A heavy steel cable had been buried beneath a deceptive, heavy layer of grey dust and loose gravel, stretched across the cracked asphalt like a sleeping viper. The mont the massive tires of the lead military transport rolled over the concealed trigger plate, the cable violently snapped taut, rising three feet off the ground with a screeching, high-pitched tallic hum.
BOOM!
The impact was deafening, a violent shudder that echoed across the barren plains. The reinforced front bumper of the lead military truck slamd directly into the steel line at sixty miles per hour. The sheer, crushing montum caused the multi-ton transport vehicle to lift off its rear wheels, its chassis groaning under a violent jolt as it slid sideways, its heavy tires screeching in a desperate, smoking fight for traction against the asphalt.
Behind it, Han Zheng reacted with split-second reflexes, slamming on the brakes of the SUV. The reinforced vehicle skidded smoothly, coming to a halt perfectly positioned in the dead center of the formation, physically shielded by the lead transport in front and the trailing truck behind.
"Ambush! Hold the periter! Do not let them breach the lines!" Lieutenant Chen’s voice exploded over the short-wave radio, heavily laced with adrenaline.
Before the thick wall of dust could even settle, the modified armored pursuit car and the two dirt bikes swerved off the parallel ridge, sliding onto the dirt shoulder to box the stationary convoy in. But these weren’t just standard, low-tier highway marauders desperate for a quick scrap. The reinforced iron doors of the armored pursuit vehicle flew open, and two figures stepped onto the asphalt, radiating the unmistakable, heavy atmospheric pressure of high-tier evolutionary awakeners.
The first was a massive, scarred man whose exposed skin possessed a dull, rock-like sheen—a powerful Earth-Awakened user. The mont his heavy combat boots touched the soil, he let out a guttural roar and slamd his palms directly into the earth.
RUMBLE!
A violent tremor rippled through the highway shoulder. The solid asphalt beneath the tires of both military transport trucks suddenly softened like quicksand, liquefying into a dense, churning mire of mud and shattered stone. Within seconds, the multi-ton trucks sank a full foot into the ground, the earth instantly hardening back into solid, reinforced concrete around the wheel wells. They were completely immobilized, their heavy diesel engines roaring and smoking in vain as the tires remained trapped in a stone vice.
"We’re anchored! The wheels are completely fused into the bedrock!" Old Wang shouted over the comms, his voice tight.
"Form up! Defensive periter, now!"
With the two high-tier powered squad mbers, Han Zheng and Lieutenant Chen, moving directly into the center of the road to intercept the primary threats, the rest of the unit executed their training flawlessly.
The four unpowered soldiers scrambled out of the transport cabins in perfect synchronization. They didn’t possess supernatural mutations, but they possessed elite, cold-blooded military discipline. Moving with practiced fluid motion, the four unpowered n instantly established a tight, interlocking defensive ring directly behind the powered frontline, utilizing the flanks of the trapped vehicles as hard cover.
With their automatic rifles raised, their crosshairs overlapping to cover every blind spot, the soldiers created an impenetrable wall of lead. The mont a group of low-tier Syndicate grunts tried to rush the side of the baggage truck with crude machetes, the four soldiers opened fire in controlled, lethal bursts.
The rhythmic ’RAT-TAT-TAT’ of their rifles cut through the wind, dropping the charging marauders into the dirt before they could even get within ten yards of the supply hulls. They anchored the defensive formation, ensuring the cargo remained completely untouched while the heavy hitters took the field.
Inside the SUV, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense, isolated from the gunfire outside by the vehicle’s thick plating.
"Stay down," Lin Qing said flatly. Her deadpan voice carried absolutely no trace of panic as she unbuckled her seatbelt. She didn’t waste words, and she didn’t offer empty comfort; she simply gave the direct instruction and expected it to be followed. She popped open the SUV’s reinforced glass sunroof and stood up, her high-caliber bunker rifle already nestled firmly against her shoulder.
In the backseat, five-year-old Han Ye sat entirely upright. His tiny face was pale and his breathing was slightly shallow from the shadow exertion he had used to flip the scout motorcycle a few minutes ago.
Yet, his small posture remained rigid and cold.
Beside him, Gu An kept her mouth shut and ducked low beneath the window line, staying perfectly still. Both kids knew the brutal reality of the world they lived in; they knew better than to compromise the cabin’s safety or distract the adults while the periter was hot.
Outside, Han Zheng stepped out into the freezing wind, flanked imdiately by Lieutenant Chen. The second powered enemy—a lean, twitching Speed-Awakened user wielding twin modified machetes—let out a mocking laugh, his body blurring into a violent streak of grey dust as he began to circle Han Zheng’s left flank at an impossible, superhuman velocity.
