The briny smell of the sea mixed with the sharp sting of disinfectant hit her all at once, and Jiang Nuan instinctively held her breath.
The massive silver-white medical pod in the center of the rest area glowed with a faint blue light, its status indicator on top blinking slowly.
No contaminants attached to the outer shell—just as Lu Shiyan had predicted.
They'd made opening the medical pod their top priority this time.
"No contamination on the outer shell, as expected." Shen Wu's voice cut through the mental link, laced with a hint of mockery. "Looks like our old friends are in a hurry."
Lu Shiyan didn't respond to Shen Wu.
His fingertips under the cuff of his sleeve curled almost imperceptibly, and the air around him rippled with a faint fluctuation of power that ordinary people couldn't detect—quietly locking onto two spatial coordinates.
"Everyone, stall according to plan. I need time."
Jiang Nuan stood in place, her gloves wrapped tight and secure.
She knew she should play her part—put on a convincing act of "studying how to open this pod."
But her feet felt nailed to the floor.
Because her gaze had already pierced through the semi-transparent observation window of the medical pod.
There was a person inside.
A man in a white shirt lay on his side, curled up in a posture that looked like sleep.
Around twenty-three or twenty-four years old.
His skin was pale to the point of being almost translucent, his eyelashes long, casting a small shadow beneath his eyes.
His features were exquisitely refined and clean, black hair falling in messy strands across his forehead.
Jiang Nuan's mind went blank for a moment.
She stared at that face.
She couldn't quite say why it felt familiar.
She was certain she had never seen this man in any fragment of her memory.
But there it was—that inexplicable sense of closeness.
"A Nuan..."
That voice came again.
As if it had called out a thousand times, ten thousand times.
She should know this person.
She should know him deeply.
But it was as if someone had erased him carefully with a rubber eraser—except the erasure wasn't thorough enough, or the traces were too deep to be fully wiped away, leaving only a shallow mark behind.
"Jiang Nuan."
Lu Shiyan's voice cut through the mental link, severing all her surging emotions.
Jiang Nuan snapped back to attention.
"...Sorry," she said through the link.
She disguised those few seconds of distraction by feigning dizziness.
Shen Wu's gaze swept over from the side.
Jiang Nuan quickly cleared her mind, letting the battle plan flood back to the forefront of her thoughts.
"Doctor Qi, how's it looking?" Liu Cheng urged from the side, his body leaning forward beneath his research coat, eyes glued to Qi Sui.
Eight pairs of eyes, all fixed on Qi Sui, who was circling the medical pod in a pretense of careful inspection.
"Almost done." Qi Sui turned and walked toward Lu Shiyan. "Let me confirm the overwrite protocol authorization process with the captain first."
Lu Shiyan stood at the entrance of the cabin, his gaze passing over Qi Sui, over that blue-glowing medical pod.
His voice came through the mental link.
"Ye Que."
"In position." Two words, crisp and clean.
"Jiang Ce."
"Ready anytime."
"Qinian."
"Been waiting for this." Qinian's voice burned with barely contained fury.
Lu Shiyan walked to the front of the medical pod and stopped. Less than a meter from the pod's surface.
Xu Guoping's breathing grew noticeably heavier, and the crew members behind him all leaned forward at once.
She watched Lu Shiyan raise his right hand.
His long fingers inside the tactical glove hovered above the surface of the medical pod.
"Yes, yes, just like that—" Xu Guoping's voice trembled almost uncontrollably, unconsciously stepping half a meter forward.
His palm hovered. Completely still.
Then his spatial ability exploded.
Light poured out from Lu Shiyan's palm like a flood, engulfing the entire massive SS-class medical pod in an instant.
That light carried overwhelming force, tearing space itself apart, folding it, reconstructing it.
The air around the pod let out a sharp, piercing whine that made Jiang Nuan's eardrums ache.
"You dare trick me!!!"
Xu Guoping's voice changed.
In a single instant, that middle-aged man's voice twisted into something no human vocal cord could produce—sharp, piercing, shrill.
But it was too late.
The light wrapped the multi-ton medical pod completely, space warping violently around its body.
Then the pod vanished.
From the center of cabin B-01, gone without a trace—along with all the pipes and mounting brackets that connected it to the ship's floor, sliced clean and precise.
Jiang Nuan's eyes went wide.
She already knew about Lu Shiyan's spatial ability, but watching a multi-ton medical pod teleported away in real time...
That was the strength of the Zero Squad captain.
If entanglement carried risk, then simply take the whole thing.
Lu Shiyan's arm dropped.
His face went pale as paper in that instant, cold sweat beading at his temples.
The price of teleporting that medical pod.
But he stood steady.
"Go!"
One word, no room for hesitation.
"You——!!"
Xu Guoping's second scream was no longer human at all.
The cabin exploded into chaos.
Gray-white mist erupted from their bodies, human shells collapsing to the ground like discarded clothes.
Tendrils, fog, shrieking cries—in an instant, cabin B-01 turned into a living hell.
Jiang Ce burst in from the doorway.
