Engineer Jiang’s eyes were full of anxiety. She couldn’t speak and could only use her palm to push Ai Xia forward with all her strength.
Ai Xia shook her head firmly, unmoving, and pointed at her feet.
If Grandma wanted to stay here and wait, then she would also stay here and wait together.
The officer saw the resolute look on her face and had no choice but to turn and leave.
The water ripples on the red rock wall swayed and then solidified once more.
Ai Xia walked over and touched it. The rock wall showed no trace, and the touch felt completely solid. It must be that there was a layer of camouflage, and behind it was the real door.
Engineer Jiang went to sit on a stone nearby. Ai Xia also went to sit beside her, reaching out to hold Grandma’s hand.
Dozens of kilometers away, in the sky.
Pei Ran asked, “Where are Engineer Jiang and the others now?”
W replied, “I’ve already had someone inform them, asking them to wait for a while at the entrance of Black Well. Ai Xia refuses to enter the shelter alone and is waiting outside with Engineer Jiang. Don’t worry, the entrance to Black Well has surveillance cameras. We can see their situation at any time.”
Pei Ran nodded. “Good.”
She gazed toward the horizon, thinking for a moment, then asked W, “Will the selection criteria they decided on change?”
W answered with great certainty, “I am almost one hundred percent sure the selection criteria will inevitably be gradually relaxed in the future.”
Pei Ran understood. Because too many people in the Federation had already died, and more would continue to die quickly—there was no room to be so picky.
Pei Ran asked, “Roughly how long will it take before the criteria are relaxed?”
W answered honestly, “I don’t know.”
Pei Ran turned her head and glanced at the swarm of human-drones hanging behind. The outside world was getting more and more dangerous. They still had to get everyone into Black Well as soon as possible.
W suddenly said, “I just received a message. A reconnaissance aircraft found the target we’ve been looking for near the coordinates reported by Captain Xiao Hai, and has already successfully completed the bombing.”
Captain Xiao Hai could now rest in peace.
Pei Ran asked him, “What exactly have you been looking for?”
She immediately added, “I’m just curious. If it’s a military secret and you can’t say, you don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s fine to tell you,” W replied. “Everyone in Black Well already knows.”
He briefly explained: the second phase of the northern shielding layer project had been attacked. The attackers were Attacker-Type 13 combat robots and madness fusion entities.
He said, “They launched an organized and tactical attack. From observing their behavior, it can be inferred that they were definitely under the command of another type of artificial intelligence product—the ‘Thinker’ fully automatic mobile combat center.
“There should be at most three of these combat centers. We’ve been searching for its whereabouts. This morning, we successfully destroyed one. Just now, we destroyed another one at the coordinates reported by Captain Xiao Hai. However, on the northern battlefield, the attack patterns of the combat robots have not changed, so we still need to find the last one.”
Pei Ran was curious: “It’s called a ‘mobile’ combat center, so it can move—it ran away on its own?”
“Not only can it run, it’s also very smart. It will automatically find places to hide to avoid being attacked.”
W said, “Black Well has already deployed all currently usable drones and aircraft, expanding the search area, hoping to find it and then blow it up. Logically, it should have been discovered long ago, but it still hasn’t. No one knows where it’s hiding.”
Pei Ran understood. “So if this ‘Thinker’ intelligent mobile combat center is destroyed, the fusion group attacking from the north will have no one to command them?”
“Exactly. The fusion group will immediately lose its unified attack target, and the level of attack will automatically drop from the current ‘erasure’ level to a disorganized mass of scattered sand. It’ll be much easier to deal with than now. The crisis at the base will be resolved.”
Pei Ran asked curiously, “What if it can’t be found?”
W replied indifferently, “According to my estimate, this well-trained fusion army might break through the defensive line and arrive at Black Well. It is almost certain they will discover the entrance to Black Well.”
Pei Ran was silent. “They’ll massacre Black Well?”
“Letting them charge into Black Well and engage in street battles with our soldiers would still be a minor issue…”
Pei Ran: Big brother, how exactly do you define a ‘minor issue’?
“The key point is, while in ‘erasure’ state, they will destroy the core shielding layer ignition device inside Black Well. Black Well currently doesn’t have the capability to produce the related components. Once it’s destroyed, there will no longer be any shelter on the East Manya Continent where normal communication is possible.”
Pei Ran: “……”
That’s a bit too ridiculously unlucky.
After going through so much hardship and traveling over two thousand kilometers, she had finally arrived here, hadn’t even entered the door yet, and now this shelter might be gone again.
In the gray sky, the swarm of human-drones chasing from behind had long left the mining zone. Pei Ran felt it was about time and began to accelerate for real.
Once she accelerated, the swarm of human-drones was completely no match.
They were thrown farther and farther away, becoming a small patch of black dots in the sky, gradually disappearing from sight.
W: “Shall we head back?”
Pei Ran: “Okay.”
