Chapter 427: Full‑Force Assault

Outside the Air-raid Shelter, the red mist had already risen to the knees.

Lu Yu, cradling Chen Yao, rolled out of the doorway, then without stopping, planted his left foot on a half‑broken wall, used the leverage to flip into the half‑collapsed drainage ditch beside it.

The two of them fell into the damp concrete trough.

Chen Yao's back struck the pipe wall, the pain snapping her shoulders and neck straight, yet not a single sound escaped her throat.

Lu Yu was even worse off than she was.

His back had been slit open by the edge of a lead door, blood streaming down his school uniform; the wound on his shoulder torn by a Reinforced Steel Bar hadn't stopped bleeding, his temple was also broken, half his face smeared with ash and blood, looking more absurd than someone who had just fled a slaughter line.

But his hand still gripped Chen Yao's wrist.

It didn't loosen.

Chen Yao looked down briefly.

That hand was steady.

The hand that had just dragged her running, flung her away from the Giant Saw Blade, and then pressed her beneath the lead sheet, was the same hand.

She had seen many people protect her.

People of Chen Shao would protect her airtight.

They would address her as "Miss", clear the neighborhood in advance, erase the danger, and then wipe the scene into an ordinary accident.

That kind of protection was clean, and cold.

Lu Yu was different.

He was almost a blood‑filled gourd himself, yet still used his body to clear a path for her.

It's sick.

Absurd.

Completely illogical in terms of profit.

Chen Yao lifted her eyes, looking at the boy blocking the mouth of the drainage ditch, for the first time not putting the words "benefit value" first.

A fine rustling came from within the red mist.

It wasn't the remnant body of Fang Ming that had been transformed by the Rules.

It was messier, more chaotic, like many pieces of wet flesh crawling along the ground.

Lu Yu half‑knelt at the ditch mouth, picking up the Reinforced Steel Bar he had casually grabbed from the ruins.

The bar was bent, its tip ground into a slanted edge, coated with gray‑green mycelium and dark red slime.

He whispered, "Stay behind me. Don't shake, don't cry, don't act like a TV drama heroine making trouble."

Chen Yao had originally intended to say she never cried.

When the words reached her lips, she changed tone, softened: "I'll listen to you."

Lu Yu turned his head and looked at her for half a second.

"Your reaction is quite startling. How come, have you had experience?"

Chen Yao lowered her lashes, her tone light and obedient: "I just want to live."

"Then that's good."

Lu Yu turned back.

The red mist was pushed aside.

When the first mutated creature crawled out, Chen Yao's stomach spasmed.

The thing barely retained a humanoid shape, its limbs bent backward on the joints, its back bulging with a dozen translucent pustules, inside which gray‑white insect shadows writhed.

It had no mouth; its throat was split by three horizontal fissures that opened and closed with each breath, exhaling a sour, foul heat.

The second one crawled down from the wall.

The third poked its head out above the drainage ditch.

They all smelled blood.

Lu Yu's blood.

"That guy clearly shouldn't know I exist… why does it still feel like I'm being maliciously targeted by some scheme?"

Lu Yu muttered a curse, then pressed his body against the ditch wall and scrambled forward.

At the instant the first mutated creature lunged down, he didn't retreat; instead he lowered his shoulder, slipped beneath its abdomen, drove the Reinforced Steel Bar through its mandibular cartilage, angling it to pierce the base of its skull.

The move was brutally clean.

The creature's limbs convulsed, the pustules on its back burst one after another, splashing a sickly yellow fluid onto the cement wall.

Lu Yu had already withdrawn from the spot.

The second one pounced from the left side.

He lifted his knee, striking the creature's forelimb off‑center, swung the Reinforced Steel Bar in a reverse arc, cracking its cervical joint, then used the bar's tip to press against its occiput and thrust it toward the wall.

Click!

The creature went limp.

Three seconds.

Two.

Chen Yao's pupils contracted.

This wasn't an ordinary student.

Ordinary people kill monsters with courage.

Lu Yu relied on habit.

His calculations of distance, weak points, and attack windows were so familiar, familiar to the point of cruelty.

