Chapter 1202: 异界尾波

Author: Sanjiu YinyuWord Count: 1220

The large red opera robe constantly moved through the nuclear ruins.

Chen Ling's gaze continually swept around, as if searching for Lu Xun and the others' whereabouts. However, the surface was now scarred and ravaged, making it impossible to discern the shelters' locations with the naked eye. Moreover, there wasn't just one shelter in Wushan, so he had no idea where Lu Xun and his group truly were.

After two nuclear strikes, all signals in the entire area were completely cut off. Chen Ling couldn't send messages to inquire, so he could only explore based on intuition.

"How long will this take to find?" Chen Ling muttered to himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the remains of a street nearby. As if he had discovered something, a crimson tentacle extended from beneath his sleeve, sweeping away the large amount of rubble and debris covering it.

As the building debris pressing down on it was swept away, a rectangular deep pit appeared before Chen Ling's eyes. Large amounts of stone fragments were piled throughout the pit, and faintly, dark red blood seeped out from within.

This was a collapsed underground shelter.

Chen Ling looked at the shocking sight before him, a flicker of complexity in the depths of his eyes.

No one knew how this shelter collapsed. Was it too close to the blast zone? Were there flaws during its construction? Was it crushed by an overloaded building nearby? Or was it some other reason? Of course... it no longer mattered.

Thousands of lives had been permanently buried beneath the ruins, with no survivors.

And how many more casualties like these were there in Wushan?

Chen Ling withdrew his gaze and continued deeper into the ruins. He could at least be certain that Lu Xun and his group were not in this shelter. Given their strength, even if they couldn't directly withstand a nuclear strike, they wouldn't be unable to handle a collapse.

Along the way, Chen Ling also saw numerous human remains. Rather than mere remains, they were more like dark silhouettes left on walls and the ground after bodies had been sublimated by extreme heat, much like the marks left by scorched food.

They were by the roadside, on bridge decks, in hospitals, and in seemingly safe corners. Some were straight, some struggling, some curled up. From their outlines, Chen Ling could even imagine what they had been thinking in their final moments.

Rustle—

A gentle breeze carried sand-like debris, whirling with a mournful whine.

The large red opera robe weaved through the broken walls and crumbling ruins. The entirety of Wushan was deathly silent, as if only Chen Ling remained.

Chen Ling didn't know how long he had been searching.

Until, in the dull gray sky above, a single star suddenly burst forth with dazzling brilliance.

Chen Ling turned to look at the star, his tired eyes gradually brightening. The thick smoke from the explosion was like nightfall, blocking out almost all sunlight, and that star, still twinkling in the gloom, was like a lighthouse in the dark, guiding his way.

Lu Xun was using the power of the stars to tell Chen Ling their location.

"It just had to be Lord Tianshu..."

Chen Ling sighed with emotion and immediately headed in that direction.

But the next moment, an inexplicable aura spread through the air. Chen Ling keenly frowned and slowly came to a halt.

"This aura... why does it feel like..."

Amidst the dust-swirling ruins, tiny fissures, like a disturbed television screen, slowly materialized, appearing everywhere in the ruins just like the dust after an explosion. At the same time, a familiar shade of gray seeped out from behind these fissures!

"The aura of the Grey Realm? How is this possible??" Chen Ling's pupils constricted slightly.

If Chen Ling remembered correctly, the formal invasion of the Grey Realm was supposed to occur in the later stages of the Great Cataclysm. The nuclear strike phase had just begun, so how could the Grey Realm converge so quickly?

Moreover, the current method of Grey Realm convergence was completely different from what Chen Ling had witnessed in the Aurora Domain. In the Aurora Domain, convergence points appeared irregularly in certain places. However, the Grey Realm aura in Wushan now seemed like thousands of sieve-like pores first emerging from nothingness, then gradually connecting to form larger patches.

Through the dense, sieve-like pores leading to the Grey Realm, Chen Ling could sense an unfamiliar aura of a Disaster Domain flowing out.

***

Underground Facility 7012.

The tremors from the second explosion were even stronger. Similarly, the noise in the conference room grew louder, with many people already beginning to leave the venue to inquire about Sun Zhongliang's whereabouts.

"Mr. Sun, if you don't intend to kill me, I should go and hold the meeting for them," Sun Zhongliang said seriously. "Otherwise, things will become even more troublesome..."

Sun Buming clenched his teeth and remained silent for a long time. In the end, he still didn't strike Sun Zhongliang. He slowly released his grip, and the latter stumbled back to the ground.

"I will get out," Sun Buming said coldly. "I'll find a way."

"As you wish."

With that, Sun Zhongliang straightened his attire and, led by other staff members, walked towards the conference room.

A moment later, muffled thuds of impact against Du Shang echoed from behind, as if Sun Buming was still unyielding, continually attempting to find a way to break through this secret treasure.

"Director Sun, do we really not need to worry about him?"

"How would we? Lock him up? Which room here could hold him?" Sun Zhongliang shook his head. "Let him be... The urgent priority is to stabilize the others and explain the situation to them."

"Director Sun, the latest intelligence has arrived!"

As soon as Sun Zhongliang emerged from the secret passage, a figure hurried towards him.

"Speak."

"The origin of the two nuclear weapons that landed in Wushan has been clarified. The first, which fell in the mountainous area, came from Japan and caused no casualties. However, the second one, which just struck, is a bit tricky... It came from the United States."

"Did it hit the town directly?"

"Not exactly, but our contacts in the United States have sent back the latest intelligence." The staff member paused for a moment. "Do you remember the American labs researching how to open portals to parallel worlds these past two days?"

"Yes, and then?"

"They seem to have made breakthroughs. Under conditions of immense energy transformation, producing extreme high temperatures and using a certain rare element as a catalyst, they can open a portal to that other world in a short time. They call it the 'Otherworld Wake.' According to the information we received, all eight American labs have been destroyed during the experiment, though the exact reason for their destruction is unclear. However, based on our analysis, we cannot rule out the possibility that they added this element to a small number of nuclear weapons as experimental samples."

Sun Zhongliang abruptly stopped.

"Are you saying they dropped this specialized nuclear weapon on our territory to conduct an experiment??"

"...Yes."

"A bunch of beasts!" Sun Zhongliang roared in fury. "Their own core, cutting-edge technology failed, so they resorted to this disgusting tactic! Do they really think they can become world hegemons again by relying on the power of another world?"