Pei Ran and W both fell silent. So this was the final outcome of Marshal Vina in the end.
Pei Ran said, “I’ll deal with her.”
W: “How are you going to deal with her? You can’t get close at all—if you get close, you’ll be caught by her.”
He knew she had just used that mysterious ability twice in a row, so she probably couldn’t use it a third time immediately.
Pei Ran summoned Green Light No.6 from within her body.
Green Light No.6 had been snatched from Yu He. As long as the target didn’t leave the line of sight, it could control the other’s movements like manipulating a marionette. Since Pei Ran had obtained it, she had never used it before.
She adjusted Green Light No.6 into her eyes.
A layer of green halo covered her vision. Pei Ran stared fixedly at Marshal Vina’s head.
However, it had no effect.
Marshal Vina was completely unaffected, still leading her motorcade, chasing after the scattered fleeing crowd, sucking people into her bizarre convoy, planting them onto the car bodies like planting flowers.
The frenzied fusion form seemed immune to the control of Green Light No.6.
Since Green Light No.6 was useless, Pei Ran sent it back to continue herding sheep.
She unfastened the collar of her combat suit and fished out a piece of paper from a hidden pocket inside. She unfolded it.
On it were the results of her efforts from the past two nights—
A comic she had drawn based on a photo of Marshal Vina.
W glanced at it too. He had been watching Pei Ran draw this over the past couple of days: she didn’t trust Marshal Vina. As the ruler of Black Well, she had long prepared a countermeasure against her.
The comic only had four panels. Like Xing Wuxian’s death comic, in the drawing, Marshal Vina was also on fire.
Pei Ran had meticulously illustrated Marshal Vina’s appearance—her sharp brows, the deep nasolabial folds beside her nose, her immaculately neat silver hair, and the military uniform that seemed welded to her body every day, down to the detailed insignia on her shoulders.
Only the upper half of the body was shown in the picture.
Fortunately, it was only the upper half, because everything below Marshal Vina’s chest was now completely fused with the military vehicle.
Her head hadn’t deformed, so only the body needed some slight modification.
Green light flowed to the tip of the pen. Pei Ran did her best to draw everything below her chest into a chaotic, fused mess with the vehicle. The messier the strokes, the more it resembled the real thing.
On top of the vehicle, Marshal Vina was scanning around with her red eyes when she suddenly noticed the small, motionless truck not far away.
Catching that small truck would allow her convoy to add another carriage.
Marshal Vina retracted the arms that had been grabbing people everywhere and led the convoy straight in this direction.
There was no more time to add anything else. Pei Ran immediately twisted her pen.
The green light spun, and a small flame suddenly burst out from Marshal Vina’s mutated arm—it seemed to be at the location of the wristband.
The energy core in the wristband caught fire, and the flames ignited the fabric on her arm, shooting upward rapidly just like in the comic.
Marshal Vina paid no attention to the fact that she was on fire. Her blood-red eyes were fixed only on that small truck.
She had already seen clearly the person sitting in the cab of the small truck. Her frenzied brain was still barely functioning and managed to recognize a familiar face—
It was Pei Ran.
The person sitting next to her also looked somewhat familiar, as if she had seen him somewhere before. She struggled to sort out her tangled thoughts and finally remembered.
That should be the virtual image of Security Agent W. She had seen it a few times on the screen before.
But how could a virtual image become a real person? Marshal Vina’s thoughts were in chaos, unable to make sense of it no matter how hard she tried.
Regardless, the two of them were trying to escape.
Driving away, leaving her Black Well.
All these people—every single one of them—wanted to leave her Black Well.
Black Well was something she had poured so much effort into, something that had only just gradually gotten on track. It had nearly fallen into the hands of that group led by Basserway, and she had barely managed to take it back. But now, all of them wanted to leave.
Absolutely not.
Black Well was her domain. These people were all her subjects. She would not allow it—none of them could even think about leaving.
She drove the convoy, speeding up and heading straight toward the small truck, but suddenly sensed something was wrong.
It was the fire.
The flames were obstructing her vision.
The fire burned rapidly, rushing upward, quickly igniting her entire body, setting her hair ablaze.
It took only a few seconds for Marshal Vina to become a person engulfed in flames.
