Chapter 153: Remnant Secrets, Blood Claw's Mark

Deathly silence shrouded the wreckage space of Shelter 07. Only the faint blue glow of emergency lights cast wavering patches on the dust-covered, battle-scarred metal walls, illuminating the shaken and bewildered faces of Xiang Lingna and Wrench.

"Sister Ai Li... Blood Claw... clan massacre..." Xiang Lingna murmured, repeating the keywords that had flashed on the console moments ago, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the cold identity tag engraved with "07." Sister Ai Li's cold, sharp mechanical eye, the bone-deep hatred and sorrow in her gaze when she spoke of Blood Claw—all flashed before Xiang Lingna's eyes. This was no coincidence! This fallen wasteland world, Brother Lin Mo's wasteland territory, Sister Ai Li's blood feud—there had to be some profound connection between them!

"Wrench! Search! The console just mentioned a 'backup path'! It must have left something behind!" Xiang Lingna struggled to her feet, ignoring her body's weakness and the searing pain of the brand on her right arm, and lunged toward the smoking, screen-black console.

"R-right!" Wrench also sensed the gravity of the situation. Forcing down the dizziness from the soul shock, he groped around the console with his remaining survival-arm skeleton and his still-intact left hand. "C-drive... C-drive... this junk's all rotted out—is the hard drive even still there?"

The console's outer shell had warped and charred from the earlier energy impact. Wrench pried open a twisted side panel with a metal rod he'd picked up. Inside was a dense tangle of wiring and circuit boards, much of it burned and melted, giving off a scorched smell.

"Damn... the inside of this thing's turned to charcoal..." Wrench muttered, his beady eyes searching carefully. Suddenly, he paused, and with great care used the tip of the metal rod to push aside a pile of melted wiring wreckage, revealing beneath it a palm-sized square module covered by a thick metal protective shell. "Hey! Kid! Look at this! Doesn't look completely fried!"

Xiang Lingna leaned in. The metal module's surface had burn marks, but its overall structure was still intact, and a few cables that hadn't fully melted still seemed connected at the interface. On the module's shell, the letter "C" and a disk symbol were faintly engraved.

"The C-drive backup!" Hope flared in Xiang Lingna's eyes. "Wrench, can you get it off?"

"I'll try!" Wrench held his breath, carefully prying the retaining clips around the module with the metal rod and his fingers. A few soft clicks, and the module came free. It was Heavy to Handle and ice-cold, like a metal brick.

"How do we read it? The interface on this thing's all warped from the heat." Wrench was stumped.

Xiang Lingna's gaze swept across the wrecked control room and finally landed on an unassuming square metal box half-buried in rubble in a corner of the wall. A faded universal data-interface marking was on its surface. "That! The emergency data reader!" She remembered Brother Lin Mo mentioning that old-world shelters usually came equipped with this kind of independently powered portable device for core data backup transfers.

The two of them worked together to clear the rubble and dragged the heavy metal box out. The box's surface was covered in scratches and dents, but the interface portion was still intact. Wrench tried to align the removed hard-drive module with the interface slot.

Click.

With a soft sound, the module slid perfectly into the interface.

Hum—

A low operating hum came from inside the metal box, and several indicator lights on its side actually lit up with a faint green glow! A palm-sized folding screen slowly rose from the top of the box, unfolding automatically and emitting a soft white backlight. The screen lit up—no complex operating-system interface, just an extremely simple progress bar: 【Reading core backup data... 1%...】

"It worked!" Wrench pumped his fist excitedly.

Xiang Lingna held her breath, staring tensely at the slowly advancing progress bar. A few minutes later, the bar reached 100%. The screen flickered and displayed a simple text interface, titled: 【Shelter 07—Final Incident Log & Associated Files (Encrypted Fragments)】

With trembling fingers (avoiding the searing brand on her right arm), Xiang Lingna tapped open the log.

The log content was fragmented, riddled with garbled text and missing fields—clearly a partially recovered remnant of the original:

**【Log Date: ███-██-██ (Unparseable)】**

**【Recorder: Overseer Proxy—Cain】**

*... Year ██ after the 'Great Collapse'... surface radiation values continuing to rise abnormally... unknown spore cloud (codename 'Withering Dust') beginning to spread... contact subjects undergoing horrific mutation... plants twisting wildly... we call it 'Corruption'... *

*... communications completely cut off... lost contact with other shelters... origin of 'Withering Dust' unknown... suspected non-natural... *

*... Team ███ went out to scavenge supplies... brought back critical intel... they discovered at coordinate area ███ in the northwest (coordinate data partially damaged: N40°██'██"/W██°██'██")... a marauder legion calling itself 'Blood Claw'... massive in scale... well-equipped... behavior... extremely abnormal... *

*... Blood Claw... not just raiding... they seem to be... systematically collecting some kind of 'samples'... (data missing)... one of our recon squads was captured... last encrypted footage they sent back... (video file lost)... showed at the center of the Blood Claw camp... a... dark purple... egg-shaped structure... emanating... energy fluctuations... of the same origin as 'Withering Dust'... but more refined... *

*... Blood Claw leader... known as 'The Butcher'... in the footage... he held a... power axe wreathed in dark purple energy... conducting... a... Sacrifice ritual... the offering was... an elf? No... footage too blurry... (data missing)... the ritual pointed toward... that egg-shaped structure... *

*... most critical discovery... Team ███ found on the outskirts of the Blood Claw camp... the remains of a small settlement that had been slaughtered to the last... survivors nearly all butchered... among items left at the scene... a bloodstained... child's identity tag engraved with '07'... (attachment: tag scan image)... after cross-referencing the database... this tag belongs to... shelter resident 'Ai Li · ███''s younger sister... 'Lingna · ███'... (Lingna? Lingna!)... Ai Li's squad went missing ██ months ago while on the 'Dawn Plan' mission... *

*... Inference: the Blood Claw legion has a direct connection to the source of 'Withering Dust' Corruption! 'The Butcher' and his core members... may already be Corruption-controlled or in deep collaboration! Ai Li's squad going missing... Lingna's settlement being slaughtered by Blood Claw... are not coincidences! *

*... the egg-shaped structure at coordinate area ███... is very likely a secondary node or cultivation facility for the Corruption source! Must... warn... (data severely damaged)... *

*... shelter main energy core... suffered remote intrusion by unknown energy (signature code: Annihilation)... corrupting rapidly... Final Bastion Protocol... activated... log... terminated... may... the spark... never die... Cain... out...】*

The log ended abruptly there.

