Chapter 534

The waves of the Pacific Ocean slapped against the piers of the abandoned Golden Gate Bridge, and the rusted steel cables whimpered in the salty sea breeze. The coastal section of Highway 101, once bustling with traffic, now only had overturned container trucks half-submerged in the ink-green seawater.

Zombie skeletons hung on the twisted guardrails, swaying with the wind. Under the scarlet sky, suddenly, a suffocating silence descended!

On the coastline, the seawater receded without warning, revealing the seabed covered with skeletons. The seawater retreated quietly, as if a drain had appeared beneath the ocean.

Dozens of kilometers away from the coastline, the seawater in the thick fog suddenly collapsed inward, gradually forming a vortex abyss with a diameter of several thousand meters. Countless rotten remains of anomalous entities floated up at the edge of the vortex; the dark energy aura on the remains had long since been devoured clean. The ultra-low air pressure caused by the void on the sea surface triggered a huge storm cloud cluster in the sky above, with thunder roaring and rolling within it.

"Gurgle—"

A muffled sound like the call of an ancient whale came from the bottom of the abyss, shaking the heavens and the earth. The next moment, the seabed suddenly arched up, and millions of tons of seawater were lifted thousands of meters into the air! Gray-blue tentacles thicker than a Ferris wheel broke through the waves. The surface of the tentacles was covered with huge horny scales. Subsequently, a spine resembling an island pierced the sea surface and slowly rose from the Pacific Ocean!

Seattle, 5,000 kilometers north of San Francisco, was once a prosperous city in North America. Now, it was a dead ruin amidst the scarlet. Dense, tide-like zombies stood like wooden stakes in the ruins of the streets. Because there were no intruders, these anomalous life forms all stood motionless, as if petrified.

At this time, a thin layer of dust suddenly began to rise from the ground. The broken spire of the Space Needle trembled while suspended three hundred meters above the ground. In an instant, all the zombies in the entire city began to move with a *clack-clack-clack* sound, howling incessantly, as if in fear or irritability. Even various large anomalous entities hiding deep in the city or underground crawled out to the surface, roaring and howling, with various monstrous limbs and tentacles swaying incessantly in the scarlet mist!

The zombie swarms ran everywhere, but soon they discovered that the earthquake did not come from the ground, but from the sky!

Rumble!

The entire city was covered by black clouds. Building ruins, cars, and withered trees, along with howling zombies and various anomalous entities, were all snatched up as if by an invisible giant hand. Defying the laws of gravity, they flowed backward toward the scarlet sky! A rotten zombie dog hit a gas station sign in mid-air and instantly exploded into a mist of blood, yet the blood droplets abnormally drifted upward.

The cloud layer tore open. The abdomen of a gray-black giant corpse occupied the entire sky, its dried skin forming thousand-meter-deep gullies. A half-section of a passenger airliner was stuck in one of the folds. When the hollow eye sockets turned toward the ground, the concrete foundations of three city blocks were peeled off and lifted as a whole, exposing the survivors who were struggling to survive in panic in the subway tunnels. Their screams had not yet left their throats before they, along with the tunnel fragments, were sucked toward the sky.

Bang!

In Kansas, central North America, a muffled thunderous sound erupted from the earth. A bottomless canyon split open in the scorched wheat fields. Vehicles blocked on the road slid into the abyss like small toys. Hot wind smelling of sulfur erupted from the cracks. Tens of thousands of flesh-colored tentacles with drill-like mouthparts crawled out from the ground cracks, and rock fragments adhering to the surface of the tentacles fell like a rainstorm.

Beneath the crust, it seemed that some kind of huge creature was swimming. The plates of the underground sedimentary rock tilted upward like brittle crackers, and heat waves surged into the sky.

Colorado Rift Frontline, 09:45

Deathly silence, oppressive deathly silence.

On the east side of the Red Rock Rift, more than one hundred TFV600 twin-barreled heavy tanks of the 4th Heavy Armored Battalion of the 22nd Iron Guard Brigade lay quietly in ambush. The infrared radar observation pillars on the turrets, covered in frost, rotated silently. The cold muzzles were all pointed toward the depths of the scarlet wasteland. Drone swarms patrolled in turns, but brought back no warnings upon returning. Soldiers wearing power armor held scanners and repeatedly swept the scorched earth; only the wind swept ashes across the charred remains of monsters.

"Drone swarms detected no abnormal heat sources."

"Sonar array silent."

"This is evil... where are the things that usually crawl out as soon as the sky brightens? Why have they misfired today?"

The operators driving the Guardian mechas discussed in low voices on the communication frequency, their tense tones carrying confusion.

"Must be that we took out that S-class Black Disk yesterday, completely solving the big trouble?"