Her mutated body felt no burning pain. She only found the flailing flames extremely bothersome, waving her arm in the air impatiently, trying to swat the fire away.
After a while, she suddenly realized—she seemed to be on fire.
She slapped at the flames a couple of times, dazedly wondering—was she about to die?
The bright light of the fire brought a moment of clarity to her chaotic mind. For some reason, she suddenly remembered a time long, long ago.
It truly had been so long ago.
Back then, her young self had stood beneath the Federal Eagle Emblem with its wings spread wide, vowing to defend the Federation to the death, to protect this land connected to her by blood, and to protect every person living on it.
Every word she had spoken back then had been sincere, straight from the heart.
But later, everything gradually changed.
Without any scheming, without using any means, it was impossible to survive the complex struggles.
Military merit alone was far from enough. Her climb had been extremely difficult.
She didn’t know when it had started, but all those things she once swore to defend with her life—though they still existed—had been pushed to the back, no longer of utmost importance. Preserving her own position had become the top priority, ranked above all else.
She always believed that she was completely different from Basserway and that group of useless, gluttonous, shameless scoundrels who only knew how to fight for power and profit.
She believed that once the day came when she held supreme power, she would undoubtedly become the Federation’s most outstanding leader—one whose name would go down in history.
But before that could happen, she had to resort to any means necessary, eliminate all obstacles, and seize all power into her own hands so that everything could proceed according to her will.
That distant, young, naive, passionate version of herself had faded with the years, gradually disappearing.
Her consciousness blurred within the flames, slowly detaching from her body.
Marshal Vina struggled to raise her hand, wanting to straighten the military cap on her head.
Even in death, she wanted to die like a soldier.
Unfortunately, the cap had already caught fire, bursting into impossibly fierce flames, and turned into ashes along with her hair.
Just like the final panel in the four-panel comic, the flames soon died out.
The Marshal Vina on the front of the vehicle had turned into a charred hunk of black carbon.
She was dead, but the unlucky ones who had been caught and brought onto this train were still painfully alive, fused with the vehicle, unable to get off even if they wanted to.
They were half-embedded in the car’s body. Someone couldn’t help but cry out, and in the next second—bang—they exploded into pieces along with the person next to them.
The explosion of a human body wasn’t enough to affect the vehicle. The body of the vehicle remained completely intact, still standing there like a monster.
The others, still shaken, carefully detoured around the vehicle and continued walking up the slope toward the rift.
But only a moment later, the convoy that had stopped suddenly came back to life, as if reawakened. Its wheels started turning again.
It suddenly accelerated and charged straight toward the small truck.
Pei Ran quickly started the truck, spun the wheel, and darted into the rift valley.
It was that mutated heart—it was still alive.
The four-panel comic she had drawn was meant to deal with ordinary people. It was more than enough to burn Xing Wuxian to death, but not enough to take down the frenzied fusion form that Marshal Vina had become.
Marshal Vina’s upper body had been burned to a crisp, but that mutated heart had clearly detached—it was no longer in its original place inside her chest.
If the mutated heart wasn’t killed, the frenzied fusion form couldn’t die.
The problem was—where exactly was that heart hiding?
W said next to her ear, “I’ll drive. You keep drawing?”
If she could draw the entire convoy engulfed in flames, completely charred, that should be enough to kill the mutated heart.
But the convoy’s appearance was too bizarre, covered in human figures. With Pei Ran’s current drawing skills, she couldn’t possibly finish it in time—even if it killed her.
Another wave of people surged out from the Black Well’s exit. The convoy’s attention was diverted and it no longer chased the small truck, instead charging toward the crowd.
The people were scared out of their wits, scattering and fleeing in all directions.
Pei Ran suddenly saw in the side mirror—Qiao Sai was clinging to the edge of the truck bed, seemingly preparing to jump.
Pei Ran was startled and hit the brakes hard.
Qiao Sai jumped out, rolling twice on the ground from the momentum, but he quickly got up and sprinted toward the direction of the convoy.
Pei Ran: ?
Although Marshal Vina was no longer extending her arms to grab people, approaching the convoy recklessly was still far from safe.
W had sharp eyes and had already spotted it. “Pei Ran, look at the third vehicle—Major General Song Wan is on it.”
The third vehicle in the convoy, like the others, was covered with densely embedded people.