Tang Dao and the other guy were still waiting on the other side of the tunnel.
Pei Ran stepped on the pedal and turned north.
They needed to make a loop; otherwise, they would collide head-on with the human-drone swarm again.
The current location of the aircraft was displayed on the console screen. The screen had been carefully optimized—no text, only a fine grid and terrain, likely the same interface Captain Xiao Hai had used to estimate coordinates.
W was also looking at the screen, estimating: “The entrance to Black Well is now slightly northeast of us. Fly a bit farther north, and then we can turn east.”
After flying a bit more, Pei Ran scanned the surroundings and prepared to turn east.
But she didn’t press down on the pedal.
W was also observing the eastern sky but didn’t see any trace of the human-drone swarm. He turned back and asked, “What is it?”
Pei Ran stared at the undulating wasteland to the north. “W, what’s that over there?”
In the visible northern distance, on the wasteland, there was a patch of ground that looked different from the rest.
The originally flat ground was bulging upward, as if something was hidden beneath the red soil, preparing to break through like a bamboo shoot.
If it were a bamboo shoot, then this must be a giant shoot, because even from the sky looking down, one could feel the force and size of it emerging from the ground.
W said something pointless: “This is definitely not a naturally occurring phenomenon.”
Of course.
The world was in chaos, with fusion entities in a state of madness everywhere. Pei Ran immediately flew the small aircraft farther away, circling from a distance, observing carefully.
Pei Ran stared in that direction and casually said, “Let’s both pray that this thing about to emerge is that missing ‘Thinker’.”
W: “It just might be.”
From afar, a thunderous boom rang out. The ground was suddenly pushed open by something, but surprisingly, very little red soil was thrown up; the crushed stones and dust somehow vanished without a trace.
The thing underground emerged from the earth at an angle.
The first thing to appear was a massive disc, spinning rapidly.
The rest of its body gradually emerged from the soil, bit by bit—
It was a long, cylindrical shape, like a giant caterpillar, or like a long chain of cylindrical train cars.
Pei Ran studied the strange object carefully. “W, is that ‘Thinker’ you mentioned supposed to look like this?”
“It doesn’t look like this,” W replied. “The Thinker Intelligent Mobile Combat Center is shaped like a short, stout, black humanoid robot. The thing that just emerged should be a fully automated intelligent tunnel boring machine.”
Pei Ran: Tunnel boring machine?
W explained, “Yes, this was a tool used during the construction of the Black Well underground base. We used many AI-controlled automated machines to expand and drill through the mining tunnels. This kind of fully automated intelligent tunnel boring machine was one of them.”
Pei Ran suddenly realized what it was.
When she was a child in the bunker, once, while exploring tunnels with a friend, they got lost and happened upon something like this.
It was completely rusted and sat quietly at the end of an underground tunnel.
Later, she heard people say it was called a tunnel boring machine, used during the bunker construction period to dig tunnels. At the very front, it had a cutter head that could cut through underground rock layers and soil, and it would even automatically install tunnel linings.
But the one now on the surface was much larger than the one Pei Ran had seen in the bunker.
And also much more bizarre.
Because as soon as it emerged from the soil, the rotating cutter disc on its front face stopped spinning.
Pei Ran saw its appearance clearly: the round disc used for cutting through soil at the front—its “face”—actually was a human face.
That human face was flat and wide, with a large gaping mouth that took up three-fourths of the disc’s surface, squeezing the eyes and nose into a cramped mass.
Inside the wide mouth were rows upon rows of shark-like fine teeth, densely packed and razor-sharp. This was likely the tool it used to forge ahead underground.
So in theory, it should rapidly rotate its teeth to cut through the mud and rock in front of it, swallow them into its belly, and then discharge them somewhere behind—this is how it forcefully carved a tunnel underground.
Now that it had emerged from the earth and its disc-face no longer spun, its expression appeared somewhat dazed.
Another fusion entity in a state of madness.
No one knew which unfortunate person had fused with this tunnel boring machine.
Its cylindrical body looked half metallic, half like biological skin, but many parts were burned and tattered, revealing patches of charred black.
There must have been some text somewhere on this tunnel boring machine, which got burned during the Silent Wave, turning it into this appearance.
It was riddled with holes and injuries, yet still able to move—and move quite flexibly.
Its half-metal, half-biological body twisted softly like a giant earthworm. With a flick of its tail, that part also emerged onto the surface.
And on its “tail,” there was a stocky black humanoid robot—much smaller in size compared to the tunnel boring machine—dangling.
The robot’s right foot seemed to be stuck in the tail end of the tunnel boring machine and was being dragged along awkwardly by it.
Pei Ran: !!!
W saw it too: “Intelligent Mobile Combat Center.”
So the Thinker had been here all along, hanging from the tail of the tunnel boring machine fusion form, dragged along as it tunneled around underground—no wonder it couldn’t be found.