Do You Want to Go Home?
"Run... run fast!"
I don't know who screamed first.
A sense of panic spread like a plague.
These thugs, who usually terrorized the Black Street, were utterly terrified. They dropped their rifles and scrambled towards the tank, frantically starting the engine to try and reverse away from this hellish place.
"Since you're here, why don't you all stay?"
In the ruins of the temple, Chen Fan slowly turned around.
He lightly flicked his right foot off the ground.
The shattered fragments of the serrated greatsword bounced up from the mud and water, hovering in front of him.
There were six sharp, palm-sized pieces of refined steel in total.
Chen Fan flicked his fingers repeatedly.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Six ear-piercing gas explosions rang out.
Six streaks of silver-gray Stream of Light tore through the rain, their speed even surpassing that of armor-piercing rounds from anti-materiel Sniper Rifles!
Sizzle!
The first steel blade pierced the head of the driver behind the bulletproof glass of the lead SUV, and then, with undiminished momentum, penetrated the fuel tank in the chassis.
Then came the second, the third...
The Hidden Force and Pure Yang heat contained in the steel sheet erupted the moment it hit the inside of the fuel tank.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Six deafening explosions erupted in succession on the open ground outside the ruined temple!
Six enormous orange-red Fireballs rose into the air, illuminating the gloomy, rainy night as if it were daytime.
The shockwave, mixed with shrapnel and flames, swept across the area. The surviving gunmen screamed in agony in the inferno, only to be engulfed by the raging flames in an instant.
A wave of scorching heat swept into the dilapidated temple, dispelling the damp chill inside.
The continuous explosions caused rubble to slide off the altar.
On the straw mat, Chen Xi's eyelashes trembled, finally awakened by the loud noise.
"Elder brother..."
The little girl rubbed her sore eyes and groggily sat up.
She walked out, leaning on a stone pillar, and the sight that came into view made her freeze in place.
Below the steps, six massive steel war machines were engulfed in flames, the ground littered with charred remains and corpses.
Before the altar, a headless, heavily armored corpse, over two meters tall, lay in a pool of blood, its appearance grotesque and terrifying.
The pungent smell of burning and blood filled my nasal cavity.
The flickering flames illuminated the surrounding ruins in a crimson glow.
And in front of that raging fire and mountain of Corpse Mountain and Sea of Blood, stood a familiar figure.
Chen Fan was wiping the rusty broken Broken Saber with the corner of his coarse cloth, a smear of undried blood splattered on his cheek.
Hearing the noise, the boy stopped what he was doing and turned around.
The chilling aura that could freeze the heavens and earth in his eyes quietly dissipated, and his gaze toward Chen Xi returned to gentleness and calm.
Chen Xi's body trembled, her eyes were slightly red, her small hands gripped the hem of her clothes tightly, and her voice was tinged with a sob and disbelief:
"Brother... are we... are we still alive?"
Chen Fan tucked the cleaned Broken Saber into his waistband, stepped forward, and gently wiped the dust from the girl's cheek with the back of his clean hand.
He looked up at the wind and rain outside the temple gate, torn apart by the firelight, his gaze piercing through the depths of the Wasteland, landing on the steel fortress dozens of miles away, its neon lights shimmering in the night— the Third Base City.
That was the Iron Wolf Gang's stronghold, a den of countless evils.
A faint smile appeared on Chen Fan's lips as he spoke softly:
"Alive."
"Xi'er, do you want to go home?"
Rainwater washed away the pool of blood along the edge of the steps.
Chen Xi looked at the burning armor wreckage on the ground, then at the boy standing in front of her, and gripped the hem of her clothes tightly with both hands.
"Think."
The girl's voice was low, yet it carried an unwavering firmness.
In that drafty, dilapidated house, there were old rag dolls she had mended herself, and firewood that her brother had chopped every day. As long as her brother was there, that was home.
Chen Fan didn't say anything more.
He walked to the Bao Gu corpse, lightly flicked his toe, and pulled down a radiation-proof cloak hanging on the back seat of the SUV.
The cloak was made of thick, tanned Anomalous Beast hide, with anti-corrosion lead wire inlaid along the edges, and it was unstained with blood.
He unfolded the cloak and draped it over Chen Xi's thin shoulders, then tightened the sash around her neck.
"Put it on, the night wind is cold."
Chen Xi sniffed her reddened nose, nodded vigorously, and huddled into the large fur.
The six modified tanks outside the dilapidated temple had been burned to charred iron frames, their fuel tanks completely shattered, rendering them unusable.
Chen Fan grasped Chen Xi's cold little hand, stepped out of the charred temple gate, and walked towards the muddy, dark Wasteland.
Without a car, they walked.
The rain gradually subsided, and the radiation clouds over the Wasteland hung extremely low, with lead-gray mist flowing among the withered grass.
If an ordinary person were exposed to the Wasteland at night without any protection, their internal organs would have been eroded and rotted by radiation particles long ago.
But at this moment, every step Chen Fan took, the landing of his feet, brought about an extremely peculiar tremor.
The mud didn't splash onto my trouser legs.
The faint radiant energy was drawn in by the pores on the soles of his feet, flowing upwards along the Meridians and falling into the slowly rotating Taiji Vortex deep within his Qi Sea.
The violent and mixed radioactive toxins were completely crushed to dust the moment they touched the cyclone.
The pure energy transformed into a warm current, seeping into the bone marrow and slowly nourishing this nascent Demon God Dao Embryo.
Chen Fan's expression remained calm and composed.
What ordinary people call the Superpower Genes Shackles are nothing more than incomplete rule circuits in his eyes.
As long as the body can withstand it, breaking through it is only a matter of time.
A pale ray of dawn appeared on the horizon.
A colossal steel behemoth rose from the ground, stretching across the edge of the plain.
The outer defensive wall of the Third Base City.
The 30-meter-high Black Mystic Alloy armor plate is seamlessly fitted and covered with an acid-resistant coating. It is densely covered with heavy machine gun bunkers and fully automatic anti-aircraft laser turrets.
Below the city wall, outside three huge sewage gates, lies a chaotic and filthy shantytown.
This is Black Street, also known as the sewers of Base City.
Due to the torrential rain overnight, the industrial wastewater discharged from the sluice gate was covered with foul-smelling yellow foam. A dozen patrol gunmen wearing Iron Wolf Gang armbands were carrying submachine guns and checking the refugees coming in and out one by one behind the barbed wire fence.
The atmosphere was extremely oppressive.
Every scavenging vehicle that drives back from the Wasteland is thoroughly searched three times.
"Get the hell out of here!"
A petty thug with pustules on his cheek brandished a leather whip and lashed it hard across the back of a hunched old man. "Have you seen that blue modified motorcycle? With a young woman on it!"
The old man was beaten until he rolled in the mud, clutching his back and kowtowing repeatedly. "Grandpa, I've never seen anything like it... I really haven't seen anything like it..."
The gang leader spat out a mouthful of spittle, cursing and looking irritated.
The gang leader gave a strict order last night: the entire city is under lockdown, and not even a fly is allowed to escape.
The deputy leader, Bao Gu, personally led more than thirty skilled men out of the city to pursue them, but even now, as dawn breaks, they haven't seen a single shadow of them.
Communication signals in the depths of the Wasteland are already intermittent, but to lose contact for an entire night is something that has never happened before in the history of the Iron Wolf Gang.