Chapter 93: A Dimensional Reduction Attack from the "Scrap Yard Owner"

"What?! Bugs? The Southwest Border?"

In the receiver, Lin Yuan's voice was calm, but Chen Weiguo's fingers, gripping the secure phone, tightened sharply, his knuckles instantly turning white.

He sprang up from his office chair, his movement so forceful that it knocked over the enamel teacup on the corner of the desk. With a "clang," tea splashed everywhere, but he didn't even spare it a glance; his voice instantly tightened like a bowstring drawn to its limit: "What did you discover?!"

"During remote sensing training just now, I didn't expect to see these filthy things."

Lin Yuan stared at the twisted black dots on the holographic screen, his brows furrowing in disgust, as if looking at a pile of fermenting trash.

"In the Southwest Border rainforest, about thirteen people. They are moving very fast, and their bio-energy signatures are… disgusting. Chaotic, tyrannical, and carrying a stench of rot that only dead people have."

He paused, his finger tracing a red line across the virtual map.

"Their target is very clear: the weather station thirty kilometers away."

"The weather station…"

Chen Weiguo's heart sank sharply, and a chill shot up his spine to the top of his head.

He knew that place all too well.

It wasn't just a weather observation station marked on the map, but a nail driven into the Southwest Border—an outpost radar station monitoring the southwest airspace around the clock!

It was the nation's eyes.

Once poked blind, the entire southwest air defense network would be torn open, and all subsequent defensive deployments would be thrown into chaos.

"The Eagle…" Chen Weiguo gritted his back teeth, the muscles on his cheeks twitching, as his fist slammed heavily onto the solid wood desktop. "These bastards, they can't win head-on, so they've started playing dirty!"

He grabbed the red dedicated phone on the desk and roared: "I am ordering the Southwest Theater Command to mobilize the 'Falcon' Special Operations Brigade immediately! No matter what kind of monsters and demons are on the other side, I will plow through that forest!"

"Chief! Stop!"

Lin Yuan's voice suddenly rose, cutting off Chen Weiguo's order.

"Why?!" Chen Weiguo stared with wide eyes, his chest heaving violently. "Those are twenty-three unarmed technicians! Are you asking me to watch them get slaughtered?!"

"It is precisely because we need to save them that we cannot send the Special Operations Brigade."

Lin Yuan's voice turned cold, radiating absolute rationality. "Chief, you haven't seen those things. Neither have I, but I can sense them."

He looked at the black dots on the screen that were changing colors and blending perfectly with the environment.

"They are not human. They possess extremely strong environmental camouflage capabilities; conventional thermal imaging and infrared are blind to them. Sending the 'Falcon' in, in that complex primitive jungle terrain, facing a group of invisible monsters…"

Lin Yuan paused and uttered the cruel truth: "That is not a battle; that is going to die. The casualties will be more than you can accept."

The other end of the line fell into a deathly silence, leaving only Chen Weiguo's heavy breathing.

"Then what do you propose?!" A few seconds later, the old general's voice was hoarse. "Are we just supposed to watch?!"

"I didn't say we shouldn't save them."

Lin Yuan toyed with the tactical pen in his hand, his eyes flashing with the cold light of a hunter seeing prey. "What I mean is, there is no need for soldiers to sacrifice their lives."

"To deal with them, I alone am enough."

"What?!"

Chen Weiguo suspected his auditory nerves were malfunctioning, his voice suddenly pitching an octave higher: "You alone? Lin Yuan, are you clear-headed?! That is a group of monsters that even you find 'disgusting'! You are the spark of the 'Genesis Project'; if anything happens to you, how can we answer to the nation?!"

"I know." Lin Yuan interrupted him, his tone devoid of any arrogance, possessing only the calmness of stating a fact. "But I also know that their greatest advantage is 'invisibility'."

"And in front of me, they are like people streaking while wearing neon lights."

This was the confidence bestowed upon him by [Void Affinity].

Under that high-dimensional perspective, all low-dimensional biological camouflage seemed like a clumsy joke.

"Chief, this is an asymmetric war." Lin Yuan's voice traveled through the electrical currents, carrying a power that comforted the heart. "If we fight with conventional means, we are at a disadvantage. But if we change the way we play… they will be the ones at a disadvantage."

"I am applying for a 'private operation'. A single-person infiltration to resolve the trouble. I guarantee that I will not use a single soldier of the state to clean up these filthy things."

Silence.

A long silence.

Chen Weiguo stood by the window, looking at the pitch-black night outside. The cigarette at his fingertips burned to the end and scorched his hand, making him flinch violently.

Reason told him this was simply insane. Letting a national treasure-level scientist and future starship captain single-handedly fight biochemical monsters was absolutely forbidden in any nation's regulations.

But he had to admit that Lin Yuan was right.

The confidence in that tone, the sense of responsibility of "not wanting to let comrades sacrifice themselves," hit his heart like a heavy hammer.

This young man who walked out of the scrap yard could always turn things that sounded like Arabian Nights into cold, hard reality.

Perhaps… this time would be the same?

Chen Weiguo crushed the cigarette butt into the ashtray and squeezed the words through his teeth.

"Fine. I approve."

"However, three conditions!"

The old general's voice was as stern as if he were reading out an operational order: "First, your life is more valuable than the radar station! If the situation goes wrong, withdraw immediately! I do not accept martyrs; I only want living people!"

"Second, the 'Ghost' remote fire control will be fully activated! Academician Wang will lead the entire technical team to act as your backup!"

