Chapter 71: Blazing Blood: The Doomsday Escape from the Underground City

The first wave of tremor flipped the console.

Metal shards scraped the floor, a sharp screech nearly piercing the eardrums. The whole laboratory shuddered, emitting a strained groan; ceiling dust fell in a rustle, followed by large chunks peeling away.

Zhang Jun lay on the ground, his right hand gripping the Heavenly Sword tightly, the blade humming incessantly, his left hand shielding the back of his head. A ruptured pipe spewed viscous purple liquid, winding its way across the trembling floor.

"System… collapse… dimensional gate… closing… energy core… unstable…" the battered broadcast speaker crackled with intermittent synthetic voice, "… evacuate immediately…"

Zhang Jun jerked his head up, his gaze cutting through the swirling smoke. A twisted metal beam crashed down with a roar, landing squarely on the spot where Lin Zhen had just stood.

The person was gone.

That mongrel ran faster than a rabbit. Only the console's wildly flashing red warning lights remained.

The suspended incubator chamber cracked repeatedly amid violent shaking, its liquid seeping out in a gurgle.

"Xue'er!"

He struggled to rise, his bones feeling as if they were falling apart, wounds torn with a stabbing pain. He couldn't bother with that, stumbling toward the incubator.

The ground beneath his feet tilted and cracked, each step teetering on the brink of collapse.

The communicator suddenly emitted a harsh electric buzz, followed by Ke Long Wang Jun's voice: "Zhang Jun! The underground city is collapsing! The core energy detonated! Level‑2 shockwave incoming, at most forty minutes and this place will be completely buried!"

"Lin Xue is still in the incubator!" Zhang Jun shouted into the communicator, his voice nearly swallowed by the deafening collapse.

"I just received her signal! She's at Area A monitoring center!"

Zhang Jun's movement froze: "Impossible, she clearly—"

He suddenly looked up.

The silhouette inside the incubator began to blur, flickering a few times like a bad TV signal, then… with a poof, vanished into the air.

Holographic projection!

"Damn!" he hammered a fist into the nearby metal column, his knuckles throbbing, sticky blood oozing, "Lin Zhen, that son of a bitch!"

Got played again!

A more terrifying roar echoed from afar, massive ceiling slabs collapsed, snapping several support columns. The entire space began to tilt sharply.

"How do I get to Area A?" Zhang Jun spun toward the sole exit, the metal floor beneath him now a steep slope, slick enough that he nearly slipped.

"Turn right, main passage! But the situation over there is terrible!" Ke Long Wang Jun's voice trembled with unprecedented impatience, "Augmented humans are besieging the monitoring center; Lin Xue can't hold them alone!"

Zhang Jun's teeth chattered, and he charged into the dim corridor, brandishing the Heavenly Sword.

The purple dragon pattern on the blade emitted a faint glow, barely lighting the constantly collapsing path ahead.

The walls on both sides split open with huge gaps, shards of stone clattering down.

Lin Zhen's words, "You are my creation, my son," echoed in his mind like a cursed chant.

But damn it, there's no time to think about that now!

Lin Xue is in danger.

That's what matters most.

——

Area A, monitoring center.

The heavy blast door was deformed by the energy cannon, its edges melting, twisted metal droplets streaming down.

Lin Xue leaned against the cold main console, ice crystal armor covering her body, silver patterns crawling across her pale cheek, nearly reaching her eyes.

Scattered on the ground were the wreckage of seven or eight augmented humans, purple oil seeping from the fractures.

"Seven shots left," she whispered into the communicator, her voice hoarse from exhaustion, "Outside there are at least thirty iron cans; the energy shield is about to give out."

Ke Long Wang Jun's voice came through: "Zhang Jun is on the way. I've found an evacuation route; the old maintenance tunnel leads to the surface, but I need time to activate it."

Another wave of violent shaking struck, the monitoring center lurched left, unsecured equipment slid with a clatter, crashing to the floor with a harsh screech.

Sweat beads formed at Lin Xue's temples, instantly frozen by Ice Soul Power into tiny ice crystals that fell with her slightest movement. The energy was nearly depleted, and fine cracks began to spider across the ice crystal armor.

Outside the door, heavy metal footsteps grew increasingly dense and orderly.

Click… click…

The augmented humans were gathering.

"They're about to launch a full assault." Lin Xue clenched the ice crystal spear in her hand, its blade flashing coldly, "How much time left on the timer?"

"23 minutes." Ke Long Wang Jun replied, "The maintenance tunnel entrance is three hundred meters northwest of you; I'll meet you there."

The tremor grew fiercer. Large sections of ceiling peeled away, exposing tangled conduits that spattered dangerous electric sparks. Lin Xue had to scramble clumsily, shifting position to avoid falling concrete chunks.

At that moment—

Boom!

The blast door was blown apart!

Blinding white light and thick smoke surged in, a dozen black silhouettes streaming in like fish. The purple sensor flickered amid the dust, and the mechanical arms had morphed into various snarling weapons.

Lin Xue's chest rose rapidly, Ice Soul Power raging. She clasped both hands and thrust forward forcefully.

A semi‑transparent ice barrier sprang up from the ground, temporarily halting the augmented humans' advance.

"We can't hold out long," she muttered softly, her voice laced with fatigue, "These iron cans are tougher than the previous ones."

Web‑like cracks spread rapidly across the ice wall.

Just as the ice wall was about to shatter—

The wall on the other side of the monitoring center burst open with a boom!

Through the swirling dust, a figure rushed out.

The purple light of the Heavenly Sword tore through the darkness, emitting a sharp whine, cleanly severing the neck connections of two augmented humans.

"Xue'er!"

That familiar voice instantly relaxed Lin Xue's nearly snapped nerves.

Zhang Jun!

He stood there, covered in blood, his battle uniform ragged, the wounds on his left shoulder and right leg still seeping blood, but his sword hand was steady, his eyes… no, his face still bore the old roguish air.

"You're late." Lin Xue tugged at the corner of her mouth, showing an extremely faint smile, "And you look even worse than me."

"Damn, the entrance is blocked." Zhang Jun rushed a few steps to her side, his back pressed tightly against her, forming a defensive stance, "Where's the old man?"

"Three hundred meters northwest, the maintenance passage."

The ice wall shattered with a boom.

Modified humans surged in like a tide.

Zhang Jun and Lin Xue moved at the same time.

The fierce purple radiance of the Heaven-Man Sword and the bone-chilling cold of the ice-crystal spear intertwined, drawing a trajectory of death in the cramped space. Each strike was fast, precise, and brutal.

But there were too many modified humans.

The collapse of the underground city was still accelerating.

A more violent shockwave hit, the ground cracking open into huge fissures, bottomless. Several modified humans screamed as they fell in, but even more kept pouring in endlessly through the breach.

"Go!" Zhang Jun ran one modified human through with a sword, then grabbed Lin Xue's wrist with his other hand, "We can't hold out! If we don't leave now, we'll both die here!"

Taking cover from the next shockwave, the two rushed out through a breach on the side of the monitoring center.