Chapter 105: The Whole Nation
—the battle on the defensive line was nearing its end.
With the command of the " " gone, the crystallized in had fallen into complete chaos.
They no longer had clear attack targets. Driven purely by instinct, they madly charged at anything that moved.
That made them far easier to deal with. Before the 's organized armored forces, the zombies fell like harvested straw, row after row.
"BOOM——!"
A ground over rubble on its treads, and a tongue of flame spat from its muzzle. A 125mm armor-piercing shell instantly punched through a crystallized " " that had just crawled out of the building ruins fifty meters away.
The sheer kinetic energy sent the entire ball of flesh, covered in blue crystals, flying, and it burst midair into a puff of glittering blue shards.
Up above, with no further need to worry about electromagnetic pulse threats, more than ten thousand " " laser drones now completely blanketed the sky over .
Slender laser beams poured down from that metal cloud, laying a dense, unbroken rain of death over the ground below.
On the ground, twelve 99A main battle tanks formed an unyielding mobile , steadily pushing forward.
Twenty-six infantry fighting vehicles swung around the flanks, their roof-mounted autocannons raking wildly, tearing apart any monster that tried to approach.
On the other side, 's had also arrived in time to provide support, completing their own breach into from the opposite flank.
The two forces, like a pair of slowly closing pincers, squeezed the remaining crystallized zombies into an ever-shrinking pocket.
"Squad One in position. Southern line cleared." 's steady, earnest voice came over the comm channel, declaring that the battle had fully entered its mop-up phase.
The crystallized that had once pushed , , and the others into bitter fighting was now pathetically fragile under nearly half the 's current firepower.
That extermination campaign lasted from early morning all the way to dusk.
was, after all, a fully developed urban area. Tens of thousands of crystallized zombies were scattered through every building, every alley, every underground space.
Even with the overwhelming firepower advantage of the drones and armored forces, searching and clearing each one was still an exhausting, time-consuming labor.
Of course, with no third-tier mutants taking part, the outcome of this battle had never been in doubt.
When the last sliver of the setting sun vanished beneath the horizon, the howling in finally died out completely.
***
Night fell.
, .
Because of the giant serpent's activity, nearly all the surface buildings here had been destroyed, leaving only ruins.
But in the darkness, the ruins possessed a strange beauty of their own. Fractured blue crystals refracted the light cast by the drones above, like a starry sky knocked over onto the ground.
stepped slowly across the rubble, the silver-gray " " power armor reflecting cold light in the night.
Ahead, dozens of " " drones hovered in midair, their beams of light turning the area bright as day.
Occasionally, a missed would burst out of the wreckage with a howl, but the next second, the soldiers in " " exoskeletons following behind riddled it with fire.
The fighting was basically over. Right now, 's objective was clear—the underground levels of the .
According to the scans from 's drones, there was a cavity down there. Probably the base those monsters had once used.
It was just that before 's could dig their way over, the creatures had chosen to cut and run first. Though in the end, they hadn't fully escaped anyway.
That actually made things a lot simpler. just needed to find the entrance from the surface... or blast one open.
"BOOM!"
With a thunderous roar, the concrete debris piled at the entrance was cleared away in a hurry, revealing a stairway leading underground.
Below the stairs stretched a metal corridor overgrown with blue crystals.
At the end of the corridor stood a metal door covered in clusters of crystals, with a sign reading " " hanging on it.
Behind the door was a vast underground laboratory, at least the size of two basketball courts by the look of it.
It was packed with precision equipment—operator consoles, culture dish racks, centrifuges, incubators—and although everything was coated in crystals, the structures remained largely intact.
What surprised most, though, was that the lights here were still on.
"There's power here?" muttered to himself, his tone confused and astonished.
[I scanned it. There's no external power source. Every cable just terminates in these crystals.] 's voice came from a that had followed him in.
"This stuff can generate electricity?" 's eyes went wide. He instinctively pried a fist-sized chunk of crystal off the wall.
It was a little heavy in the hand and hard to the touch, but he felt no electric shock.