Xiang Lingna stood rooted to the spot as if struck by lightning, her mind a blank. The tag scan image on the screen, though blurry, matched the one she held in her arms exactly! Sister... Ai Li? That Sister Ai Li who guarded Hope Bastion like a lone wolf in the wasteland, bearing the blood feud of her slaughtered clan—was her own elder sister? And her settlement had been slaughtered by Blood Claw... she was the sole survivor? Found by her sister, only to be separated again in the disaster?

The massive informational shock left her ice-cold all over. Fragments of lost memory churned in her mind like sharp glass, bringing wave after wave of stabbing pain. Blurry images flashed past—a warm campfire, a blurry but gentle female figure (Mother?), the stubborn profile of young Sister Ai Li, then the shrill alarms, explosions, firelight, savage faces, the cold touch of metal (an identity tag pressed into her hand), being shoved into a dark ventilation shaft...

"Ah!" Xiang Lingna clutched her head in agony, tears spilling uncontrollably. So the past she had forgotten was this bloody and desperate! So she and Sister Ai Li both bore the same blood feud! And behind the enemy Blood Claw stood Corruption Claw and the Doctor! They collected samples, built egg-shaped structures... to cultivate Corruption? Or to perform some terrible ritual?

"Kid... you... you okay?" Wrench watched her pale face and agonized expression with concern.

"I... I'm fine..." Xiang Lingna took several deep breaths, forcibly suppressing the surging emotions, though her gaze turned colder and more determined than ever. "Wrench, the coordinates! The coordinates of the Blood Claw camp and that egg-shaped structure mentioned in the log! Part of the data's damaged, but there has to be a way to reconstruct it!"

She looked at the screen again and tapped open the 【Associated Files (Encrypted Fragments)】 mentioned at the end of the log. Inside was only one document: "Preliminary Analysis Report on 'Withering Dust' Spores and Corruption Energy (Remnant Pages)."

The report content was even more fragmented, but several key points leapt out:

*... spore structure... contains highly ordered fragments of Annihilation origin... non-natural generation... suspected artificial 'seeding'... *

*... Corruption energy (provisional name: Annihilation Decay)... possesses extreme erosiveness, psychic contamination, and spatial permeability... has disintegrating effects on living organisms, mechanical constructs, energy fields, and even spatial structures... *

*... its core characteristics... share a 97.8% similarity with the unknown cosmic spores (codename: X-Abyss) collected ███ years ago by the 'Deep Space Exploration Plan' at the edge of the 'Emerald Nebula'... but X-Abyss spores are in an inert sealed state... (data missing)... *

*... Inference: 'Withering Dust' is very likely an activated, weaponized version of X-Abyss spores... its spread... is a... premeditated... planar-level bioweapon attack!... behind-the-scenes entity (codename: 'The Sower')... purpose unknown... ultimate threat level: extinction-level... *

*... Blood Claw legion... suspected to be 'The Sower's' surface proxy executors... objective: collect high-adaptability life samples (for spore hosts?)... establish secondary Corruption nodes (egg-shaped structures)... accelerate the Corruption process... ultimately... (data completely destroyed)... *

"'The Sower'... planar-level bioweapon... proxy executors..." Xiang Lingna murmured to herself, a chill rushing from her feet to the top of her head. The Doctor... Corruption Claw... could they be just a part of this terrifying "Sower"? Blood Claw slaughtering her home, collecting samples, building nodes—all executing this extinction plan? Then Brother Lin Mo being imprisoned in Corruption Claw's furnace... could that also be part of the plan? Used to cultivate some even more terrifying "sample"?

"Kid... we seem to have... poked a hornet's nest like no other..." Wrench stared at the report, his beady eyes filled with unprecedented fear.

Just then!

Wooooo—woooooo—woooooo—

A shrill, air-raid-siren-like wail, without any warning, came piercing through thick metal and concrete from above them, from outside the entire rubble pile, and erupted suddenly! The sound drew closer, growing denser, louder! Full of warning and despair!

At the same time, the claw-mark brand on Xiang Lingna's right arm suddenly sent a spike of searing pain! An icy, violent thought carrying an aura of destruction crashed in like a tsunami! No longer the Doctor's cold calculation, but pure destructive madness!

"Warning!... detected... massive... Corruption beast swarm... energy signature... approaching... bearing... directly above... number... incalculable... threat level... annihilation-class..."

The console screen, amid the alarm, stubbornly flickered a few more times, spitting out one last line of broken text before finally dying into dead, silent darkness.

The alarm above sounded like a death knell, pounding relentlessly. Dull thuds and teeth-grating scraping sounds came through the thick metal ceiling, as if countless massive, heavy, malicious creatures were frantically digging and slamming into the rubble pile above the shelter's remains!

The entire space shook violently! Dust and gravel rained down like a storm!

The Doctor's counterattack had come! Not in person, but—driving the endless tide of monsters across this corrupted wasteland, to bury them along with this shelter that now knew the secret, once and for all!