Return

Lin Shuguang turned and came back to Professor Wang and the others.

Everyone hurried over.

"Captain Lin."

Lin Shuguang's gaze swept across each face. "Is everyone all right?"

The nearly forty-strong team now had fewer than ten people left.

The losses had been devastating.

"Zhou De and the others bought us time, but they were already..." The Special Management Bureau warriors choked up at this point.

They hadn't merely gathered temporarily for a single mission. They had belonged to the same squad, lived and worked together for nearly five years, and weathered all kinds of frontline missions. They had long since become brothers who would trade their lives for one another.

It was hard to bear seeing their brothers torn limb from limb with their own eyes.

Many of the younger Special Management Bureau warriors already had reddened eyes.

Lin Shuguang patted the warrior on the shoulder. "Great Xia won't forget them."

"Captain Lin—" Professor Wang opened his mouth, a trace of guilt on his face.

It was because they had been protecting them that so many young warriors had sacrificed their lives.

The atmosphere fell silent.

Many people began to droop their heads in dejection.

Lin Shuguang looked at them and said expressionlessly, "This isn't the time to dwell on this. I know everyone's hurting. I'm hurting too! I was the one who brought you in, and I want even more to take every one of you out intact. Who the hell among us wasn't raised by our parents? If some damn mission requires you to trade your lives for it, I can't do that! And I won't do it!

"I'll say this right here: not a single person who came here is a coward!

"Now pull yourselves together! As long as I'm here, I won't let anything happen to any of you!"

The Special Management Bureau warriors trembled.

With Lin Shuguang's rallying cry, the group hurried toward the Walking Corpse bodies.

Professor Wang walked over to Lin Shuguang and asked, "Captain Lin, where did you go after the white fog disappeared?"

Lin Shuguang's gaze was calm. "I was taken to a Maze. After I walked out of the Maze, I encountered these Walking Corpses too. I killed all of them before leaving."

Everyone who heard Lin Shuguang describe it so casually couldn't help clicking their tongues as they looked at him.

He killed them all?

The number Lin Shuguang had encountered was probably far greater than the small number they had just faced.

Possibly many more!

The calmer Lin Shuguang's face looked, the more it made everyone's hearts tremble with fear.

The scene of Lin Shuguang fighting alone, trapped amid millions of soldiers and civilians, flashed through their minds... The bloody ferocity he had carved out with his own hands stirred a soaring heroism in everyone present—the kind of spirit that let one man hold the pass against ten thousand—sweeping away their earlier dejection.

Professor Wang opened his mouth, but many words were firmly lodged in his throat by Lin Shuguang's offhand tone.

He heavily patted Lin Shuguang on the shoulder. Some things needed no words.

Just as Lin Shuguang had said earlier, who the hell among them wasn't raised by their parents?

To pay for the sake of an old wreck like him with the lives of so much fresh blood painstakingly nurtured by the nation made his heart ache too!

On one side was the mission; on the other, living, breathing lives.

Professor Wang fell silent. He had to explore this world even more seriously. As long as he found something truly valuable, then the young warriors would not have sacrificed themselves in vain!

Lin Shuguang glanced at the sky.

The Blood Sea remained.

His confusion deepened.

Was the world he had experienced earlier truly beneath the same sky as this place...?

But why was there no sign here at all of the scene where the Blood Saber had stirred up the Blood Sea vortex?

"Crack—"

A tearing sound suddenly came from above, reaching everyone's ears with perfect clarity.

Everyone looked up.

They immediately saw a scene they would never forget.

The Blood Sea in the sky was like a shattered mirror, exploding outward into countless fragments. Before they could fly very far, however, they were swallowed by the Blood-Red Fire Sea surging from above and burned to ash on the spot.

"What is this?" Wu Feng and the others gaped.

A torrential flood like a raging storm surge plunged down from the sky, and the entire world began to sway violently.

"Hurry, hurry! This world is collapsing!" Professor Wang shouted urgently.

The others came to their senses and ran toward the passage entrance.

The entire sky shook madly. Countless erupting currents of air crashed down, while enormous black vortices swallowed everything around them.

The terrifying sight left Wu Feng's legs weak. Only after Cheng Jun fiercely yanked him did he avoid collapsing to the ground.

Professor Wang looked around at the Walking Corpse bodies, his face full of regret.

He had planned to study these bodies carefully, but he hadn't expected the world to collapse so quickly.

Gritting his teeth, he stopped fleeing and scooped up the still-intact half of a corpse from the ground. Only then did he start running toward the passage entrance.

He had little strength to begin with, and carrying such a huge corpse made him even slower.

Seeing this, Lin Shuguang immediately turned back, grabbing Professor Wang with one hand and the Walking Corpse with the other.

He moved as swiftly as a galloping horse.

Behind them, rolling black vortices continued devouring the world. In the blink of an eye, they had rushed in from ten thousand meters away to within a thousand meters, and they were still closing fast.

Lin Shuguang found these people too slow. They were still a hundred meters from the passage.

He decisively threw Professor Wang and the Walking Corpse's body through the passage together, then turned back again and ran to Wu Feng and Cheng Jun, who were bringing up the rear, grabbing both of them by the shoulders.

"Brace yourselves for impact."

Before he had finished speaking, and before the two men could even look horrified, Lin Shuguang hurled them toward the passage entrance.

"Don't touch me!"

Pei Ruoyi screamed. She burst into motion with a bundle on her back, and her speed was not slow at all.

But Lin Shuguang still found her too slow. He grabbed her shoulder and, without another word, flung her out with absolutely no tenderness as she screamed. Her speed surged more than tenfold.

Thus, he was the only one left behind.

He looked at the rolling tide of darkness already rushing over from a hundred meters behind him.

His heart couldn't help surging.

But then, all of a sudden!

A blood-red figure suddenly appeared. The unstoppable dark tide parted before it, making way.

Lin Shuguang's expression changed.

He instinctively took a step back.

"That thing... seems to be coming for me!!!"

He couldn't tell whether it was friend or foe—especially since it had emerged from the Divine Tree.

Without a second thought, Lin Shuguang turned and dashed toward the passage entrance.

"Buzz!"

The Blood Saber flew over violently.

Even the darkness around it was utterly incinerated by the heaven-shaking killing intent it carried.

Feeling the astonishing power behind him, Lin Shuguang unleashed all his strength.

"Whoosh!"

His entire body passed through the passage.

He landed on the ground.

The desolate, lonely scene before his eyes made him pause in surprise.

The Blood Desolate Land, which had once been packed with Blood Forests, had now become completely bare.

"Captain Lin!"

When the Special Management Bureau warriors saw Lin Shuguang emerge last, their hearts finally settled.

Lin Shuguang nodded. "Contact the Si Bureau. We're heading back."

"Yes!"

Lin Shuguang walked over to Professor Wang, who was directing Pei Ruoyi and the others in handling the Walking Corpse's body.

When Pei Ruoyi saw Lin Shuguang, however, she glared at him resentfully through her disheveled hair.