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

Within a second, hundreds of radial cracks appeared on the metal floor of pod zero.

Ji Yun sat in the open hibernation pod, her white hair flying wildly. Two completely opposing force fields expanded outwards from her left eye (dark red) and right eye (eerie blue). The dark red force attempted to tear apart the inner wall of the pod—the molecular spacing of the alloy plates was violently stretched, the metal emitting a sharp, shrill deformation scream. The eerie blue force desperately clung to the boundary of the dark red force; at the point where the two met, the air was instantly reduced to a vacuum.

The gravity parameters have collapsed.

Medical equipment secured to the deck of the carriage came loose from its bolts and flew toward the ceiling. Life support bags burst, and the green nutrient solution exploded into countless spherical droplets in the weightlessness. An amputee veteran in the corner was slammed against the cabin ceiling by the sudden gravity of the flip, his back hitting the crossbeam with a muffled groan, and his seatbelt buckle snapped off.

On the instrument panel in the control room, the gravity readings jumped wildly. +1.2G, 0G, -3G, +7G. The numbers flipped so fast that afterimages appeared on the screen.

"Structural stress in the vehicle body exceeds limits!" Xiao Huo's alarm blared repeatedly. "Within a three-meter radius of Cabin Zero, the curvature of space has exceeded the physically resolvable threshold!"

Inside the cockpit, Wang Hu was slammed to the ground, his cheek pressed against the deck, and he forced out a sentence through gritted teeth: "Boss... that woman..."

Su Yuan stood in front of the control panel, the deck beneath his feet shattered into a spiderweb, but his body was firmly anchored by the purple light of the mark on his left arm, remaining motionless.

He stared at the monitor screen.

Ji Yun opened her mouth.

Two voices simultaneously emerged from her throat: one a cold, metallic tone devoid of any emotion, the other Ji Yun's own hoarse voice, torn and distorted. The two voices overlapped, yet spoke completely opposite words.

"Kneel down. Hand over the keys."

"Su Yuan—fire—smash my head—quick—don't let the code—"

Ji Yun gripped her neck tightly with her right hand, trying to cut off the cold voice. Her left hand, however, stretched forward uncontrollably, fingers spread, dark red energy seeping from her fingertips and spreading towards the carriage.

She was fighting with herself.

In the surveillance footage, the miniature deep-space crystal fragment extracted from the mutated survivor's body had not completely disappeared. The shattered powder re-condensed above Pod Zero, its rotation speed increasing. A spatial rift, as thick as a bowl, tore open from the center of the powder, and black, viscous, almost solid deep-space matter flowed down from the rift.

The first drop of black mud landed on Ji Yun's shoulder.

Ji Yun's body convulsed violently, and the dark red in her left eye instantly expanded, while the deep blue was compressed into a small area at the corner of her eye. Her own voice became more urgent and shrill.

"Su Yuan! Don't hesitate! It's just a matter of one shot! The defense code is in my head; if it leaks, you're all finished!"

The voice of the Deep Space Will descended, utterly calm and devoid of any emotion: "Place the key on the ground. Step back. All authority over this body will belong to the Matrix. Resistance is futile."

The second drop of black mud fell, hitting Ji Yun's head and spreading down his white hair.

In the control room, Tang Lan propped herself up from the floor, one hand gripping a Gauss rifle, the muzzle pointed at Ji Yun's head on the monitor screen. Her gaze was calm and cruel, awaiting Su Yuan's order.

Wang Hu lay on the deck, his lips moved, but he didn't speak.

Su Yuan did not issue any orders.

He turned and walked out of the control room, stepping into the passageway leading to Cabin Zero.

The area of ​​gravity reversal was growing larger and larger. The alloy plates in the passage were subjected to extreme forces of gravity, both positive and negative, under his feet. Some of them sank downwards, while others arched upwards, twisting the entire passage into an unrecognizable shape.

Su Yuan walked forward step by step. The purple light from the mark on his left arm anchored him in normal gravity, making each step steady and firm.

He did not draw his gun.

He drew the sword of judgment from his waist.

