Chapter 33: Instinctive Reaction
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The night was thick as ink. The base’s silence was brutally torn apart by the low growl of an engine and the shriek of rotors from a black assault transport.
Cold rain poured down in sheets, lashing the aircraft’s frigid metal skin in a dense, hurried tattoo.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was as leaden as if it had solidified.
Xu Yan sat pressed against the cold bulkhead, his tactical helmet pulled low over his brow, shadows concealing most of his face.
He did not look at anyone. Instead, he absently rubbed between his fingers the prototype portable force-field generator that had saved Duan Peng in the abandoned warehouse and whose surface was now covered in fine cracks.
Yet that cold sensation would not leave him—
It was identical to the fleeting, almost tangible gaze he had sensed near the ventilation shaft the previous night, in front of the warehouse’s main control console.
Last night, the moment Jing Dong vanished into the shadows beyond the lead plating like a startled viper, Jing Zhimin received an encrypted alert regarding abnormal surveillance patterns within the base.
Their movements had been far faster than anyone imagined.
There had been no need for interrogation. The unmistakable trajectory of the operation had resonated lethally with the string already drawn taut inside Jing Zhimin’s heart.
He knew that the secret of Cocoon Weave, like a sandcastle, had been exposed on the shore of the rising tide.
The immediate priority was not to track down an infiltrator who had already come under suspicion, but to move the heart of the storm—Xu Yan and his laboratory—at once.
Thus, amid the utmost urgency, the order was issued: a five-man elite tactical team, assembled from the base’s fastest operatives and including Xu Yan and Duan Peng, was given the highest priority and crammed aboard a transport aircraft. Their mission was an emergency purge at Storm Tower, an abandoned offshore drilling platform—Operation Dawn.
The mission briefing was extraordinarily simple: destroy the illegal signal source disrupting communications in the surrounding waters.
The true objective?
An impeccable smokescreen, one that would immediately remove Xu Yan from the base and carry him far from the storm of any potential investigation.
As long as he was carrying out a mission, he would not be recalled for questioning unless he committed an unforgivable crime such as treason.
At the same time, everyone who might notice something was being sent away on various combat assignments as part of a training plan.
He needed time to think of a way to resolve this potentially exposed problem properly.
Duan Peng sat opposite Xu Yan. Sensing the icy tension radiating from his old friend, he hesitated, wanting to speak but holding back.
What frustrated him even more was that their research had been forcibly interrupted. The “Cocoon Chamber,” which had finally held for twenty-five minutes, was still lying in the warehouse like a patient.
He broke the silence, his voice blurred by the roar of the engines. “Damn it! This cursed weather and that blasted platform really know how to pick their moment! Old Xu, what do you think about our Cocoon Weave—”
He had only gotten halfway through the sentence when Ouyang Nan silenced him with a wary glance.
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They had been explicitly informed that discussing anything unrelated to the mission was forbidden during the operation.
The new recruit, Wu Mingjie, repeatedly checked his weapon with nervous precision.
Zhao Cheng, codename Wildcat and the acting commander of the operation, sat near the cabin door, his back rigidly straight. Through the narrow porthole, he stared out at the boundless darkness and storm.
Before the operation, Jing Zhimin had given him only one private encrypted order:
“Protect that kid, Xu Yan. Bring him back alive. The Dawn mission itself is secondary.”
The weight of those words far exceeded that of the mission itself.
As the outline of Storm Tower drew nearer beyond the porthole—flickering in and out of sight amid the gale, torrential rain, and raging waves like the skeleton of some primordial beast—Zhao Cheng inhaled deeply, drawing in air cold with the mingled scents of engine oil and rainwater.
He knew this place was both a battlefield and a temporary refuge for Xu Yan’s team. More likely still, it was a gigantic trap concealing unimaginable danger.
“One minute to prepare!” the pilot’s voice cut coldly through the communications channel.
The red cabin lights flared suddenly, illuminating the faces of every team member as they tensed in an instant.
The transport began to buck violently in the savage currents, forcing its way toward the narrow, rain-slick landing zone atop the drilling platform.
A new storm—a real storm steeped in steel, seawater, and blood—was bearing down upon them.
And the turmoil in the warehouse, along with the shadow of the unseen watcher forcibly suppressed at the bottom of their hearts, seemed now to be brewing an even more perilous backlash amid this hostile expanse of sea and sky.
The abandoned offshore drilling platform known by the codename Storm Tower stood in silence between the leaden sea and sky, the skeleton of an iron colossus.
Gales whipped up waves heavy with the stink of salt and slammed them against the rust-streaked steel supports, producing a mournful roar.
Driven by the wind into whips, the icy rain lashed the five members of Xu Yan’s team, drenching their combat uniforms.
They had just cleared the resistance point of the hypothetical enemy force Redeem on the platform’s middle level. Now they were struggling upward along a narrow, slippery exterior maintenance walkway toward their upper-level objective: the central control room housing the signal jammer.
Below their feet, the vast sea boiled and roared, dark green as ink. The vertigo of the height and the slick, corroded steel made every step feel like walking along a razor’s edge.
“Stay alert! The target control room is just above us! Watch for crossfire!” Zhao Cheng, serving as acting commander, shouted, but his voice was indistinct amid the howling wind and rain and the static of the internal communications channel.
He led from the front, with Xu Yan close behind, Duan Peng covering the center, and Ouyang Nan and Wu Mingjie bringing up the rear.
Rain blurred their tactical visors. The bone-chilling cold pierced their soaked uniforms and burrowed into their very bones.
Suddenly—
“BOOM!”
A muffled explosion came from diagonally above them!
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It was not an attack. The long-neglected steel structure had finally succumbed beneath years of wind and rain!
An entire section of rusted overhead walkway split apart as though cleaved by a giant axe. With a shriek of tearing metal, it came crashing down toward them, carrying a torrent of rust flakes and rainwater.
“Collapse! Scatter!” Zhao Cheng’s roar was instantly swallowed by the thunderous crash of falling steel.
There was nowhere to hide! The narrow maintenance walkway was a death trap!
A vast shadow descended upon them in an instant.
Broken beams and twisted steel plates swept down like the enormous scythes of the Grim Reaper.
Ouyang Nan had time only for a brief cry before Wu Mingjie lunged forward and knocked her down, shielding her beneath his body.
Duan Peng roared as he searched for cover, but the slick steel beneath his feet sent him staggering.
Zhao Cheng raised his arms desperately to protect his head.
At that critical moment—
Xu Yan moved.
His reaction was impossibly fast. Almost the instant the structure gave its first ominous groan, his hand had already flashed into the tactical pouch at his waist.
There was no hesitation, no thought—only the instinct forged through countless brushes with death in the warehouse.
A black metal cube the size of a palm, its blue indicator pulsing with a dim, ghostly light, was slammed onto the wet steel beneath his feet.
“Vrrrrm!”
A low yet piercing energy hum instantly overwhelmed the roar of wind, rain, and shrieking metal.
Centered on the black cube, a pale blue, translucent membrane of light expanded in an instant like an overturned bowl, barely enclosing Xu Yan, Duan Peng, and Ouyang Nan, whom Wu Mingjie had tackled to the ground beside him.
Its range was extremely limited. It covered only the three of them.
The instant the membrane formed, the deadly torrent of steel came crashing down.
BOOM!!!!
The deafening impact made the entire platform tremble.
A broken steel beam slammed violently into the pale blue membrane.
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