Armed Train in the Apocalypse

The remnants retreated into the Four Countries Peninsula.

The train left half of its carriages behind to rest, and the rest drove deeper into the peninsula.

In February, under Chongying City, the Armed Train and Donghuang Heavy Industry met again.

Outside the city, endless anti-tank trenches and dragon’s-teeth concrete stakes formed a ferocious saw-toothed belt; in the windows of abandoned buildings, various probes were hidden; beneath the trenches lay deep, remotely detonated minefields.

Short, thick bunkers poured from concrete and composite armor sat among them, connected underground, forming overlapping fields of fire above.

But what drew the eye even more was the wilderness beyond the prepared battle zone, where tens of thousands of women and children waited in numb silence. Most of them were orphans left after the nations of the Sticks and the White Elephant were destroyed, with a small number of Chongying People and Donghuang People mixed in. They almost carpeted the whole wasteland, their number close to two hundred thousand!

And they were the first line of defense Chongying had laid down.

Whether it was the Armed Corps, the Heavy Armor Brigade, or the Donghuang People who had come along with the army seeking revenge, all fell silent at the sight of this formation.

Although since the apocalypse everyone’s hands were stained with blood, those who could stand here still held on to some of their own principles.

They were here to resist invaders, not to be invaders themselves.

To talk about morality in the apocalypse was laughable, but it was precisely this faint difference that had allowed them to hold out this long against the Four Nations’ invasion.

And now, what the Chongying People wanted to do was shatter this spirit of the Donghuang People!

The method was filthy and disgusting, but effective enough.

Mountain Goat’s face was grave as he asked, "Do we tell the conductor?"

He Jie shot him a glance. "Inform Donghuang Heavy Industry to attack according to plan."

Mountain Goat hesitated for a moment, then quickly went to relay the order.

The engines of the Armed Train roared, the tracks creaked and ground over the earth, shells were loaded, and the soldiers entered a state of war.

But on the other side, Donghuang Heavy Industry still showed no movement.

Before He Jie could give the order to ask, Lian Jin made a few long leaps and was suddenly standing on the train’s front, frowning. "What’s this, how are we supposed to deal with these old folks and kids?"

He Jie looked out at the wilderness before them. The old people and children hugged dirt and stones, building low walls in front of them and then sitting behind. The women held weapons in their hands, their eyes full of fear and hatred as they stared at them.

"All I see are enemies holding weapons!"

"That’s hundreds of thousands of them!"

Lian Jin irritably scratched at the scab on his chest wound.

He Jie turned his head toward him, eyes wide as he growled low, "Or what?! They’re the ones who started this war, so why the hell should I be the one to feel guilty! Have you forgotten our brothers hanging from the flagpoles?!"

Lian Jin snapped back, furious, "Why are you yelling at me? It’s not like I don’t get it. The point is, my men are all regular army—how the hell are they supposed to pull the trigger?"

Hundreds of thousands of old, weak, women, and children—this kind of debt could crush an entire unit!

The apocalypse only changed the overall environment; it didn’t instantly make everyone cold-blooded and heartless, cruel and ruthless.

Especially in a special collective like this one, where it had taken a huge amount of time and countless honors to lock them in one shackle after another, to forge one suit of armor after another—what they were being asked to do now was no different from completely smashing their convictions!

Once that was broken, there really would be no going back.

He Jie took a step forward, staring straight into his eyes. "Then you tell me, now that we’ve come this far, are we supposed to turn back?"

"There’s no way we can retreat, but..."

"If you guys can’t do it, then I’ll go first."

"Liang Kuan!"

The burly man holding a shield appeared silently on the train’s front, as quiet as a mountain.

Lian Jin instinctively wanted to look for his big sister, but then he remembered what she’d told him when she’d been badly wounded before. The struggle in his eyes gradually turned to ice.

A war of national annihilation and genocide wasn’t child’s play; someone had to shoulder this debt!

Lian Jin clenched his teeth and let out a vicious grin. "You looking down on me? I’ll take the vanguard for this fight!"

"Snap."

A crisp sound rang out.

A wave of heart-clenching dread suddenly rose in everyone’s chest.

The few Tier Two Evolvers instantly showed shock in their eyes, subconsciously turning toward the direction where the danger had appeared.

