A Flurry of Blows Beats the Old Madman

Emerald sludge soaked the earth ploughed by artillery fire, its putrid stench suffocating. Dark green hyphae lay exposed on top of the soil like blood vessels ripped violently from the surface of a body. Distant artillery still thundered, and burning steel rained continuously from the sky like an endless deluge. One hundred and twenty Conqueror tanks formed the tip of the spear in the assault. Their long, thick gun barrels and nearly red-hot coaxial machine guns spewed tongues of flame relentlessly, pouring ferocious firepower into the intervals between the curved barrages of the artillery to the rear. Tens of thousands of clone infantry cradled Ripper rifles, roaring as they charged after the tracers streaking across the sky, hurtling headlong toward the shattered mycoid aberrations and giving voice to their boiling fury in raw, primal howls. "Aaaagh!!!" "Ruuugh—!!" Mangled by shrapnel from heavy shells, a mycoid aberration let out a wail—or perhaps a roar—its corpulent body billowing like an umbrella as it continuously squeezed out billowing clouds of dark green spores. That dark green spore cloud was like a miracle cure; aberrations touching it groaned in relief, staggering up from shell craters as their mangled limbs regenerated at a pace visible to the naked eye. Especially the Walking Corpses and Corpse Hounds! Serving as cannon fodder, they were not known for offensive prowess, yet possessed astonishing resilience. Inhaling just a single breath was enough for their twisted bodies to struggle back to life. In the blink of an eye, the dark green cloud was sucked completely dry, while the "giant mushroom" that released the spores visibly shriveled as though withering. Noticing the situation here, a charging squad of clones immediately closed in like a vice, their rifles barking while they maintained their offensive momentum, driving forward. The giant mushroom took multiple rounds, teetering on the verge of collapse. Yet just as the clone squad drew near, the giant mushroom's body suddenly spasmed violently like boiling water, and its torso split open with a rip nearly a meter wide! Over a dozen tentacles lashed out from the fissure, whipping toward the oncoming clone soldiers like scourges! "Ruu!" One clone soldier took a direct hit. The creature let out a short, excited shriek, dragging this unfortunate fly into its maw like a hunting frog and jamming his head into an esophagus dripping with corrosive acid. Yet before the giant mushroom could savor the sweet flesh and blood, a bayonet burst through the back of its skull. "Ruuugh!!!" A howl of agonizing pain erupted from its gaping maw and wounds alike. As if struck by violent indigestion, it twisted the tentacles at its base, recoiling backward and vomiting up the mangled corpse along with its digestive fluids. Before it could stabilize itself into a defensive stance, another clone soldier rushed before it, bloodthirsty madness in his pupils gleaming just as starkly as the polished bayonet in his hands! "Aaaagh!!!" Roaring, he plunged the bayonet into the aberration's body, twisting and wrenching it with all his might. The giant mushroom capable of emitting healing spores soon collapsed to the ground, and the surrounding Walking Corpses and Corpse Hounds were likewise pinned down and slaughtered. A Crawler lunged forward and snapped a clone soldier's neck, but was blown to pieces an instant later by an incoming tank shell. The two sides clashed in brutal close-quarters combat. Those clone soldiers seemed even more like slime mold than the grotesque aberrations, their bloodthirsty eyes treating slaughter as their very reason for being! Their lifespans were measured in seconds. They had crossed tens of thousands of kilometers of desert to reach this alien land, only to burn in this final moment. They fell continuously, yet not one retreated. Turbid flesh and black mud blended into one. Staining the earth red, they pushed the battle line forward—and forward again—by the most primitive means possible! "Charge!" Leaning half his body out of a turret spattered with blood and mucus, a Wilante Centurion roared, urging his subordinates onward. "Show these filthy, hideous things what real cruelty is! "We'll make them regret ever being born into this world! Dedicate victory to the Marshal! Bring glory back to Triumph City! Bring death to our enemies! "Charge!!" Deafening roars answered his shout. "Aaaagh!!!" Though they couldn't clearly make out what their leader was howling about, rushing toward death was indeed the best release for them. Behind them, soldiers clad in heavy hazard suits advanced slowly, bearing cylindrical metal canisters on their backs and wielding decontamination nozzles. Every now and then, someone would pause, bend down, and pick up fragments of corpses mingled with muddy water and blood, tossing them into the canisters on their backs. Strain B could not grow outside Baiyue Province, but the fruiting bodies produced by the Broodmother kept in captivity by the Alliance resolved this issue. In addition to large-scale synthesis through incubation chambers, the Alliance Institute of Biological Research had developed "portable decontamination equipment"—the very gear these Wilante soldiers carried on their backs. Each culture canister contained a "fruiting body" inoculated with the genome of Strain B, capable of continuously synthesizing Strain B while consuming only a single corpse per square kilometer. The Strain B eroding the soil could not survive outside Baiyue Province on its own, naturally vanishing once it fulfilled its mission of eradicating Strain J. It was remarkably effective. By now, the