Chapter 57: (6,000 Nutrient Solution Bonus Chapter)

The convoy had barely rolled out of Mount Dapan Base before the gunfire started, and it never stopped.

At noon they halted for ten minutes to let the soldiers off to relieve themselves, then it was back into the truck. Lunch was eaten onboard—one individual field ration per person.

After eating her fill, Xie Li leaned against the truck wall and dozed off. When she woke, the cycle repeated: eat, toilet, sleep. Round after round—tedious, sweltering, miserable.

They stopped and started along the deserted highways, bumping along for two days. On the evening of the third day, they finally crossed into Q City's territory.

Q City sat in mountainous country. It had once been lush and green everywhere; now the whole city lay barren and scorched black, as if a great fire had swept through it.

A report came through the tactical helmets from the lead scout vehicle: entered the target zone, zombie activity detected, moderate numbers.

"All personnel, prepare for combat." Fu Yunsheng's voice followed immediately.

Xie Li turned to look out the window. Masses of zombies began pouring from the shadows of the buildings.

They seemed faster than they'd been a few days ago. Some could even leap two or three meters into the air. The sight was deeply unnerving.

Gunfire rang out in a continuous stream. The zombies were gunned down one after another before they could even get close to the convoy.

Through the crashing waves of the horde, the convoy pushed steadily toward the logistics park.

During a magazine change, Xie Li turned to Tian Tiantian beside her. "Doesn't Q City have a military garrison base?"

"It does," Tian Tiantian said. "Word came from the Northern Base a few days ago. For some reason, the garrison here suddenly went silent, so the commander decided to bring people over to take a look."

"Hm? I thought communications were down?" Xie Li was even more puzzled.

"The Northern Base rushed out a batch of drones and re-established contact with all the major bases. That's what came through from their side—said there's still a large stockpile of supplies in the logistics park and told our commander to bring people over to haul it away," Tian Tiantian explained.

The convoy ground forward against the horde for about an hour before the outline of the logistics park emerged through the dusk.

Thousands of zombies were packed densely around the park's perimeter, their rotting bodies stacked layer upon layer, trampling and shoving one another, their snarls rising like a tsunami of sound. The mass of them stretched beyond sight—it made one's scalp crawl.

"All vehicle crews, large horde ahead. Deploy in combat formation. Priority: clear the park's main gate." Fu Yunsheng's voice came through the tactical helmets.

The convoy moved as ordered. Two main battle tanks rumbled out of the column, turrets swiveling, bearing down on the front. One shell blasted a gap straight through the horde.

A dozen armored vehicles formed a wedge, shielding the heavy trucks at its center. Engines growling low, the steel flood surged toward the tide of corpses.

"Want to experience the joy of a heavy machine gun?" Tian Tiantian winked at Xie Li, pulled her up through the roof hatch, and climbed into the heavy machine gun mount.

Xie Li didn't decline. She gripped the handles, looked at the tidal wave of corpses surging toward them, let out a soft breath, and pulled the trigger.

Heavy machine gun rounds screamed out, unstoppable, boring into the horde. The moment each round punched through, a whole line of zombie bodies was torn apart at the waist.

Xie Li leaned into the gun and swept it side to side. The bullet stream reaped back and forth through the horde; wherever the rounds fell, zombies dropped in swathes like harvested wheat.

Gaps were torn through the impenetrable mass, only to be filled the next second by the zombies surging up behind.

An ammo box was emptied in under a minute, Tian Tiantian swapping in fresh ones with quick, practiced hands beside her.

The heavy machine guns on the other armored vehicles roared in turn, tongues of flame weaving into a net against the dusk. Yet the moment the gunfire paused, swarms of zombies leapt from the ground and hurled themselves straight at the vehicles.

A mutated zombie shot out of the horde. Its body was withered to skin and bone, its skeleton jutting sharply beneath blackened, rotting flesh, its clawed fingers hooked like talons. In a single bound of three or four meters it lunged straight for Tian Tiantian.