On the bronze-colored blade, gray-white high-dimensional runes flowed. The force field that repeatedly vibrated within the passage became docile and retreated to both sides upon contact with the radiating rules surrounding the blade.

The door frame of Cabin Zero was deformed, and Su Yuan squeezed in sideways.

Ji Yun was just three meters away from him.

The third drop of black mud was falling from the spatial rift, about to hit her cheek. The edges of the rift continued to tear, and more deep-space matter surged at the other end, waiting to pour out.

Ji Yun's left eye stared directly at Su Yuan, his reflection shimmering in the dark red pupil. The Will of Deep Space spoke again, this time twice as loud: "Final warning. Drop your weapons."

Ji Yun's voice was almost a whisper: "...Please..."

Su Yuan remained expressionless.

He gripped the knife handle with both hands, took a half step forward with his left foot, lowered his center of gravity, and pointed the blade diagonally at the ceiling.

The gray runes on the Blade of Judgment lit up at that moment.

Su Yuan did not strike Ji Yun.

He slashed at the expanding spatial rift above her head.

The moment the blade pierced the crack, there was no explosion, no energy clash. The higher-dimensional erasure rule acted directly on the energy channel connecting the crack to the deep-space matrix, like a scalpel precisely severing an umbilical cord.

scoff.

The soft sound of tearing silk.

The spatial rift severed in the middle, and the deep-space black mud at the break point, having lost its source, solidified in the air into two black, solid fragments that slammed to the ground. The micro-crystal that had reformed was instantly shattered into powder by the aftershock of the blade's energy, without even a moment to react.

The crack disappeared.

The voice of the deep space will abruptly ceased.

However, the dark red in Ji Yun's left eye did not fade.

Deprived of external energy, the deep-space contaminants began to seep inward with all their might. Ji Yun's body sprang up from the hibernation pod, her ten fingers curled like hooks, reaching straight for Su Yuan's face. Her movements were abnormally fast, her joints cracking, her body driven by dark red energy, completely disregarding the limits of her bones and tendons.

The "cloud" mark on Su Yuan's left arm suddenly glowed with a purple light.

He did not dodge.

Ji Yun's fingers barely touched Su Yuan's collar when Su Yuan's left hand reached out, his five fingers gripping her neck tightly like an iron hoop.

The force was so great that Ji Yun was forced back into the hibernation pod, his back slamming against the metal plate at the bottom of the pod with a dull thud.

Su Yuan leaned down and pressed down, his left hand still locked around her throat.

Purple purification rules poured into his palm, rushing straight to Ji Yun's brain along his carotid artery. Ji Yun's body began to convulse violently, the dark red of his left eye and the eerie blue of his right eye clashing wildly on the same face.

Her mouth opened and closed, her teeth biting her tongue, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

The will of deep space made one last struggle. Ji Yun suddenly raised his left hand, and dark red energy cones condensed on his five fingers, piercing straight into Su Yuan's temple.

Su Yuan didn't even turn his head.

The purple light from the mark on his left arm formed an extremely thin insulating film on the skin's surface. A dark red spike poked into it, producing a piercing friction sound and sparks flying, but it couldn't even penetrate a millimeter.

The purple rules swept through Ji Yun's brain, crushing, peeling away, and burning the deep-space pollutants that lingered in the gaps between neural synapses.

The dark red in Ji Yun's left eye began to fade.

From intense scarlet to dull ochre, until finally only a faint pinkish glow remained, completely enveloped and suppressed by a deep blue.

Ji Yun's body stopped convulsing. She gasped for breath, her chest heaving rapidly, and her fingertips were still trembling uncontrollably.

Su Yuansong released his grip and took a step back.

His left arm was trembling slightly, and the purple light of the mark had dimmed somewhat. This round of purification had taken a considerable toll.

"Lock the cabin," Su Yuan said without turning his head.

The hibernation chamber's cover closed again, locked with a click, driven by a hydraulic mechanism. The cryogenic system inside the chamber restarted, and a thin layer of frost quickly covered the glass observation window.

Ji Yun closed her eyes behind the white frost. A faint blue light shone through the frost from the corner of her right eye.

