(PS: It was finally done. Tomorrow morning, my parents-in-law and my wife would handle the discharge paperwork. I could resume normal updates tomorrow.)
While Wu Pifu's essence was still deep in thought, the roughly twenty remaining survivors could no longer run. With the danger lifted, it was clear that military or security forces had arrived. They all collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, weeping and wailing. Some had even lost control of their bowels and bladders.
The greatest terror between life and death was not simply dying all at once. It was being chased by monsters, caught, devoured, then assimilated into the monsters and becoming one with them. They likely could not even die. That kind of horror was enough to shatter the courage and sanity of any normal sentient being.
At the end of the passage, more than a dozen soldiers in exoskeleton armor came sprinting over. Each stood around three and a half meters tall, with an automatically targeting rifle or cannon mounted on their shoulders and jet propulsion units on their backs. They moved at terrifying speed, covering a hundred meters in less than two seconds, with incredible mobility. Judging from their earlier long-range shots, their accuracy at range was also extremely high. They were clearly equipped with formidable technology.
"Stay alert! Quarantine! Treat the wounded!"
The captain shouted from five hundred meters away. Half the personnel immediately rushed to positions throughout a kilometer-wide area around the passage. Two soldiers in white-painted exoskeleton armor began spraying some kind of mist over the wounded people on the ground who were not yet dead. The remaining soldiers ran toward the other survivors, sternly ordering them to clasp their hands over their heads and lie facedown, then sweeping beams of light from their exoskeleton armor over their entire bodies.