Chapter 83

[New Base: Calling the main city, inquiring about the situation.]

[Loch City: Estimated death toll exceeds ten thousand.]

[Loch City: Estimated death toll exceeds twenty thousand.]

[New Base: Aliens retreating north, New Base is engaged in combat.]

[Military District: Unable to dispatch reinforcements. New Base, exercise extreme caution.]

[New Base: Acknowledged.]

[Loch City: City Defense District dispatching rescue teams. Residents, please send location signals.]

[Loch City: City Defense District has set up a temporary shelter in the north of the city. Residents, proceed there on your own. If you need rescue, send location signals.]

[Military District: No signal from Control Tower.]

[Military District: Confirmed Tower 2, Ding Man, deceased.]

[Military District: Confirmed Tower 3, Qiao, deceased.]

Cries, laughter, scoldings, roars, reminders—all sorts of voices surged forth.

[Military District: Main Control Tower severely damaged, rescue impossible.]

[Military District: Confirmed Main Control Tower, Horne, deceased.]

“He’s not dead!!” Amid the snowfield’s bleak whiteness, Hels rushed back to Loch City, charging toward the Main Control Tower.

After two days of rescue operations, the City Defense District announced they had not found Horne’s body in the shallow burial zone of the Main Control Tower. The tower’s unique terrain and elevated position forced them to abandon the rescue there and use their limited resources to save more people.

[New Base: You lot, go search the Main Control Tower!!]

[Military District: Control Tower confirmed no survivors. Please do not use public channels for base-unrelated information.]

[Military District: Hello, New Base Commander. We hope you understand that every sacrificed life is as important as the colonel’s.]

[Han Ya: To hell with that, to hell with that! I’m heading back to the city.]

[Wen Yu: Calm down. Watch for attacks from the retreating aliens.]

[Han Ya: Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!]

[Ben Yian: I already requested it. The search teams have been to the Main Control Tower. No sign of Horne in the ruins—they believe he’s buried deeper. Going back would delay chances for other potential survivors. I can’t reach the Main Control Tower alone.]

[Han Ya: It’s almost the third day!]

It was nearly the third day. With limited manpower and resources, the Military District—outside the Air Force Zone—had suffered heavy losses everywhere. Everyone was overwhelmed, and the military refused repeated, meaningless rescues anywhere, even for their own colonel.

[Loch City: Estimated death toll exceeds thirty thousand.]

[Han Ya: Damn it, they can’t abandon Horne!]

[Ben Yian: Three days. Chances of survival are slim.]

[Han Ya: What bullshit are you spouting? Are you even human?]

[Ben Yian: I’m just stating the facts! You’re too far to return, and I’m right here but can’t do a damn thing! Don’t you think I feel worse?]

[Wen Yu: Where is Hels?]

On the evening of the third day.

The filth in his lungs made tears stream down as he coughed nonstop. When Horne opened his eyes, everything before him was a bluish gray.

He did not know how long he had been unconscious. He only felt that no part of his body belonged to him anymore—he was pinned under stones and rubble. After a long daze, he coughed violently.

Enduring excruciating pain, he pushed away the weight on him with nearly all his strength. Fortunately, the stones were not too large, and he was not buried too deeply.

He crawled up slowly. With every movement came convulsive agony. He could not stand, so he lay prone, limping outward on hands and knees.

Turbid wind blew past. Some light lingered in the distant sky, but it was all shrouded in dust and haze.

The Control Tower had originally stood nearly fifty meters tall, with the operations room in the middle-upper section. Now, half the operations room lay exposed to the open sky, while the other half—where the glass enclosure had been—still stood intact. The upper ten meters or so had become piles of fallen stones, rebar, and metal.

The doorframe was bent. Horne crawled laboriously to the edge, covered in congealed blood and with muscles that barely obeyed him. He squeezed out from the triangular safe zone formed by the collapse, moving slowly—each step exhausting every ounce of his strength.

In that moment, the full sight of Loch City lay exposed before him.

He froze instantly, collapsing into a sudden sit.

Ruins everywhere.

Flying dust, gunpowder smoke, fractures.

Loch City’s tallest structures—the Control Towers and Warfallen Asylum—had all snapped in half. The towers and the asylum alike, whether blue building or gray.

Thick smoke still rose, though the flames had died.

The city’s south side was almost total rubble, the north relatively intact. The Main Control Tower in the north had not collapsed as badly as Towers 2 and 3.

Cries swirled around his ears, across his entire field of vision, like demons whispering.

Horne had never seen such a scene. It rivaled the hells described in books.

He raised his head slightly. The hazy sky drifted peacefully with clouds—no aliens.

Nor was there an electromagnetic net.

His terminal brimmed with messages. Horne panted as he tapped it open, intending to check what had happened and send a distress signal.

An urgent roar came from below: “Horne!”

Stones shifted, a few tumbling down with rolling crashes.

From the rubble-choked outer ledge of the tower-like ruins, a frenzied figure climbed up barehanded. The moment that figure reached him, it embraced him fiercely.

“Horne, Horne,” came the near-despairing murmur. “You’re alive. I knew it.”

Horne drew in a sharp breath, his face contorting. In a hoarse whisper, he said: “It hurts. Lighter.”

