Chapter 1 Lingering Sensation

Hao Ren rubbed his temples, trying to grasp the lingering feeling in his heart, but the voice that had sounded in his mind earlier in a daze had faded like a dream. He checked the previous mental communication records and found that they were indeed blank. The data terminal hadn't spoken at all.

"I seemed to hear someone talking just now," Hao Ren exhaled, turning his head to look at the monitor in the car. It seemed that the convoy was about to cross the river, and the opposite bank was shining brightly not far away. "It seemed to mention that this world couldn't hold on much longer..."

"Your dreams are always special. Don't underestimate them," the data terminal said seriously for once. "You seem to have the ability to communicate with other consciousnesses through dreams."

"I know, I know, but this 'connection' was too short. I can't grasp any clues. But I have a feeling that coming to the Northern Wasteland Ruins was the right decision. This place must be the key to this planet... Omens always appear at the center of events, don't they?"

The three armored vehicles safely crossed the frozen Gray River, and what greeted the mercenaries was a dead world even more desolate than the wasteland outside, and everything here was even stranger. The cameras transmitted the scenery in front of and on both sides of the armored vehicles. Hao Ren saw the silver-gray land outside, all covered with the same luster, as if the entire world had been transformed into a piece of metal. There were no plants, no buildings, and not even a normally shaped stone on this silver-gray land. All that could be seen were some strangely shaped bulges and cylindrical towers, which seemed to be integrated with the ground like melted cheese. Their smooth surfaces reflected the lights of the armored vehicles, and the hazy light was constantly refracted between a large number of such metal structures, presenting a bizarre and colorful appearance.

Hao Ren tried hard to think about what the scene in front of him looked like. Finally, he thought of something: a melted city.

It was as if a world of the same scale had been cast with metal, and then they were melted halfway and suddenly cooled down. What should be formed should be this kind of thing.

"The great plains of steel..." A young soldier held his gun nervously, looking at everything. "Everything has been transformed into metal?"

"It's not metal. Nanomachine swarms don't have the ability to change the properties of matter. They just make these things appear to be made of materials similar to themselves," Ulanov said, tapping the armor plate behind him with his gun. "Welcome to Old Xingzhou City. You are driving on the ruins of six million five hundred and thirty thousand citizens and two hundred thousand buildings—including one of my legs, one arm, all of my liver, and three-quarters of my lungs. Now I really can't find them."

The young soldier turned his head with a strange expression. "Your jokes are never funny."

Ulanov laughed hoarsely twice. Obviously, he was still very satisfied with his "internal organ joke." Hao Ren couldn't help but feel strange when he looked at the scenery outside the car: the silver-clad land outside was the product of the nanomachine swarms raging. They looked strange and beautiful, but they were piled up from the bones of countless people and the ruins of the city. Those tall bulges and cylindrical towers that looked like melted ice cream should be large buildings in the past—if they were blown open, could any traces of artificial creation still be found inside? If this land were dug deep, could the city's subways and the remaining pipeline remains still be found?

Or perhaps nothing could be found. The nanomachine swarms may have already penetrated this land, transforming the entire Northern Wasteland Ruins into their own domain from deep underground. In short, everything could only be based on speculation. Everything that happened here was unknown. Deep in the silver-gray land lay areas that humans could not reach. Starting sixty-five years ago, no one has been able to understand what these nanomachine swarms are doing on this land.

Similar thoughts were also spreading among the other mercenaries. Even these rough men who made a living from fighting couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion when faced with the Northern Wasteland Ruins: fear and awe made them sensitive. But Nolan just yawned boredly after seeing the reactions of the people around her, seeming uninterested.

Night gradually fell, and the sky covered by dust and fog had no stars or moon, a piece of darkness: in fact, the humans of this planet hadn't seen the starry sky for decades. But Nolan not only didn't stop the convoy, but instead ordered to speed up. She said that nighttime was when the nanomachine swarms were at their lowest activity. Those terrifying little devils still needed to rely on solar energy to provide some energy. Although they could still move at night, their reactions were much slower than during the day.

