforced seams the veteran had painstakingly welded together. Sparks flew as the high-strength metal welds began to melt rapidly under the plasma cutting.

"Boss!" Wang Hu's eyes were bloodshot with anxiety. He released the main gun control lever, drew the armor-piercing pistol from his waist, and ran towards the rear compartment passage.

Tang Lan's Gauss rifle had already locked onto the back of the wounded soldier's head.

"I told you, don't move."

Su Yuan typed a command on the keyboard with his right hand, and the weapon systems of the entire vehicle instantly lit up in red. Firing permissions were completely and physically locked. Even Tang Lan's Gauss rifle emitted a click as if its power had been cut off.

Su Yuan turned around, leaned against the edge of the control panel, crossed his arms over his chest, and coldly watched the remnants of the soldiers frantically tearing down the door on the monitor screen.

"Let him demolish it," Su Yuan uttered three words.

The veteran, watching from the corner, understood Su Yuan's lip movements and frantically pounded the floor. He didn't know what was behind that door. But he knew it was the power of the giant eye in the deep space that had awakened this traitor. Once the door was broken open, what would be released would be something terrifying enough to wipe out the entire tank.

scoff-

The final weld completely broke off under high-temperature cutting.

The 30-centimeter-thick alloy door of the No. 0 compartment lost its support and collapsed forward with a crash, slamming heavily onto the deck of the carriage and kicking up a cloud of dust.

An extremely violent burst of dark matter cold air, with a temperature approaching absolute zero, mixed with high-dimensional pressure that could almost crush human bones, erupted from the pitch-black interior of Pod Zero.

The dark red viscous liquid in the eyes of the aberrant remnant soldier boiled with excitement. He discarded the plasma cutting blade, opened his arms, and let out a sharp cheer, preparing to receive what he thought was the blessing of the Deep Space Matrix's power.

however.

What emerged from that dark, icy fog was not a monster from deep space.

Instead, it was an invisible and intangible, grayish-white blade aura composed of pure high-dimensional paradoxical rules.

This blade of energy swept out silently from the depths of Cabin Zero without making a sound or creating any airflow.

The fanatical expression on the soldier's face froze instantly. His outstretched arms remained in an embracing posture.

The blade's energy pierced straight through his chest.

There was no gushing blood, no screams.

The moment the mutated and swollen body of the remnant soldier came into contact with the blade's energy, it began to collapse directly at the microscopic particle level. His hard black bone spurs, boiling dark red viscous fluid, and mutated muscle tissue, like a pencil drawing forcibly erased by an eraser, turned into extremely fine gray powder, which fell gently onto the deck.

In less than a second, a catastrophic infected entity was completely wiped out, leaving not a trace.

Wang Hu stood frozen at the entrance of the passage, pistol in hand. Tang Lan lowered her malfunctioning rifle, her gaze towards Su Yuan now filled with deep apprehension.

Su Yuan sneered and walked back to the driver's seat. "When I forged the Blade of Judgment on the bronze casting table, I also took the opportunity to peel off a fragment of the annihilation rule that remained of Zero the Purifier. I sealed that fragment of rule on the inner door panel of Zero pod. As long as the pod is destroyed from the outside, the rule will trigger absolute annihilation in reverse."

He glanced up at the monitor: "Keeping him around is so he can step on the garbage shredder himself."

Wang Hu swallowed hard and tucked his pistol back into his waistband. His boss's meticulous planning, calculating every step ten steps ahead, was more chilling than any deep-space monster.

On the deck where the remnants of the army had perished, ashes scattered. In their place remained a high-purity deep-space crystal, no bigger than a fingernail, radiating an extremely pure dark red light.

This thing was not erased by the rules; it is the physical coordinate core used by the Deep Space Matrix for positioning.

The small robotic arm quickly descended from the top of the cabin, and the probe precisely pinched the crystal, dragging it directly into the analytical slot at the bottom of the central control panel.

"High-dimensional data reading in progress... Reverse decoding begins."

With a hum of electricity, the holographic image on the main screen of the Devourer flickered a few times. An extremely large and intricate underground structure diagram forcibly covered the vehicle's original radar scanning interface.

That is the true underground structure of Asia's No. 01 Dead City.

The moment the blueprints appeared, everyone in the carriage held their breath.

This is not some ruined city shelter left over from the old Blue Star era at all. The upside-down steel skyscrapers and the chaotic gravity field on the surface are all physical disguises created to cover up the behemoth underground.

At the heart of that underground blueprint was a massive interstellar jump engine central array consisting of thousands upon thousands of reactors connected in series.

"Target confirmed." A scarlet warning box popped up on Xiao Huo's interface: "The true identity of the Dead City is the 'Deep Space Mother Targeted Delivery Jump Engine.' The underlying energy of the current array has been activated and is currently in the charging and preheating phase."

A blood-red countdown timer suddenly popped up in the upper right corner of the screen.