The third mutated creature didn't rush to pounce; it lay atop a height, its back pustules swelling simultaneously, the insect shadows inside skittering against a thin membrane.

Lu Yu breathed heavily.

Blood dripped from his cuff, leaving intermittent red dots in the drainage ditch.

Lu Yu switched the steel bar to his left hand, pressing his right hand under his ribs.

There, the fabric had been sliced by shrapnel; his uniform was soaked through.

The third mutant suddenly sprang down.

Lu Yu did not meet it head-on.

He wedged the tip of the steel bar into a crack at the edge of the ditch, using the creature's momentum to let it slam into the sloped opening.

The steel bar pierced the throat and lodged in front of the spine.

The mutant was not yet dead; its limbs scrabbled, and pus sacs on its back bulged one after another.

"Close your eyes, cover your nose."

After saying that, Lu Yu lifted his foot and kicked the tip of the steel bar.

The sloped opening lifted upward.

The pus sacs ruptured together.

Yellow-white pus sprayed half the ditch, the wall paint corroded into black spots, a stinging smell flooded the nostrils, Chen Yao's eye sockets reddened, her stomach churned violently, yet she still covered her mouth and nose as he said, making no sound of dragging her feet.

When Lu Yu retreated, his steps staggered twice.

Chen Yao steadied him.

This time, Lu Yu did not shake her off.

His temperature was high; blood loss made his skin hot, his breath scraping his throat, hoarse and dry.

Chen Yao held his arm, her fingertips touching blood, and whispered: "Why did you save me?"

Lu Yu leaned against the wall, tilted his head to look at her: "What do you think?"

"You only act when there's profit; your outlook is as if you've been in too many capitalist meetings."

Chen Yao fell silent for a few seconds.

Then she tore a strip from her own sleeve and handed it over.

"Wrap it."

Lu Yu looked at that strip of cloth, then at her: "Just now you were playing the innocent bunny, now you're start raising affection points?"

Chen Yao pressed her lips: "You said if you want to live, don't cause trouble. You've lost too much blood; you'll die. I don't want you to die."

Upon saying that, she herself was stunned.

"I don't want you to die."

Four words, very light.

Yet it made the shell over her chest, uncracked for many years, appear a fine fissure.

Lu Yu did not take the cloth strip.

He braced the steel bar on the ground and stood up: "First leave this ditch. The red mist is rising; below will be flooded."

"Can you hold on?"

"Even if I can't, I must."

Chen Yao grabbed his shirt cuff.

This time it was not a pretense.

She stepped closer, voice low: "Lu Yu, take me out. As long as you can get me out, I can make many people owe you a favor."

Lu Yu snorted: "Pie in the sky?"

"Really."

"Then you owe me for now. After we get out, I want a hot meal, none of those conglomerate sets, something filling."

Chen Yao looked at his profile, then softly hummed.

"Okay."

Outside the B-09 isolation ruins.

Eighteen heavy plasma cannons formed an arc, their blue-white high-temperature beams intertwining into a net, continuously bombarding the deep red domain membrane.

The ground was baked white by the heat, soil vitrified, the special forces' protective masks full of scrolling data streams.

Yet that layer of domain membrane showed no fluctuation.

The cannon fire striking it was like throwing into a bottomless pit.

No rebound, no absorption reading, no thermal diffusion.

It swallowed humanity's most violent industrial output cleanly, without even bothering to give feedback.

Su Ming stood before the command vehicle, black combat suit over a tactical vest, the channel in his ear a chaotic market.

"Third round of firepower ineffective!"

"Drone swarm lost contact; three seconds after entering the domain membrane, signal drops to zero!"

"Life detection returns no echo, thermal imaging blank, even shouts are eaten!"

"Su Team, are there still survivors inside?"

As the last question was asked, the channel briefly stalled.

Su Ming gave no answer.

He stared at that mass of deep red.

Inside were thirty-two students.

And Chen Yao.

If Chen Yao dies inside, the pitifully thin rope between the Federation and Eden Garden will break on the spot.

Chen Shao won't listen to explanations.