"Military dogs!" the Earth-user bellowed, his voice echoing like grinding stones as he raised massive walls of jagged rock from the highway asphalt to shield his remaining grunts from the soldiers’ gunfire. "Leave the trucks, hand over the cargo, and leave the woman in the SUV, and we might let you walk out of these plains alive! Fight us, and you die in the dirt!"
Han Zheng didn’t deign to answer the boast. His dark eyes flashed with a dangerous, lethal light as he fully unleashed his dual-awakened aura.
The air around his towering fra violently warped, a massive, invisible wave of kinetic force manipulation expanding outward like a physical hamr. The sheer, crushing pressure of his presence caused the approaching Syndicate motorcycle grunts to falter, their front forks violently buckling under the sudden, artificial weight crashing down on their tal fras.
"Lieutenant Chen, break the earth user! I’ll handle the speed trail!" Han Zheng ordered, his voice cutting through the din of battle.
"On it!" Lieutenant Chen roared. His hands instantly erupted into brilliant, roaring sheets of white-hot thermal fla. He lunged forward, throwing a concentrated, continuous torrent of fire directly at the Earth-user’s rock shields. The intense, supernatural heat instantly caused the stone barriers to crack, expand, and shatter into flying, molten shrapnel, forcing the massive Earth-user to scramble backward.
From the open sunroof of the SUV, Lin Qing provided a terrifying display of marksman precision. The freezing wind howled against her face, blowing her hair across her eyes, but her hands were like carved marble.
BANG!
Her first shot tore cleanly through the reinforced iron visor of a Syndicate grunt who was attempting to scale the side of the lead transport truck.
BANG!
Her second bullet caught a motorcycle rider directly in the throat, sending the heavy bike careening into the dirt shoulder where it flipped violently. Because of her incredible luck, her positioning within the chaotic battlefield was always subconsciously flawless; every ti a piece of stray shrapnel, a ricochet, or a random burst of gun fire sprayed toward the SUV, a sudden shift in the wind or a slight tilt in the chassis caused the rounds to miss by inches or ricochet harmlessly off the reinforced glass. She was a silent, deadpan turret, systematically picking off the flanking grunts, working in perfect tandem with the four unpowered soldiers to keep the pressure entirely off the cargo.
In the center of the road, the battle of high-tier evolvers reached a bloody climax. The enemy Speed-user blurred into motion, completely disappearing from a normal human’s sight before reappearing directly in Han Zheng’s blind spot. His twin machetes descended in a lethal, cross-cutting arc ant to decapitate the Commander from behind.
But Han Zheng didn’t even turn his head. With a cold, calculated flick of his wrist, he generated a dense, localized kinetic shield rely inches from his neck.
The heavy machetes slamd into the invisible barrier with a screeching, tallic ring, the imnse feedback instantly shattering the steel blades into a thousand flying pieces. Before the stunned Speed-user could retreat, Han Zheng’s hand shot backward like a striking viper, clamping tightly around the man’s throat and violently slamming him down into the asphalt, cracking the road beneath them into a spiderweb of craters.
The enemy Earth-user scread in raw rage, his hands tearing at the ground as he attempted to summon a massive, jagged spire of stone to impale Lieutenant Chen from below.
Amidst the absolute chaos of explosions, roaring fire, and heavy gunfire, a third, sneaky opponent had been crouching silently beneath the dark shadows of the shattered concrete overpass. He wasn’t a high-profile power user, and he didn’t possess a loud aura; he was an unawakened, cold-blooded Syndicate sniper wielding a specialized, high-velocity rifle, completely ignored by the main combatants who were focused on the heavy hitters.
The sniper lined up his crosshairs through the smoke, completely bypassing Han Zheng’s formidable fra and locking squarely onto the exposed silhouette of Lin Qing standing through the SUV’s sunroof. Her deadpan face was perfectly frad in his lens, her focus entirely occupied by a grunt crawling near the baggage truck. His finger slowly squeezed the trigger.
Pfft!
The silenced, high-caliber bullet sliced through the freezing wind, moving at a lethal, supersonic trajectory straight toward Lin Qing’s temple.
Because Han Zheng’s sensory awareness was constantly attuned to the entire kinetic field of the battlefield, his dark eyes violently snapped backward the exact millisecond the hidden bullet entered the airspace around his vehicle. His heart stopped. The bullet was moving too fast, the trajectory was perfect, and Lin Qing, focused on her own target, hadn’t seen the flash.
"Lin Qing!" Han Zheng’s voice bood with a rare, panicked roar as he spun away from his downed opponent, his hand reaching out frantically to manipulate the kinetic velocity of the incoming round, his eyes locked onto the lethal streak of tal flying directly at his wife.
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