Su Yuan sheathed the Blade of Judgment back into his waistband, turned around, and walked out of Cabin Zero.

The gravity in the passageway has returned to normal. The twisted deck is in disarray, creaking underfoot.

He walked back to the control room.

Tang Lan put down her gun. Wang Hu got up from the ground and wiped the dust off his face with his sleeve.

Su Yuan sat in the driver's seat and looked at the tactical glass directly in front of him.

The white bone reactor outside, constructed from thousands of skulls, was emitting a blinding blood-red light. At the top, Li Xiuyuan remained uninvolved in anything happening inside the carriage. He sat there, his right eye, covered by deep-space crystals, observing the Devourer with keen interest.

Li Xiuyuan's voice came through the communication channel.

"Quite interesting." His tone was one of detached amusement. "Going to all that trouble to save a woman who's half-dead. Too bad, it was all for nothing."

Su Yuan did not reply.

"Her left eye has been connected to the Deep Space Matrix for fourteen years. You think cutting off the external connection will make things clean? Her cerebral cortex is already filled with coordinate data. In those few seconds of connection window just now, one percent of Earth's coordinates have already been leaked."

Li Xiuyuan raised his right hand and pressed it down.

The bone reactor emitted a deep, resonant sound that penetrated to the very marrow.

Inside the mass of tens of thousands of human spines and pelvises, dark red high-dimensional energy, like a floodgate opened, surged wildly through those transparent conduits into the jump engine array deep underground.

On the main control screen, the blood-red countdown jumped suddenly.

02:47:33.

02:47:30.

Two seconds became one second.

The rate of loss has doubled.

"You see, this thing doesn't need 100% accurate coordinates." Li Xiuyuan stood up from the throne, his tattered general's uniform fluttering in the windless void. "Even just 1% is enough to shorten the delivery distance. And what I need to do is fill the engine with energy in the remaining time."

He made a fist with his right hand and then suddenly swung it outwards.

On the rock walls surrounding the cave, countless dark red lights began to illuminate.

One. Two. Ten.

Dozens of humanoid figures dressed in the exoskeleton armor of high-ranking officers from the old Blue Star emerged from the dark cave in the rock wall.

It's not about leaving.

It floated out, suspended by an anti-gravity halo.

Their armor was covered in dark red deep-space crystalline crusts, and behind the visors were not human faces, but clumps of boiling red slime. Each person wielded a different weapon—some were high-frequency energy cutting saws, some were heavy ray emitters, and some were spears formed directly from deep-space matter.

Elite rebels.

It was created from the remains of a high-ranking officer of the old Blue Star Expeditionary Force.

They didn't roar, they didn't shout, they didn't make any unnecessary movements.

A standard three-man tactical team advanced, providing cover from both sides, pressing towards the Devourer from all directions simultaneously.

"Main gun!" Wang Hu lunged at the weapon control panel and slammed the fire button down with both hands.

The Purifier's main cannon roared, its plasma warheads slamming into the densest traitor formation on the right. The explosion engulfed the three figures in the front row, but their high-maintenance shields absorbed most of the impact. A layer of the crystalline shell on their armor shattered, revealing the rusted, old Blue Star-standard skeletons beneath. The figures staggered a couple of steps in the flames before continuing their advance.

"The protection level exceeds that of a standard rebel by at least three orders of magnitude!" Little Fire quickly reported the data.

Tang Lan's heavy sniper rifle fired simultaneously. The bullet pierced the knee joint of a traitor, and dark red liquid spurted out. The guy's entire left leg was broken, but his upper body was still levitating thanks to the anti-gravity aura. He picked up the ray emitter and continued firing.

The high-dimensional ray struck the force field deflection module of the Devourer and was refracted, hitting a distant support pillar made of white bones, which instantly turned into ashes.

Wang Hu spun the main cannon like a madman, firing all the secondary cannons at once. The cannon barrels were almost red-hot, and the entire cavity was illuminated by the dense barrage as if it were daytime. But there were too many elite traitors. Before the wreckage of the front row had even hit the ground, the rear row had already used the anti-gravity aura to fly onto the top of the Devourer's hull.

