Chapter 2

The shock-resistant foam that enveloped Wang Wuyin automatically disintegrated into snowflake-like fragments after ten seconds, falling into the mountain stream. Before he could take a deep breath of fresh air, he was choked by a mouthful of water. He struggled to swim, trying to reach the shore, but the surging current kept pushing him downstream, making it impossible to stop.

It had rained in the mountains these past few days, and the water in the mountain stream was at its most turbulent.

In an instant, Wang Wuyin found himself in a crisis. He choked on several mouthfuls of water, struggling to grab onto something by the shore. However, the water was too swift. His hand barely touched a rock by the stream, but it was slippery, covered in moss. His hand slipped, and he was instantly swept further downstream by the current.

His clothes and equipment, soaked in water, suddenly became heavy, especially the anti-explosion boots on his feet, which made the soles even heavier, dragging him down into the water.

Fortunately, Wang Wuyin was a good swimmer and had extensive combat and survival experience. He quickly calmed down. He realized that the current in this part of the stream was too strong, and the cliffs on both sides were becoming steeper. He tried to stay afloat on the surface while being careful not to be slammed into the sharp rocks by the current.

The water in the mountain stream wouldn't drown him immediately, but if he were to hit those rocks and lose consciousness or suffer from bleeding or fractures, it would be truly life-threatening.

Looking up at the sky from the stream, the mountains on both sides were getting higher, the terrain more dangerous, and the sky above was narrowing into a thin, curved line. He didn't see any enemy drones, and he had temporarily escaped the enemy's pursuit, which gave him a slight sense of relief.

Wang Wuyin let the current carry him, and the turbulent water took him far away. In just a short while, he was carried more than ten miles downstream. The stream flowed through unfamiliar forests, and mountain peaks passed by his eyes. He tried to stay afloat, paddling and keeping his head up to conserve his strength and maintain his vision. After about an hour of struggling in the water, the sky was beginning to brighten, and Wang Wuyin's strength was almost depleted. The turbulent stream finally reached a relatively calm riverbank, covered with boulders and a fallen tree trunk. Wang Wuyin grabbed a branch of a fallen tree by the stream, stabilized himself, and then pulled himself to the shore, finally climbing out of the stream with great difficulty.

Wang Wuyin's clothes were soaked through, cold and heavy from the water. He was shivering, his face pale. As soon as he crawled to the shore, he lay down under a tree by the stream, gasping and coughing.

At that moment, the dark sky suddenly started pouring rain. The raindrops fell like tiny bullets, stinging his face, and the trees in the mountains on both sides of the stream were being battered by the rain.

After resting on the ground for a few minutes and regaining some strength, Wang Wuyin gritted his teeth and got up, observing his surroundings.

This was deep in the mountains, far from human habitation. The riverbank on both sides was flanked by steep slopes and cliffs, several hundred meters high, much more difficult to navigate than the paths he had taken when entering the mountains. Without ropes or similar equipment, it would be extremely difficult to climb up or down.

Wang Wuyin looked at the fallen tree and the boulders around him, and then at the slopes and cliffs on both sides. The boulders on the riverbank were of various sizes, making it a dangerous area where he couldn't stay for long. He had to grit his teeth and try to climb to a higher position away from the bottom of the stream.

Holding onto the overgrown weeds and shrubs, Wang Wuyin shivered and struggled to climb up in the rain. After about ten minutes, he finally moved away from the bottom of the stream and climbed up several dozen meters. Beyond this point, the terrain became a vertical, ninety-degree cliff, and Wang Wuyin couldn't climb any further.

He couldn't just stay here in the rain; he needed to find a place to take shelter.

Wang Wuyin felt around and looked around. Suddenly, he saw a dark cave hidden behind some trees and shrubs. He cautiously approached the cave, first checking for any signs of wild animals, such as footprints or droppings, and finding none, he crawled through the shrubs and entered the cave.

This cave hadn't been visited by anyone for many years. The entrance was covered with a thick layer of dead branches and leaves. The cave was only about twenty meters deep and looked relatively clean. Apart from two stalactites, there was nothing unusual inside, and it wasn't a den for any wild animals. Wang Wuyin finally collapsed onto a rock inside the cave.

