324: Chapter 324 Silence

The first thing they did after setting off wasn't fighting or scouting; it was lining up.

Lin Yuan stood at the very front of the group.

Facing the expeditionary force of 5,769 people, he issued an order that seemed somewhat strange to Ling Shuanghan.

"The march will be split into two segments. Blue Star's people go in front, and Ling Shuanghan's people follow behind. Keep at least thirty paces of space between the two."

Ling Shuanghan raised an eyebrow slightly.

She didn't ask why.

A hundred years of experience in the Apocalypse had taught her that a leader's orders didn't always need an explanation.

But her adjutant, Huo Yan, couldn't help himself.

"Thirty paces?"

Huo Yan whispered to Ling Shuanghan, "What does he mean by this? Does he think we're in the way?"

Ling Shuanghan glanced at him.

"His Shelter, his rules."

Huo Yan opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He had lived for nearly a hundred years and seen all sorts of rules.

But he had truly never seen a rule like "marching separated by gender."

However, on second thought—

He looked at the female survivors from Blue Star in the front and middle sections.

Then he looked at the rough men around him who had spent most of their lives fighting on the ice plains.

Fine.

Walking separately was probably for the best.

It would save his brothers from acting like they'd never seen a woman before.

Though, in truth, they really hadn't seen this many women in a long time.

The group was quickly arranged according to Lin Yuan's requirements.

The front and middle sections consisted of the four thousand plus female survivors from Blue Star.

Goddesses like Ji Wushuang, Luo Qinghan, and Ye Qingyue were scattered throughout the formation to protect them.

Ye Qingxue walked at the very front, side-by-side with Lin Yuan.

The rear section consisted of Ling Shuanghan's 800 people, mostly men with a few women.

Ling Shuanghan herself walked at the junction of the two groups.

This allowed her to command her own people while also being able to communicate with Lin Yuan at any time.

A gap of exactly thirty paces of empty space separated the two groups.

It was like an invisible line dividing two different worlds.

The wind on the ice plains whistled past, carrying fine ice crystals as the expeditionary force began to push toward the core of the rift.

During the first hour, nothing happened.

During the second hour, still nothing happened.

During the third hour—

Huo Yan began to question his life.

What had he done before they set off?

He had arranged a rearguard unit.

He had arranged a plan for handling wounded soldiers.

He had arranged an emergency retreat route.

He had urged his subordinates to watch out for cracks in the ice.

He had urged his subordinates to watch out for sudden Froststorms.

He had urged his subordinates to watch out for sneak attacks from mutant insects.

He had even instructed his subordinates to take his blade back if he died.

And the result?

The road was as level as if someone had ironed it beforehand.

The temperature was as stable as if central air conditioning were running.

Every so often, a fist-sized silver sphere would buzz, emitting a low-frequency sound wave that was almost inaudible to the human ear.

Those were the Insect-Repelling Sonic Nodes Lin Yuan had set up in advance.

Huo Yan knew the principle behind them—he had heard Lin Yuan explain it during the supply demonstration before they left.

The sound frequency specifically targeted the sensory organs of the frost mutant insects, covering a three-meter radius. The insects would steer clear upon hearing it.

But knowing the principle was one thing; seeing the results with his own eyes was another.

They had been walking for three hours.

In those three hours,

The silhouettes of frost mutant insects could occasionally be seen on either side of the ice plains—

Ice Armored Centipedes squirmed in distant ice crevices.

Frost-Shelled Beetles crawled across the ice in swarms, and Frost-Silk Spiders spun silvery-white webs between ice pillars.

But not a single one came within a step of the corridor.

It was as if they had encountered an invisible wall.

Upon reaching the edge of the sonic coverage, they would automatically turn and hurry past the sides of the corridor.

The warriors behind Huo Yan were fully armed, weapons in hand, maintaining a standard combat marching formation.

It had been three hours.

Not a single person had drawn their blade.

