Chapter 2346: S-Rank Guide Forced Love 31

"Damn!" Ma Wen slammed the communicator hard, "The signal's cut off!"

"Stay calm!" Lu Wen shouted sternly.

You Zan stood in place, his breathing slightly shallow.

His senses were much sharper than others'.

He could hear the scuttling of aberrations deep in the black mist, and smell the increasingly heavy stench of decay in the air.

They were trapped.

Temporary command camp.

"Report! The vanguard team's signal is gone; last located in the outskirts of the core!" the communications soldier's voice trembled.

Raymond slammed his fist on the console, his face ashen, "Damn it! That place is the ruins of the old mine's pollution treatment plant."

The pollution source affects sentries more severely than the aberrations.

"Form a rescue team immediately!" Raymond ordered, and the tent flap was lifted.

A cold voice cut him off.

"No need."

Jin Chen had somehow already stood at the entrance of the command room.

"The pollution source erupted, forming a natural shielding field."

"Continue with the original plan, advance the main forces while avoiding aberration gathering points."

"What about the vanguard team?" Ye Jun stepped forward.

He had become deeply bound to Lu Wen; if Lu Wen died, as his guide, he would suffer for the rest of his life.

"I'll go." Jin Chen said simply.

Raymond jumped up, "Are you crazy?! You're a guide! The contamination zone is full of aberrations—going in there is basically sending……"

His words trailed off as he realized Jin Chen wasn't an ordinary guide; this dissuasion wouldn't work on him either.

"Continue on the original route." Jin Chen walked toward the exit without looking back, "I'm going to find someone."

Ye Jun instinctively took two steps after him, "I'll go with you!"

Jin Chen glanced sideways, "If you come, you'll just hold me back."

Only a lunatic would let the protagonist suffer and cause trouble in the past.

Ye Jun froze in place.

Jin Chen ignored him further and pushed the door open to leave.

【Zero Egg.】

【Main God locked on! Host, charge!】

You Zan's breathing grew heavier and heavier in the black mist.

The seven vanguard team members stood back-to-back in a circle, wary of any movement around them.

"I suggest we wait here for reinforcements!" Dick said.

"Screw waiting!" Barry snarled, "The contamination zone corrodes mental barriers—the longer we stay, the more dangerous it gets!"

Lu Wen said nothing, his gaze sweeping obscurely over You Zan.

An opportunity arrived.

You Zan looked toward the direction they had come from……if his perception wasn't wrong.

I hope Jin Chen doesn't come here; it's very dangerous.

But he felt the white wolf's comfort; the white wolf told him Jin Chen was already heading this way.

You Zan clenched his fists.

Jin Chen shouldn't have come.

The moment Jin Chen stepped into the black mist, his mental barrier unfolded automatically, shutting out the pollution.

Behind him, several black shadows followed silently.

They were the mercenary sentry squad secretly arranged by Hicks, best suited for resource prospecting.

They belonged to no tower, loyal only to him.

"Split up to enter the core; leave three people to find the vanguard team."

The mercenary sentries nodded and quickly dispersed into the black mist.

Jin Chen proceeded alone, able to sense You Zan's mental fluctuations.

Chaotic, tense, yet still lively.

He narrowed his eyes slightly, his mental power spreading silently like a spider's web.

——

Under the double onslaught of a flood of aberrations and the pollution source eruption, the formation that had barely been held together instantly collapsed.

The vanguard team was scattered, and its internal encrypted communications were completely cut off.

"Hold formation! Fall in on me!" Lu Wen's roar couldn't travel far in the silence.

The aberrations' hisses, metal scrapes, and companions' muffled groans came from all directions, only to be swiftly swallowed by the darkness.

The vanguard team was completely dispersed; each person now faced the abyss alone.

You Zan relied on the faint stability from his collar and beast-like intuition, wildly hacking away in the darkness.

Each strike brought up a stench of bloody gore and the dying wails of aberrations.

But the enemies in the darkness seemed endless.

Worse still, the whispers of mental pollution began to sound clear in his ears, incessant, trying to awaken the dormant infection within him.

The black swamp cat let out a sharp cry, which You Zan absorbed into his mental landscape.

Fortunately, there was still a white wolf in his mental landscape, so the black swamp cat wouldn't be devoured by the abyss, and he could barely keep his balance.

You Zan fought while retreating, trying to move back toward the direction he remembered coming from.

However, the terrain in the darkness became Distorted and unfamiliar, and the tug of war with the aberrant caused him to unknowingly drift into a deeper, more dangerous zone.

That was a ground fissure formed by the collapse of an old mine, deeper than a cliff, exuding a richer pollution.

At that moment, You Zan keenly detected an anomaly.

Behind him, besides the aberrant's howls, there were deliberately softened footsteps.

Those footsteps followed him closely when he moved, and silently concealed themselves when he stopped; they were human.

Get out!

You Zan whipped around, pointing his gun at the darkness behind him, his eyes cold with killing intent.

After a brief silence, Lu Wen slowly emerged from the shadows of the Distorted pipe.

Using the darkness, Lu Wen had dropped his earlier disguise, leaving only mad killing intent and ferocity.

He held a strangely shaped gun that flashed with an eerie green light.

You're really perceptive—you can even notice me.

Lu Wen said: "In the High Tower, there can be only one strongest sentinel! Now it's me, and in the future it will still be me!"

He licked his dry, cracked lips and said, "Lord Kai En is right—creatures like you, crawling back from the ruins, ought to be wiped out completely!"

"Just you?" You Zan sneered.

Even though his mental landscape was under violent contamination assault, and even though his body was fatigued from continuous combat, he didn't believe Lu Wen could kill him.

"With this!" Lu Wen suddenly pulled the trigger.

A silent beam of eerie green energy shot forth, swift as lightning.

This is a bullet specially developed to target infected sentinels; upon impact, it instantly detonates the residual contamination within the infected, causing their mental landscape to collapse completely.

In the nick of time, You Zan relied on combat instinct to roll sideways.

The energy beam grazed his shoulder plate and flew past, striking the aberrant that lunged at him from behind.

That aberrant let out a shrill, almost inhuman shriek, oozing thick black‑green pus, and within seconds turned into an unidentifiable, foul‑smelling slab of rotting flesh!

You Zan felt a chill run down his spine—what else was unclear?

Kai En really went all out to kill him.

"Die!" Lu Wen, seemingly mad, aimed again.

The battle erupted instantly.

The eerie green beams flashed intermittently in the darkness, each one a hair's breadth away.

You Zan's mental strength surpassed A‑rank, which also meant he had suffered more contamination.

Under multiple pressures, his mental barrier teetered on the brink, and even before his eyes, double images of hallucinations began to appear.

The black swamp cat writhed and howled in anguish within his mental landscape; Jin Chen wasn't by his side, the white wolf's soothing was limited, and You Zan refused to let it out to fight.

Even so, You Zan suppressed him with absolute strength, still not allowing Lu Wen any advantage.

Lu Wen's combat uniform was slit in several places, blood seeping out.

"Die!" Lu Wen seized the moment when You Zan's arm, grazed by the aberrant's claw, and slammed the gun barrel against it.

A fierce gleam flashed in You Zan's eyes—he did not retreat but advanced.

He bore the aberrant's blow head‑on, and also sought to snap Lu Wen's neck before he could fire.

In an instant, the distance between them shrank to the bare minimum.

At that very moment, deciding life and death.

"Awoo—"

A soul‑piercing, resonant wolf howl suddenly rang out in the core of You Zan's mental landscape.