Chapter 640: Little Animals Have Arrived

It was dark, damp, and abandoned, with a musty, rotting smell pervading everything. The air felt like a kind of dirty, heavy "colloid," a viscous substance settling at the bottom of this forgotten abyss. Industrial exhaust from the stacked city-factories above, toxic gases seeping from abandoned mine tunnels below, and the "corrupting psionic energy" released by the planet itself as its veins dried up—all of this accumulated at the city's lowest levels, eventually turning this place into a... heterogeneous zone.

It wasn't an alien realm, but in a way, it was just as dangerous.

No matter how you looked at it, the bottom layers of the Gray Dwarf's cities were no longer habitable. As Luo led her personal guard through the decaying, dark streets, she sometimes wondered if the "bottom-dwellers" mentioned in reports really existed. But her guard captain told her that people did live on this level.

The "abandoned ones" cast out by the Great Wall, the wanderers and scavengers who couldn't make it upstairs, and the criminals sentenced to "ultimate punishment" by gangs or local warlords—they would sink layer by layer through the walled city, finally reaching this dark district to become its "residents."

Most of them gathered near abandoned drilling rigs or ancient factories, living in shopping malls and apartment buildings that looked like ruins. They used scrap furnaces for power or stole electricity from the floors above. They hunted in waste rivers or cave zones, occasionally raiding the biotech farms or automated factories on higher levels. Some people living in the lower levels of the Great Wall told stories of what happened in the "Abandoned District" with superstitious, horror-filled tales, describing attacks from the darkness as invasions from alien realms—after all, they'd never seen a real alien realm or entity.

Luo looked up at the sky shrouded in thick, dusty fog. From here, she could no longer see the "Great Walls" formed by the towering buildings, but she could see countless overlapping shadows and the crisscrossing pipes and beams in the air. Occasionally, something falling from the upper levels would break the distant silence, crashing loudly between the buildings—an invaluable treasure for the "residents" of this level.

The Restoration Knights formed by the planet's native population and their little court in a cage were still deeper down, in the underground cities and mines.

Luo couldn't help but make a connection in her mind: she felt that the entire Gray Dwarf was a dirty, deep sea, and the giant cities on its surface were corpses rotting and crumbling. Nutrients fell from the top to the ocean floor, and deep below, no matter how dark, life still found a way to survive. But the deep sea itself was rotting; it seemed to have died long ago, yet somehow it could keep rotting forever.

The entire Dark Flow Starfield was trapped in this cycle.

"They won't come near this place," the guard captain's voice came from the darkness. "The impact of the shuttle crash and the sound of the recent fighting can travel far. Anyone with any sense would get far away immediately—and this level isn't without order. Some gangs have connections even here. Many of the scavengers and exiles in the bottom district are their informants, and they'll do their best to avoid getting caught up in warlord conflicts... especially a 'Black Dot Warlord' like this."

Luo nodded and led the soldiers deeper. Occasionally, she would see a light at the edge of the district—it could be a tactical squad, or an ancient lighting fixture still working in the abandoned area, or even some "locals" bold enough to come out and check things. In this darkness, chaos was breaking the long-standing dead silence.

She casually stuck a cardboard card painted with a triangular emblem onto a nearby wall.

From a distance came faint screams and the sound of gunfire. A flash of fire flickered at a street corner, and a faint scent of blood drifted in the air—but in this place, filled with all kinds of pungent smells, the smell of blood was hard to distinguish.

The surface of the cardboard card seeped blood, quickly merging into the wall. The sound of flesh growing became clear in the darkness, and blood vessels and nerves began to appear on the wall, gradually forming the outline of a door.

At almost the same time, Luo's spiritual intuition was triggered. Her heart tightened, and the living metal on her back and her artificial spine began to prickle faintly.

"Old Joe is here..."

As if to prove her words, a rapid clatter of mechanical feet suddenly tore through the silence of the street. Several lights appeared in the ruins of nearby buildings. A flare shot into the sky, and in the brief light that descended, Luo and the soldiers' position was exposed.

"They're here!"

A tactical squad rushed out of the shadows of the buildings.

Luo and the soldiers ducked behind the nearest cover. The emergency shield device emitted a faint glow, illuminating their surroundings. They saw two more tactical squads appear from a nearby street corner, and several six-legged tactical walkers, shaped like giant insects, smashed through walls with heavy steps and strode into the street. The walkers' lights turned the area bright as day.