Boom!

The first step was onto the roof armor.

Then came the second kick, and the third. Five rebels landed on the roof of the vehicle simultaneously, and the high-frequency energy cutting saw hummed to life, its scorching orange arcs biting into the black and gold armor plates.

The shrill sound of metal being cut came from above.

The amputees and disabled veterans in the carriage looked up in horror as the armor plates on the ceiling were visibly thinning.

"There's someone on the roof!" Wang Hu shouted.

At this moment, Jiang Yu leaned against the corner of carriage 013, his face deathly pale. At the severed site of his right arm, the living metal remnants extracted by Su Yuan using the refining furnace were faintly heating up under the resonance of the high-dimensional energy of the battlefield.

He heard the sound of cutting through the roof.

Jiang Yu gritted his teeth and shoved the severed arm fragment into an exposed control circuit interface on the vehicle's exterior wall. The remnant of living metal instantly activated, transforming into an extremely fine neural connection probe that pierced the circuit.

His fourteen years of experience coexisting with the parasite within his body came in handy at this moment. He was familiar with the underlying logic of high-dimensional metallic frequencies because his body was a living receiver.

Same-source frequency intrusion.

Three of the five rebels on the roof experienced a sudden and severe disruption to their visual systems. Their optical sensors had been forcibly programmed with incorrect IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) tags.

In the eyes of the traitor standing in the middle, his two companions on the left and right instantly became the weapon terminals of the Devourer.

He instinctively swung his deep-space spear, piercing his companion's chest on the left. At the same time, the traitor on the right, also under the same visual deception, raised his ray emitter and blasted the head off the one in the middle.

The three elite rebels killed each other in a second and fell off the roof of the car.

Jiang Yu pulled out his severed arm, spat out a mouthful of blood, and slid down the wall.

The remaining two traitors are still cutting.

The last layer of armor plating was sawed through, and a two-meter square piece of black and gold sheet crashed down onto the carriage deck. Five rebels leaped into the carriage through the opening, their high-frequency ray guns all aimed at the medical bay.

There are still unconscious wounded people lying there.

Su Yuan walked out from the end of the passage.

He didn't even look at the five traitors.

The movement of drawing the Blade of Judgment was as casual as brushing dust off a shoulder. Grayish-white blade energy rippled from the edge, silently sweeping across five dark red bodies.

High-maintenance shield, deep-space crystal shell, old Blue Star standard exoskeleton armor.

In the face of conceptual-level erasure rules, everything equals zero.

The upper bodies of the five elite rebels, along with their weapons, began to disintegrate at a microscopic level. There was no blood, no sparks, no dramatic explosion. Their physical structures were reduced to the most basic gray dust, scattering across the ground.

His lower body fell to the ground under the force of gravity, and the metal limbs rolled several meters away with a clanging sound.

Su Yuan sheathed his sword and returned to the driver's seat.

"Hit it."

He pushed down the power pusher.

With its engines fully loaded, the two-thousand-ton black-gold war machine crushed the rubble beneath its feet and charged straight toward the hundred-meter-high white bone reactor in the center of the hollow.

Li Xiuyuan looked down from his high position.

His right eye—the deep-space coordinate stone—spinned rapidly. An invisible force field burst forth from his eye socket, enveloping the charging Devourer.

Absolute gravity collapse.

Space warped. Within a thirty-meter radius of the Devourer, gravity instantly surged to an absurd level. The two-thousand-ton tank began to emit a sickening metallic creaking sound under this force. The secondary armor plates on both sides of the hull were squeezed inward by invisible giant hands, and rivets flew off one after another.

The tracks stopped rotating. The vehicle was nailed to the spot.

Wang Hu was pinned to the seat by the weight of the object, unable to move. His facial muscles were stretched and distorted, and he managed to squeeze out a voice through clenched teeth: "This bastard... is treating us like canned food..."

Su Yuan's right hand remained pressed on the control panel.

He gave a cold laugh.

"Force field deflection".

The planetary-level global force field deflection module of the Devourer chassis was activated at full power. A pale blue spherical force field bounced outward from the vehicle body.