He grabbed Jiang Nuan in one motion, thick arms hooking around her waist, half-carrying, half-dragging her toward the exit. His other hand conjured a heavy defense shield, blocking the tendrils whipping through the air.
The wall on the other side of the cabin blasted open.
Blistering heat and fire burst through the breach, and a lean figure leapt out of the flames, upturned eyes burning with fervor.
Qinian.
The moment they charged out of B-01, gray-white mist began seeping from the metal bulkheads along the corridor.
The Forbidden Zone had gone mad.
But Qinian's wall of fire swept along both walls, incinerating every wisp of fog and every tendril that leaked through, leaving a narrow corridor just wide enough for two to walk side by side in the middle.
His control was far more precise than the last round.
Because this time, his brother was still alive.
Jiang Nuan glanced back mid-sprint.
Lu Shiyan ran at the rear, still pale, but his steps were steady.
Shen Wu stayed half a step beside him, mental strength extended outward like an invisible barrier.
Every tendril that tried to reach down from the ceiling would jerk to a dead stop mid-approach, as if losing its sense of direction, then veer off elsewhere.
One by one, they were cut down by Qinian's flames, Qi Sui's black sickle, Ye Que's gunfire.
Flawless coordination.
Last time, she and Qinian had been backed into a corner here. Qi Sui had traded his life for theirs, and Qinian had been torn to pieces in the flames.
But now, with the full Zero Squad assembled, pure overwhelming force.
At the end of the passage, the deck hatch had already been blasted open, howling winds and the salt stench of the sea pouring in.
Light spilled through.
"Move!" Jiang Ce roared, slamming his heavy shield aside a cluster of thick tendrils.
They burst onto the deck. Helicopter rotors thundered overhead, the rope ladder already lowered.
"Up!" Lu Shiyan barked.
Jiang Nuan gripped the rope with all her strength, climbing hand over foot. Qi Sui followed right behind, then the others one by one, with Jiang Ce covering the rear.
Jiang Nuan tumbled into the cabin, leaning against the medical pod Lu Shiyan had teleported up ahead of time, gasping for breath.
The others climbed aboard one after another. Jiang Ce was the last.
"Pull back!" Lu Shiyan ordered the pilot.
The moment the helicopter lifted off, the seawater around the White Whale surged as if something was shoving it upward from below, and a colossal column of water blasted into the sky.
The grayish-white fog no longer drifted aimlessly—it rapidly condensed, compressed, and took shape.
A pillar as thick as a skyscraper rose slowly, dragging with it a deluge of seawater and mist.
In an instant, its shadow swallowed the entire sky.
"Everyone, hold on—!" Shen Wu's shout rang through the cabin.
The pilot cursed, yanking the controls hard. The helicopter banked into a near ninety-degree roll to the right, rotors screeching.
The gigantic tentacle crashed down with a shadow that blotted out the sun, slamming into the sea less than three meters from the tail.
The shockwave's blast hurled the helicopter sideways, the frame shuddering violently as Jiang Nuan's body was flung toward the cabin wall.
An arm shot out from the side, pressing firmly against her shoulder, pinning her to the seat.
Ye Que.
He sat beside her, one hand gripping the overhead handle, the other holding her in place.
"Full speed," Lu Shiyan ordered.
The pilot pushed the engines to max, and the helicopter tore out of the fog zone at breakneck speed.
Behind them, a second tentacle rose. A third.
But they were clearly slower now.
As if something was dragging them down, refusing to let them leave those waters.
The moment the helicopter crossed the fog boundary, all the tentacles behind them seemed to lose their strength at once. They went limp, crashing into the sea in unison, sending white spray fifty meters high.
The grayish fog churned and twisted behind them, letting out one last, low mournful cry.
Then the mist began to shrink. Smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Until only the hollow shell of the White Whale remained, floating alone on the now-calm sea.
Silence filled the cabin for a few seconds.
"...Fuck." Qinian leaned against the wall, tilting his head back. "That thing was genuinely vile."
No one argued.
Jiang Nuan sank into her seat, all strength drained from her body.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
She was alive.
Everyone was still alive!
The realization surged up from her chest with a rawness that nearly drowned her. All those deaths from the last round—the collapse she'd been powerless to stop—this time, it had all been rewritten.
She opened her eyes.
Ye Que's hand still rested on her shoulder. He made no move to pull it away.
Then, against her own control, her gaze drifted sideways.
The medical pod was right there.
Through the translucent observation window, the young man in the white shirt lay on his side, still sleeping, his pale features serene as a painting.
Jiang Nuan's heart quickened.
Not just because she had survived.
"A Nuan, stop messing around, come back with me..."
She clenched her fist hard, trying to drive the voice from her head.
Who the hell was this man?
Why would the Forbidden Zone go to such lengths to crack open that SS-class medical pod?
For him—or for something else hidden inside?
And why, herself—why did she feel this way about him?
The roar of the engines filled everything.
Jiang Nuan slowly looked away, but caught a gaze in her periphery.
Lu Shiyan sat across from them.
His pale face was expressionless, but those deep brown eyes were fixed across half the cabin, locked onto her face.
Fixed on the face she'd worn when she'd looked at the medical pod just now.
