great-warnovel Chapter 320 The Evolver Organization
Chapter 320 The Evolver Organization
The pump station ruins are still on fire, with bent steel bars stuck between concrete blocks, and broken water pipes spewing white steam outwards.
Lu Yan walked out of the collapsed maintenance passage. The outer layer of his armor was charred black, two armor plates were missing from his right shoulder, and the sole of his boot had run over shards of glass.
The silver-masked man left no body; silver liquid flowed from the cracks in the floor tiles, condensing into a mist under the high temperature and seeping into the fire.
The Void Disc circled the ruins once, but the disc did not capture any returned coordinates, leaving only a few segments of invalid Silver Blood programs.
Zhao Leiguang's report squeezed into the team's internal channel.
"Those guys under the bridge all retreated to the old city hospital, clearing out the front line for the wounded."
Shen Xinglin added a sentence.
"The east wall is still being defended, and the defense forces have put the transport vehicles back onto the main road."
Lu Yan walked to the overturned ambulance. The driver's terminal was still lit, and the screen was scrolling through the audio files left by Lin Chuxue.
He reached out and connected to the terminal. The recording was extracted by the Void Disk, and a red waveform filled half of the screen.
The recording contained hurried footsteps, the scraping of chains, and the cries of children.
"Lu Yan, Lin Xi said that there are three thousand children in the sixth ward."
Lin Chuxue's throat tightened, and she spoke in a very low voice for the second half of her sentence.
"They call themselves evolved beings and say they can save everyone."
The recording stopped here, and a series of encrypted coordinates appeared on the screen, with the endpoint located underground in the Old City Hospital.
When Zhao Leiguang and Shen Xinglin arrived outside the ruins, monster scraps were still hanging on their shields and lances.
Su Yunqing first reinforced Lu Yan's shield, pressing it against the gap in his right shoulder to suppress the blood seeping from the edge of the armor plate.
Wen Yue stood beside the ambulance, pressing the World-Destroying Thunder Crossbow into its slot, the arrowhead deviating half an inch from the direction of the Old City Hospital.
Qin Wuyi unfolded the structural diagram she had taken from the flesh and blood array, with the main plate resting in the center of the diagram.
The Void Disk was cast into the underground structure of the hospital, and the power lines from the five secret realm gates all converged on the same point.
Ward 6.
This area is not listed in the public archives of the old city hospital; even the underground construction drawings only go up to the fifth floor.
There is only one path leading to Ward 6.
The main building morgue has a dedicated freight elevator.
The flesh and blood array has sealed off the elevator entrance, and an external explosion would cause the underground power supply to collapse.
Wen Yue raised the tactical board, circling the monster's retreat route.
"They didn't disperse."
"The area surrounding the old city hospital is entirely patrolled."
Zhao Leiguang snapped the two shields back onto his arms.
"Okay, the hospital's night shift hasn't ended yet, let's go to the emergency room."
Wen Yue glanced at him.
"Your two shields need to be sent to the orthopedics department first. They're cracked like that; even logistics can't repair them."
Lu Yan put away the recording terminal.
"Hospital."
The old city hospital stands deep in the ruins, its outer walls covered with a thin film of blood and flesh, and its windows, stairs, and ventilation vents are all sealed off.
The membrane pulsates in a fixed rhythm, causing the circuits inside the building to flicker, and blood seeping from the cracks in the walls flows into the drainage ditch.
The retreating monsters patrolled beneath the membrane, their carapace scraping against the wall, leaving behind large patches of slime.
The monster did not pounce on the seven people as they approached.
A multi-legged beast crawled past Zhao Lei's light shield, its mouth opening and closing, before circling around them and burrowing back under the membrane.
Lu Yan looked down at the Void Disc.
The blood magic mark left by the fifth blood gate was affixed to everyone's armor, and the patrol unit classified them as part of the internal order.
"Don't touch the outer wall."
"They recognize people, but not membranes."
Qin Wuyi threw out six array plates.
The array slid along the hospital's outer wall, past the main gate and fire exit, and finally came to a stop at the western sewage outlet.
The main plate presses down on the ground, and the array patterns drill into the ground along the manhole cover.
The cables from the abandoned power grid in the old city were dragged onto a control panel, and dozens of power lines converged from various parts of the city into the hospital's exterior wall.
Qin Wuyi lifted the main plate.