"Look out!" Xie Li cried, both hands leaving the machine gun.

Her left hand slammed Tian Tiantian's head down while her right ripped the tactical dagger from her belt, slashing at the incoming claws.

Blade and bone claw crashed together in midair, spraying sparks. Checked for an instant by the blade, the mutated zombie snarled and wheeled, raking a backhanded claw across the armored vehicle's hull.

The thickened bulletproof armor was torn open by that single swipe.

Before the soldier inside could react, the claw thrust in through the crack, pierced her shoulder, and lifted her bodily out of her seat.

"Shoot that beast down." Tian Tiantian wrenched her head free from under Xie Li's hand, roaring as she raised her gun.

"Instructor, get back inside the truck!"

Dropping those words, Xie Li pushed off the hatch rim with both hands, vaulted onto the roof, sprinted two steps across it, raised her muzzle, and fired at the mutated zombie.

The mutated zombie dodged the rounds with a sidestep. It turned its head to glance at Xie Li, then abandoned the prey already in its grasp, yanked its claw out of the soldier's shoulder, and leapt back into the horde.

Xie Li tracked its landing spot and fired several more shots, but the thing was too fast. After a few reports, it vanished into the mass of corpses.

"Get back in the truck, Xie Li," Tian Tiantian called from inside.

Xie Li hugged her rifle and jumped back down into the cabin.

The cabin reeked of rust. The wounded soldier lay on the floor, her shoulder soaked through with blood that was already turning thick and black.

She blinked bloodshot eyes at the comrades crowded around her—some pressing on the wound, some digging for the first aid kit.

Everyone was trying, fighting to save her. But she knew no one could. A scratch from a mutated zombie outside the base was a death sentence.

With a bloodied hand, she fumbled the pistol from her belt, raised the muzzle, and aimed it at herself.

Xie Li stared at that blood-stained hand. They had been crammed together in this truck for two or three days, and they didn't even know each other's names.

And now she had to stand and watch this comrade—whose name she'd never had the chance to ask—pull the trigger on herself.

As a soldier, she would rather keep the last bullet for herself than become one of those monsters and turn her claws on the comrades who had fought beside her.

The mood in the cabin sank. Tian Tiantian patted Xie Li's shoulder. "Kid, don't space out. The battlefield doesn't give you time to daydream."

Xie Li nodded, pushed her muzzle out through the firing port, and shot into the black mass of corpses outside.

Fu Yunsheng's voice came through the helmets again: "All crews, a breach has been torn in the horde at the main gate. The whole column pushes into the logistics park. Hold formation, no falling behind, watch for mutated zombies in the horde."

The convoy rolled over the carpet of corpses and charged through the logistics park gates, the two main battle tanks falling in at the rear to bottle the pursuing horde outside.

Conditions inside the park were better than out there; the zombies weren't nearly as dense.

Scattered zombies burst from the warehouses, howling as they lunged at the convoy, and were cleared out with a round of aimed fire.

"Dismount. Clear the remaining zombies inside the park and search for supplies," Fu Yunsheng ordered.

Xie Li jumped down after Tian Tiantian and moved toward the nearest warehouse, gun raised.

The park was enormous. The soldiers split into teams and cleared it warehouse by warehouse in alternating cover. The entire night passed in the search.

By daybreak, the situation in the park had been roughly mapped.

The logistics park's stockpiles were rich. Several large warehouses were crammed with drinking water, rice and flour staples, and compressed rations, plus a batch of intact engineering equipment. Most of the parts needed for well drilling were found as well.

For Mount Dapan Base, all of this was nothing short of aid delivered in a snowstorm.

The soldiers also found a small group of survivors in the park, about twenty or thirty people, holed up in a warehouse full of supplies and living fairly comfortably.

From these survivors they learned that the Q City garrison base had run into trouble days ago—quite a few of them had heard the commotion.