According to Nolan's calculations, if everything went smoothly, everyone should be able to reach the Northern Ring Tower before sunrise, just in time to avoid the moment when the nanomachine swarms regained their activity.

The armored vehicles were passing between two towering silver-gray "hills," and the strong lights shone on the metal "slopes" on both sides, reflecting circles of phantom light. Ulanov looked at the two symmetrical "hills" and said in a low voice, "This must be the Locke-Linton Twin Towers. They used to be the tallest buildings in the world. I've been there a few times, when this city was still around."

"Yeah, the tallest buildings in the world. When the swarms lost control, they set the world record for the highest number of instant deaths in the same building, but it was broken in the fourth year by the Far East No. 3 Shelter explosion," Nolan said, turning on the communicator next to her. "All vehicles, turn off the lights and use ultrasonic waves to explore the road. This is a dangerous area ahead. Strong light may activate some nanomachine that are lightly dormant."

The three armored vehicles turned off their lights. After losing this only light, this small convoy was more like a few wandering souls wandering in a silent hell. In this cold, dead, and desolate world, everything seemed small and fragile, and the heavy armor plates couldn't bring much sense of security. There was no situation like this that made people clearly realize how far away they were from the world of the living—and the direction of the convoy was still going deeper into the depths of death.

On the boring and sleepy journey, Hao Ren was confused many times in a half-dream and half-awake state, but he never heard any strange noises again. Finally, he found that a glimmer of light appeared vaguely in the sky outside, and the armored vehicle was passing through a huge silver-white barrier. The material of this barrier was significantly different from the silver-gray substance formed by the nanomachine swarms, and its regular appearance made people recognize at a glance that it was made by humans. It was tens of meters high and looked indestructible, but there was a huge hole in the lower half, and the shape of the hole looked as if it had been melted through by high temperature.

The armored vehicles passed through the hole under the barrier in a line. Ulanov patted Hao Ren on the shoulder: "This is the first hole eroded when the swarms lost control. Initially, they flowed out from the container opposite this barrier. Of course, now that container has been swallowed clean, and there are no nanomachine swarms opposite the barrier either. They have all been transferred to the Gray River in the outer areas for reasons unknown."

After passing through the hole, Hao Ren finally saw the natural rocky soil that he had missed for a long time, as well as the severely mutated and twisted plants that grew with difficulty in the cracks of the rocks. He knew that he had arrived at the central hinterland of the Northern Wasteland Ruins, the final island that had not been eroded under the siege of the nanomachine swarms.

Nolan raised her hand and pointed to the center of the monitor screen: "That is the Northern Ring Tower."

In the hinterland of the Northern Wasteland Ruins, the former nanometer sea outer wall formed a dividing barrier like a ring mountain, dividing the eroded wasteland outside from the normal land around the ring tower into two completely different areas. The Northern Ring Tower is located on a towering hill. It is more than four hundred meters high and consists of three symmetrical, pyramid-shaped conical towers. At the top and halfway up the three-tower building are installed huge ring-shaped facilities, which are the origin of the "Ring Tower" name.

Those two huge ring-shaped facilities are antennas. In the days when the master computer had not crashed, they released signals to control the surrounding nanomachine swarms.

After seeing the Ring Tower, the mercenaries obviously breathed a sigh of relief. They knew that the most dangerous area had been safely passed. At least before the return trip, they didn't have to worry about being swallowed up by the nanomachine swarms. The armored vehicles drove all the way to the hillside. The road ahead had completely collapsed and the vehicles could not pass, but the entrance to the Ring Tower was already close at hand. Nolan ordered everyone to get out of the car and walk to the building.

Ulanov and Hao Ren got out of the car together. He looked up at the building he hadn't seen for sixty-five years and took a deep breath.

Then he strode forward.