02:59:59.

"Three hours." Su Yuan stared at the constantly changing number, his eyes icy cold. "In three hours, this engine will completely break through the space barrier surrounding Earth and forcibly warp in and deliver the core of the Deep Space Matrix here. We won't even have to wait thirty days."

"We must cut off its main power source." Tang Lan reloaded the Gauss rifle.

Su Yuan gripped the steering wheel with both hands, preparing to steer the Devourer toward the underground entrance.

The piercing air raid siren blared wildly in the cockpit.

Inside the dilapidated steel buildings hanging upside down in mid-air on both sides of the silent streets of the dead city, countless pairs of scarlet optical detection eyes suddenly lit up without warning. The red light merged into a continuous mass in the pitch-black ruins, like a swarm of bees awakening.

Countless figures plummeted vertically from the inverted building, crashing heavily onto the low-gravity road surface surrounding the Devourer.

Those were hundreds or even thousands of corpses wearing standard individual armor from the old Blue Star Expeditionary Force.

No, they cannot be called corpses. Their combat suits were tattered, and most of their flesh had been replaced by dark red metallic mechanical structures from deep-space crystals. These half-human, half-machine monsters no longer wielded gunpowder weapons from the old Blue Star, but deep-space ray guns that shimmered with high-dimensional energy fluctuations.

"Traitors." Little Fire pulled up the database for comparison. "An old-era expeditionary force deeply infected by deep-space matter and mechanically modified. Retains all tactical memories and combat instincts from their lifetime."

The moment these monsters landed, there were no meaningless roars.

Dozens of rebels in the front row, wielding heavy energy shields, slammed them into the ground, forming an impenetrable shield wall. The assault troops in the rear quickly dispersed in three-man formations, seizing high ground. Further away, in the shadows of buildings, dozens of slender, high-frequency energy sniper rifles were locked onto the observation windows of the Devourer.

They are not zombies; they are a top-tier army equipped with advanced weaponry.

boom! boom! boom!

The dense gunfire instantly illuminated the dimly lit street. Countless high-dimensional armor-piercing rays and corrosive energy bullets intertwined in mid-air, forming a deadly net of fire that left no blind spots, pouring towards the Devourer.

Wang Hu roared and lunged at the main weapon control station: "Damn it! You can't even rest in peace! I'll send you to your final rest!"

He was about to press the fire button.

Su Yuan reached out and stopped him again.

"No need to waste our ammunition." Su Yuan's left hand swiftly swept across the control panel, directly activating the god-level component he had just stripped from Zero Purifier. "Let them taste the power of their own weapons."

"Planetary-level global force field deflection module, starting at full power."

A pale blue spherical force field suddenly expanded around the massive body of the Devourer.

The overwhelming barrage of high-dimensional rays and armor-piercing projectiles did not explode upon contact with this pale blue force field. The surface of the force field flashed with a vast array of mathematical formulas and geometric refraction angles.

hum!

All attacks that struck the Devourer were like light shining on an absolutely smooth mirror, refracted back by the force field at an incredibly precise angle, returning 100% along the same path.

Because of the acceleration of the force field, the speed at which it refracts back is even faster than when it came.

The streets instantly transformed into a battlefield.

The traitorous sniper, hidden behind cover, was precisely pierced through the optical scope by his own high-frequency energy blast, his dark red brain matter mixed with engine oil spraying onto the wall. The heavily armored shield wall position was met with a barrage of corrosive missiles from his own heavy gunners, and the defensive line was blasted into a pile of molten scrap metal in a second.

The hordes of rebels were torn to shreds by the reflected barrage of fire. Severed limbs floated eerily upwards in the low-gravity environment.

Overwhelming technological superiority. The entire area was wiped out instantly.

The enemy's perfect tactical formation was thrown into complete chaos.

Su Yuan gave them no chance to reorganize their defenses. He pushed the power pusher to the overload red zone.

"Hit it."

The Devourer's engines roared deafeningly, its massive black-gold chassis transforming into an indestructible meat grinder. Its two-thousand-ton mass rampaged through the streets. Destroyed tanks blocking its path were sent flying through the air. Thick steel bunkers were sliced ​​through like paper by the Abyss-Shattering Ram.

The massive tracks crushed the unprepared rebels, the cracking sounds of breaking bones and deforming armor blending together. The Devourer carved a bloody path through the steel ruins and monster carcasses, leading to the underground engine center of the dead city.

Boom!

As the locomotive slammed into the last, five-meter-thick blast-proof door at the entrance to the underground passage, shattering it into countless pieces of scrap metal, the Devourer plunged headlong into an extremely massive underground cavity.

The tank braked sharply at the edge of the cavity. The searchlight beam shone brightly into the center of the cavity.

A deathly silence fell over everyone in the carriage.