After hearing the news Tian Tiantian brought back, Xie Li asked, "Are we still going to the Q City garrison base next?"

Tian Tiantian shook her head. "No idea. Depends on the commander's call. Probably yes—we need to resupply ammunition and fuel."

Xie Li didn't press further and turned her gaze back forward. She and Instructor Tian were on guard duty, guns in hand, covering the loading zone's entrances from left and right, while soldiers bustled behind them.

Crate after crate of supplies was passed hand to hand up into the heavy trucks. Under the blazing sun overhead, everyone was drenched in sweat.

The better part of a day passed before everything was loaded. The twenty-odd survivors were settled into one of the heavy trucks, squeezed in among the piles of supplies.

Fu Yunsheng gave the withdrawal order. The soldiers finished collecting zombie crystal cores, the convoy re-formed, rolled over the carpet of zombie remains, and burst out through the logistics park's rear gate.

Xie Li sat down against the truck wall, pulled a compressed biscuit from her tactical vest, and gnawed on it slowly with sips of mineral water.

After nearly a full day and night of work, the soldiers were dead on their feet. Tian Tiantian leaned against her, snoring thunderously. Xie Li herself didn't feel particularly tired—just hungry, craving hotpot, barbecue, fried chicken and burgers...

Finishing the biscuit, Xie Li stuffed the wrapper back into her pocket, hugged her gun, leaned against the wall, and dozed for a while.

When she woke again, it was the small hours of the night.

"Footage from the forward scout vehicle. All of you, take a look." Fu Yunsheng's voice came through the helmets, her tone uncharacteristically grave.

Xie Li opened her eyes and looked at the tactical screen in the cabin.

The image was live footage sent back from close range by the forward scouts. The lens trembled slightly, as if the person holding it couldn't stop shaking.

In the footage, the Q City garrison base was gone.

Every building in the base was sheathed in a layer of grayish-white matter, thick and dense, like plaster—or like some calcified secretion from a colossal organism—encasing every exterior wall.

"What is that? Are we being invaded by aliens?" someone in the cabin couldn't help whispering.

Xie Li stared at the screen. Her intuition screamed that this place was extremely dangerous, that they must not go near it.

The next second, Fu Yunsheng began calling the roll.

"Xie Li, Tian Tiantian, Yu Jing, Liang Hui..."

Name after name rolled off her tongue. "Everyone named, dismount and assemble."

Tian Tiantian wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, gave her cheeks a light pat, and the grogginess of fresh sleep vanished from her face in an instant.

She shoved Xie Li's back, pushing her toward the exit. "Move, off the truck. Stick close to me later."

With no choice, Xie Li hugged her gun and followed.

The stifling night wind hit them head-on, carrying an indescribable stench, like rotten egg white. One whiff and Xie Li's stomach flipped; she quickly pulled her mask up over her nose and mouth.

A dozen-odd people assembled in the night, every face drawn tight.

Fu Yunsheng stood fully armed beneath the command vehicle, a mask covering most of her face, revealing only a pair of eyes—eyes of unshakable resolve.

"We must find out exactly what happened inside the Q City garrison base. That is the only objective. All personnel, on my order—move out."

"Yes, ma'am!" they answered in unison.

Fu Yunsheng turned and strode toward the grayish-white zone.

In the night, the dozen of them advanced slowly in tactical formation. Xie Li kept to Tian Tiantian's side, her focus razor-sharp, her mental domain covering a ten-meter radius—no stir or movement could escape her senses.

Cutting through the base's blocked gates with tactical daggers, the group entered the compound.

Up close, Xie Li found that the grayish-white matter coating the buildings was full of holes, its inner structure honeycombed like a beehive, some of the holes still holding globs of sticky white mucus.

Her boot soles sank slightly into the gray-coated ground, like stepping on half-dried plaster, each step leaving a shallow dent.

Not even a hundred meters in, Xie Li felt something wrong.

