Chapter 526

Boom boom boom!

At the rear of the United Alliance convoy, vehicles were assembling into formation according to orders; hundreds of personnel on defensive vehicles stood ready for the appearance of Hunters, when suddenly the crimson mist around them was all swept away by hurricane-force winds—now the entire battlefield was lashed by gales, and as the crimson mist receded, visibility cleared; several large and small convoys located each other’s positions and began merging lanes.

He Linqiu opened his vehicle door and leapt out, his feet striking the ground to send a shockwave like a blade thrusting skyward; beside him, a man and a woman followed in flight using power armor, and as she scanned the battlefield, she immediately issued a string of commands via communicator.

In an instant, hundreds of glowing small drones shot out from her convoy, scattering rapidly to blanket a vast area.

“Crimson isolation dispersed—strengthen communications—notify all allied forces!”

“Understood!” Two subordinates moved instantly; He Linqiu accelerated in midair, her speed surpassing even that of powered armor flight.

She charged straight toward the largest tornado; its wind wall teemed with swarming insect-zombies caught in the vortex, and at its eye stood Jiang Yun, clad in high-energy battle armor, riding the wind—only when He Linqiu pierced the wind wall did she finally establish contact with Jiang Yun’s signal, his perception still clouded by the thick crimson.

“Tianqiong orders all of us to reach the northern foothills of the Red Soil Rift by 16:45—if the crimson tide hasn’t stopped, consolidate your lines nearby!”

“I know.” High above, Jiang Yun stared grimly at the endless tide below, his voice sharp: “General Li Sheng’s 13th Iron Guard Brigade should be retreating into the Hongshan Pass area any moment—we must hold our ground and give them buffer space; if these monsters surge down the rift, our center and northern flank will be threatened.”

“Right!” He Linqiu nodded: “Hongyuan, Song Feng, and Liang Hao’s convoys have already moved to support from the flank with the tank battalion—the terrain at Black Stone Plain is favorable, they’ll arrive within forty minutes.”

“Besides General Zeng’s 22nd Brigade, the only forces left here are the United Alliance and our Infinite Alliance… we should hold.”

“And the Thunder Fleet’s main force,” He Linqiu said.

Jiang Yun added: “The Utopia’s firepower is immense—Xiao En wants to detach some troops to reinforce us, but it’s unnecessary. Director Jian deployed a batch of all-terrain trains to assist with track construction; they may be encountering trouble—their signals are being blocked…”

Boom!

As Jiang Yun spoke, a powerful dark energy surge rippled outward—in the next instant, a ghastly pale hollow face appeared grotesquely behind him; the Hunter raised its Senran claws, completely ignoring Jiang Yun’s wind, teleporting straight up to this altitude of hundreds of meters.

Jiang Yun felt every hair on his body stand on end, his spine tingling—but before he could turn, a violent collision erupted behind him, a furious gust hurling him backward; when he spun around, he saw He Linqiu had somehow appeared instantly at his back, using her energy-concentrating ability to block the Hunter’s lethal strike—but the Hunter’s sudden burst of power was too great; she absorbed only part of the impact before the claw struck her full force, shattering large sections of her power armor, crimson mist spraying past Jiang Yun’s face.

Jiang Yun snapped to action, instantly seizing He Linqiu with a violent wind current, then swept his hands outward, expanding the tornado’s wall diameter tenfold—all crimson mist was now repelled, the howling gale even stripping the red haze clinging to the Hunter’s body; the monster, mid-transformation into the mist, was now dragged downward by gravity.

Jiang Yun would not let this chance slip—he reversed his hands, launching two wind spears—one from above, one from below—clamping the Hunter in midair like a meat grinder’s grinding stones; the high-speed, razor-sharp air currents, laced with hard sand and stones, acted like wind-bladed knives, rapidly dissolving the Hunter’s biofield and flesh—within seconds, it was ground into crimson mist and rained down.

Jiang Yun glanced around and casually dispersed the mist. Though his wind ability couldn’t match the raw destructive power of fire or lightning, it was nothing short of a savior against the crimson mist—he was effectively the battlefield’s janitor, capable of dispersing immense pressure from the monster tides; because of this ability, Jiang Yun was forced to shuttle across hundreds of kilometers of battlefield, serving as a weather-level covering force.