At the very center of the void stood a bio-chemical reactor, hundreds of meters tall. This reactor was not constructed of metal at all, but rather forcibly stitched together from tens of thousands of human spines, pelvises, and intricate neural cables. Countless transparent, thick conduits connected these skeletons, flowing with a dense, dark red high-dimensional energy that continuously supplied fuel to the bottomless array of warp drives below.

At the very top of the reactor, which is made of stacked skulls.

A man was sitting upright.

He wore a tattered but still legible uniform of a first-generation expeditionary force general. The left side of his body was intact, exuding the composure and authority of a seasoned veteran. But the right side of his face, and indeed his entire right side of his body, had been completely eroded and assimilated by deep-space crystals. The dark red crystals, like veins of minerals growing within flesh and blood, occasionally shimmered with a cold luster.

The man had his eyes closed, like a silent statue.

But the moment the Devourer rushed in, he opened his eyes. His right eye, which had been corroded by crystals, was entirely composed of a rotating deep-space coordinate stone.

He didn't speak. His voice, transmitted via a high-dimensional frequency band, forcibly cut into the Devourer's public communication channel.

"JY-003." The man's voice was hoarse, with an eerie quality like two pieces of raw iron rubbing together. "I've calculated a million possibilities. You really did bring the key and came to this pre-ordained grave to die."

The man slowly raised his left hand and flicked the oxidized expeditionary force nameplate on his chest.

The surveillance footage zoomed in on it. Two lines of text were engraved on the plaque.

[Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Project Pangu]

【Li Xiuyuan】

Wang Hu's eyes widened instantly, and he pointed at the screen, cursing, "Bullshit! The deputy commander of the expeditionary force died long ago along with those old Deng's. You, a monster whose brain has been stuffed with deep space, dare to impersonate a high-ranking officer?!"

Li Xiuyuan completely ignored Wang Hu's insults. He sat on the bone throne, looking down at the black chariot, a contemptuous and mocking sneer on his lips.

He didn't raise his hand to attack, nor did he summon the guards lying in ambush around him. He simply slowly extended his right hand, which was covered by crystals, and pointed his index finger across the void hundreds of meters away at the rear half of the Devourer's carriage.

To be precise, it refers to the zero isolation pod whose door had just been opened.

Su Yuan's eyes twitched. A sharp, piercing pain suddenly shot through the "cloud" mark on his left arm—a top-level warning sign of encountering a collision with a higher-dimensional rule of the same level.

Xiao Huo's interface flashed red light wildly: "Warning! Extremely high-intensity spatial jump fluctuations have occurred inside the carriage! Source: Deep space coordinate crystal inside pod zero!"

On the monitoring screen, the fingernail-sized deep-space crystal, previously extracted from the mutated survivor and quietly suspended in the analytical tank, suddenly erupted with a blinding crimson light. It bypassed all of Little Fire's physical compression procedures and directly constructed a miniature space-tearing tunnel inside Pod Zero.

The crystal wasn't attacking the vehicle; it was attempting to forcibly teleport someone out of the vehicle.

Su Yuan suddenly turned around.

His gaze pierced through the long carriage aisle, fixed intently on the deepest part of Cabin Zero.

There, a hibernation pod was placed, completely encased in ice. Inside lay Ji Yun, the former commander of the 011 train and one of the creators of Project Pangu.

Before forcefully destroying the deep-space scout asteroid, in order to preserve Ji Yun's last breath as she was on the verge of brain death, Su Yuan exhausted all his dark matter energy and used "absolute definition of rules" to fix her life state at the frame of "absolute physical stillness" at 00:00.01.

But at the moment.

The thick, solid ice layer on the surface of the hibernation pod, which represented absolute stillness, was now emitting a teeth-grinding "crackling" sound. Countless spiderweb-like cracks were spreading wildly in all directions.

The miniature deep-space jump crystal hovered above the hibernation pod, forcibly injecting massive amounts of high-dimensional pollutants into the static rules.

boom!

The solid ice shattered completely, turning into a shower of ice shards. The hatch of the hibernation pod was flung off from the inside by an irresistible force, slamming heavily against the metal bulkhead.

Inside the silent Zero compartment, a chilling sense of oppression, enough to freeze one's soul, was awakened.

Ji Yun's tightly closed eyes suddenly snapped open.

She slowly sat up, her full head of white hair flying wildly in the windless cabin.

When she looked up at Su Yuan's surveillance camera, it felt as if all the air in the cockpit had been sucked out.

Ji Yun's left eye was no longer a human pupil, but had transformed into a boiling dark red, exactly like Li Xiuyuan's and the Deep Space Giant Eye, so deep that it could devour all light.

However, her right eye still retained the pure, deep blue of the highest rule and command of the Pangu Defense Line, so blue that it was without a trace of impurity.

The extremes of red and blue intertwined on the same face, creating a terrifying, half-god, half-demon transformation. She simply stared at Su Yuan, a strange smile playing on her lips, a smile that was hard to decipher—whether it was a plea for help or a look of destruction.