After resting for a while in the cave, Wang Wuyin began to check his belongings.

His hands, legs, and back had several abrasions, some of which were bleeding. His palms were cut and bleeding profusely. These injuries were mostly from being scraped by rocks in the stream or from rolling down the slope, but they weren't serious or life-threatening.

He had lost his rifle and many of his equipment items. Now, he only had a pistol, a dagger, two grenades, a compass, a lighter, a blacklight flashlight, a military map, and a block of high-energy compressed food. This high-energy compressed food was brought from Base No. 6, and they had been eating wild food for days, so they hadn't eaten this compressed food yet...

But at this moment, given the surroundings, he had no choice but to eat it.

Wang Wuyin carefully tore open the packaging and ate half of the compressed food, which helped him regain some strength. He then gathered some dry branches and leaves at the cave entrance and started a fire in a hidden corner of the cave. He took off his wet clothes and pants, wrung out as much water as he could, and put them back on.

In the warm glow of the fire, the moisture on Wang Wuyin's body slowly evaporated, and his strength gradually returned. His pale face began to regain some color. Wang Wuyin sat cross-legged on the ground, closed his eyes, and began to breathe slowly. A warm current, which he had learned from the military's qigong practice called "Hunyuan Zhou Tian Gong," started to flow in his dantian, like a scorching little snake, moving along his Ren and Du meridians—this qigong was suitable for most people, not the highest level, but it was still very powerful. Due to his average talent and late exposure to this practice, Wang Wuyin had remained at the beginner level, which had prevented him from joining the elite underground special forces and instead joining the surface forces, his greatest regret.

Under the influence of "Hunyuan Zhou Tian Gong," the warm current circulated in Wang Wuyin's body for a while, and a heat began to spread from his body, both inside and out. His strength and senses quickly recovered, and even the wounds on his body began to stop bleeding.

When Wang Wuyin felt he had reached his limit, the warm current returned to his dantian and settled down. He opened his eyes again.

Thinking about the last moments of Li Zhitao's sacrifice, Wang Wuyin couldn't help but shed tears. Over the years, his comrades had left him one by one: Xiao Shenyang, Old Chen, Zhao Pizi... and finally, Li Zhitao. Many familiar faces were now gone, and he was the only one left.

The war had reached a point where only China was still holding out in all of Asia. Countries around China, such as South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and countries in the Middle East, had been almost completely destroyed, with no organized resistance left. In Europe, only Russia and France were still fighting, and the entire United Kingdom had become a death island overrun by zombies.

Before the crisis, few people in the world would have believed that the defeated ** Group could rise again, claiming to be the custodians of prehistoric human civilization and the maintainers of Earth's order, and once again sweep across the globe, bringing immense disaster to the world.

It wasn't until the crisis that threatened all of humanity swept the globe that people gradually woke up. But by then, the fate of humanity had already been pushed into an unknown abyss by the dark forces hidden on Earth...

The Third World War was an unprecedented war that would determine the fate of humanity. It was a war destined to become an epic. All surviving humans were fighting. If they won, humanity would welcome true freedom and liberation, and Earth would enter an unprecedented era. If they lost, the entire Earth would fall into endless darkness...

This was the final battle between light and darkness!

...

The flickering flames in the cave were driving away the darkness. Wang Wuyin sat by the fire, hugging his legs, recovering his strength, thinking about how to leave this place, and waiting for the rain to stop. This place was relatively safe for now, allowing him to avoid the enemy's hunt. Even at this moment, Wang Wuyin was not completely hopeless. After experiencing countless sorrows, his heart had become as hard as iron. He lived for one thing: to fight. Even with just a gun, a dagger, or even just his teeth, he would continue to fight.

About an hour later, the rain outside became even heavier. As Wang Wuyin's clothes and pants were almost dry by the fire, the entire cave suddenly shook with a loud rumble. Startled, he quickly kicked out the fire and ran to the cave entrance to observe. He saw a car-sized rock and many smaller rocks rolling down the opposite slope, crashing into the stream below and shattering into several pieces. The water in the stream had risen by more than a meter in just a short time, becoming even more turbulent. The fallen tree trunk that had stopped him was almost submerged, with only a part of the root still visible above the water.