coalition forces had already reclaimed half of Haiya Province's land using this equipment. As artillery smoke and spore clouds drifted slowly upward, the drone camera pulled back, revealing dense masses of figures blanketing the entire wilderness. The force launching the assault wasn't just a single ten-thousand-man legion, but ten full legions from the Eastern Legion! Even more brutal slaughter and death unfolded everywhere across the mud-stained earth... The Alliance wasn't the only one that could see Torch's declining fortunes; the Legion's commanders saw it just as clearly. To secure more bargaining chips when dividing the spoils of war, they had to seize more territory! And just to the east of the Legion's front, the fighting on the Alliance-controlled line was even fiercer. If the Legion's clones merely viewed death as a release, the Alliance's players truly looked upon death as a homecoming. Even though the Wilante never cared about clone casualties—and even wished these ants would die faster so the rear could send younger, stronger cannon fodder—they still didn't dare casually let clones become deeply encircled... After all, even an individual who did not fear death would lose the will to fight and cease resisting under such conditions. Yet with the players, no such problem existed. In order to farm a few more mobs before dying, or simply to keep friendly troops from getting in their way, they would even take the initiative to push deep into the heart of enemy territory, deliberately allowing themselves to be surrounded by Torch's aberrations. This deceptive tactic had cost Torch dearly in the early stages of the war. Whenever they attempted to divide and encircle the Alliance's effective strength to annihilate it, they suffered far greater losses instead. East past the Alliance-controlled sector lay territory held by the Academy's Mobile Task Force Alpha and the Free State's Hound Special Forces. Further out was the front controlled by Enterprise. Aside from the 100th Mechanized Mountain Division deployed to the front lines early on, three infantry divisions that had marched through Yuema Province and twelve mercenary groups were engaged in combat in this area. Every faction was showing off its prowess on the front lines, while Torch was left exhausted from running about, doing nothing but taking a beating. The battered landscape was mottled black and blue, looking just like a face beaten to a pulp. Looking down upon the fragmented front, the Human Sovereign stood in the void, his eyes wide with rage, his teeth clenched so hard they threatened to shatter. Gone was every trace of the calm ease and effortless composure he possessed when the war began. There were too many enemies! Gun-toting soldiers swarmed toward the front like locusts. No sooner had he finished deploying in the east than tens of thousands appeared in the west; once he finally managed to handle both flanks, Alliance aircraft dumped a horde of paratroopers right on his face. Now threats came not just from dead ahead—a fire was burning at his rear as well. No matter how skilled he was at scheming, he couldn't fend off countless fists raining down on him all at once. "Die... Every last one of you, die!" the Human Sovereign roared in fury, yet no one could hear his cries. He repeatedly projected his consciousness into the advanced organisms on the front line, fighting in person to turn the tide, yet in mere moments he would lose connection with his mortal vessel, forced into an endless cycle of connecting and disconnecting. As if moved by his efforts, or perhaps taking pity on his futile struggles, a gentle voice came from above his head. "Enough. You have done all you could." At the sound of the Holy Son's voice, the madness on his face froze for an instant. Yet only for an instant. "I can still fight..." he panted, lingering traces of madness from the previous advanced organism's death still etched on his face. Gazing at that frenzied expression, the Holy Son sighed softly. "The fall of the Kingdom of Heaven is inevitable... Our time is up. The others have already set out, and you should—" "Never!" Having completely seen red, the Human Sovereign bellowed, cutting off those airy words. At this moment, he was like a beast backed into a corner. Staring fixedly at the burning battlefield below, he enunciated every single word. "I will never retreat! My Kingdom of Heaven is right here... I am going nowhere!" To bring about the descent of the Kingdom of Heaven upon this land, to elevate humanity toward higher existence, at least a million survivors had perished by his hand! After paying such a heavy price in sacrifice, now that his Kingdom of Heaven had finally descended upon the mortal realm, all those sacrifices had at last yielded fruit... No one was taking his kingdom away! He would fight to the bitter end! So that all this blood was not shed in vain! Looking silently at the contorted face, the Holy Son sighed softly. "I respect your choice..." As he spoke, a trace of madness crept into his vacant gaze, like a black hole swallowing all creation and space itself. "...I will witness the final moments of this miracle alongside you." ... Low plumes of black smoke churned in the sky, while shattered clouds traced the paths of ballistic arcs. Standing on the bridge of the Heart of Steel, Chu Guang looked down on the battlefield ploughed over and over by artillery fire, just like the "Human Sovereign" drifting somewhere unknown. However, compared to the madmen of Torch, his expression and composure were conspicuously calmer; his stern demeanor showed scarcely a ripple of emotion. Beyond the bridge's floor-to-ceiling windows, the faint