[Who knows? The principle behind its energy conversion is already beyond my database.] said nonchalantly. He had long since grown completely used to phenomena that couldn't be explained. [ and and the others haven't managed to make head or tail of it either. All they know is that it appears to be a silicon-based structure with a high energy density.]
"I heard something about that unlucky couple from , didn't I?" thought for a moment, then asked idly. "I heard the guy is a little special?"
[After the left , over at the research center hasn't been able to hear the crystals' 'song' anymore,] said. [There must be a distance limit or some other condition attached.]
"Oh, I see." Having finished the gossip, turned and issued orders to his team. "All right, everyone. Follow the planned procedure—collect whatever experimental data is usable and take samples of the crystals here."
Two hours later, every sample, hard drive, and paper document that could be moved out of the underground laboratory had been packed up and hauled away one by one.
On top of that, they had also collected a large number of new crystal samples.
And the most incredible part was that the laboratory's old experimental records on those mysterious creatures had survived with barely any damage, almost all of them still intact.
But both , who was in charge of the search, and , watching from the side, sensed a kind of contempt.
As if they simply couldn't be bothered to care about this kind of "inferior" technical research.
had most likely felt that contempt too—which was why, once the tissue samples of various crystallized mutants, fragments of the 's shed skin, and the small number of tissue specimens torn from the 's body were delivered to her side—
this research fanatic had thrown herself entirely into the laboratory, clearly nursing a stubborn breath, determined to produce some results as quickly as possible. She was so absorbed that for the monthly summary meeting, she only sent two students from her team to attend.
***
Three days later, , underground conference room—the monthly summary meeting.
, , , , , , , ... aside from , all the core figures of the were gathered in one place.
On the main screen at the front of the room, a massive national map slowly unfolded, assembled from reconnaissance footage pieced together from 's drones.
And when the map's full scope was laid out before them, even though most had already anticipated something like this, the room filled with the sound of sharply drawn breath.
Across the entire nation, zombies ran rampant almost everywhere. There was not a single place of peace to be found.
The four provinces of the north were wholly engulfed by a darkness resembling an .
Within that , there was almost no city light at all—only the occasional earth-shaking, terrifying roar that announced the dangers lurking in the dark.
"What is that thing's sound?" asked. Her expression at that moment was far from pleasant.
[I don't know,] answered honestly. [When the drones turn on their lights, they attract attacks from monsters resembling enormous mutated dragonflies. I can't probe deep into it without any worries.]
The conference room fell silent once more. Everyone's gaze shifted from the north to the southeastern coast.
The situation there was just as horrifying. The coastline had pushed nearly a hundred kilometers inland.
The lowlands of three entire provinces had been swallowed by murky seawater. The once-prosperous cities were now nothing but the rooftops of skyscrapers, standing like gravestones in a limitless ocean.
"How is this possible..." murmured in awe.
In the footage, an unending storm shrouded the entire region.
In the sky, scarlet clouds never dispersed. Fierce lightning interlaced across heaven and earth. Occasionally, the shadows of impossibly huge beasts could even be seen flickering past deep within the sea of clouds.
had lost another " " trying to complete the preliminary survey of this area.
It had dropped out of contact without the slightest warning while attempting to cross the cloud layer. hadn't even detected where the attack came from.
And apart from these two extreme regions, while other places didn't have natural upheavals on such a grand scale, their situations were no less dire.
More than half of the nation's major cities were shrouded in pale fog, some thick, some thin. monitor readings spiked sharply in these areas, and in some places, the reading level even exceeded four.
In the southwest, over the city of , lost his third " " amid the dense red fog.
The final image the drone sent back was a boundless canyon whose surface heaved and writhed slowly, as though it were made of living flesh.
When all the footage had finished playing, a long, dead silence settled over the conference room.
A suffocating urgency, like an invisible hand, seized the throat of everyone present.
For the first time, they had seen so directly just what kind of hopeless world they were up against.
"We... we have to speed up construction and expansion!"
In the end, it was who broke the silence first.
