Chapter 118: Reorganization

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The orange-red headlights of the Infinite cut through the night beneath the blizzard, its ice-breaking shield slicing through thick snow like a hot knife through butter, flinging it aside.

Neither zombies nor cars could withstand this immense power!

Everyone held their breath and surged forward.

In Car 2, Kiki kept her eyes fixed on the radar system while launching two drones to scout the darkness.

“That big monster must be buried in the underground city—it didn’t follow us.”

After nearly an hour of relentless speed across the snowfield, as zombies and obstacles grew sparser, the group finally began to feel the relief of barely escaping death; the heavy atmosphere aboard the train was broken by Kiki’s voice.

“Really? We… we’re saved?” Zhao Yan, who had been paralyzed with fear all along, suddenly came alive, trembling as she asked.

“Looks like it.” Chen Sixuan ignored them, walked to the cab, and looked at Lin Xian, drenched in sweat, concerned: “We seem to have escaped danger—should we rest? The snowfall is too heavy, visibility is blocked, and ahead lies a valley. I’m worried the initial quake might have triggered an avalanche—if we charge through, we’ll be in trouble.”

Lin Xian nodded, gradually slowing the Infinite’s speed. “You’re right, but we can’t let our guard down. While we rest, I need to secure the rear cars—otherwise they’ll slow us down.”

The nonstop run had exhausted him; they’d covered over a hundred kilometers across the snowfield, and he truly wanted to stop and rest. Behind Car 5, two flatbed cars were hauled, followed by the Twin Star 11R nuclear-powered electric locomotive, and further back, two Keer 3-type biological research cabins were dragged along with temporary couplers, completely unprotected by armor. This setup was unusual, but they’d had no choice to escape in time.

HISS~

After the desperate sprint, the train’s iron wheels were scorching hot, melting the snow beneath them with a sizzling hiss of steam.

“How’s it going?” Lin Xian entered Car 1, his expression still tense. Kiki was operating the drones circling the train for vigilance.

Huh…

Kiki, tense all night, finally exhaled. She licked her lips and said to Lin Xian: “I can’t swear about anything else, but that big thing definitely didn’t follow us—if it had, such a massive disturbance would’ve been detected.”

“You reminded me.”

Lin Xian pulled out the Soul-Disturbance Detector and handed it to Kiki: “You got a blood essence, right? Use this to scan.”

“Got it.”

Kiki snapped to attention, pulled out the larger, bizarre blood essence, installed it, and activated it immediately—a strange energy pulse surged forth.

0!

To Lin Xian’s surprise, according to this reading, there wasn’t even a single zombie nearby…

“Could it be broken?” Kiki was also startled.

“Probably not.” Lin Xian knew better than anyone whether machinery was faulty. He looked out at the snowfield—the blizzard was covering everything at an incredible rate; ordinary zombies simply couldn’t keep up. Perhaps by morning, they’d be entirely buried under snow.

Ding Junyi, who had remained silent, looked at the device in Kiki’s hand and asked: “Level-2 bizarre blood essence? You killed a B-class Nightwalker?”

Lin Xian stared at the Soul-Disturbance Detector’s reading, finally exhaling the tension from the abyssal monster’s shadow. He turned to Ding Junyi’s calm expression and couldn’t help asking: “Does your emotion system lack the words ‘surprise’ and ‘fear’?” Ding Junyi looked at him curiously: “Why ask that?”

“If I screamed and panicked like Dr. Zhao and Dr. Xu, would I get more concern or protection from others?”

At these words, the atmosphere fell silent. Chen Sixuan, Kiki, and the others stared at Ding Junyi with strange expressions.

Zhao Yan and Xu Wen’s gazes toward Ding Junyi were complex—slightly annoyed, speechless. Clearly, though they’d worked with her for years, they still couldn’t stand her way of speaking.

Lin Xian paused, startled, then replied after a long moment: “Alright, back to the topic.”

He removed the bizarre blood essence: “By the way, how do you define these things? Your terminology differs from the current Tianqi Federation’s Phoenix Society.”

“Actually, it’s the same!”

Xu Wen, whose complexion had improved, spoke up first: “The current Tianqi Federation and the original Federal Government both began developing under the same Angel Project. After the Federation’s collapse, research directions remained largely unchanged. Whether Nightwalkers or Bizarre Beings, both refer to these evil entities. Our research on Soul-Disturbance Values has been largely synchronized. But the Underground City Project has lost broad scientific support…”

Lin Xian was surprised: “Your biological research institute knows the details of the Angel Project?”

“Not entirely.”

Zhao Yan, Xu Wen’s mentor, looked at the group, her face tense: “Now, we study anything related to dark energy—zombies, corruption, human-bizarre entities, blood essences, calamity plants, psychic abilities—all of these are connected to this dark energy. After the Federation collapsed, the Angel Project was restructured. Our Underground City falls under the Dawn Project, and we lack the massive psychic or armed resources needed to obtain these blood essences or calamity plants for research.”

!

“The Dawn Project, theoretically, no longer belongs to the official structure of the current Tianqi Federation. But its leaders still consider themselves the legitimate government of the world, so they deliberately distinguish terminology in extreme-night research.”

“For example, Nightwalker and Bizarre Being mean the same thing. Currently, Soul-Disturbance Values within -100 are classified as C-class or ordinary. Values beyond -100 are broad: from -100 to -1000 are defined as B-class Bizarre Beings. These creatures all yield Level-2 Bizarre Blood Essences, with slight size variations. We believe this doesn’t necessarily reflect the creature’s threat level or rank—it may simply indicate how many humans it has consumed.”

“Consumed humans?” Kiki frowned. “I thought Soul-Disturbance Value directly measured a Bizarre Being’s threat level—and even measures psychics with the same numbers, like Evolution Rank, Diamond Rank…”

Zhao Yan stared at Kiki in astonishment: “How do you know that?!”

“It was a broad conceptual framework from the early Angel Project—somewhat useful as a reference,” Ding Junyi finally spoke.

“Since the Nightfall Contagion theory emerged, whether the current Phoenix Society’s new Angel Project [Nightwalker] or our Dawn Project, the mainstream view holds that the Tianqi Extreme Night is a global evolutionary ritual. Most humans fail to evolve, corrupting into zombies or human-bizarre entities, undergoing biological mutations, while the Star Abyss gives birth to Bizarre Beings. Under this premise, each Nightfall brings more deaths or corruption, yet equally, every day survived allows humans to evolve stronger—not just gaining psychic traits, but holistically: increased cellular activity, muscle potential, greater resistance to viruses and bacteria…”

“In short, as long as you live, you evolve. This evolution may seem minuscule in the short term, but over time, by the second Extreme Night, survivors will have shattered their original physical limits.”

“That’s also why the Federal Government split into three factions after the first Extreme Night.”

New book, seeking monthly votes, brothers—get on board and charge ahead!

(End of Chapter)