outline of the coastline was already visible. Within a week at the earliest, or half a month at the latest, the landing force would link up with the main army on the northern front. After that would come locating and destroying the Church of the Torch's facilities. There was little of note in the details of the localized engagements. At the moment, Chu Guang was reviewing the investigation report on Shelter 182 sent over by Fang Chang via the holographic screen. It was a vault abandoned for a century, which Torch had rebooted and converted into a research facility primarily dedicated to the Gestalt Lifeform project and its related branches. Most research and production facilities held by the Church of the Torch followed this pattern. According to the investigation report provided by Fang Chang, in addition to several modified production machines and three black boxes discovered on B4 of Shelter 182, they found 120 cylindrical cultivation tanks used for submerging test subjects on B5, as well as a colossal glass vat covering a hundred square meters filled with genetic modification stock solution. On top of that was a large cold-storage vault holding over a thousand corpses that had either yet to be disposed of or possessed research value. Those corpses hung like meat in a cold locker, bearing three arms or two heads; almost none still retained a recognizable human form. According to the confessions of the facility's staff, Torch Apostles screened captured survivors for suitable candidates who showed no obvious rejection reactions to injections of the genetic modification stock solution, then tossed them into cultivation tanks filled with the solution to soak for three to seven days, successfully converting a portion of them into mutants. Naturally, even after weeding out unsuitable candidates who exhibited rejection, only a fraction of them completed the transformation. After all, "mutants" were an unfinished, unstable technology to begin with, plagued by immense risks in its underlying technical principles. Moreover, reverting fully developed adults to an embryonic state, replacing their genome, and forcing its expression was no less difficult than shoving someone back into their mother's womb to be born again. It was vastly more difficult than a complete blood transfusion. Even with the Church of the Torch's advantages in biotechnology, they could only achieve a 67% "yield rate." And even among that 67% of "acceptable products," more than half completely lost their sanity during the transformation due to the torture-like agony, reduced to feral, beast-like beings. As for those who didn't turn into beasts, their minds suffered varying degrees of distortion. The most common was schizophrenia—such as multiple personalities residing within a single body—or amnesia, or imagining themselves to be cooks or other such identities. The associated research was all recorded in experimental logs, every line steeped in shocking, gruesome bloodshed. Torch seemed to have recognized that these things were unfit for public eyes, intending to destroy the originals while backing up the data. Fortunately, his little players had arrived in the nick of time, intercepting the Apostle who had been preparing to evacuate. Having read the entire report through to the end, Chu Guang sighed softly. "...Just from the contents of this single investigation report, the crimes of these bastards are too numerous to record." Standing behind him, Heya, who had remained silent for a long time, lowered her head, an expression of mortifying guilt on her face. "I'm sorry..." "You don't need to apologize for mistakes you never committed," Chu Guang said, flicking his index finger gently to disperse the pale blue beams at his fingertips before turning back to look at her. "What's more, your research findings have made monumental contributions to our cause and indeed to all of humanity. You should be proud. Hold your head high." Heya raised her head, but her complex gaze still wavered evasively. The people who committed these atrocities were her former neighbors. They might have even dined at the same table in the same cafeteria... and among them might even be her teacher. "Yet they were residents of Shelter 117 after all..." "Only a portion. Even if just one person made a different choice, that is still a different choice." Chu Guang interrupted her, gazing into her evasive eyes as he continued. "Besides, there is no shortage of Shelter 117 residents in the Alliance Institute of Biological Research. They are all fine people, as you well know." Those blue coats were people the Alliance had rescued from Shelter 401. Though not numerous, their contributions to the advancement of the Alliance's biotechnology were by no means small, and they shared credit for the Alliance's prosperity. Heya's eyes rimmed with red, and she whispered softly. "Thank you..." "No need to thank me. I believe I've said something similar before," Chu Guang said with a faint smile. "I'm not the only one who thinks this way. That includes Yaya, who pulled you out of that hibernation pod, and the other residents who help gather research materials for you... All of us feel the same." The Alliance never practiced identity politics—it had always been this way. Moreover, not every resident of Shelter 117 had joined Torch in the first place, and there were those who joined only to regret it later. Then again, there was one matter he had always been curious about. All available intelligence indicated that Torch had only thirteen Forerunners in total, and that number even included the Holy Son known as Wang Yi. Yet according to the intelligence gathered by the Guards Corps through