A veteran who had followed Ling Shuanghan for sixty years leaned in toward Huo Yan and lowered his voice:

"Boss, are we... a bit redundant?"

Huo Yan didn't speak.

Because he also felt a bit redundant.

No, not just a bit.

He felt extremely redundant.

He looked back at the rearguard unit he had meticulously arranged—

Twenty A-class warriors, each carrying three days' worth of emergency supplies.

Ready at any moment to cover the retreat.

Now, these twenty people were walking at the very back of the group, so bored they had started counting the patterns of the cracks in the ice.

"One thousand three hundred and twenty-seven."

"You counted wrong. That one just now was a fork, so it counts as two."

"Does a fork count as one or two?"

"How should I know?"

Huo Yan took a deep breath.

He decided to stop listening.

The Blue Star survivors in the front and middle sections, however, were walking quite easily.

Most were wearing the thermal suits issued by Lin Yuan, their steps light, and some were even chatting quietly.

Occasionally, someone would look curiously at the mutant insects crawling on the ice outside the corridor.

They would let out a cry of surprise, only to be comforted by a nearby goddess—

"It's okay, they can't get in."

This scene gave Huo Yan a strong sense of dissonance.

In his world, what did an expedition mean?

It meant writing a suicide note before leaving.

It meant being wary with every step that the ice beneath your feet might suddenly crack open.

It meant that at any moment, a mutant insect could lunge from an ice crevice and bite off your leg.

It meant assigning sentries during every rest because a Froststorm could descend at any time.

It meant that upon reaching the destination,

You would take a headcount, find that a dozen or so were missing, and then continue on in silence.

And now—

The people in front were walking as if they were on a spring outing.

Huo Yan felt that his sixty years of expedition experience were worthless at this moment.

In the fourth hour,

An accident finally occurred.

A dull vibration came from deep within the ice, and fine cracks appeared on the ice surface beneath their feet.

Huo Yan was instantly alert, his hand gripping his hilt.

"Ice layer fracture!"

He barked, "All personnel, on alert!"

The 800 warriors in the rear section completed the transition from marching formation to combat formation in half a second.

Muscle memory honed over a century was as fast and natural as breathing.

But the real problem wasn't in the rear.

The vibration had damaged a sonic node up ahead, creating a gap in the corridor.

Dozens of frost mutant insects surged in almost simultaneously—

Ice Armored Centipedes, Frost-Shelled Beetles, and Frost-Silk Spiders, all mixed together, lunged straight for the Blue Star survivors in the front and middle sections.

The Ice Armored Centipedes were the fastest, their bodies covered in translucent ice-crystal shells.

At two meters long, their segments stabbed into the ice with a piercing clacking sound.

The Frost-Shelled Beetles were slightly slower but more numerous, with a dozen or so huddling together like a moving wall of ice.

The Frost-Silk Spiders were the most insidious; they didn't take the ground but instead swung silvery-white silk from the tops of ice pillars, attempting to enter from the air.

The survivors in the front and middle sections screamed.

Huo Yan was about to lead his men to support them—

Then he saw a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Ji Wushuang moved.

This woman, who looked like she had stepped out of a painting, raised her hand with an effortless motion, as if shooing away a fly.

A wave of energy rippled out from her palm.

The three Ice Armored Centipedes charging at the very front—

Each an opponent Huo Yan would have to take seriously—shattered into ice shards within the energy ripple.

Shells, segments, and internal organs were all pulverized in an instant.

Clean and efficient.

Even the splashing body fluids were vibrated into an icy mist mid-air.

At the same time, Luo Qinghan made her move.

Her method was more direct—

She crushed the shell of a Frost-Shelled Beetle with one foot, then turned and delivered a palm strike that slammed two others into the ice.

Two insect-shaped pits were left in the ice.

Ye Qingyue's method was the most ornamental.

Her Superpower possessed some kind of cutting attribute.