Wang Wuyin was secretly alarmed. The stream below was indeed dangerous. It was fortunate that he had climbed up early; otherwise, he wouldn't have survived.

While standing at the cave entrance observing the situation outside, a loud noise suddenly came from inside the cave. Dust and debris flew as a large rock from the cave wall behind the fire collapsed. Wang Wuyin turned to look and saw that a table-sized section of the cave wall had collapsed, revealing a new cave entrance behind it.

Wang Wuyin calmed himself and approached the new entrance, peering inside. The entrance was natural, and it was dark inside, but his curiosity drove him to take his pistol, turn on his blacklight flashlight, and carefully enter the dark cave—hoping that this new entrance might lead to a way out.

The entrance was small, but as he moved deeper into the cave, the space gradually opened up. After walking about fifty to sixty meters, a loud rumble echoed behind him, and the entire cave shook, dust flying.

Hearing the rumble, Wang Wuyin knew something was wrong. He turned around and saw that several massive rocks had fallen from above, completely blocking the narrow entrance he had come through. He rushed to the fallen rocks and tried to push them, but they were immovable. His hands, already injured, bled again, leaving two bloody handprints on the rocks.

Wang Wuyin stepped back, breathing heavily. The rocks were too large, and the two grenades he had wouldn't be enough to blast them open. If he tried to blast them from the outside, the explosion would likely collapse the entire mountain.

Seeing this, Wang Wuyin had no choice but to swallow his fear, take a deep breath, and continue deeper into the cave. After walking about a hundred meters, the blacklight flashlight revealed something in the middle of the mountain.

A human skeleton was in the cave!

But the skeleton was not lying on the ground. Instead, its lower half was fused with the granite of the cave, while the upper half protruded from the rock, as if it had tried to emerge from the stone. The scene was incredibly eerie.

This was a truly shocking sight. The skeleton looked like a bizarre and mysterious sculpture—a person trying to emerge from the rock but getting stuck and dying.

For a moment, Wang Wuyin felt his heart constrict, and his breathing stopped.

How could a human skeleton be inside a rock and fused with it? He couldn't understand it!

He shone the blacklight flashlight and saw that the skeleton's hands were stretched out from the rock, holding a black, pigeon-egg-sized bead.

Wang Wuyin approached and carefully examined the bead in the skeleton's hands. The black bead was spotless, resting in the skeleton's palms.

Even though he had seen many life and death situations, the eerie scene in the cave made Wang Wuyin feel tense. He swallowed and slowly approached, observing the skeleton and its surroundings.

There was nothing unusual around the skeleton, but on the rocks nearby, Wang Wuyin saw fossils. Recognizing them from his biology classes, he realized they were trilobite fossils, which were over 200 million years old. If the skeleton was with something 200 million years old, could it also be 200 million years old?

Everything before him was too bizarre, completely beyond Wang Wuyin's comprehension. After observing for a while, he finally carefully took the strange bead from the skeleton's hands.

As soon as the bead left the skeleton's hands, the exposed part of the skeleton turned to ashes and fell to the ground, as if completing a mission.

Wang Wuyin didn't notice that his palm still had some blood. When the bead touched the blood, a drop of blood was instantly absorbed. The originally black bead, after absorbing the blood, suddenly emitted a faint glow.

Wang Wuyin thought he was seeing things and was stunned for a moment. But the next second, he realized the bead was incredibly hot, like a burning coal. In pain, he loosened his grip, and the bead fell from his hand.

The bead didn't hit the ground but floated in the air, emitting a bright red light that illuminated the entire cave. The red light then enveloped Wang Wuyin like a pool of mercury.

"What's happening? Why is this happening..." Wang Wuyin felt his body become immobile, and the surreal scene before him made him feel terrified. Everything around him seemed to be changing, the cave twisting and becoming surreal.

As Wang Wuyin cried out, he saw the bead glowing intensely, floating in front of his forehead. The brilliant light from the bead was so intense that he couldn't open his eyes. The next second, the bead shot toward his forehead.

Wang Wuyin felt a dark flash, and his head exploded with a loud bang...

...

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