investigations and interviews, far more residents had walked out of Shelter 117 back then. Where were the rest? Including Heya's mentor Karen... Where did all the blue coats who once joined Torch go? He wasn't the only one perplexed; even Sun Yuechi, former Administrator of Shelter 70, had harbored similar doubts. Shelter 70 and Shelter 117 had maintained regular contact over the past century, exchanging research on mutant slime molds and the like... After all, the former was situated right beside an enormous Broodmother, yet happened to lack expertise in biology. In Sun Yuechi's impression, the residents of Shelter 117 hardly seemed like madmen capable of doing such unhinged things, nor did they possess the ability to pull them off. Most blue coats actually had a miserable time on the wasteland. Kinder wastelanders simply ignored them, while the ruthless treated them as fat targets for slaughter. Of course, this wasn't to excuse the transgressions of Shelter 117, but he always felt an invisible hand was pulling the strings behind the scenes... just as the Alliance indirectly manipulated the situation in Brahma Province through the pawn of the Baiyue Company. Though Chu Guang wasn't particularly fond of the man's cynical analogy—since the two were completely different matters—he had to admit he had shared a similar feeling. The trajectory of the Church of the Torch's development in the decade after leaving Jinchuan for Haiya was, to say the least, somewhat absurd. The Iron Tower Organization was at least a bargain-bin Alliance, a self-help league formed spontaneously by local survivors, and far more solid than Boulder City. Yet bizarrely, Torch—which hadn't even been able to overcome Boulder City—had dismantled the Iron Tower in a very short span of time and enslaved the survivors of an entire province. The black boxes they possessed far exceeded the theoretical reserves of Shelter 117, and they had outfitted one special operations force after another with unbelievable equipment that proved troublesome even for the Alliance's elite soldiers. Chu Guang wasn't merely curious about where the other Shelter 117 residents outside the "Council of Thirteen" had gone; he was even more curious about what had transpired during those years after Torch set foot on this land beneath his feet... Right at that moment, Lyu Bei of the Guards Corps stepped through the sliding door into the bridge and snapped a crisp military salute. "Respected Administrator, my lo—sir, our investigators operating on the front lines have received a transmission originating from within the domain of the Kingdom of Heaven..." Lately, the kid had finally corrected himself from calling him "my lord," and Chu Guang was fairly pleased with his progress. The only thing that still left something to be desired was that while the fellow often parroted his words, he rarely took them to heart. Seeing Lyu Bei abruptly cut himself off, Heya tactfully prepared to excuse herself from the bridge, but Chu Guang stopped her. "Stay and listen." With that, Chu Guang turned to Lyu Bei and added: "The Alliance has not reached the point where it needs to hide symptoms from the 'doctor.' I believe I've said that all intelligence on the Church of the Torch gathered by the Guards Corps is open to the Alliance Institute of Biological Research. There is no need to ask me beforehand." Lyu Bei lowered his head. "Yes, sir..." Knowing the lad meant well, Chu Guang didn't reprimand him further, merely gesturing with his eyes for him to proceed. Lyu Bei paused, then presented the intelligence in full. Simply put, it wasn't just the coalition forces that believed Torch had reached the end of the line; Torch's own insiders also thought they were done for. Although the Church of the Torch bore the name "church," its religious doctrines were merely meant to dupe ordinary people. Among themselves, Torch's upper echelon didn't buy into that nonsense, focusing far more on science and pragmatic methods. While there were certainly steadfast idealists among them, there was no shortage of opportunists and "not-my-problem-ists" either. You'er, who currently worked for the Alliance, was a prime example of the latter. The man himself didn't quite know what he wanted to do. Before the war, he had been a corporate drone at a pharmaceutical company. When war broke out, he relocated to do research elsewhere, was coaxed into a hibernation nap by his colleagues, woke up in the Wasteland Era, and followed Torch without giving it much thought when they beckoned. Other researchers had been drawn by Torch's resources, hoping to leverage them to continue their unfinished pre-war research. In short, there was one such senior researcher among Torch's leadership who, seeing that the recklessly suicidal tree of Torch was ninety percent sure to fall, hoped to defect to the Anti-Slime Mold Coalition forces with intelligence and research data in exchange for leniency. What was interesting was that, according to this senior researcher, the high-ranking leadership of the Church of the Torch apparently planned to flee using a secret device located inside his facility. Evidently, he wasn't on the list for this "strategic relocation," so he seized the opportunity to leak the information. "What is that researcher's name?!" Heya asked anxiously before Lyu Bei could finish. Lyu Bei gave Chu Guang a hesitant glance, but seeing the Administrator merely looking back at him impassively, he finally sighed in defeat and held nothing back. "The name that person left for us to identify them by is Karen... I was surprised at the time as well, but I get the feeling that person isn't the one you've been looking for."