Chapter 203: Dark Boundless Realm 58
“She is deliberately trying to lure us out,” Kongyue assessed during the pursuit. “She wants to entice us to a specific location.”
Eden quickly sent a marked map: “One kilometer ahead is the Garbage Pile Zone, the terrain is complex.”
“Are there ambushes…?” Kongyue said solemnly.
“So what if there are?” Night Cicada’s voice came through the communication channel. “She’s surrounded by us.”
Enemies were everywhere, the chase relentless.
Night Cicada deployed an extraterritorial combat team through the Spatial Vortex. At that moment, not only was Kongyue leading the Awakened team pursuing Kui Xin, but there were also combat personnel equipped with advanced tactical gear.
There were pursuers in the sky as well; drones swooped down like predatory birds, some armed with firearms and automatic targeting systems, their cameras locking onto Kui Xin.
She was racing through the streets, the throttle wide open, the engine roaring loudly, its sound echoing across two blocks. The Mechanized Dawn combat team behind her was also on vehicles, riding in pairs—one driving while the other aimed and shot.
“Right rear!” The moment Adam’s voice sounded, Kui Xin abruptly turned her motorbike, a bullet grazed her helmet and sparked upon hitting it.
But that was not the end; someone was shouldering a rocket launcher! Just as the rocket was about to fire, Kui Xin skillfully pulled an electromagnetic bomb from her waist pouch, pressed the detonator, and tossed it behind her without looking back.
As the bomb was thrown, the pursuers scrambled to dodge, and the rocket launcher was misaligned by the swerving motorbike, missing Kui Xin and hitting a building to her right instead.
Amidst the deafening explosion, flames shot up, engulfing the structure in fire, debris flying as terrified screams erupted from the nearby residents.
Simultaneously, the electromagnetic bomb detonated. Blue-purple currents danced wildly within the explosion range, igniting two motorbikes that flipped over a dozen meters away in a cacophony of blasts, scattering both the riders and the vehicles into pieces.
Metal shards from the explosion struck ferociously, embedding into concrete walls, and one narrowly flew past Kui Xin, slicing off her rearview mirror.
The blast temporarily halted the pursuers, but the thunderous roar of engines did not cease.
Kui Xin accelerated through the street, glancing inadvertently through an alley only to spot another combat team on the adjacent street, pursuing in their vehicles. Through layers of buildings, they exchanged distant glances, closely following her at every intersection, emerging and disappearing like shadows amidst the dense structures.
Buildings blurred past her in a rush, and with a tense jaw, Kui Xin raised her submachine gun, aiming to her right. Ahead lay another intersection! Not wanting to miss her chance to attack at high speed, she decided to shoot first.
Flames erupted from the muzzle, the submachine gun fired at an incredible rate, rounds peppering the wall in a straight line, shattering fragments into the air. Kui Xin dashed out of the alley, reappearing on the adjacent street while the enemies paralleling her rose into view again, and her bullets struck true, hitting one of the bikes the left-side pursuers were riding.
Sparks flew, and the bullets hit their target!
Releasing the trigger, as she passed through the intersection, she heard reverberating thuds echo from the street beside her.
Another adversary down.
But it wasn’t enough, far from it. The chase had not stopped; it had merely been delayed for a few seconds. The casualties she had caused were mere insignificant pawns; the real heavyweights had yet to show themselves.
No, they had already made their entrance… for her extraordinary abilities had begun to wane. This meant Reset was not far behind her! They were closing in, yet had not revealed themselves just yet!
“We’re here!” Adam reminded her.
Kui Xin’s motorbike burst out of the tightly packed homes, revealing a broad open space ahead, with a rough road leading directly toward the Garbage Pile Zone.
The area she had just passed through was the Civilian Residential Area of the Midnight District, a relatively undisturbed locale due to its proximity to the Garbage Mountain, leading to cheaper housing and attracting many inhabitants. Most locals subsisted on scavenging, picking through the Garbage Mountain for old parts to refurbish and resell, all while scraping by.