The resistance underfoot was growing. She lifted one foot to check—her sole was already caked in a thick layer of white mucus, viscous as half-melted rubber.

"Don't fall behind." Tian Tiantian doubled back and pushed her forward by the shoulders.

Shoved along two steps, Xie Li lowered her voice. "Instructor, this stuff is sticky. Haven't you noticed?"

"Noticing doesn't mean we can turn back halfway." Tian Tiantian's reminder was resigned. "Remember: on a mission, never fall behind. Stay with the main group."

"Got it." Xie Li quickened her pace and closed up with the team.

The special ops team pushed onward, breaking through the gray matter coating the buildings and checking room by room, collecting usable ammunition along the way.

Inside the buildings everything was still in place, the traces of daily life obvious. The disaster had clearly come too suddenly for anyone to evacuate.

The strange thing was, there wasn't a single zombie in the base. Not a single corpse, either.

That empty silence was more chilling than a field of bodies—as if the base's entire population had simply evaporated.

They pushed on until they reached the plaza at the base's center, where Fu Yunsheng, at the front, made a hand signal—full alert.

The special ops soldiers scattered instantly, each diving for cover, muzzles leveling forward in unison.

Xie Li crouched behind a toppled concrete pillar and peered ahead.

In the center of the plaza, the ground had split open into an enormous fissure.

The earth looked as though something had torn it apart from within. The crack's jagged edges were slathered thickly with that grayish-white matter, forming a cavernous entrance about ten meters across, plunging straight down into bottomless dark. That sickening stench was pouring out of it.

Since entering the base, the feeling of knives at her back had grown stronger and stronger—as if hundreds of eyes in the darkness were fixed on her. Yet her mental domain had been open the whole way, and she hadn't sensed so much as an ant.

At the front, Fu Yunsheng made several more hand signals. The soldiers behind their cover received the order and began edging toward the great cavern mouth.

Xie Li rolled her eyes and followed—any normal person's first instinct at a place that so obviously spelled trouble was to retreat. Only the female lead would charge in without blinking.

Were lives wholesale goods?

Complaints aside, Xie Li understood in her heart: Fu Yunsheng was doing this to find out what had happened here. Only by finding out could the other bases avoid the same fate.

Rationally, she understood completely. Emotionally, she still wanted to roll her eyes. Couldn't they spare the small-fry cannon fodder?

Fu Yunsheng had plot armor anyway—she'd survive no matter what she charged into. She could have just gone herself.

"Xie Li, in with me. Everyone else, hold position and keep watch," Fu Yunsheng ordered.

Hearing that only her own name had been called, Xie Li actually breathed a sigh of relief.

She didn't want to watch too many people die here. She and Fu Yunsheng, at least, could protect themselves—if things went wrong, they could still run.

One behind the other, the two of them probed their way down the great shaft.

The passage was deep. The beams of their tactical flashlights shot out and were nearly swallowed by the bottomless dark.

The gray matter underfoot grew thicker the deeper they went. A few hundred meters down, the passage suddenly opened wide.

Xie Li and Fu Yunsheng stepped into an impossibly vast underground space—the entire depths hollowed out into a circular chamber big enough to hold a giant stadium.

Overhead, hanging from the dome, were countless eggs, each the size of an adult human. The shells were translucent; under the flashlight beams you could just make out the things curled inside.

Sweeping the beams downward: at the bottom of the hollow, innumerable white fleshy worms writhed slowly. Their bodies were coated in mucus. The smallest were about human-sized; the largest were meters thick, their raised heads alone the size of trucks.

The worms' heads bore two compound eyes and a round gaping mouth, its maw lined with row upon row of inward-curving fangs, ring within ring, and thick tentacles like octopus arms sprouting all around it.

Beneath the worms lay heaps of broken corpses. Severed limbs were stacked in layers, some gnawed down to bare bone, some still trailing scraps of torn clothing.

Case closed. The base's people had all been dragged into this hellhole and turned into feed for these worms.

