Chapter 525

This was a zone of ash, the endless crimson earth and rubble beneath it making the land seem even more eerie, as if only the color of blood remained between heaven and earth.

Hurricane winds howled across the land, carrying blood-red frost, sweeping through patch after patch of charred soil, past row after row of burned and torn trains, armored vehicles half-buried in the earth, and shattered warships; bodies littered the ground, the stench of smoke and blood so thick it made one vomit, the frost scraping against frozen human corpses emitted strange whimpers, and tiny crimson insects crawled out of cracks in broken power armor and quickly burrowed back into the sand.

Click~

A train car, burned to charcoal, jutted at an angle from a cracked rail bed; a mutated, rotting foot crushed a bloodstained Phoenix Society badge into the ashes, then sprinted away with a low growl—three scythe-like bone limbs tore through flesh in the mist, thrashing wildly in the wind.

The horizon boiled as hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of crimson zombies surged forward in unison through the blood mist, marching and running toward the front; the ground teemed with bizarre, erratic corpse insects—crimson centipedes packed densely together.

Against the crimson sky, hundreds of semi-transparent tentacles, as thick as oil pipelines, hung down from the clouds; their chrysanthemum-shaped suckers suddenly split open, sweeping across the land and kicking up waves of sand and dust, and with each sweep, countless energy beams flashed and crackled through the crimson mist across the vast expanse ahead.

This was the Colorado Canyon region of Arizona, North America; the ground trembled from the Fir Basin in the west to the Black Stone Plains over a hundred kilometers away, the deafening storm of war stretching southward for dozens of kilometers to the Red Stone Grand Canyon, while the eastern flank of the Fir Basin had become a hellish furnace.

Amid the thick blood mist, a winding end-of-the-world train slowly advanced through the crimson tide; the mist obscured all distant vision, the train like a steel dragon lost in fog, with no sight of its front or its end.

No one knew how long the front line stretched—in this region, hundreds of battles converged from every direction, every front firing, every battlefield retreating!

As the crimson zombie horde closed in, the dense artillery fire grew deafening, the sky nearly torn apart by torrents of firepower, like the Battle of Kursk amid crimson chaos.

One hundred and forty kilometers east of the Colorado Red Rock Canyon, artillery fire stretched from the Grand Canyon to a black valley, where vast stretches of black fossilized trees stood—once an extension of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, now these black, dead woods made the land look like hell’s scorched earth.

Along the winding rails, a specially modified three-tier intercontinental train moved like a mobile city, bristling with dense weapon arrays—long guns, short cannons, energy weapons all present—like a long, spiny serpent crawling slowly along shattered tracks; some cars burned fiercely, monstrous creatures flew through the crimson fog and gunfire, breached the defenses, bit through broken carriages to kill survivors, triggering horrific screams, then seized one and took to the air—only to be shredded mid-flight by resistance fire and crash to the ground; swarms of drones arrived to reinforce, their burning flames illuminating graffiti on the carriage armor:

Trans-Eurasian End-of-the-World Train—Utopia!

The battle raged on, the train’s end invisible in the thick crimson; squadrons of warships flew low overhead, guarding the train’s defensive line, fighter jets screamed through storm clouds, while behind, across the open plains, over a thousand heavy tanks and armored units formed a advancing line, holding back the endless zombie tide surging from the crimson, like two tidal waves crashing together, smoke exploding everywhere.

Beep-beep-beep!

On a large command vehicle, the Second Intercontinental Force’s command center was thick with grim resolve; intelligence terminals flooded with frantic battlefield updates, alarms blaring nonstop.

Among them, a senior officer in a general’s coat with salt-and-pepper hair, though weathered, now stared with sharp, alert eyes at the battlefield display.

“Report!” An officer turned from the information terminal.

“Lines 4 and 5 report intense crimson tides, originating from the Black Stone Plains in the H direction.”

The old man, Luo Shaokai, Chief of Staff of the Second Intercontinental Force, turned to another terminal: “What about the east?”

“Report! The Dragon-Kun Fleet’s firepower is critical—request ground support!”

General Luo’s gaze turned piercing—he issued orders immediately:

“Notify Battalion 2 and Battalion 3 to close toward the left flank—no gaps allowed; Battalions 4, 6, and 7 and two mech companies accelerate; the 13th Iron Guard Brigade must retreat through that pass and seize Hill 2713 in the Fir Basin within twenty minutes—and order the Firestone Fleet to ascend and suppress the AF zone…”

Boom-boom-boom!

Dozens of miles away, on the Black Stone Plains, thousands of end-of-the-world vehicles kicked up clouds of dust as they charged, maneuvering and skirmishing alongside the slow-moving train; on the perimeter, two mech battalions and a drone squadron of the 22nd Iron Guard Brigade held defensive positions; hundreds of Vulcan mechs stood in long lines through the smoke like steel walls, their Vulcan cannons and flamethrowers spewing torrents of destruction into the crimson horde; behind them, countless soldiers in power armor used tanks and mechs as cover, firing at the advancing front.

“Commander, orders say we must advance to cover Section 95 of the train—push forward at least twelve kilometers!”

“I know.”

On a battlefield beside the moving train, Leng Shaoxian, clad in reinforced Iron Hunter power armor, crushed a crimson insect underfoot, then fired a burst from his Vulcan Gatling at a bizarre flying monster overhead; the flame torrent struck, and a dark shadow rapidly expanded before crashing precisely before him—the monster opened its maw, extending parasitic tentacles to attack, so he tossed a fragmentation grenade straight into its bloody maw—next instant, BOOM! Its head exploded into a cloud of blood mist.

“Watch out—don’t underestimate those crimson insects that burrow into energy cores—crush them the instant you see them; they can cripple power armor’s energy supply in seconds—no one can afford to be careless!”

“Yes, Commander!”

Whoosh! As he finished speaking, hundreds of fully armed power armor soldiers behind him marched forward in steady, clanking steps.

Leng Shaoxian glanced at the dead flying monster—then his dark energy detector suddenly blared; he instantly looked skyward, his Gatling’s motor whirring to life.

“Watch out, there’s a—”

Before he finished, a four-winged monstrous shadow tore through the clouds hundreds of meters above, rapidly growing in size—over ten meters long—and instantly, hundreds of guns opened fire on the black shape; the next moment, a hurricane swept away the blood mist, and a twisted, pitch-black creature—like liquid asphalt—plunged straight down, its bio-field glowing emerald green, deflecting the metal storm and flipping a heavy anti-aircraft truck clean over.

BOOM!

Artillery exploded, dozens thrown into the air; the heavy truck was hurled into the slow-moving train, its side armor instantly torn open, spilling the carriage’s contents, sparks flying from shattered rails and wheels; the truck lodged in the ground, metal groaning in protest.

“A-class crimson entity—bring up heavy artillery!”

Leng Shaoxian shouted as he sprinted toward the train, his leg thrusters igniting; he charged forward and rammed his shoulder into the truck, knocking it down—meanwhile, the black-asphalt creature, its bio-field cracking under concentrated fire, still crawled frenziedly toward him, opening its mouth to fire a jagged red laser beam that cleanly sheared off the tops of three train cars, along with their mounted cannons.

“Damn it!” Leng Shaoxian ducked, then turned back—his eyes burned red as he roared: “Zhang Zijian, Wang Lin—where the hell are you?!”

“Coming!!”

Klong!

From the line, two 6-meter-tall Defender-X assault mechs surged forward; their left-arm anode particle cannons screamed with heat, and two blasts erupted instantly, reducing the four-winged monster to six charred segments, leaving a blackened, ionized path scorched into the ground.