“How are you?”

“Fine.” He Linqiu tore off a sparking fragment of her chest armor; her bloody, mangled chest was visibly healing and clotting—even so, the intense dark energy invasion left her face pale, her mind ravaged by Fengkuang erosion and agony—but she took a deep breath and told Jiang Yun: “I’m heading to reinforce now—Captain Shi at Longshan No.1 is holding that direction—no problem there!”

“Good!”

After He Linqiu left, Jiang Yun lifted the tornado’s wind current and sped rapidly toward the front-line battlefield of the Combined Train.

Beneath the crimson sky, the Combined Train moved like a wounded steel dragon across the scorched earth; ten kilometers ahead, both ground and air battles had reached white-hot intensity.

This was the front of the train—but there was no track here at all!

Whirrrrrr!

Behind the 22nd Iron Guard Brigade’s line, a construction corps of dozens of bulldozers, six all-terrain track-laying machines, and thousands of construction drones were working furiously across the open plain; laying machines rammed alloy rails into the scorched soil, drones under Wei Ao’s control swarmed like silver bees, welding; metal components from every battlefield were here disassembled, manufactured, and assembled into track segments laid down one by one.

Yet even with this production capacity, the advance remained painfully slow—not only because of the fierce combat, but primarily due to insufficient materials.

Without prefabricated rails, the drones’ disassembly and assembly speed was extremely slow; most “rails” assembled from various metal frames couldn’t bear the weight of such a massive train fleet—most track was laid by continuously transporting and dismantling rails from other areas.

The train force’s decision to advance eastward was not only to avoid the Grand Canyon, but to connect with the nearer eastern rail lines!

Zing!

A crimson centipede as thick as a truck tire burst from the ground—its head was instantly split open by the Black Dragon Armor’s steel-slicing greatsword.

Da Lou raised his greatsword and continued scanning; on the other side, Shu Qin pressed her earpiece.

“Watch your radar—these things love emerging from underground—and watch for crimson insects.”

Da Lou and Shu Qin, clad in Black Dragon Armor, led the Infinite Team in tightly guarding the construction crew; they were not the main defensive line, yet countless crimson insects, aerial threats, and Suishi appearing Hunters still loomed.

“It feels like everything’s converging here—strange,” Lü Chang slashed through crimson mist wielding an electric knife, followed by a dozen Infinite Team members; his powered armor’s shoulder cannon shattered three bone-spiked zombies, pus and blood splattering on his visor and instantly vaporized; he panted, scanning the surroundings: “Do the monsters know what we’re doing?”

“Don’t take chances.”

Sun Yuzhen soared through the air, wings spread, dual pulse cannons in hand, drenched in monster blood: “The Tower People are a high-dimensional civilization—we can’t treat these monsters as mere beasts.”

“Alright…”

Boom boom boom! Before they could catch their breath, a swarm of glowing centipedes erupted from the sand—these giant centipedes rapidly consumed electrical energy, their biofields terrifyingly strong; conventional thermal weapons couldn’t penetrate them.

“Watch out!”

Lü Chang heard Da Lou’s warning, turned—suddenly, a torrent of azure electric chains slammed into the insect horde; the stench of burnt flesh rose with thick smoke, the violent ionization making everyone’s scalp tingle.

“Holy shit… damn impressive!” Lü Chang stared at the boy amid the smoke, blurted out.

“Hey, this move’s called Thunder!” Mo Xiaotian crackled with electricity, arms raised high, screaming; his youthful face flushed purple-red from ability overload.

“Look up!”

Sun Yuzhen pointed skyward, shouting to the group; countless heads tilted upward—the crimson fog was torn open and sealed again by the Track-Stellar Cannon’s azure light spears; the Tianqiong Train hung like a black titan at three thousand meters, its weapon arrays spewing fire; each triple-barrel salvo shook the clouds into boiling chaos, blasting the dangling fleshy tentacles into acid-blood rain.

Within the crimson clouds, a colossal atmospheric shadow, vast as a sky-covering mass, thrashed countless tentacles, sweeping down upon the ground forces; its scale hidden in the clouds was even more terrifying than the S-Class [Sky Tentacle] of Dawn City.

Behind the Tianqiong Train, the aerial battle raged in white-hot fury!