But this time, Su Yuan made an extra move.

He raised his left arm, and the purple light of the "cloud" mark flowed through his fingers into the control panel, with the paradoxical rules being directly injected into the deflection module's computing core.

The force field did not break.

It underwent a qualitative change under the influence of the paradoxical rule. The deflection is no longer a simple "blocking" or "resolving", but has become a mirror in an absolute sense.

The absolute gravity collapsing onto the Devourer was completely received by the mirror, reversed in angle, and refracted back in an even more violent manner.

Objective: The Bone Throne.

A crack finally appeared in Li Xiuyuan's expression at that moment.

The gravity he released caused a collapse that slammed onto his own head.

The reactor, constructed from tens of thousands of human skulls connected by dark red conduits, emitted a continuous series of cracking sounds under the immense, self-generating gravity. Starting from the top, the skulls shattered, crumbled, and collapsed layer by layer. The thick, transparent conduits twisted and broke under the pressure, releasing dark red, high-dimensional energy that gushed from the fractures, scorching deep craters into the rock walls.

The entire skeleton reactor disintegrated within three seconds, from top to bottom.

Li Xiuyuan fell from a height of 100 meters.

His left side crashed onto a pile of broken bones, several ribs were broken, his uniform was torn, and a fragment of a general's rank insignia flew out and landed with a clatter in front of the Devourer's tracks.

Su Yuan ejected from the cabin.

His body flew over the guardrail at the front of the Devourer, drawing a short arc in the air before landing precisely two meters in front of Li Xiuyuan.

The moment he landed, Su Yuan stepped forward with his right foot, lowered his center of gravity, and suddenly increased his speed to the maximum.

Li Xiuyuan struggled to raise his right hand, and the Deep Space Coordinate Stone flashed wildly, attempting to release the Gravity Authority once again.

too slow.

Su Yuan's leather boots stepped onto his chest.

The broken ribs shattered completely under that kick. Li Xiuyuan spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with black crystalline fragments. He was pinned to the pile of broken bones by the force of the kick, his spine embedded in the pile of skull fragments.

Su Yuan squatted down.

The blade of judgment was drawn from his waist, and with surgical precision, the tip probed into the edge of Li Xiuyuan's right eye socket.

The grayish-white high-dimensional runes seeped into the skull along the blade, precisely locking onto every nerve plexus connecting the deep space coordinate stone to the optic nerve and brainstem.

Then, cut them one by one.

There were no unnecessary movements, no hesitation.

The spinning coordinate stone in Li Xiuyuan's right eye stopped rotating. The dark red light faded from his pupil, revealing a grayish-white prosthetic eye that had shriveled beyond recognition.

Half of his face was contorted, it was impossible to tell whether it was from pain or something else. The deep-space crystalline shells on the right side of his body began to crack and peel away; without the energy supply from the coordinate stones, the parasitic crystals rapidly withered and died.

Li Xiuyuan briefly regained human consciousness.

His left eye—the only human eye he still had—lost focus for a few seconds before refocusing on Su Yuan's face.

"You..." His voice changed, losing its previous metallic quality, becoming hoarse and cracked, the voice of an old man, "You think you've won?"

Su Yuan stood up expressionlessly.

Li Xiuyuan started to laugh.

First came suppressed chuckles, then unrestrained laughter, and finally, a grotesque, off-key maniacal laugh. His whole body trembled as he laughed, his broken ribs piercing his lung membranes, each laugh accompanied by blood and foam.

"This engine..." He raised his left hand with his last bit of strength and pointed to the ground, "is not a jump tunnel at all."

"The deep space matrix does not need to come to Earth."

"What it wants is to send the Earth there."

Su Yuan's eyes narrowed slightly.

Li Xiuyuan's laughter stopped. His gaze suddenly became incredibly clear, a kind of clarity and despair that only the deputy commander of the old Blue Star expeditionary force had felt fourteen years ago, simultaneously welling up in his cloudy left eye.

"The entire Earth. A galactic plate. The moment the engine pierces the space barrier, Earth, along with the remaining matter of the solar system, will be folded, compressed, and transported. The matrix will open its mouth and swallow it whole."

