Old Wang tore off his cement-stained gloves and sat side by side with his wife on the unfinished top floor slab, gazing at the gradually brightening city lights below, yet feeling not a hint of warmth.
The foreman had delayed wages again, and their son's tuition for the next semester was still uncertain.
He had planned to say some nice things to the foreman today, but he hadn't seen the foreman all day. It was as if the other party knew what he was going to do today and didn't even come to the construction site.
His wife was whispering beside him about whether to go back to her parents' home to borrow some money, her voice full of exhaustion and helplessness.
Listening to the names his wife listed one by one, Old Wang took a deep drag on his cheap cigarette. The smoke made him cough violently, and his heart felt heavy as if a stone were pressing on it.
"Sigh, this life..." He sighed, his sentence unfinished, his gaze inadvertently cast toward the distant city center.
Just then, a sudden change occurred.
At first, it was in the far distance, the sky over the Pearl of the Sea venue, abruptly dyed with a strange purple halo, like a huge, ominous scar.
Immediately after, centered on that spot, the purple color spread and diffused outward visibly, like ink dropped into clear water.
Even more horrifying was that as the purple light spread, chaos spread like a plague on the bustling streets below!
They clearly saw crowds of people in the distance being harvested by invisible scythes, falling in swathes, or after a brief struggle, standing up again in a twisted, stiff posture, and then pouncing on the normal people beside them.
Screams and commotion came in waves, from far to near, sweeping toward the area where they were.
"That... what is that?!" Old Wang's wife grabbed his arm violently, her nails almost digging into his flesh, her voice distorted by fear.
Old Wang was also stunned, the cigarette falling from his trembling fingers.
He watched helplessly as the wave of chaos got closer and closer, watching pedestrians on the street below suddenly freeze, their skin turning gray and their eyes fierce, then roaring and pouncing on their former neighbors and friends...
A living hell was staged before their eyes within a few minutes.
The unfinished high-rise building they were in now became an isolated island.
In the open space of the construction site downstairs, dozens of "fellow workers" had mutated, wandering aimlessly, occasionally emitting teeth-grinding roars.
The commanding view did not bring any sense of security; instead, it allowed them to see this apocalyptic picture more clearly and desperately. They were trapped, with nowhere to run.
"It's over... it's all over..." His wife slumped to the ground, murmuring absentmindedly.
Old Wang also felt a bone-chilling cold. He held his wife's cold hand tightly, looking at the gathering monsters downstairs, a sense of powerlessness he had never felt before overwhelmed him.
Just when despair soaked his whole body like ice water—
Rumble—!
A dull and rhythmic roar came from the end of the street, accompanied by the clanging sound of metal tracks crushing the road surface!
Several tall Titan Mechs, like moving fortresses, in a tight assault formation, broke into the chaotic street like a steel wall!
Behind these path-clearing Titan Mechs, the quadruple cannons on the shoulders of the Heavy Magnetic Storm Mechs spewed tongues of hot fire, precisely blowing the gathered groups of zombies into pieces.
Agile Spider Mechs shuttled around the legs of the Titans, their rotating machine guns weaving a dense net of firepower, sweeping away scattered zombies like cutting grass.
Wherever the torrent of steel passed, limbs flew, and a passage was forcibly torn open through the crowd of roaring zombies!
"My God..." Old Wang opened his mouth wide, unable to believe what he was seeing.
This was even more beyond his cognition than the monsters just now.
Just then, a sakura-pink figure landed silently behind them like a ghost.
Yae Sakura sheathed her sword. Looking at the terrified couple, especially the woman slumped on the ground with a bloodless face, a faint, imperceptible fluctuation appeared in her dead eyes.
"It's not safe here, follow me." Her voice was cold, devoid of extra emotion.
Old Wang turned his head sharply, startled again to see a strange girl holding a sword: "You... who are you?"
Yae Sakura was silent for a moment. She looked at the steel beasts fighting the monsters below, listening to Himeko's calm commands and Natasha's report confirming the cleared area in her communicator.
She thought of Fu Hua's promise, and what the organization named "Fire Moth" was doing.
Himeko said they came from here.
She didn't quite understand the meaning of this name, but she knew that at this moment, they were snatching lives from this inferno.
After a moment of hesitation and thought, meeting the couple's bewildered gaze, she softly uttered the name she had heard from Himeko:
"Fire Moth."
This name, accompanied by the roar of Titan Mechs downstairs and the screeching of zombies, was branded into the hearts of this ordinary couple who survived the disaster.
It represented a sudden glimmer of light in chaos and destruction, and the unimaginable heaviness and unknown behind this glimmer.
In the detention center of the Sapphire City Police Department.
Wang Defa curled up on the cold single bed of the detention center, his brows furrowed, repeatedly calculating the same question in his mind—
Which piece of the City of the Future's cake did he touch?
Was it the bidding for the land in the West District?
He did use some shameful means, but would a behemoth like the City of the Future care about such petty profits?
Or did he meddle in energy trade in some gray areas, touching the other party's sensitive nerves?
Or perhaps... some inconspicuous engineer or researcher "disposed of" by his men was actually a talent secretly cultivated by the City of the Future?
His thoughts revolved around those shadowy conspiracies and exchanges of interests.
He was accustomed to measuring everything with money, power, and violence, and speculating about others with the most despicable mindset.
In the dark logic he constructed, the fact that the City of the Future went to such great lengths, even using super-standard forces like "Arahato" to purge them, must be because they touched the core interest chain of the other party, or knew some secrets they shouldn't know.
"Damn it... who leaked the news... or which deal crossed the line..." He cursed in a low voice, puzzled.
He felt like a rat that unintentionally broke into a beast's lair, ruthlessly dragged out and crushed, yet dying without understanding what forbidden scent it had smelled.
He was immersed in his own filthy deductions, just as he couldn't imagine that Yun Feng's donation was genuine charity, not tax avoidance under the guise of charity.
BOOM!!!!!