Lin Qing shifted the SUV into park but kept the engine running, its steady hum a stark contrast to the roaring wind. She stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the very edge of the jagged concrete precipice. She looked down. Fifty ters below, a roaring, violent river choked with water, jagged rocks, and the rusted, twisted tal skeletons of fallen cars surged through the canyon.
Reversing the vehicle ant driving back through the mountains and facing the heavily ard Vanguard Syndicate armies at the main highway borders. Turning back ant certain death.
Gu An and Han Ye stepped out of the SUV, joining her at the edge of the cliff. The freezing wind howled violently through the canyon, whipping their clothes and hair across their pale faces.
"The gap is too wide," Gu An said, her voice trembling slightly, her eyes welling with tears of frustration as she looked across the twenty-five-ter chasm. "Even if we drove the SUV at maximum speed, it won’t work. We would just plunge straight into the rocks. We’re trapped. We have to go back."
Lin Qing didn’t panic. Her sharp, calculating gaze swept across the ruined structure, analyzing the angles, the load-bearing points, and the remnants of the blast. The bridge wasn’t completely eradicated; thick, twisted bundles of steel rebar, shattered iron support girders, and massive, braided suspension cables hung limply from both sides of the chasm, dangling into the dark shadows of the canyon like broken spiderwebs.
She turned her head slowly, her icy, piercing eyes locking directly onto Han Ye.
The boy stood perfectly still at the edge of the cliff, his small face illuminated by the harsh light of the canyons. He looked at the dangling iron rebar, then down at the deep, absolute shadows stretching across the canyon walls. A realization sparked within his mind. He knew what she was going to ask before she even spoke.
"Han Ye," Lin Qing spoke, her voice cutting through the roaring sound of the river below like a cold blade. "Your expanded core. Can you bridge this gap?"
Han Ye didn’t answer imdiately. He closed his eyes, extending his consciousness downward into the chasm. The sheer density of the shadows inside the deep canyon was imnse, providing him with a nearly limitless, ocean-sized pool of raw dark energy. He opened his eyes, cold determination freezing his pupils into black stones.
"I can lace the broken iron together with my shadows," Han Ye analyzed, his voice dropping into that chillingly mature register that belonged to a warlord, not a child. "I can weave a skeleton of dark energy across the rebar, connecting the two cliffs. But shadows have no physical mass. They are constructs of lightlessness. The mont the heavy rubber tires of the SUV touch my threads, the weight will cut right through them. The car will fall, and we will die."
He turned his head slowly, his gaze shifting directly onto Gu An, who was standing frozen beside him.
Gu An blinked, pointing a trembling finger at her own chest, her breath catching in her throat. "? What can I possibly do against a gap like this?"
"You have a spark," Han Ye explained, stepping closer to her, his voice commanding and tight. "You need to project your shield horizontally. You need to lay a flat, solid runway of compressed energy directly ’over’ my shadow skeleton. My shadows will provide the anchor, the tension, and the structural frawork, but your shield will provide the floorboards for the tires to roll across."
Gu An looked at the massive twenty-five-ter gap, then down at her own trembling, small hands. The sheer scale of the maneuver was insane, a terrifying gamble against gravity itself.
It required an absolute, flawless level of evolutionary synergy that they had never even simulated in the safety of the bunker. If either of them lost focus for a single microsecond while the heavy SUV was mid-crossing, the illusion would shatter, and they would all plunge fifty ters into the raging rocks below.
"There is no turning back," Lin Qing said, her voice demanded absolute obedience. "If we reverse, we walk into the guns of an organized human syndicate. If we stay here, we are sitting ducks. We cross this chasm now. Trust your training, trust your cores, and trust each other."
Gu An swallowed hard, her small hands clenching into tight fists to hide her violent trembling. She looked over at Han Ye. The five-year-old boy was already moving, his dark eyes freezing into twin spheres of bottomless black as he stepped toward the very edge of the broken concrete lip.
"I will weave the skeleton," Han Ye whispered, his voice carrying that unnerving gravity. "The mont my shadows anchor to the opposite cliff, you must overlay the floorboards, Gu An. Do not let the energy flicker. If your shield drops for even half a second, the weight of the rig will drag us all into the rocks."
"I... I can do it," Gu An gritted out, her jaw tightening as she forced her fear down into the deepest, darkest corner of her mind. She couldn’t afford to be the weak link. Not today.
"Get in the vehicle," Lin Qing commanded.
The trio moved with synchronized, urgent speed. Lin Qing climbed into the driver’s seat, her hands gripping the steering wheel with rock-steady precision. In the backseat, Gu An and Han Ye strapped themselves into their harnesses. Han Ye unbuckled his seatbelt just enough to lean forward, slamming his palms flat against the rubber floorboards of the cabin, while Gu An pressed her hands firmly against the interior of the front windshield, her eyes locked on the empty air ahead.
Lin Qing shifted the SUV into reverse, backing nearly thirty ters down the narrow mountain trail to give herself enough runway. She locked her gaze on the opposite side of the chasm, her foot hovering over the accelerator.
"Comncing crossing in three," Lin Qing announced calmly. "Two. One. Go."
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