"01, understood."
"02, understood..."
In numerical order, the drivers checked the passengers in their vehicles, then quickly answered Zhang Tianyuan.
Outside the large square, everyone had already evacuated, leaving the site isolated from the outside world.
From this point on, the air and dust inside the site would no longer come into contact with the outside world. Instead, after Zhang Tianyuan and the others left, all of it would be extracted and destroyed.
After all, no one knew whether the terrifying KV Virus might spread through the Spacetime Tunnel the instant it opened.
The Mutual Aid Society's first group of core members, publicly designated the 0808 Task Force, were also the only people besides the advance team who currently knew about Zhang Tianyuan. They were now on full alert.
Among them were members of the academy of sciences, leading physicists, professional instrument operators, biochemical experts...
Scientific instruments had been switched on in every direction.
Ultra-high-speed cameras and infrared equipment were only the basics. Outside the site, there was even advanced equipment monitoring changes in Earth's gravitational and magnetic fields.
These instruments normally operated only on satellites.
But now, to observe the Spacetime Tunnel, they had all been brought over, whether they would prove useful or not.
The highest-ranking leaders and leading scientists from various fields gathered at the observation window, so nervous that their palms were sweating.
Meanwhile, Zhang Tianyuan sat inside his vehicle, watching the time as he opened the base's main control panel.
He selected the world "I Am Legend."
He set the destination to the Imperial Capital.
"Open the spacetime gate!"
The next second.
A pitch-black Spacetime Tunnel abruptly appeared and, following Zhang Tianyuan's will, swallowed everything in the square, making it vanish.
Immediately afterward, nervous, excited voices rang out beyond the square:
"They really disappeared!"
"Did they really travel to a parallel spacetime?"
"Quick, play back the recording from just now. I want to see how it happened..."
Zhang Tianyuan and the others could no longer hear the commotion inside the shelter.
Because they had already arrived in another world.
In a dark, dilapidated city, the trees lining the streets flourished with green leaves. Pair after pair of large, bare feet trampled the rotting leaves piled on the ground, their owners gazing at the moon overhead and letting out howl after howl.
With a flutter, the birds in the surrounding trees all woke with a start and gave strange cries.
They hurriedly flew away from the trees.
The next second, a pair of large gray hands reached out of the darkness, plunging toward a bird's nest...
Beneath the trees, Darkseekers roamed the streets in packs.
Some charged into buildings, using their noses to search for anything edible, while others rushed into all sorts of corners where animals lived, driving out the inhabitants.
Cats, dogs, rats, and even some giraffes, cattle, and sheep...
After humanity retreated, the concrete jungle had become a playground for animals, and also a hunting ground for Darkseekers.
This was merely a hunt that had long since become routine.
Tonight, however, was somewhat different from usual.
Along the route where the Darkseekers sprinted after their prey, a dark shadow flashed past. Then, with a bang, something seemed to crash to the ground, compressing the air and forcing it outward.
Thud!
The Darkseeker that had been far ahead of the others, the one most likely to catch the prey, ran straight into an iron wall. Before it could react, the tremendous recoil had already knocked it unconscious.
Then one driver felt his armored truck seemingly rock a little.
Zhang Tianyuan looked out through the bulletproof window. When he saw the city shrouded in darkness, without a single artificial light, he knew he had arrived too late.
"Everyone, we're too late. The apocalyptic event has already happened, and judging by the current situation, humanity has already fallen..."
This was the capital!
If even this place was completely dark, then even if the timeline had not reached 2012, when the story began, a considerable amount of time must have passed since the virus spread.
At that thought, Zhang Tianyuan hurriedly grabbed the radio again.
"No one is to get out of their vehicles or open their windows. Keep your weapons and flashlights ready, and wait for the nuclear, biological, and chemical team's test results!"
Just as a string of acknowledgments came back, Zhang Tianyuan suddenly heard a piercing howl.
He immediately realized:
"It's the Darkseekers!"
The Darkseekers nearby had already reacted the moment Zhang Tianyuan and the others appeared.
Their virus-altered bodies were extremely well adapted to darkness, especially their eyes, which could see clearly even at night.
They could spot the people sitting in the vehicles at a glance.
They knew that this species, similar to them in build, was their food.
It was just that they had not seen this kind of food for a very long time...
Now it had suddenly appeared again, and that meant-
-
Dinner time!
The packs of Darkseekers on the streets sprinted madly forward. Their skin and faces, turned ashen gray by pigmentation, together with the hair loss caused by the viral infection, made them look like a mob of sprinting, bald braised eggs.
Inside the vehicle.
Zhang Tianyuan watched the Darkseekers charging toward them.
There were so many of them that, moving together, they actually piled into a human wall. Some Darkseekers stepped directly onto their companions' shoulders, leaping swiftly toward them.
And they were not coming from just one direction. Reports came in of large numbers of Darkseekers charging from behind them as well.
Quite a few Darkseekers even jumped out of the buildings on either side of the street, landing directly on the vehicle roofs, then poking their heads down and banging on the windows...
"What do we do now?"
Bai Xu looked at the hairless face outside the window with some panic.
Even Wu Yisi, usually the calmest of them, clenched both fists nervously at the sight of a Darkseeker so close.
These things looked far too creepy.
Especially knowing that they had once been human...
Zhang Tianyuan took a deep breath, driving the uncanny valley effect out of his mind. Gripping the radio, he shouted:
"Everyone, stay calm! Turn on our vehicle lights now!"
Hearing Zhang Tianyuan's order, everyone instinctively obeyed.
The next instant.
Click, click, click!
One modified headlight after another switched on throughout the convoy, completely illuminating their surroundings as though it were daytime.
Even Zhang Tianyuan, inside his vehicle, found the lights so bright that he could no longer see what was happening outside.
All he could hear were waves of agonized screams.
They came from the Darkseekers.
Their advance team had not only ultraviolet flashlights; even the vehicles' lights had been modified to emit ultraviolet light.
Exposed to ultraviolet light, Darkseekers melted faster than ice cream in the sun.
In the movie, a Darkseeker had leaped out of a building after the protagonist, landing in a shaded area without direct sunlight. In just the time it took the protagonist to get up from the ground, that Darkseeker had been burned down to a few skeletal remains.
At New York's latitude, the ultraviolet intensity that September had not been particularly high, nowhere near the maximum UV index of 15.
And the ultraviolet intensity emitted by Zhang Tianyuan's modified vehicle lights was no weaker than New York's in September!
Only thirty seconds passed before Zhang Tianyuan heard the screams outside gradually stop, replaced by a kind of sizzling sound.
Like pouring water over a pile of charcoal.
He knew that the Darkseekers outside had melted...