That man, for his sister, could uproot the Zhao family and also pull half of the Federation's economic chain into the water as a sacrifice.

When that time comes, Gospel Church will stir up trouble outside, Fake Person will hide in the crowd gnawing on bones, and Eden Garden will overturn the table from within again.

In this situation, really, don't play any longer.

Su Ming raised his hand: "Ceasefire."

The gun barrels went out one by one.

The heat wave still rolled, and the Special Forces members looked at him through their masks.

Su Ming took a pair of custom-made gloves from the equipment crate.

The gloves' surface was covered with fine silver‑gray patterns, and three seal rings were embedded at the wrist.

This is a rule‑penetration device, codename "Door‑Seeker", specifically used to probe the weak points of the Weird Domain's boundaries.

The side effect is disgusting.

It treats the user's nerves as circuits, probing inward along the Domain Membrane rules.

The deeper it probes, the harsher the backlash.

Su Ming put on the gloves, pressing his fingertips onto the deep‑red Domain Membrane.

The next second.

All the silver‑gray patterns on the gloves lit up, then turned blood‑red within half a breath.

Su Ming's dorsal hand veins bulged, and it seemed as if insects were burrowing back beneath his skin.

He clenched his jaw, the wrist seal rings clicked in succession, and two of them shattered on the spot.

The nearby agent hurried, "Su Team, withdraw! The readings are over the limit!"

Su Ming did not withdraw.

He stared at the scrolling symbols on the gloves' feedback screen.

C-level residual domain revival?

Nonsense.

Even A Ji isn't this overbearing.

This thing is devouring the Devouring Rule.

The Door‑Seeker's penetration logic just made contact, and the opposite side bit it back along the same homogenous path.

A crack appeared in the third seal ring.

Su Ming finally stopped.

The glove's fingertips were already charred, the palm split open, blood flowing down his wrist. He tilted his head to spit out the froth in his mouth, his facial lines tightened coldly.

"Record."

The civilian agent beside him fumbled to start recording.

Su Ming spoke: "Re‑grade the B09 incident. Minimum A Ji. It possesses three characteristics: sealed space, communication isolation, and Devouring Rule penetration; a core living entity is suspected. Conventional firepower is ineffective; an ordinary counter‑deceiver entering would be a sitting duck."

The agent's Adam's apple bobbed, "The people inside..."

"We haven't reached the corpse‑collection stage yet, don't rush to cry."

Su Ming turned and looked toward the containment vehicle behind.

Three black heavy trucks were parked outside the warning line, their cargo shells engraved with seal symbols; twelve armed agents surrounded them, each bearing a custom weapon, and no one dared approach within three meters.

"Activate the backup plan."

The deputy officer was stunned, "You intend to use a high‑risk containment object?"

"Rule collision."

Su Ming tossed the damaged gloves into the isolation box, "Since it won't let us open the door, we'll find something with a worse temper to force the door open."

The deputy officer's face turned pale, "Su Team, specimen 31 hasn't been tamed yet; the last lab trial killed seven people, and the corpse fragments weren't even fully assembled."

"I'll keep an eye on it."

Su Ming looked at the Domain Membrane, his voice low, "Open the first‑layer seal, project its rules into it. As soon as a crack appears in the Domain Membrane, the rescue teams will enter in three waves. Remember, prioritize rescuing the students, then retrieve the living‑entity data. Chen Yao..."

He paused for half a beat.

"Chen Yao must come out alive."

The deputy officer sensed the weight behind the words and said nothing further.

The order was passed down, and the containment vehicle began unlocking.

A scraping metal sound emanated from inside the cargo compartment.

One burst.

Another burst.

Many veteran agents present felt a tingling on their backs.

Su Ming raised his hand, about to issue a strong‑attack command.

The space beside him sank without warning.

The air was compressed into a ring of black folds, then sliced a bottomless crack.

A massive Weird wave poured out from the crack, its cold triggering all instruments to alarm simultaneously.

The Special Forces' muzzles swiveled in unison.

At the other end of the crack, someone stepped out, walking on the shattered space.