Xie Li and Fu Yunsheng both felt their bodies go numb. They stopped in the same instant, killed their flashlights, and began easing back toward the exit with softened steps.

Two meters out, Fu Yunsheng stopped again. She turned to look deeper into the cavern.

Xie Li turned her head too, and saw a faint light flickering in the depths, flashing on and off, aimed again and again at where they stood.

"Someone's sending a distress signal. We have to get them out," Fu Yunsheng whispered.

Xie Li's eyes went wide, her face a picture of are-you-kidding-me.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of giant fleshy worms were feasting on the corpse piles below, and tens of thousands of eggs overhead could hatch at any moment. Was this woman dreaming?

"The swarm is feeding. As long as we're careful and don't disturb them, we can climb across the upper wall of the shaft, reach the person, and bring them out. We have to find out what happened here."

Fu Yunsheng had no intention of consulting her. Plan stated, she gripped the gray matter coating the shaft wall and began moving toward the corner where the signal came from.

In her heart, Xie Li cursed eighteen generations of Fu Yunsheng's ancestors, slung her gun onto her back, gritted her teeth, and followed.

The gray matter on the wall was much drier than that on the ground, its surface covered in irregular bumps and holes that could just barely serve as handholds.

It looked solid, but the stuff was brittle—the moment her fingers dug in, the edges crumbled to grit and sifted down.

As she climbed carefully, Xie Li couldn't help stealing glances at the feeding worms below.

What had these things been before mutating—earthworms or maggots? How could they grow this huge, this disgusting?

The two moved fast, traversing the near-vertical wall as if it were flat ground. After almost ten minutes of climbing, they reached the corner where the signal had come from.

Once there, they shielded their flashlights and searched the area in a circle—no sign of any living person.

Neither dared make a sound; they could only search the wall inch by inch.

Just as Xie Li and Fu Yunsheng were starting to wonder whether they'd imagined it, the faint light flashed again—barely ten meters away, practically within reach.

They climbed toward the light. Up close, Xie Li saw a blood-caked hand. Its owner was curled up inside a narrow cleft in the rock.

The cleft was less than half a meter wide, barely enough for one person to squeeze into sideways. Its mouth had been crudely sealed with broken stones and gray matter to mask the scent of the living person inside.

Fu Yunsheng moved in, pried away the gray matter, and gently pulled the person out, heaving them onto her shoulder.

Xie Li looked the survivor over. By the build, a female soldier, wrapped in a bloodstained army blanket, her training uniform in tatters, the exposed forearms covered in wounds torn by fangs.

Her face was caked with grime and dried blood, her lips cracked and peeling white, her cheekbones jutting high—she was nothing but a frame of bones.

Fortunately, she was still breathing, though barely conscious.

"Help me hold her," Fu Yunsheng whispered.

Xie Li moved in and freed a hand to support the wounded woman so Fu Yunsheng could work, securing her with an emergency strap.

With the casualty strapped on, Fu Yunsheng climbed in front to clear the way, Xie Li bringing up the rear.

Perhaps because Fu Yunsheng had to mind the person on her back, her climbing was much slower.

In the darkness, someone—who knew who—loosened a stone underfoot. A fist-sized chunk broke away from the wall and tumbled down.

Xie Li caught its falling trajectory and lunged for it. Her fingertips grazed the stone's edge—she missed.

Cursing her luck, she clung to the wall and watched the stone drop, dead-on, onto a feeding worm.

The worm's head snapped up, round maw aimed skyward, the tentacles around its mouthparts splaying wide as it emitted a shriek pitched too low for human ears.

Xie Li couldn't hear it, but her mental power felt it—and not just her. Every worm in the cavern received that signal.

Every worm stopped feeding in the same second. Hundreds, thousands of white heads rose in unison, maws gaping, tentacles lashing, hunting frantically for the intruders.