Song Wan was on it. Her lower body had already fused with the vehicle, only the upper half of her body was exposed. She was still wearing the hospital gown from earlier.
W said, “Those next to her are her orderlies and adjutants. Looks like they evacuated her from the hospital.”
But they’d had terrible luck, running into the fusion form Marshal Vina had become—and ended up becoming part of the convoy.
Song Wan was different from the others on the vehicle—she wasn’t panicking or struggling. She was looking in their direction and had already spotted Qiao Sai running over.
She furrowed her brows, her expression stern, and made a hand gesture to forbid him from coming closer.
The convoy was still moving. Having failed to crash into the crowd, it began to turn around.
This time, its target was likely the upward slope ahead—there were still quite a few people blocked at the bottom, unable to ascend in time.
Inside the convoy, Song Wan turned her fixed body with great difficulty and fished out something black from the adjutant beside her, gripping it in her hand.
Even without W saying it, Pei Ran already understood what it was.
The convoy completed its turn, forming itself into a circle.
This was the best moment. Song Wan pressed the item in her hand.
A thunderous explosion resounded.
The blast shook the earth and sky. The entire convoy was torn apart into fragments.
The frenzied fusion form was gone, and so were the people embedded on the vehicles—only the echo of the explosion lingered through the rift valley.
Qiao Sai was knocked to the ground by the shockwave. He quickly got back up and dashed forward—but there was already nothing left over there.
He stood there, stunned, unable to react.
A long time passed before he finally turned around and walked back toward the small truck.
The silence sealed everyone’s lips—no one could cry.
Pei Ran made a hand gesture to him, signaling to get in the truck.
The small truck followed the stream of people, slowly driving up the slope, and finally saw what lay outside the rift—in the night, an endless expanse of barren land.
The sky was like a black curtain, without a single star. The wilderness was silent.
There might still be frenzied fusion forms near the Black Well’s exit. Those who escaped didn’t dare linger, continuing to move forward, one shadow after another disappearing into the dark wasteland.
“The entire upper echelon of Black Well is dead,” W said. “Very few troops remain. It’ll be extremely difficult to organize them effectively again. Inside Black Well, everything is overrun by frenzied fusion forms—it might still be burning. It’s unlikely anyone will return for quite some time.”
He paused, then looked at Pei Ran.
Pei Ran heard him softly say in her ear, “Pei Ran, I’m free.”
He was free.
He no longer had to be locked in that lightless underground room, no longer had to deal with endless daily tasks, no longer had to serve as the Ministry of Defense’s exclusive artificial intelligence.
Pei Ran nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Wait a moment,” W said. “Black Well’s signal transmission device is still functioning. I have one last task to finish.”
Pei Ran’s wristband vibrated.
Not just hers—almost everyone was lowering their heads to look at their wristbands.
It was a set of images. He had sent news of Black Well’s fall to everyone in the Federation, warning them not to come to Black Well again.
The Ark had already sunk.
Pei Ran started the vehicle and continued driving forward.
Not far ahead, a person stood there.
She was small in stature, just like when Pei Ran had first seen her in White Port City. Amid the crowd scattering in panic, she stood firm—like a rock unmoved in a rushing stream.
It was Abu.
The small truck approached. Abu stepped forward and knocked on the passenger door beside Pei Ran.
She had likely spent the past few days in the hospital practicing Morse code—her usage was far more fluent now: [I’ve been waiting for you here. We must go after Nan Yi right now—otherwise, it’ll be too late.]
She said they had to go after Nan Yi. That meant it was something very important.
Pei Ran didn’t waste time asking for background—she asked first: [Where is he?]
Abu reached out her hand, pointing in a direction across the wilderness, and tapped: [That way. He’s driving.]
She then climbed into the truck bed in the back.
Pei Ran started the truck and turned her head, casting one last glance back at Black Well.
At the bottom of the reddish-brown rift, the quarantine gates stood wide open. That large white boulder was still there, and every now and then, people were still fleeing through the exit.
The sanctuary in this apocalypse had vanished just like that.
The vile died by vileness, the greedy by greed. Warriors faced death without fear, and the reckless stumbled onward.
Black Well sank into the whirlpool. Power and conflict faded like smoke.
All returns to dust. All returns to earth.