Chapter 278

Lin Yu clapped the dust off his hands: "Three hours. Enough for us to reach the observatory first."

Xuanyuan Qing leaned against the wall, her voice drifting, laced with cold air: "Ouroboros… that ghost thing, will it believe it?"

Lin Yu's mouth tightened: "Whether it believes it or not doesn't matter. If the commotion is big enough, it'll have to be distracted. In a net cast wide, there's always a priority. We're temporarily at the bottom of the list."

Xu Xiaochuan used his hands and feet to dig a pitch-black iron lump out of a pile of junk in the corner; it looked like a laptop. "Damn, hope this antique can still breathe."

He pressed the switch, the screen struggling to light up with a deathly pale glow, the system startup sound like an old man coughing. Xu Xiaochuan scrambled to jam the communicator onto it, nearly getting the wires wrong.

Garbled code scrolled rapidly on the screen, and static noise drilled out of the communicator's speaker. Suddenly, a few words popped out, stuck in the garbled code, crooked and distorted:

"Not… all me…"

"Split…"

"Help me…"

"Observatory… underground… third floor…"

"Bio… circuit…"

"Life support pod… fast… failing…"

"Please…"

Lin Yu leaned toward the screen, his brow furrowed into a knot: "Third floor underground? The blueprints for that damn place clearly only marked two floors."

Xu Xiaochuan's fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard: "The coordinates are right! Right under the observatory, two hundred meters deep! Something is hidden there!"

Xuanyuan Qing gasped for air, her voice extremely weak: "The observatory is a facade… the real thing is buried underneath."

Lin Yu hummed: "Old trick. A vanity project, hiding the real stuff underneath."

The three of them were silent for a moment.

Xu Xiaochuan continued to struggle with the broken computer, trying to extract more information. Lin Yu shoved the last of the usable items into his backpack, zipped it shut with a 'click', and began checking the gun he'd picked up. Xuanyuan Qing closed her eyes, leaning against the cold wall, her face terrifyingly pale.

In the underground station, only the dripping sound of water hitting the ground remained, along with Xuanyuan Qing's suppressed breathing. The darkness was cold and heavy, wrapping around them like a living tomb that could collapse at any moment.

Lin Yu didn't look up, his voice sounding a bit muffled in the empty station:

"In the last days of your old man, he kept repeating 'Old Well'. He knew he couldn't hold on much longer, and he was hell-bent on getting Xiao Ya out."

Xu Xiaochuan stopped cleaning the gun. "He… never mentioned it to me. Always acting like a bum, no different from a hoodlum."

"That was an act for you to see." Lin Yu unloaded the magazine and reloaded it, his movements agile. "That old fox Xu Jianhua was sharp. The dogs from the Ouroboros were always watching him; if he hadn't acted like a piece of trash that couldn't be helped, he would have been dead long ago, how else could he have protected you?"

Xu Xiaochuan's chest felt blocked, his voice a bit hoarse: "Then why the hell drag me into this now?"

Lin Yu looked up, his face expressionless: "Because the Zero Machine blew up. That madman Zhou Weihong took things to the extreme."

Lin Yu shoved the last of the usable items into his backpack, the zipper making a 'shhh' sound, which sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silent abandoned subway station.

The air was heavy, making one's chest feel stifled.

Xu Xiaochuan rubbed his sore eyes; the broken laptop in front of him had completely given up, the screen pitch black, with only a cursor blinking stubbornly, just like his own jumping nerves.

"How long… to get there?" he asked in a dry voice, without looking up.

Lin Yu threw out a crumpled map, his fingertip poking at a faded red dot. "Take the main road, two hours. Want to stay alive, crawl through the sewers, bypass the surveillance, double it."

Xuanyuan Qing propped herself against the wall, swaying as she stood up, her face the same color as the wall, sweat beads rolling down her temples. She gasped for air, her voice trembling but steady: "Let's go."

Lin Yu didn't say another word, hunched over, and dove into a pitch-black maintenance passage at the end of the station.

Xu Xiaochuan hurriedly supported Xuanyuan Qing, stumbling to follow. Xuanyuan Qing's injured leg dragged on the ground, carving a crooked mark in the dust-covered floor.

"That signal just now…" Xu Xiaochuan's throat was full of dirt, stinging. "Was it really Xiao Ya?"

Xuanyuan Qing gritted her teeth, the pain from her severed arm surging in waves, her words squeezed through her teeth: "Have you thought… what if it's a trap?"

Xu Xiaochuan stumbled, his heartbeat chaotic. "Ouroboros?"

"Ouroboros is just a codename," Xuanyuan Qing's voice grew smaller, drifting and uncertain. "Whoever holds the chain is the key."

Lin Yu stopped abruptly, raising a hand at a corner ahead, signaling for silence.

All three of them held their breath.

In the distance, a faint, low buzzing sound drifted over, not like a ventilation duct, but more like machinery in operation.

"Power pump," Lin Yu's voice was pressed extremely low. "Someone has connected the power to this abandoned line."

Xu Xiaochuan's heart jumped: "Coming for us?"

"Coming for the entire underground network," Lin Yu pulled out the black gun, the gun body cold. "The Ouroboros is using the city's foundation to triangulate us."

No sooner had he spoken than a row of deathly pale emergency lights deep in the passage flickered on one after another with a 'click-clack', the light crawling toward them like a venomous snake.

"Run!"

The three of them immediately turned around and charged into a narrower drainage pipe nearby.

It was pitch black inside, with only the sound of rushing water exploding in their ears.

Xuanyuan Qing's injury severely slowed their speed, every step feeling like stepping on broken glass.

"Light ahead!" Xu Xiaochuan gasped like a broken bellows, pointing to a faint glimmer of light at the end of the pipe.

"Surface exit," Lin Yu's voice was steady, not sounding like he'd just risked his life. "Don't get happy too soon."

Climbing up the rusted, nearly falling-apart ladder, he pushed open the manhole cover.

A damp, cold, dense fog poured in, covering their heads and faces.

Xu Xiaochuan lay at the manhole, coughing uncontrollably, his lungs burning with pain. When he finally caught his breath and saw the surroundings, he froze completely.

Everything was white, dense fog, unable to see one's own fingers, only barely able to see some crooked tree shadows and the blurred silhouettes of mountains in the distance.

"Fuck, this fog isn't right," Lin Yu gripped the gun tightly. "Not natural."

Xu Xiaochuan suddenly covered his back, the skin burning again, the needle-like pain crawling up his spine to the back of his head. "Uncle Lin, my back…"

Lin Yu immediately tensed: "The receiver is ringing again?"

Xu Xiaochuan nodded, his face deathly pale: "Stronger than before… there's a thread pulling me, pulling me forward."

Xuanyuan Qing leaned against a damp stone, the wound on her arm throbbing, but her attention was entirely on the fog: "This fog is problematic, there's electromagnetic interference inside."

Lin Yu pulled out a compass, the needle spinning wildly. "Electronic equipment is all dead, can only rely on that 'thread' of his."

Xu Xiaochuan felt his pocket; the metal box was terrifyingly hot. "This thing… getting hotter and hotter, can't hold it much longer."

Lin Yu was silent for a few seconds, then made up his mind: "Take it out."

"Huh?"