At that same moment, the eggs hanging from the dome burst open. Amniotic slime cascaded down, and countless larvae poured from the ruptured shells.

Barely a dozen centimeters long, milky white and translucent, their six barbed legs scuttled across the walls at blinding speed, filling the air with a rustling hiss.

The white tide of insects poured down, racing over every climbable surface in the cavern, blanketing it entirely.

"Run!" Fu Yunsheng growled, abandoning all stealth and scrambling outward with everything she had.

Even carrying a person, her climbing was unhindered—each spring of her body covered meters.

Xie Li scrambled on all fours, nimble as a mountain goat, running along the wall.

There were simply too many larvae. The wall was carpeted with them; every step Xie Li planted came down with a wet popping crunch, bursting grubs and spattering their juices.

Below, the giant worms finally locked onto the fleeing three. They swarmed up the walls, and the larvae too slow to get out of their way were crushed to paste beneath their massive bodies.

The foremost worm thrust its tentacles at Xie Li and gaped its maw, a wave of rotting stench washing over her.

Clinging to the wall one-handed, Xie Li yanked a grenade from her belt, bit out the pin, held it one second, and when the maw was within half a meter, she threw.

In the same motion she leapt, body soaring, and kicked off the wall, shooting several meters upward.

The grenade went off, a muffled blast sounding from inside the worm. Its body swelled violently, then great gouts of fluid and shredded flesh erupted from its maw and flanks.

But it didn't die. Shrieking, it thrashed its head, and the fluids and meat splashing onto the other worms drove them into a frenzy.

In an instant, every worm raised its head. Hundreds of round maws opened to their limit, aimed at Xie Li's group—and sucked.

An irresistible force of suction surged up from below.

The rock face in Xie Li's grip shattered outright under the pull. Her body lost all support and was dragged helplessly into midair, plummeting toward the dozens of gaping mouths below.

Twisting frantically in the air, she pulled her rifle around and fired down at them.

On the other side, Fu Yunsheng was ripped off the wall by the suction too. With the casualty on her back, the three of them were like bugs caught in a web, struggling uselessly in midair.

Then Xie Li saw a pair of translucent wings burst from Fu Yunsheng's back, nearly four meters across, glowing with a soft light, like a luminous deep-sea jellyfish—holy as an angel descending to earth in that dark cavern.

With one great beat of her wings, Fu Yunsheng tore free of the irresistible suction, her body rocketing upward, straight for the dome.

Xie Li was still falling. Watching Fu Yunsheng fly farther and farther away, she couldn't help rolling her eyes again—you had wings this whole time, why didn't you use them earlier, instead of dragging me in here to climb caves, damn it!

But this was no time for complaining. Below, the giant worms waited with mouths agape, ready for dinner.

In midair, Xie Li closed her eyes and compressed every scrap of her mental power to its limit.

She didn't know whether it could kill all these worms. She only knew that if she didn't unleash her ultimate move now, she'd be ground into dumpling filling.

The psychic blast detonated outward with Xie Li at its center.

Every worm within a hundred meters, big or small, died at the same instant.

Xie Li slammed heavily onto the tentacle of one dead worm, the impact sending her rolling twice across the slick limb before she steadied herself.

Every ounce of strength had been drained from her in that instant. Her body was soft as cotton now—she could barely crawl.

Xie Li bit through the tip of her own tongue, using the sharp pain to force herself conscious, desperately mobilizing the green motes of light in her body to restore her mental power, while raising her muzzle and firing at the worms closing in on her.

Round after round flew out, but rifle bullets landing on these behemoths were no better than tickles. The encirclement shrank fast.

High at the dome, Fu Yunsheng hovered in midair, laying down fire support.

There were only two of them against swarming hordes—their meager attacks were like a mantis trying to stop a cart.

Xie Li's magazine emptied in moments. Her grenades were all thrown. All she had left was a backup pistol.