"I've been here for fourteen years, not because I want to be some kind of deep space lackey," his voice trailing off. "I want to find the ignition switch and destroy it with my own hands. But it's not here."

His finger pointed downwards.

"The real switch is at the very bottom of the dead city. I've been digging for fourteen years and haven't found it. It's too deep. So deep that I suspect it's not even on the physical plane."

He hadn't even finished speaking.

A sound came from underground.

It wasn't a vibration. It wasn't an explosion.

It's a heartbeat.

An ancient, grand, and deep sound, so profound it could penetrate ten thousand meters of rock.

Bang.

The Devourer's vehicle shuddered. Fine cracks appeared throughout the hollow rock wall with that sound. Gravel fell from the dome.

The countdown on the main control screen.

02:00:17.

Su Yuan's gaze swept over the string of numbers.

02:00:12.

01:59:58.

After jumping a few times.

The numbers stopped.

Then, all the numbers simultaneously began to flash violently.

01:59:58。01:59:58。01:59:58。

It flashed three times.

The main screen suddenly went black for a moment.

When it lit up again, the blood-red countdown was gone.

Instead, a line of text appeared.

00:00:00.

No alarms. No explosions. No system notifications.

It just quietly jumped from two hours to zero.

Everyone was stunned.

Then bloodshed ensued.

From beneath our feet. From the deepest part of the earth. A blinding, blood-red light, bright enough to burn our retinas, pierced through dozens of layers of rock, through the engine array, through the hollow ground, and shot straight overhead.

The blood-red light shone on the dome, refracting and turning the entire underground space crimson.

The Devourer's black-gold armor turned an eerie dark red amidst the blood-red light. All the instruments inside the carriage simultaneously displayed the same message, the same line of text, in the same font that did not belong to any known system.

"Let's begin eating."

Li Xiuyuan lay on the pile of broken bones, looking at the blood-red light that pierced through everything, and the smile on his lips finally froze completely.

The last glimmer of humanity in his left eye has also been extinguished.

Bang.

The second heartbeat.

Heavier and closer than the first tone.

The ground beneath their feet began to crack. The cracks spread outwards along the hollow floorboards, and the blood-red light seeping through the fissures grew brighter and denser. The temperature was rising rapidly. The air became thick and scorching.

The chassis sensors of the Devourer emitted a piercing overload alarm.

Xiao Huo's voice lost its usual composure, and an unprecedented high-frequency tremor appeared in the synthesized voice: "Detected underground...at an extremely deep level...physical parameters are being rewritten...gravity constant, Planck constant, speed of light limit...all deviated..."

"This is not engine start."

"Something is waking up from below."

Su Yuan looked down at Li Xiuyuan at his feet.

This half-human, half-machine entity, who claimed to be the deputy commander-in-chief of the Pangu Project, had completely lost all vital signs. Broken ribs pierced his heart, and deep-space crystals peeled off his body, turning into gray powder that was tossed up and then fell back down with the tremors of the ground.

His last expression before he died was one of fear.

It wasn't fear of Su Yuan.

It was fear of what was underfoot.

Su Yuan flipped and leaped back into the Devourer. The moment he landed on the hood, the tracks roared to life. Wang Hu didn't need a command; he pushed the power push lever to the standby position, waiting for Su Yuan to enter the cockpit.

Tang Lan swept the area with her heavy sniper rifle, the blood-red light reflecting off her visor and revealing a blank face. But the knuckles of her hand gripping the gun were white.

Jiang Yu leaned against the carriage wall, the severed end of his arm burning intensely. He could feel it. His fourteen years of experience coexisting with living metal told him that there was an extremely distant yet extremely clear blood relationship between the awakening being underground and the remaining metal fragments within his body.

The third heartbeat.

The first penetrating crack appeared in the hollow dome, and large chunks of rock began to fall. The remains of the bone reactor bounced and fell with the tremors of the ground, bone fragments sliding towards the crack and being swallowed by the blood-red light.

Su Yuan sat in the driver's seat and placed his palm on the control panel.