It was coming from inside Chongying’s city!

A familiar white light suddenly appeared on the ground, rising slowly like a rocket, then sweeping across the land with violent Pan Energy fluctuations.

The Chongying People in the city raised their heads as if seeing an old friend they’d only ever read about in history books.

Those few mild wounds, repeated endlessly in retellings, had become a kind of national PTSD.

At the moment the explosion began, the Tier Two Evolvers in the city felt the danger and bolted madly for the outside, but even the fastest Tier Two "Defender" couldn’t outrun the spreading speed of the white light.

Even as they ran until blood sprayed from their mouths and noses, their muscles snapping and dissolving, they still couldn’t escape this absolute crushing.

This was the gap brought by difference in tier.

Struggle was meaningless.

Whether it was the painstakingly built concrete pillboxes or the crowds of people, they were erased like pencil sketches under a rapidly moving eraser.

Huge blank patches appeared in the world.

And the old, weak, women, and children that He Jie and the others had been agonizing over were also cleared away like NPCs in a game with one keystroke—no pain, no struggle.

They didn’t even know what had happened; they just died in the rippling white light. Flesh melted away at high speed, their skeletons turned into brittle biscuits and then into even finer ash, yet not even the Tier Two Evolvers like He Jie could clearly see the process.

Their brains buzzed with the resonance of the blast, leaving them incapable of thought. Everyone stood frozen in place like dolls.

Only two figures were unaffected, appearing one behind the other on the train’s front.

The one in front wore a black shirt, long hair and narrow eyes; the one behind wore a great fur coat, graceful and imposing.

The scorching gale, heavy with the metallic stench of blood, swept toward them, but just as it reached them it stopped dead, blocked by a curtain of wind.

Su Huan turned his head, smiling. "I was in the car listening to you lot dithering over a little thing like this. You could’ve just called me out from the start. All right, you clean up the battlefield; I’ll go take a walk inside."

Only then did Lian Jin and the others snap out of it, their gazes trembling as they looked at the tall figure before them.

He Jie felt something inexplicable stuck in his throat, his whole body trembling. "Conductor..."

Su Huan waved his hand casually, then tore open the wind curtain. In a flicker of electric light he was already inside Chongying’s city.

Only the figure wrapped in the great fur coat could keep up with his pace.

Once they’d gone some distance, Lord Lian asked softly, "After killing so many people, you don’t have nightmares?"

"Mm-hmm-hmm..."

Su Huan let out an ambiguous little trill.

Hands in his pockets, he strolled through the lingering shockwave of the explosion. With every step he easily crossed dozens of meters, like the legendary Shrinking Ground into Inches. Even Lord Lian had to keep leaping to stay with him.

There was almost nothing left in the very center of the city; under the power of Fusion, no material could survive.

Walking over a ground like molten lava, feeling the fierce wind slicing past his ears, Lord Lian understood better than anyone how powerful this explosion had been.

If she had been standing at the exact center, she probably would have been seriously injured on the spot.

An injury worse than losing her heart.

Provided, of course, that this was the maximum power Su Huan could unleash.

But was that possible?

Thinking of those two battles, of how he’d easily toyed with her in the art she prided herself most on—hand-to-hand combat—Lord Lian felt a trace of despair.

Lost in thought, the two of them had already crossed the ruined city. Behind it lay a small lake, though its surface sat about a hundred meters lower than the city, making it look at first glance like a deep pool.

The city had been built right on the lake’s edge.

Jagged rocks surrounded the little lake; some were so smooth they looked as if they’d been often caressed, their surfaces polished to a soft luster. The lake water itself was an eerie pale black, flowing along the river behind it and eventually into the sea.

This was already the deepest part of the Four Countries Peninsula, only a hundred kilometers from the coast.

The previous explosion had of course swept over this place. The black surface of the lake heaved and churned, waves of stench rolling upward, but what was even more shocking was the heaps of bones piled like mountains along the shore.

And the layers upon layers of cages, and the bloodstained stone platforms built around the lake like some kind of altar!

From inside the cages, pairs of rotting, decayed eyes stared fixedly at the two of them.

This was clearly a human slaughterhouse!

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