"It's possible..."

On a plain about 3 kilometers east of the Silver Star, a huge defensive line had been opened up by the Iron Guard Brigade and the elite teams of major fleets. A temporary steel smelting factory covering more than two thousand square meters rose from the ground through the efforts of drones, construction machinery, and nearly thirty thousand engineers and construction personnel. Although it was not yet finished, the internal track base had been manufactured first. A large amount of metal materials, scrapped cars, tanks, and even train carriages were continuously pulled into the factory under the operation of transport teams. The sound of metal friction could be heard for several kilometers in the silence.

"The efficiency has indeed greatly improved."

Miss Jian Miss Jian Xuwei, wearing power armor, looked at the data summarized by the engineers in the holographic field of view and quickly synchronized it. Chen Chen Sixuan sat in command of the Sky Dome Train. In the communication screen, General Li Sheng, commander of the 13th Iron Guard Brigade, and General Zeng Zeng Weiguo of the 22nd Iron Guard Brigade both sent messages that there were currently no enemy contact warnings on any major frontlines.

"Regarding the speculation about the 'world-class' entity, it is temporarily limited to internal discussion." General Li Sheng adjusted his glasses. "Judging from the feedback from various fleets, morale tends to believe that we eliminated the S-class threat."

"This is a good thing."

"This is a good thing." The voice of the Chief of Staff, General Luo, was steady and powerful: "Regardless of whether the judgment is accurate, positive emotions are always better than despair. Continuous fierce battles plus internal mutations, our losses are already great enough."

"Yes, this is good news."

Jiang Yun turned his head to look at Shawn and Marcus of the Utopia beside him: "It seems we bet right; the pattern didn't happen again."

"Resources are concentrated for construction, the site is expanded, this speed should be much faster than building while fighting before."

"This should be our only way." Marcus smiled at Jiang Yun: "We never thought before that we would lay tracks across a state to save our lives."

Jiang Yun shrugged: "This is the disadvantage of trains, but the advantage is the large carrying capacity and strong defensive capabilities. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to save so many people."

"No matter how large the carrying capacity is, there is a limit to the tracks." Shawn, the leader of the Utopia, turned around: "The train is not a starship, it won't fly. The final destiny is to be able to drive to Ushuaia, unfortunately... we didn't even drive out of North America."

Hearing this, Jiang Yun raised his eyebrows slightly: "Speaking of flying... I do know a friend who has always wanted the train to be able to fly, and he actually succeeded."

"You mean that Sword-Wielder."

Shawn said: "The resistance you did in Dawn City shocked our entire European battlefield. Mechas falling from the sky, breaking through the giant screen of the sky, the South Heaven Gate opening fire—it was truly spectacular, even the Corpse-Driver was taken out."

"Yeah..."

Jiang Yun looked at the dense drone clusters and various newly built loading lines in the factory, murmuring: "If he were here, there would be no need to build this factory at all."

The Colorado Canyon area was exceptionally quiet today. From dawn until the afternoon, no scarlet zombies or monster tides appeared. On the defensive lines everywhere, except for some energy-devouring insects that occasionally crawled out and lacked threat, it was as calm as an afternoon on a holiday before the apocalypse. The only difference was this scarlet apocalyptic celestial phenomenon.

Taking advantage of this rare rest time, the major train fleets were constantly repairing the trains, cleaning armor, recasting plates, and overhauling various circuit problems. At the same time, weapons and food were being reorganized. In the team of millions, a wired channel through the trains had been established. In these channels, nearby fleets exchanged supplies, and at the same time, doctors, mechanics, repairmen, and other people with technical abilities were kept busy, providing assistance in different fleets, which had become a temporary apocalyptic social system.

However, communication was communication, and the actual exchange of supplies was limited to nearby fleets. After all, this long train of fleets added up to more than one hundred kilometers from front to back, and many sections were not connected. Coupled with the cars and Iron Guard Brigade troops of two or three hundred thousand people, the frontlines were too long. Fortunately, intelligence information could be shared in real-time, which allowed the command center with General Luo and other military personnel and several major fleets as the core to carry out scheduling and command in a timely manner.

On the Sky Dome Train, Chen Chen Sixuan, who had held the fort for a day, let Shu Qin and Hearing Shizhi take over and returned to her room. Ning Jing, Abai, and Bai Xiaoqing returned to Longshan No. 1 after slaying the S-class to assist Shi Shi Diyuan. Now, Longshan No. 1 had a team of more than 6,000 people and had absorbed a lot of new blood. Brother Qian Qian Dele had Xiao Meng take the members of the Joker fleet to move into the Sky Dome Train, vacating the original train for other fleet members in urgent situations.