On the main screen, the words "Start Eating" are still flashing.

The mark on his left arm didn't raise any alarm. Not because of safety, but because the level of what lay beneath it was beyond the mark's perception and assessment capabilities.

The mark fell silent.

This is the first time Su Yuan has acquired it.

In the corner of the screen, an inconspicuous sub-window suddenly popped up. It was the deep geological scanning program that Xiao Huo was running in the background. It was originally used to probe the structure of the engine array, but now, something that shouldn't be there had appeared in the scan image.

At the very bottom of Asia's No. 01 Dead City.

Below the jump engine array.

Three thousand meters down from where Su Yuan thought it was the end.

The scan image shows a large, regular cavity that is rhythmically contracting and expanding.

Its shape is that of a heart.

It has a diameter of over 800 meters.

Bang.

Fourth tone.

The sound was so loud that all the glass on the Devourer shattered simultaneously. Crimson light shot out from the cracks in the ground, illuminating the entire chassis of the vehicle. High-temperature gases surged up from the cracks, and the alloy plates at the bottom of the carriages began to glow faintly red.

The amputee veteran lay slumped in the passenger seat, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.

He had seen the giant eye in deep space. He had seen the thousand-eyed mountain of flesh. He had seen the Zero Purge.

But he had never experienced this level of oppression before.

That wasn't fear. It was a deathly stillness etched into the very core of a being's genes when facing an absolute predator, a stillness so profound that even trembling is impossible.

Wang Hu's hand rested on the putter bar, his voice hoarse: "Boss, which way to go?"

Su Yuan tapped his fingers lightly twice on the control panel.

He stared at the outline of the heart, which was 800 meters in diameter, on the scan image and remained silent for three seconds.

Then he pushed the power pusher all the way down.

The Devourer's engines roared, its tracks crushing through bone fragments and rocks. The vehicle turned around, aimed at the largest crack in the hollow ground, and charged towards it at full speed.

"Boss!" Wang Hu's voice cracked, "What's down there—"

"I know what's down there."

Su Yuan's voice was completely flat, without any inflection.

The abyss-piercing wall at the front of the vehicle pierced through the ram, emitting a dark golden light. The Devourer, carrying two thousand tons of mass, plunged headlong into the blood-red fissure in the ground.

The fall begins.

Everything around was blood red.

The rock strata shattered and then closed again as the rammed ram carved a path through the vertical rock mass. The refining furnace started automatically, and the devouring conduits extended from both sides of the vehicle, frantically melting the rocks that blocked its progress.

The temperature is soaring.

One thousand degrees. Two thousand degrees. Three thousand degrees.

The outer layer of the black-gold armor began to emit a dark red heat radiation sheen. The cooling system inside the vehicle was running at full power, and the liquid nitrogen in the cooling pipes evaporated within seconds, forcing Wang Hu to manually switch to the backup cooling circuit.

Depth: 500 meters.

One kilometer.

1,500 meters.

With every hundred meters of descent, the heartbeat became clearer. By two thousand meters, the vibrations of the heartbeat could be directly transmitted through the vehicle body, causing the internal organs of everyone in the carriage to resonate.

Tang Lan fastened her seatbelt.

She didn't ask Su Yuan where he was going.

She simply ejected the magazine from the heavy sniper rifle and replaced it with the last three specially made armor-piercing rounds from the ammo box. Then she reloaded the rifle and pointed it straight ahead.

On the tactical screen at the front of the vehicle, the scanned images were constantly being updated. The heart of the 800-meter-long target was getting closer and closer, its outline becoming clearer and clearer.

Its surface is not muscle tissue.

It is rock. It is metal. It is the Earth's own crustal material.

This heart grew from the earth's material.

Or rather, something transformed a part of the Earth into its own heart.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The intervals between heartbeats are getting shorter and shorter.

The depth gauge of the Devourer shows: 2,800 meters.

Two hundred meters from the target.

Su Yuan's left hand rested on the hilt of the Blade of Judgment.

The mark remains silent.

However, the thin film of purple light covering his palm developed its first crack under the resonance of his heartbeat.