Arcing silver-white lights sliced through the air, cutting the three Frost-Silk Spiders attempting to enter from above, along with their webs, into halves.

The cross-sections were as neat as if cut by a laser.

The whole process took no more than five seconds.

The first wave of mutant insects that had rushed in was mostly cleared out by the three women with casual ease.

Huo Yan's hand was still on his hilt; he hadn't moved an inch.

It wasn't that he didn't want to move.

It was that his brain needed time to process the information before his eyes.

Those Ice Armored Centipedes—

In his world,

An Ice Armored Centipede required the coordination of three to five A-class warriors to kill—

And yet, one had been pulverized by a woman's casual slap.

The warriors behind him had seen it too.

No one spoke.

But Huo Yan could feel that their hands had loosened slightly from their weapons.

It wasn't that they were relaxing their guard.

It was the realization that they might truly be of no help at all.

However, that wasn't even the most ridiculous part.

The most ridiculous part was—before the goddesses had even finished clearing them out, Lin Yuan had already walked over from the front of the group.

His pace was neither fast nor slow, and his hands weren't even out of his pockets.

Only when he reached the gap did he pull out his right hand.

An Ice Armored Centipede lunged at him, opening its mouthparts filled with ice spikes.

Lin Yuan gave it a casual slap.

The centipede's head shattered.

The ice-crystal shell crumbled under his palm like an eggshell, fragments flying out and embedding themselves into the nearby ice.

He didn't even look at the centipede.

He stepped forward, crushing a Frost-Shelled Beetle.

He shifted his body, dodging a strand of frost-silk while simultaneously shattering three Frost-Silk Spiders with a palm strike.

Turning around, he kicked the last two Ice Armored Centipedes away, sending them crashing into an ice pillar outside the corridor where they smashed into a pile of crushed ice.

A dozen or so seconds.

The dozens of frost mutant insects that had poured through the gap were all cleared.

Not even a single shard of ice had stuck to him.

Lin Yuan looked down at the sole of his shoe and frowned.

"I stepped on a bug."

He rubbed the sole of his shoe against the ice a couple of times.

Then he took a new sonic node from his supplies, placed it in the damaged spot, and activated it.

The gap closed.

The corridor was restored.

The entire process took no more than thirty seconds.

Huo Yan stood thirty paces away, maintaining his combat stance, motionless.

The 800 century-old warriors behind him maintained their perfect combat formation, motionless.

From beginning to end, not a single one of them had made a move.

Because it simply wasn't their turn.

First, those women had crushed them with casual ease—

The mutant insects that they would have had to risk their lives to deal with were like paper in the hands of the goddesses.

And then Lin Yuan was even more excessive—

He hadn't even used a Superpower, relying purely on physical output to clear the field like he was stepping on ants.

Huo Yan slowly released his hilt.

He turned to look at the veteran beside him.

The veteran's expression was complicated.

"Boss."

"Yeah."

"I feel like we didn't just write our suicide notes for nothing."

"...Yeah."

"We even sharpened our blades for nothing."

Huo Yan didn't answer.

He silently returned his blade to its sheath.

Ling Shuanghan had stood at the junction of the two groups the whole time, taking everything in.

Her gaze first fell on Ji Wushuang—

This woman's strength was at least at the SS-Rank Peak, and her actual combat ability might have already touched the threshold of SSS-Class.

Then Luo Qinghan—she was at the same level.

Her moves were crisp and efficient, without a single wasted motion.

Ye Qingyue—slightly weaker, but the precision of that cutting-type Superpower showed that her combat experience far exceeded her age.

Any one of these three could crush the strongest warriors under her command.

And there were several more women like this around Lin Yuan.

They protected the female survivors of Blue Star like lionesses guarding their cubs.

Any threat would be crushed before it could even get close.

And Lin Yuan himself—

Ling Shuanghan withdrew her gaze, no longer wanting to think about it.