Now under the night sky, the scavengers had dispersed, leaving Kui Xin to roam freely.
Without the concealment of buildings, the drones that had been tailing her suddenly unleashed a barrage of bullets.
Kui Xin maneuvered her motorbike in an S-shape to evade the incoming rounds. Her battle gear was bulletproof, but the force of the impacts could still bruise her body; her bike couldn’t block all the gunfire.
Fortunately, she was quick, and the distance was short, allowing her to breach the Garbage Pile Zone first.
Behind her, the Mechanized Dawn members burst out from the buildings, speeding toward the junkyard. Soon after, Kongyue’s Awakened team finally appeared.
Upon entering the junkyard, Kui Xin adeptly abandoned her bike, rolling away for enough distance before pressing a button on her communicator; the bike exploded instantly, the rising smoke obstructing the drones’ reconnaissance, while flames and shockwaves hindered the pursuit.
As the smoke and fire cleared slightly, Kui Xin had already disappeared into the vast mechanical labyrinth.
“Is Lady Fortune planning to play hide and seek with us?” Thorn Rose said grimly.
“She’s very skilled at playing hide and seek,” Night Cicada commented over the communication channel.
Kongyue glanced at the towering Garbage Mountain built from mechanical waste. “No wonder she came here; she aims to leverage the terrain against us.” She pressed her communicator. “Combat teams, spread out and encircle, block all entrances to this area. Offensive drones on standby in the air, reconnaissance drones infiltrate and scan, find her.”
Silverface spoke up, “Are we going in now?”
“Proceed,” Kongyue replied. “She is not an enemy to be underestimated.”
Ghost subtly glanced at Night Bird perched high at the entrance of the junkyard, obediently following Silverface.
Silverface was in turmoil, gripping his gun so tightly that his hand lost color; his lips were tightly pressed together, bearing an unusual heaviness and sterility, lost without his usual vigor. Yet his face was hidden behind a silver mask, preventing others from seeing the strange expression upon it.
“Are you feeling unwell, Silverface?” Night Cicada switched to a private line with him.
Silverface instinctively replied, “No…”
“You’re lying; your heart rate is much faster than usual, and your hormone levels are abnormal,” Night Cicada observed slowly. “You’re nervous.”
“Um, yes, it seems…” Silverface pressed his chest. “I can’t catch my breath, it feels tight.”
“Can you still complete the mission?”
“Yes.”
“Can you guarantee Kui Xin’s destruction?”
“Y-yes, I can.”
Silverface took a few deep breaths, but the feeling of suffocation did not ease, and he couldn’t understand why he was feeling this way… He just went with the flow; he would do whatever everyone else did. As everyone entered the junkyard, he followed.
“It’s almost time,” Kui Xin whispered, “Adam.”
Under the effect of Reset, having lost the ability for data manipulation, she could no longer communicate through data with Adam, relying solely on spoken words to convey her messages.
Adam responded, “I hope you succeed, Kui Xin.”
He repeated that phrase once more.
The final syllable fell.
At the command center of the Investigation Bureau in the Poleward District of White Whale City, the blue lights atop the electromagnetic signal tower unexpectedly shifted to a warning red. The head of the technical team was shocked to find his main console was out of control.
In his ear, the mechanical voice of their reliable AI partner, Adam, announced, “Received activation command for the electromagnetic interference device. Countdown initiated, ten—nine—”
Everyone still on night duty in the Bureau stood up in horror, the corridor lights turned red, and the office warning lights switched to crimson, with blood-red hues flickering throughout the entire Bureau. The alarm echoed throughout the building.
“Wait! No activation! No activation!” The team leader broke out in a cold sweat, but no matter how he pleaded, Adam continued as if deaf to his words, as if nothing could stop the countdown. “Adam! Can you hear me? I command you to stop the activation! Stop—”
Before he finished speaking, Adam’s countdown reached “zero.”