The giant worms were practically on top of her now, the nearest less than a meter away. One of the giants lifted its head, tentacles sliding out from either side of its maw, their mucus-slicked tips quivering in the air—centimeters from licking Xie Li's cheek.

Xie Li flipped off the dead worm's carcass, dropped into a crevice between the corpses, raised the pistol in both hands, and pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out. The brass round spun from the muzzle, tore through the air, pushing a visible ripple of shockwave—and drifted slowly toward the worm's maw.

Xie Li realized everything around her was slowing down. It was as if all the worms had stopped.

The maw less than a meter from her froze in midair.

Out of the darkness, a figure dropped from the wall above, as if walking on empty air.

She landed between Xie Li and the giant worm, her back to the swarm, facing Xie Li.

She lowered her eyes and looked at her.

Xie Li's heart skipped a beat; her head went muddled. What was Jin Zhaoye doing here?

Their eye contact lasted less than a tenth of a second.

Too brief to exchange a look—so brief Xie Li couldn't catch any useful information from her eyes at all.

Jin Zhaoye had already turned around, facing the telekinetically frozen swarm. She raised her right hand, fingers spreading, the slender knuckles seeming to glimmer in the dark.

A force field too subtle for the eye to catch spread from her palm, rolling out in all directions.

Wherever the field passed, the air crackled with faint pops. Every giant worm surrounding Xie Li was swallowed by that field—not one could break free.

Jin Zhaoye's brows knit slightly. Her fingers closed slowly, and her lips parted to breathe a single word: "Burst."

No fewer than twenty giant worms were caught in the field, and in the same instant, every one of them exploded from within—as if an enormous hand had crushed their bodies.

Muffled detonations merged into a rolling thunder in the cavern's depths.

Viscous fluids and shredded flesh sprayed radially in all directions, splattering the entire bottom of the pit.

But as the flying gore neared Xie Li and Jin Zhaoye, an invisible barrier stopped it all—like torrential rain battering transparent glass.

Xie Li half-knelt on the ground, head tilted up, gazing at the woman standing before her.

A storm of blood rained down behind her, fluids sliding down the unseen curves beyond the barrier. Standing atop that mountain of corpses, her hair drifting in a windless air, she was like a god who had stormed into hell.

"What are you spacing out for?" Jin Zhaoye's voice came from above her. "Run. Or do you want to stay and treat these worms to a midnight snack?"

She seized Xie Li's wrist and hauled her up off the ground.

Xie Li staggered at the pull—a force engraved in her memory. The first time they'd met, Jin Zhaoye had dragged her along exactly like this.

A force field spread from the soles of Jin Zhaoye's shoes, paving the ground beneath their feet.

Xie Li felt as if she were being dragged at a run across a giant trampoline—each step launched her body meters through the air.

Behind them, every worm in the cavern went berserk.

The ones untouched by the force field woke from their brief paralysis, their massive bodies swarming up the walls.

The gray matter on the walls sloughed off in great sheets, and countless tiny worms poured out of it, their curled bodies snapping straight the instant they launched—like ten thousand white arrows, all shooting toward the four fleeing figures.

These larvae weren't strong attackers. They couldn't bite through tactical vests or bore through combat boots. But attack was never their purpose.

Landing on the fugitives, they began spewing mucus nonstop—fluid so viscous that it jammed gun muzzles it landed on and glued their boot soles when it hit their feet.

Overhead, Fu Yunsheng beat her wings hard, dodging the larvae's assaults while bracing her gun one-handed to lay down covering fire at the pursuers behind Xie Li and Jin Zhaoye.

Even in these conditions, her aim was terrifyingly precise—every round she fired struck a worm dead on.

Only when Jin Zhaoye and Xie Li leapt up out of the pit and back into the passage did Fu Yunsheng bellow at the top of her lungs: "Fall back!"

Jin Zhaoye spread her fingers, and a force field detonated beneath their feet. She and Xie Li launched like cannonballs, flying straight out of the passage and crashing down onto the ground of the base's plaza.