The armored vehicle tore a roaring yellow dragon of dust through the barren ruins.
In the distance, the outline of an old base emerged under the gray, hazy sky. This fortress, built from high-strength explosion-proof concrete, was now wrapped in a thick, wriggling black mist that shifted like a living creature.
The building’s lines twisted and stretched within the fog, crouching at the edge of an abyss, slowly opening a grotesque, deformed giant mouth.
The temperature inside the vehicle was dropping sharply.
Jiang Nuan pressed against the window, watching the sky grow darker outside. Her stomach churned violently. The strong, rancid stench that snuck in through the air conditioning vents made her gag repeatedly.
The vehicle began to slow down, its tires rolling over rust-covered barbed wire scattered around the perimeter, producing the nerve-grating sound of metal snapping.
"Captain." Jiang Nuan dug her fingers into her seatbelt, staring at the darkness ahead that seemed to swallow even light itself. She struggled to resist. "C-can I wait for you in the car?"
She didn’t want to go in.
That wasn’t residual energy—it was a graveyard!
She didn’t want to die!
"I promise I won’t run off," she added quickly.
Lu Shiyan paused, his hand mid-motion as he adjusted his black tactical gloves.
He didn’t answer immediately. He just looked at her calmly, his gaze like that of someone examining a naive, ridiculous child.
"Wait in the car?" Lu Shiyan’s voice betrayed no emotion. "If you want to melt into a pool of blood in five minutes from the omnipresent contamination, I can grant you that wish."
Jiang Nuan’s breath caught. She bit her lower lip hard and said nothing more.
Silently, she felt the heavy weight of the pistol secured inside her clothing.
She could only comfort herself.
Way to go, Jiang Nuan. From a B-level tunnel straight to an SS-level... even if it’s just a weakened version.
She tried to psych herself up, but the effect was about zero.
Qi Sui grabbed several matte-black half-face protective masks and handed them to everyone one by one. The masks were cold and lightweight, covering the mouth, nose, and jaw, with small filter valves embedded on the sides. When he handed one to Jiang Nuan, his hand paused for an extra moment.
"After we get out, Nuannuan needs to stick close to us,"
Jiang Nuan nodded, pressed the mask to her face, and fastened the clips behind her head with her fingertips. The moment the filter valve activated, the nauseating stench was cut off, and her churning stomach finally settled.
Everyone’s expressions were hidden behind the protective masks, leaving only their eyes visible.
Just as the masks were fastened—
"Boom!"
Without warning, the vehicle jolted upward. A violent impact came from underneath, as if something had slammed up from the earth’s core!
The armored car screeched with friction, the entire body tilting almost forty-five degrees.
Jiang Nuan was thrown to the side by the immense inertia, crashing heavily into Qi Sui’s shoulder.
A hand immediately grabbed her arm, steady and strong.
Before she could even stabilize herself—
"Crash!"
The asphalt road beneath the vehicle exploded!
Several pitch-black bone spikes, as thick as adult arms, burst up from the ground, piercing straight through the vehicle’s hardened chassis!
One spike scraped just past Jiang Nuan’s calf, its sharp tip dripping green slime.
The liquid hit the leather seat with a hiss, burning a hole straight through it, thick white smoke stinging their nostrils.
An inch closer—
And her leg would have been gone!
"Abandon the vehicle!" Lu Shiyan ordered sharply.
The door was kicked open.
Ye Que grabbed Jiang Nuan by the back of her collar, lifting her like a cat, and pulled her out of the cabin in one swift motion.
His feet touched the ground, and he immediately let go, spinning around to shield her.
The sensation underfoot was wrong.
What should have been hard concrete now felt nauseatingly sticky, like stepping on a massive, rotting slab of flesh. Each step sank slightly before rebounding.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ye Que shielded Jiang Nuan behind him with one hand while drawing a large-caliber tactical pistol with the other. Flames spat from the muzzle as bullets precisely shattered several bone spikes that once again thrust up from the ground.
The instant the bone spikes shattered, they emitted a piercing, wailing cry.
The eerie sound sent a chill down Jiang Nuan's scalp.
"Into the main building." Lu Shiyan spread his left hand, palm facing down, and pressed it sharply.
"Gravity, tenfold."
Boom!
Within a five-meter radius centered on Lu Shiyan, the air let out a strained, explosive roar. The wildly thrashing bone spikes, crushed by an invisible mountain, slammed heavily into the ground, turned into pulp. The floor sank half a meter.
Jiang Nuan's eyes widened.
Spatial ability users were already extremely rare.
And Lu Shiyan's power went far beyond mere rarity.