Several Black Dot soldiers on the opposite side opened fire, but the brief exchange quickly quieted down, as if it were just a test of pressure. Luo stared at the war machines from behind the shield. Electronic scans told her that Old Joe was inside one of the walkers—even in this situation, he still had to hide inside an iron shell surrounded by soldiers.

"Luo!" Old Joe's hoarse, unpleasant voice came from the walker's broadcast device. "I didn't want things to come to this—you should know, I'm not the type to kill everyone."

"Too bad that joke doesn't make me laugh anymore, Old Joe," Luo grinned and shouted back at him. "My sense of humor has gotten a lot better these days!"

The walker raised its gun barrel, its six feet scratching restlessly on the ground like a real insect. "You still have a chance. Listen, I just want the raw data from your Fissure Lab. I'll leave you the rest—your trade lines, factories, ports, and mining centers—they're all yours. You won't find a fairer deal than this, girl. Some experimental data that's useless to you now, in exchange for your safe departure. I can even still guarantee your return to the Company..."

Luo laughed, as if she had finally confirmed something, her voice full of delight. "Just as I thought. You were after the Zorda Blackstone test data from the very beginning. Everything else you offered was just a cover. Who's asking for this stuff? Definitely not an idiot like you—those 'trading partners' behind you? Those Hidden Society cultists?"

"That has nothing to do with—"

"It's because their rift device is about to f*cking collapse! Those dumbasses got the method wrong. The key irradiation parameters when they opened the rift were off!" Luo shouted happily. "A huge void big enough for an Angel to descend is about to tear open in the middle of the Dark Flow Starfield—they screwed up! Hahahaha... Old Joe! So you're screwed too! Pretty soon, a ton of people are going to want your head, and the Conglomerate won't let you off either—"

Old Joe suddenly fell silent. The words "Angel's descent" even stirred a bit of commotion among the clone soldiers.

Two seconds later, the gloomy, hoarse voice came from inside the large walker. "Looks like you can't leave here alive today."

A slender hand rose from behind the cover, flipping him off. "As if you were ever really going to let me go from the start."

"Blow her and that ridiculous cover to pieces."

The cold command came from the walker as it raised the grenade launcher mounted on the side of its gun platform. The other walkers and Black Dot soldiers also raised their guns and cannons instantly—a deafening roar erupted, and in an instant, they flattened the place where Luo and the guard soldiers were hiding.

But just then, another odd screech came from above, as if something was falling from high in the sky at great speed.

Some of the Black Dot soldiers who were busy pulling triggers heard the sound overhead, but before they could look up, a terrible wave of heat suddenly swept through the area!

Fire, fire everywhere. Incendiary bombs descended from nowhere, blanketing the entire district like a storm of doom. A few unlucky soldiers took direct hits, their bodies covered in flames that couldn't be extinguished. The thin shields of standard light powered armor lacked sufficient heat resistance. After a few struggles, their protective layers were burned through, and they fell to the ground in agonizing screams.

The roar of exploding flames came from all directions. Soldiers scattered in panic. The sensors on the tactical walkers screamed in alarm. Commanders searched for the source of the attack, mingled with Old Joe's panicked shouts: "What's happening? Who—"

An especially massive fireball erupted from the middle of a Black Dot tactical squad. As the fire rapidly expanded, a figure stood atop the raging flames, her long hair flying wildly, laughing loudly: "Ahahaha... Want a match, sir! Want a match! Full price forty thousand, hahaha—Here come the matches!!"

The large tactical walker spun its gun barrels frantically, sending a dense barrage of bullets at the lunatic standing in the fire. But her figure turned into part of the flames almost instantly; the bullets only passed through her phantom.

New alarms rose in Old Joe's heart. Sensors detected another high-energy reaction rapidly approaching. He hurriedly turned the walker around, only to see a huge shadow charging straight at him through the sea of fire.

He fired a few shots in haste, but they hit a hazy protective aura. Then the shadow was right in front of him—an astonishing giant snake, over ten meters long, as tall as a three-story building when raised upright.

The upper half of the giant snake was a beautiful woman.

This snake-woman immediately lunged forward and hugged one of the walker's combat arms. Her terrifying demonic strength pushed the war machine back several meters. Then, amid a dreadful squealing and grinding, she began to slowly lift the heavy machine while laughing excitedly.

The walker struggled uselessly, and a frantic voice came from its speakers: "Who are you! Where the hell did you come from?!"

"It's the damn little animals from kindergarten!"

The Snake Princess shouted excitedly, lifted the tactical walker high, and slammed it viciously into the ground!