Hels released him at once, breathing raggedly as he cupped Horne’s face with both hands. The blood on them mingled with grit between his fingers, impossible to tell whose was whose.

Hels’s face was caked in grime and blood; he looked little better.

Horne clutched weakly at Hels’s hands, dizzy and lightheaded. The instant he saw him, tension drained from his body, and he slumped against him, half-closing his eyes. “What happened? Any reports?”

The evening wind blew into the Control Tower’s formerly sealed space, carrying dust and encroaching night.

Search-and-rescue voices from below sounded distant. Horne paid them no mind; his consciousness was already scattering.

Hels supported him, hands trembling for a moment before he gritted out: “No, none.”

Horne closed his eyes, brow furrowed tight. “Contact City Defense District. Send a Main Control Tower distress signal.”

“I’ll carry you back,” Hels said.

Horne parted his lips, but no words came. He slipped back into unconsciousness.

When he woke again, he was home.

In the living room stood a crowd: leaders, generals, officials, even court personnel and media. Faces familiar yet strange.

“We analyzed the surveillance from the day of the explosion. We now suspect you of crimes against humanity. Specific evidence is still being processed.”

“What?” Horne had just spoken when he coughed, his throat thick with soot. He was wrapped in bandages, several severe wounds newly fitted with bone reset devices. He looked around. In this home that had always felt the safest, that familiar figure was absent.

No one told him where Hels had gone.

He had just woken to this scene, without even a chance to check his terminal. He still did not know the source of this catastrophic event.

But the current situation was the most baffling of all. If not for the fact that they faced only him, Horne might have doubted they spoke to him at all.

“Until the specific evidence and procedures conclude, you are temporarily prohibited from leaving here. Your residence will be sealed, and all your privileges revoked, including your colonel rank.”

Horne did not know the speaker well; he rarely dealt with court people. But the man’s face was cold, each word like a sawtooth ripping into him.

Not just him—everyone here was the same.

What… were they saying?

The agony in his body left him unable to think.

Through the crowd, Horne spotted one familiar face: You Wangwang. He stood at the rear, expression anguished. The moment their eyes met, he looked away.

“Where is Hels?” Horne asked, retracting his gaze. His chest felt stuffy—a sensation he had never known.

Someone nearby replied coldly: “Suspected of obstructing official duties. Currently detained by City Defense District, but he’ll be released tonight.”

“He…” Horne tried to speak, but the initial speaker cut him off.

“Before we submit all definitive evidence, prepare your defense. Cherish the time.”

“What?” Horne still did not understand.

No one explained anything to him. They moved like death’s wandering souls, coldly slashing scythes at him before filing out in a dark mass.

The last one paused, looking back at him with complicated eyes.

“What did I do?” Horne asked, gaze bewildered.

You Wangwang turned, shut the door, and approached. Horne thought an explanation would come, but instead, a sharp slap landed.

Horne had never heard You Wangwang so furious, so harsh: “I told you long ago not to act on your own whims! Not to get involved in these things! Why wouldn’t you listen?!”

His chest heaved violently, the old man’s pointing finger trembling.

Horne was stunned, mouth agape, face burning as if scorched. His gaze nailed to You Wangwang’s face in disbelief.

He felt swept into a fog.

You Wangwang’s eyes were bloodshot, his face flushed, voice breaking uncontrollably: “Do you know how Bai Lun died?”

Startled by his demeanor, Horne shook his head instinctively.

You Wangwang’s wife, Bai Yin’s mother. It was from when Horne was very young—so young that his memories held almost no trace of her.

“She died the year Ganal and I competed for leadership.”

If no compromise, Bai Yin would meet the same end. To distance themselves, father and son had minimal contact for over twenty years. Fortunately, Bai Yin was clever, never drawing attention. He kept to his role as Air Force colonel, never meddling, hanging high like a star.

“Even someone as clever as Bai Yin couldn’t escape unscathed after accidentally injuring a teammate.”

Horne fell silent. His fingers dug into the sofa, harder and harder, tips blanching bloodless.

“I warned you. After I noticed my key was missing, I had Bai Yin warn you too! Why wouldn’t you listen?” Midway, the questioning turned to heartbroken lament. You Wangwang pounded his own chest fiercely, the thuds muffled. Then he coughed, retching dryly.

Horne tried to support him but could not move a step amid his body’s pain.

You Wangwang staggered back, collapsing onto the sofa. He panted for a while before saying: “Horne, oh Horne. A white-haired person sending off a black-haired one—how am I supposed to face your parents?”

“Wh… what?” Horne’s lips trembled. “You… all of you… what exactly are you talking about?”

You Wangwang took a deep breath, wiped his face, and rasped: “Check your terminal yourself.”

Horne opened his terminal. You Wangwang said weakly: “Forget it. Humanity ends here anyway. Might as well.”

[Military District: Colonel Horne, without authorization, is suspected of abusing his position to maliciously or negligently activate the Control Tower self-destruct system. This caused the three Control Towers to explode, gravely harming or attacking humanity’s overall safety and survival interests, leading to massive civilian deaths. Rank temporarily stripped, under house arrest. Evidence transferred to the court, awaiting further investigation.]

The self-destruct system had detonated the three Control Towers at the cost of releasing all energy to destroy the aliens.

But once triggered, aerial defenses vanished, exposing the entire city.

Horne’s mind buzzed instantly.