Reenactment

"Report! An anomaly has appeared in Kunlun's Neural Link!"

In the Command Center, the Neural Link diagram on the central display warped. The connection between Kunlun and its pilot was no longer perfect, and the Sync Rate was fluctuating wildly.

"This..."

No one had ever seen anything like this before. They stared tensely at the display as an ominous atmosphere began to descend over the Command Center.

Kunlun's body suddenly convulsed violently. It then raised both hands and clutched its head tightly, as though it were suffering unimaginable pain.

The enormous giant began swaying from side to side, startling the staff in the mech hangar into stumbling backward.

Seeing Rosen's entire body convulsing, Mike no longer cared about the consequences of forcibly interrupting the connection. He yanked the Mind Cap off Rosen's head!

The Mind Cap was a crucial tool for facilitating the connection. Without it, the success rate of establishing a connection was practically zero.

But something unexpected happened once again. Even without the Mind Cap, Rosen did not leave the connected state. His eyes remained blood-red as he stared blankly ahead. Then, another despairing message came through the communicator.

"It's out of sync! It's out of sync! Now both the pilot and Kunlun are completely out of sync!"

Mike felt Kunlun shake violently several times before it froze in place.

At the same time, alarms abruptly blared throughout the mech hangar, and the staff began evacuating in panic.

"Rosen..." With nowhere to retreat, Mike had never seen anything like this before. All he could do was try his best to awaken Rosen's mind.

"Rosen, relax. Take deep breaths..." he kept saying. "Get out of those memories. Don't get trapped in them... Right, don't you hate basketball? Hurry, think about basketball... Remember the 76ers I told you about? They've already disbanded..."

If there had been a third person present, they would surely have praised Mike's quick thinking.

But it was already too late. Rosen had long since sunk into it, unable to pull himself out.

The violent fluctuations in his brainwaves forced Rosen into the connected state once again.

"I... I..."

His previous failure hung over Rosen like a nightmare. He realized that something had gone wrong with his connection to Kunlun. He tried desperately to control it, but the problem only grew worse.

He felt his limbs gradually going numb...

His senses were drifting farther and farther away from his body.

It was as if the scene from a year ago were replaying itself.

"No... no... no!!!"

With his last shred of will, Rosen forcibly awakened his mind. But he had barely caught his breath when the scene changed again.

The enormous dark-red eyes suddenly vanished. In the blink of an eye, Rosen found himself in a city ravaged beyond recognition.

Before him lay broken walls and collapsed buildings, with the sunset as red as blood.

Gray dust drifted down from the sky.

"Here... this is..."

Rosen suddenly felt suffocated—he was standing on a rooftop, and in the distance, wasn't that bridge snapped cleanly in two the Tsing Ma Bridge?

This was Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, where the Shatterdome stood.

But Rosen immediately noticed the problem. In his memories, the Tsing Ma Bridge had never been destroyed, and...

Rosen looked around and abruptly realized that the city's architecture seemed rather outdated.

But Rosen had no time to care about that. At that moment, a piercing alarm sounded, while helicopters overhead roared through the sky.

Boom... boom...

Some sort of dull, thunderous sound was drawing closer to Rosen.

Rosen discovered that he was still wearing that black Pilot Suit. Though it restricted his movements somewhat, he did not dare take it off. He could only hurry downstairs and run toward the street.

The farther he ran, the more confused Rosen became. This was indeed Hong Kong, but the buildings were far too old. He even caught sight of the Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong, which existed only in photographs—after all, that building had been demolished as early as 2022.

Wait... was this before 2022? Rosen suddenly realized something.

Why am I here?

How old was I back then...?

Just then, a scrap of paper blew past Rosen's eyes. He instinctively caught it.

It was a torn newspaper. Across the top were several large words: "God of Desire" Approaches Hong Kong. The date was too blurred to make out clearly, but Rosen could barely identify the year—2020.

2020?

Rosen froze.

Because he had only just been born then.

"No, impossible... My memories have actually gone back to 2020..." Rosen shook his head in disbelief. "That's impossible... Memories from that time couldn't possibly have remained in my mind until now, and a connection couldn't possibly show something outside my memories."

Just then, the rumbling grew louder and louder. The violent shaking made Rosen lose his footing and fall to the ground. Then, the source of the sound finally revealed itself—a high-rise building collapsed with a deafening crash, and a gigantic shadow appeared before Rosen.

It was a monster that looked eerily similar to a human. It had four limbs, stood on two feet, and towered over every skyscraper around it. This thirty-story-tall humanoid had bluish-green skin and a mouth far larger than any human proportions. Rosen could even clearly see fragments of buildings still lodged inside its mouth—that mouth was just like its name: the God of Desire.

"Roar!!!"

The monster opened its mouth, spewing a visible storm and countless fragments of buildings. Its thick legs slammed into the ground, leaving a footprint with every step. As its arms swung, the buildings lining both sides of the road instantly crumbled apart.

Suddenly, its searchlight-like eyes glanced downward and met Rosen's gaze.

It seemed to have taken a keen interest in the ant before it.

"Roar!!!"

It was coming!

It was coming for him!

It threw back its head and howled. Merely lifting one leg sent countless low houses toppling over. In an instant, dust rose up and blotted out the sky.

"Fuck!"

Rosen's expression changed drastically, and he turned to run. But before long, he lost his sense of direction in the smoke and dust. He could only dart blindly through the streets, while corpses gradually began appearing on the ground...

Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and there were more and more of them.

Rosen felt as though he were running through a sea of corpses.

The monster's foot crashed down in front of Rosen with an earth-shaking boom, as if the heavens and earth were collapsing. Rosen could only immediately turn and run in another direction.

Rosen knew he could never outrun the monster, so he immediately turned at a corner and rushed into an alley—several cars smashed into the corner like pebbles a moment later.

Rosen ran for his life through the alley, and the monster seemed to have been enraged by him. It began wildly battering the surrounding buildings, sending bricks and broken beams raining down over Rosen's head.

Several chunks of rubble instantly smashed Rosen's head open, leaving him bloodied. He could only raise both hands and protect himself tightly amid the rain of stones.

Inside the cockpit, Mike watched helplessly as Rosen, his eyes glowing blood-red, slowly raised his right hand.

The signal lights on the control panel began flashing, while a line of text appeared on the heads-up display ahead: Weapon System Activated.

Whoosh, whoosh... Bzzzzzz...

After a burst of chaotic electrical noise, Kunlun's right wrist lit up—the Cloud-Mist High-Pressure Magnetic Storm Ring, which had not seen the light of day for an entire year, began operating.

But this time, its target was not a monster.