With the obstacle cleared, the four of them quickly advanced toward the main building’s entrance dozens of meters away.
Jiang Nuan was yanked along by Ye Que as they ran. The surrounding black mist grew thicker, reducing visibility to less than five meters.
Charging into the main hall, Lu Shiyan grabbed the hydraulic seal switch and slammed the door shut.
The heavy alloy door boomed closed, cutting off most of the black mist and shrieks from outside.
For a moment, the hall fell silent.
Then, in the next second, everyone’s heart sank.
This wasn’t the old base they remembered.
In the pitch-black darkness, only the walls, ceiling, and floor emitted a faint green glow.
The interior space had been completely transformed. Corridors and forks, identical in every direction, stretched endlessly—above, below, left, and right—connected end to end like a boundless, three-dimensional maze.
Thick black liquid oozed from the walls, and the stench in the air was almost tangible.
Lu Shiyan drew a dagger from his waist and pressed its spine against the wall.
The blade sank in.
Concrete walls shouldn’t be soft.
He pulled the knife back; it was coated in black slime that stretched into fine threads.
"Spatial folding," Lu Shiyan said, frowning. "It turned this place into a nest."
Ye Que raised his sniper rifle, trying to peer down the corridor through the scope.
But after one look, he lowered the gun with a grimace.
"The line of sight is distorted," he said, his tone heavy. "Linear ballistics are useless here."
For a top-tier sniper, being unable to use his rifle meant losing most of his edge.
"Then we fight close."
Qi Sui’s voice came from beside Jiang Nuan.
His usual gentle smile was gone. He raised his right hand, palm upward.
Silently, a scythe materialized in his grip.
The handle was jet-black, the blade curved like a crescent moon.
Jiang Nuan froze. This was the first time she had seen Qi Sui’s weapon.
She had once guessed what it might be—a scalpel? A needle?
But a scythe?
It was the shape of Death itself.
Before she could think further, countless cracks split open along the walls on both sides of the corridor.
A dense swarm of black figures surged out.
Their forms were like skinned hounds, bodies slick with slime, no eyes—just bloody maws crammed with fangs. There were so many of them they couldn’t be counted, pouring out from every branching path and every crack in the walls, a black tide that drowned the corridor.
Qi Sui moved.
His scythe traced a black arc through the air.
The motion was too fluid, like a waltz—each time the blade cut through the air, more hounds were split in half from the middle.
At the same time, Qi Sui flicked his left hand, and several silver threads shot from his fingertips.
The threads pierced into the black mist. One second later, three hounds lunging from the side froze mid-air, their bodies convulsing and twisting uncontrollably.
Qi Sui pulled back.
The threads went taut.
The three hounds were instantly sliced into fragments, as if taken apart by invisible blades. Chunks of meat slapped wetly to the floor.
Ye Que abandoned his useless firearm and drew a wafer-thin dagger from his waist.
The short blade stabbed out again and again, each strike piercing a vital point.
No arcs, no elegance—only the shortest distance, the fastest speed, the most lethal path.
One hound slipped past his guard, charging at Jiang Nuan from the diagonal rear.
Ye Que didn’t even turn his head.
He flung the dagger backward.
The blade sank into the hound’s throat, pinning it to the wall.
He yanked the dagger free and resumed his assault without missing a beat.
Lu Shiyan was a walking engine of destruction.
“Gravity, tenfold.”
“Space, sever.”
With every command issued, swaths of black figures were crushed and ground to pieces, as though an invisible hand had smashed a colony of ants. The corridor echoed with the dull crack of snapping bones and the splatter of ooze, until all that remained was a litter of broken corpses.
Jiang Nuan stood in the safe zone carved out by the three men around her.
She clutched the silver pistol tightly in her hands, shaking so much she could barely hold it steady.
She forced herself not to look at the squirming chunks of meat on the floor, focusing only on the shadows still surging ahead.
Qi Sui’s scythe once more traced a lethal arc, the hem of his coat sweeping up and down.
Ye Que’s dagger pierced the skull of the last hound, then was pulled out cleanly.
Lu Shiyan raised a hand, and the monsters in the final area were crushed into a dull, reverberating boom.
The battle was over.
The corridor was piled with remains, dead silent.
Jiang Nuan gasped for air, her heart pounding wildly.
So this... was Zero Squad.
Just as she thought the crisis had passed and she could finally relax—
Qi Sui, who had been silent, suddenly stiffened.
He snapped his head up, staring toward a deeper part of the maze.
“Qinian…”
Jiang Nuan’s heart clenched.
“I can sense him. He’s inside.” Qi Sui paused, as if discerning something.
“…His emotions are very wrong.”