Because thinking about it was useless.

That man's strength had already exceeded the scope of her understanding.

She was now only certain of one thing: he hadn't set up the safety corridor because he needed protection.

It was because he was lazy.

Too lazy to casually crush a few insects with every step he took.

The device was for convenience.

Not for survival.

This realization kept Ling Shuanghan silent for a long time.

The expeditionary force continued forward.

After the corridor was restored, everything returned to its previous state—calm, safe, and so boring it made one want to sleep.

The warriors in the rear section completely abandoned their tense state.

It wasn't that they weren't dedicated.

It was that they simply couldn't keep it up.

You ask a group of people prepared to die to walk on a level road for over four hours.

The only accident in between was resolved by someone else in thirty seconds. How could you expect them to stay tense?

The rearguard's crack count had already reached over three thousand.

The debate over whether "a fork counts as one or two" was still ongoing.

In the fifth hour,

Ling Shuanghan walked up to Lin Yuan.

Lin Yuan was checking the layout of the sonic nodes ahead, his expression flat, as if he were checking the streetlights in his own yard.

"In my world..." Ling Shuanghan began.

Her voice was very soft, made somewhat blurry by the wind on the ice plains.

"Every expedition costs us at least a 10% casualty rate."

Lin Yuan didn't speak, waiting for her to continue.

"The worst one was fifty years ago. Three thousand people set out, and only eight hundred came back."

She looked at the quiet, harmless marching route.

The sonic nodes buzzed, the heat modules emitted a faint warmth, and there wasn't a single silhouette of a mutant insect on the ice.

"You have turned death... into a stroll."

Lin Yuan glanced at her.

"Dead people are the greatest waste."

His tone was very calm.

"I don't do wasteful things."

Ling Shuanghan fell silent.

There was no embellishment in this sentence, no emotional appeal; it wasn't even a particularly pretty thing to say.

But it carried more weight than all the heroic words Ling Shuanghan had ever heard.

Because the person who said it had the ability to make it so.

She turned around and walked back to her own group.

Huo Yan came to meet her: "Your Majesty?"

Ling Shuanghan didn't answer his question.

She only said one thing.

"Tell everyone to put their weapons away. Stop maintaining a combat formation."

Huo Yan was stunned for a moment: "But—"

"No buts."

Ling Shuanghan's tone was calm and certain.

"On this road, we don't need weapons."

She paused.

"We just need to follow along."

Huo Yan was silent for a few seconds, then turned to convey the order.

The 800 century-old warriors put away their weapons, transitioning from a combat formation to an ordinary marching queue.

This was the first time in a hundred years they had put away their weapons during an expedition.

It felt very strange.

But it was also very... relaxing.

The wind on the ice plains continued to blow, and fine ice crystals hit the thermal suits with a rustling sound.

The expeditionary force moved steadily forward within the safety corridor.

There was a thirty-pace distance between the front-middle and the rear sections, like two parallel rivers, each flowing quietly.

Walking at the very front, Lin Yuan had his hands in his pockets, his pace relaxed.

Ye Qingxue walked beside him, occasionally glancing at him.

"You frowned when you stepped on that bug just now."

"Yeah."

"Did you think it was gross?"

Lin Yuan thought about it.

"Mainly that the beetle's shell was too hard; it was uncomfortable under my foot."

Ye Qingxue looked at him for two seconds.

"You crushed its shell with one step just now."

"Right."

"And then you say it was uncomfortable."

"...Right."

Ye Qingxue stopped talking.

She felt that discussing standards of "hardness" with this man was meaningless.

Because in his world, anything he could crush with one step probably counted as "soft."

Thirty paces behind, Huo Yan took the crumpled list of belongings from his pocket, unfolded it, and looked at it.

Then he tore it up.

The fragments were swept away by the wind, vanishing into the icy mist.

He wouldn't need it.

He really wouldn't need it.