The convoy rolled on. Lin Xinghai sat in silence, Roger's words echoing in his mind.
This world is even more dangerous than I imagined. If I want to survive, I'll need to take risks.
Originally, he planned to grow slowly—collect blood energy when possible, wait patiently when not. But now, hesitation felt like death.
Twenty minutes later, the convoy ran into another group of zombies, this time only five. Hardly a threat; the mercenaries dispatched them in seconds. Before Roger could even call out, Lin Xinghai leapt from the vehicle and hurried to collect Yuan Crystals.
Roger raised a brow at his eagerness but said nothing. A man's quirks weren't worth policing.
This time, Lin couldn't just stand and watch. Drawing the vibration dagger, he crouched over a corpse. The idea of dissection was unsettling, but after observing it several times, he no longer felt nauseous.
The dagger sliced easily through flesh and skull. Within moments, he exposed a quail-egg-sized crystal lodged three centimeters deep.
The Yuan Crystal gleamed like a flawless diamond. Curious, he pried it out and held it up. Warmth seeped into his palm, smooth as jade.
Ding! Yuan Qi detected. Host cannot absorb it. Convert to blood energy?
The sudden prompt made his heart pound. He wanted to shout yes, but he forced himself to decline. The Yuan Crystals had to be turned in; if their condition changed after use, he'd never be able to explain it.
The system must stay hidden, he reminded himself, silently siphoning the zombie's blood energy instead.
Around him, the others had already extracted their crystals. With so few corpses, each mercenary only needed to dissect one, so the work finished quickly.
"Good work, Xiao Hai." One mercenary gave him a nod of approval."Quick hands," another added with a thumbs-up.
Lin Xinghai smiled outwardly, but inside he cursed.
Great. The faster they grab Yuan Crystals, the fewer chances I get to harvest blood energy.
He crouched by two more corpses, pretending to inspect their wounds while secretly drawing their energy, but that was all he could manage before the others climbed back aboard. Reluctantly, he followed. Too much dawdling under so many eyes would invite suspicion.
The journey continued. Every ten to twenty minutes, another cluster of zombies appeared—sometimes only a few, sometimes more than twenty. Each fight fed his growing reservoir of energy.
By the time the convoy neared Tianshan City, over two hours later, his blood energy had reached sixty-three points.
Almost there, he thought, pulse quickening. Inside the city, the numbers will soar. A few more battles and I can break through.
Just then, an alarm shrieked through the cabin. Lin's eyes lit up. Another horde? More fuel for him.
But the sound was different—sharper, urgent, a warning far beyond the usual zombie alerts. The display confirmed it: the weather detector, not the undead sensors.
Worse, the mercenaries' faces had changed. He saw fear.
"Run! Now!" Roger roared.
Fang Tianhe's voice followed over comms, urgent with command: "Immediate evacuation!"
The 50-ton armored vehicle screeched into a 180-degree drift. Only the advanced suspension kept it from toppling. Engines howled like beasts. In seconds, their speed doubled—sixty kilometers per hour became one hundred and twenty.
Then the vehicle's flanks split open, revealing rows of hidden thrusters.
Boom!
Blue fire erupted, slamming them forward with brutal force. The cabin shuddered as if it might tear apart, but the vehicle didn't slow. It soared.
Only when Roger slumped back in relief did Lin dare glance through the rear viewport.
What he saw froze his blood.
A tornado a kilometer wide towered where they had been, a black pillar bridging earth and sky. Soil, rock, entire chunks of land ripped free and whirled upward. In a single breath, the terrain for a full kilometer vanished, replaced by a gaping pit.
The storm crawled forward, gouging a rift valley into the earth.
Lin swallowed hard. Nature itself had become a predator.
"This," Roger muttered once his voice steadied, "is the most terrifying natural disaster of the Great Tribulation—the Hell Tornado."
He drew a sharp breath before continuing. "It forms in under ten seconds, anywhere within a radius of up to three kilometers. When it comes, ordinary life has no chance."
Lin's throat tightened. "But… the catastrophe is over. Why are these still happening?"
"The disaster has passed," Roger said grimly, "but echoes remain. Natural calamities flare up from time to time—rare, but not gone. Maybe once a month. We were unlucky today."
His eyes darkened. "Let's pray the rest of this mission goes smoothly."