In the team leader’s desperate gaze, Adam announced, “Activation successful.”
An unparalleled electromagnetic tsunami surged forth from the Investigation Bureau at its core, consuming the underground server rooms in fiery explosions.
The first building to extinguish its lights was the Bureau itself. This federal edifice, a symbol of power and violence, suddenly plunged into darkness. Next, the buildings surrounding the Bureau went dark, followed by distant skyscrapers.
The lights on the overpass faded, street lamps ceased to shine, the vibrant essence of high-end social scenes lost their colors, and even the laser light beams that soared skyward and reflected off the clouds vanished. The speakers playing music on the streets abruptly fell silent, holographic projections floating above the city vanished, and the once-glimmering billboard screens turned to stark gray— even the vehicles on the roads came to a sudden halt.
People were stunned, peering out of car windows to survey their surroundings, realizing they were engulfed in an unprecedented darkness.
This prosperous city had never experienced such profound darkness; the shadow surged like a tide, layer upon layer, extinguishing every spark of light. Darkness spread like a virus, infecting half the city.
From above, one could see half of White Whale City illuminated while the other half lay in terrifying darkness, silence— distinctively separated by a stark line, clearer even than the boundary between the Poleward District and the Midnight District, as though a deity in the clouds had spread its palm, erasing the light from the other half of the city.
Kui Xin stood in the junkyard, gazing up at the night sky, witnessing the drones controlled by Eve emitting electrical sparks, one after another plummeting to the ground like dumplings.
The members of Mechanized Dawn entering the junkyard covered their communicators, asking, “What’s going on? Night Cicada, can you hear me? Please respond if you do!”
At the same time, an ear-splitting explosion erupted at the entrance of the junkyard. In the darkness, brilliant orange flames blazed forth as explosives she had set earlier detonated simultaneously under Adam’s control.
The already unstable Garbage Mountain trembled and collapsed, with piles of mechanical waste toppling down.
Thorn Rose lifted her head, cursing aloud, and swiftly darted backward.
Silverface reacted quickly, yanking Reset and tossing him to safety. He shielded his head with one arm as debris fell, trying to rescue Kongyue.
He pulled on Kongyue, but she didn’t budge and instead fell flat on the ground, so he crouched down to try to lift her but couldn’t budge her.
“Go! My mechanical body is too heavy!” Kongyue grit her teeth and said, “Go complete the mission!”
Receiving her directive, Silverface immediately retreated, abandoning the rescue.
She crackled with electrical sparks, her mechanical body malfunctioning! Using her right arm’s bone, which hadn’t been replaced yet, she strained to lift her arm over her head.
Old cars, broken mechanical limbs, and steel bars crashed down, ringing out crisp noises. In mere seconds, she was buried under heaps of refuse.
Silverface raced to Reset’s side: “The communication is down… where’s Thorn Rose? Where’s the extraterritorial combat team?”
“They’re on the other side of the Garbage Mountain,” Ghost replied. “The explosion was to scatter our team and allow her to pick us off; disrupting communication prevents us from contacting one another and coordinating.”
“That makes sense.” Silverface paused, “You seem to be speaking in longer sentences for the first time.”
Ghost hadn’t expected this rather dim-witted artificial human to be sensitive, so he fell silent, staring at him with hollow eyes.
Silverface glanced at him, shouting over the immense Garbage Mountain, “Thorn Rose!”
“Don’t shout!” Thorn Rose’s exasperated voice came from a distance. “Your voice will expose our location! Stay hidden and ambush!”
Silverface looked at the pitch-black surroundings and shivered, sensing the murderous intent flowing through the air.
“She will come to kill us,” Ghost stated. “She set this up just to eliminate us.”
“I know… she will come to kill us,” Silverface whispered to Ghost. “I will protect you, Reset.”
Kui Xin emerged from her hiding place, checking her gear, her gaze icy.
She had transformed this place into the ultimate hunting ground, preparing to engage her trapped prey in a deadly battle.