"The blood membrane feeds on the old electric grid."
"It didn't draw energy from the secret realm."
Su Yunqing looked towards the top floor of the hospital.
"A power outage will affect the equipment on the sixth floor."
Lu Yan clicked on the power supply branch.
"Keep the main storyline."
"Go in through the sewage pipe and follow the cable to the morgue."
Zhao Leiguang kicked open the rusted manhole cover, placed his two shields in front of him, and crawled into the narrow pipe.
The sewage pipe was filled with half a foot of sewage, and the wall was covered with vein-like patterns that pierced into the cement every few meters.
Shen Xinglin stood guard at the rear of the column, cutting his lance into a locking bar, and using the lance tip to jam the pipe fork.
Su Yunqing pressed the shield against the outside of everyone's boots. The sewage touched the edge of the shield and slid down the slope back to the bottom of the ditch.
At the end of the pipe were piles of scattered brochures, the paper swollen from being soaked, with eight red characters printed on the cover.
"Evolve and ascend, embrace new life."
Wen Yue used the tip of her boot to open one of the books.
The booklet depicted humans shedding their skin and donning silver husks, and the last page was filled with recruitment slogans for evolved beings.
"Take living people apart, break them down into materials, and then write about new life."
Wen Yue closed the brochure.
"These people's training materials are quite economical in terms of paper usage."
Zhao Leiguang replied from the front.
"Saving paper at the expense of lives, this is a typical example of a heartless organization."
The fire door to the morgue was half open, and inside were empty freezers with faded patient labels on the doors.
The freight elevator was hidden at the very back, its doors wrapped in a cocoon of flesh and blood, with broken teeth, bone nails, and IV tubes embedded in the walls.
Xiao Qianyu walked to the cocoon and slashed down with the Dragon King's Halberd.
The cocoon wall split open with a long gash, and the flesh rolled up to both sides, revealing a vertical elevator shaft.
There was no elevator car in the shaft; steel cables hung down into the ground, with large patches of dried blood tangled at the ends.
Just as Zhao Leiguang was about to step into the well, the old loudspeaker in the corner of the morgue lit up.
"First Squad".
The words on the radio were flat and monotone, each one seemingly squeezed out from a crack in the wall.
"Your blood mage and three thousand children are with me."
Zhao Leiguang stopped in his tracks, placing his two shields in front of the well shaft.
Wen Yue raised her crossbow, scanning the surroundings through the scope. There was no one else in the morgue.
The broadcast continued.
"The extraterrestrial parasites give you power; we give you the future."
"They can be safe and sound if they help us complete the Genesis Plan."
"Rejection—they are the first nourishment for the plan."
The old monitor in the corner lit up, the snowflakes receded to the four sides of the screen, and the picture switched to the underground ward.
Lin Chuxue lay unconscious inside the huge glass container, while the Blood Pool's wailing was locked outside the container, and the blood patterns on the staff were pressed into a dark red.
Lin Xi stood beside the container, her ankles still bearing the old scars from the rusted chains, her face expressionless.
Behind her were rows of incubation chambers, with children lying in transparent enclosures, breathing masks covering their mouths and noses, and number tags affixed to their chests.
Su Yunqing stared at the monitor on the screen.
"They are still alive."
Wen Yue did not lower the crossbow.
"condition."
The monitor switched screens, and the Europa Gate appeared in the center of the screen.
Yang Jian stood outside the ruined gate, his three-pointed double-edged sword pressing down on the left wing of the twelve-winged angel. The angel's holy spear of light smashed into the ground, and a large amount of rubble was thrown up from the distant ruins.
The angel had a gash in its chest, with a white parasitic crystal hidden deep within its flesh. The divine aura emanating from it was so intense that it made one's chest feel heavy, even through the screen.
The broadcast announced the last sentence.
"Go to the European battlefield and retrieve the divine core from the twelve-winged angels."
A countdown timer lights up in the upper right corner of the screen.
Fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.
Zhao Leiguang looked up at the numbers.
"A journey across Europe in one hour."
"Does this organization sell tickets?"
Lu Yan attached the Void Disc to the monitor. The Europa live stream came from the combat frequency band, while the source of the hospital broadcast was on the sixth basement level.
The countdown has reached 59 minutes and 50 seconds.
Below the shaft, the freight elevator's steel cable began to slide down.