He pointed at the densely marked regions on the map—areas had flagged with green dots as suspected of having survivor activity—and said excitedly:
"We can't just stand by and watch them get devoured by these monsters! We've got tanks, we've got drones—maybe we can send troops out directly!"
"And then what?" countered coolly. "Send troops where? The north? The southeast? Or the southwest?
How long could our armored forces hold out in the ? How far could our drones fly through the thunderstorm? How many minutes could we survive in a canyon of flesh?"
's words were like a basin of cold water, dousing the flame had just kindled.
"But..." tried to argue.
"No buts," cut him off, his gaze sweeping over everyone present. "Yes—having courage, wanting to save people, even daring to take risks, that was never wrong.
But we also have to consider the practical problems and take the wisest measures we can. We shouldn't hole up and defend ourselves, but we absolutely shouldn't charge ahead blindly either.
The enemy's strength is far beyond anything we can imagine.
The more times like this, the less we can afford to chase quick results." He stood up, walked to the screen, and pointed at the entire area of .
"In my view, our strategic priority at this stage should be to thoroughly cleanse and reclaim the whole of ."
He walked up to the map and drew circles around two cities within besides City, both of which were also shrouded in white fog.
"Besides in City, there are two more cities in where white fog has accumulated. The threat levels in those places are still unknown. We have to concentrate on dealing with them first.
Once is secured, we've built up a sufficiently complete rear base, and our population has grown further—only then should we think about reaching out to rescue others."
nodded in agreement. "I agree with Director Zhang. Moreover, there's an even more immediate problem right now—energy."
He looked up at the camera in the conference room and continued, "Mr. , if I remember correctly, the 's output should be close to full capacity by now, right?
If we want to support larger-scale industrial production and military operations, we're going to need more energy."
[As for the energy problem, there's no need to worry too much.] 's voice came through the main screen's speakers at just the right moment.
[According to the information in my database, , not far from us, has a standard national-level , and a bit farther away, has a uranium mine.]
[As long as we take control of those places and restore the fuel supply line, I can further unleash the 'potential' of the . The scale of our power generation won't be an issue.]
He paused for a moment.
[Of course, when the time comes, we may need some manpower to help with the hardware modifications.]
's words visibly relaxed the expressions of everyone in the room. Energy was the foundation that drove industry. As long as that didn't become a problem, they still had hope of rising again.
"So the primary direction of expansion next is the –Baishan line in the southwest, right?" said, looking up after finishing her notes.
nodded. "I agree!"
"No objections from me!"
"I agree too."
"..."
The others nodded in agreement one after another.
"Then... what about the survivors in other places? Are we just going to leave them to fend for themselves?" couldn't help asking, something nagging at his face. "They might not last until the day we're able to rescue them."
[I've already done something during reconnaissance.] 's voice rang out calmly.
[Using the high-speed mobility of the ' ,' I dropped large quantities of plastic cards over most of the areas suspected of having survivors during gaps in my patrols.]
[They're printed with the 's address and some brief route suggestions. If their situation is truly desperate, they can take the risk of retreating toward us.]
[But this is already the limit of what we can do right now.]
[When our strength is insufficient, any large-scale long-distance rescue operation could turn into a disaster.]
[On that point, I agree with —haste makes waste.]
was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. He knew this wasn't wrong.
[However,] shifted the subject, [just because the main force can't move rashly doesn't mean we can't send a small, elite force south to scout the route, gather survivors along the way, and further investigate the actual situation on the ground.]
"But from a risk standpoint," frowned. As an old soldier, he instinctively opposed this kind of high-risk operation. "A long-range mission that deep into unknown territory is almost the same as forming a suicide squad. That shouldn't be issued as a reasonable order."
"Right, so this naturally isn't an order."
A gentle yet firm voice rang out.
rose from his seat, swept his gaze over the assembled crowd, and wore his usual melancholy smile.
"I haven't received any orders."
He walked up to the enormous map, his gaze settling on the distant south—that land shrouded in flood and storm.
"I'm just... thinking of getting back into my old line of work."