"Third, the extraction team is on standby five kilometers away. Once you are done, get back immediately!"

Lin Yuan grinned and gave a non-standard salute: "Understood!"

"Go."

Chen Weiguo hung up the phone, his whole body collapsing into the chair as if his bones had been removed. He stared at the ceiling and muttered to himself: "You brat… make sure you don't mess this up."

…

One hour later.

A black-painted supersonic transport aircraft without any identification numbers, like a giant bat, hovered silently over an open space thirty kilometers away from the "wind eye" radar station.

The cabin door opened.

Lin Yuan walked out.

No exoskeleton armor, no heavy weapons. He wore only a form-fitting black bio-monitoring combat suit.

This seemingly ordinary suit was actually printed by the "nano-forging matrix" using scraps left over from "luan bird one". Bulletproof and stab-proof were just its basic functions; it was more like a second skin that could breathe.

"Comrade Lin Yuan, equipment confirmed." The leader of the extraction team handed over a tactical backpack, his eyes complex. He didn't know who this young man was, but the order from above was—if this person doesn't return, you don't need to return either.

"Take care." The leader saluted, his palm held straight.

"Relax." Lin Yuan threw the backpack onto his shoulder and revealed a mouthful of white teeth. "I'm going into the woods to collect some trash; I'll be back soon to drink with you."

After speaking, he turned and dove into the light-swallowing primitive jungle.

His figure vanished instantly, like a drop of water merging into the sea.

…

"wind eye" radar station.

The hot and humid air was filled with the mixed smell of machine oil and mold. Station Chief Li Weiguo wiped the grease off his face, holding a screwdriver in his hand, worrying over a signal processor.

"Damn it, this lousy weather."

The young technician Xiao Zhang next to him complained while wiping sweat. "98% humidity, this imported piece of junk is harder to please than a grandfather; it just broke down again after being replaced for so long."

"Less talk, fix it quickly." Li Weiguo glared at him. "Headquarters just issued a red alert; the west is not peaceful. If this 'eye' of ours goes blind, that would be the sky falling."

"I know, I know, it's for the motherland." Xiao Zhang muttered, burying his head into the circuit board.

They didn't know at all.

Just two hundred meters away, at the edge of the barbed wire fence, death had already opened its mouth.

Over a dozen black shadows glided along the ground, like pools of flowing asphalt. Their skin changed color and texture along with the surrounding vegetation, and even their breathing was perfectly suppressed.

"Boss, sentry positions confirmed."

A hoarse report came through the tactical headset. "Four directions, all blind spots. The heat sources inside show twenty-three people, no heavy weapon signatures."

"Very good."

"Butcher" pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, his eyes behind the lenses devoid of any warmth. He looked as refined as a university professor, but his gloves were stained with an indelible scent of blood.

"Prepare to move."

He raised his hand and made a cutting gesture, his voice as soft as if he were reciting a poem.

"Our mission is 'erasure'."

"No prisoners, no survivors. Let them… completely disappear from this world."

The black shadows behind him let out low, irrepressible, strange laughs, like evil ghosts smelling the scent of blood.

Butcher's mouth curved in a cruel arc, and just as he was about to wave his hand to order the assault.

Suddenly.

Boom!

A loud noise exploded in his chest. It wasn't a gunshot; it was his own heartbeat.

An indescribable, suffocatingly massive fear descended without warning, instantly gripping his heart.

That feeling was too eerie.

It was like an ant, happily preparing to bite a passing beetle to death, only to suddenly discover a pair of huge, cold eyes above, watching it indifferently through a magnifying glass.

Under that gaze, his pride in his strength, speed, and camouflage—all those evolutions that made him feel he had surpassed humanity—turned into a joke.

He was not a hunter.

He was a bug placed on a glass plate, ready to be crushed at any moment.

"What… is that?!"

Butcher's pupils contracted violently, and the tremor from his biological instinct made his whole body stiff, unable to even move his fingers.

The next second.

Boom—!

An invisible mental storm, like a bursting tsunami, instantly swept through the entire squad!

This was not an attack on the physical body at all.

This was a pure mental crushing from a high-dimensional life form!

"Aaaaaah—!"

The team member closest to Butcher suddenly dropped his weapon, clutching his head tightly with both hands, and let out a shrill scream that didn't sound human.

His eyes instantly became bloodshot, the corners of his eyes split open, and that originally cold face was now filled with extreme madness and fear.

What did he see?

"Get away! Don't come over!!"

The team member roared, suddenly turning around, and the high-frequency combat knife in his hand stabbed fiercely into his teammate's chest!

Puchi!

Blood sprayed, staining the camouflage suit red.

"Are… are you crazy?!" The stabbed teammate widened his eyes in disbelief, but immediately after, his eyes were also swallowed by the same madness.

"Kill you! Kill you all! There's a ghost! There's a ghost!!"

The chaos exploded instantly like a plague.

"Ah! My head! My head is going to split!"

"Don't eat me! Get away!"

The killing machines that were disciplined and coordinated just a moment ago had now turned into a group of completely out-of-control beasts. They even forgot their original mission, leaving only the most primitive survival instinct—to eliminate everything moving in front of them, including their own companions.

The sound of blades entering flesh, the sound of bones shattering, and the beast-like roars intertwined in the jungle into an absurd symphony.

Only Butcher was still standing.

After all, he was a perfect experimental subject, his willpower as hard as steel. But he wasn't having it easy either; dark red blood was slowly flowing from his seven orifices, and it felt like an electric drill was frantically churning inside his head.

"Ugh…"

Butcher knelt on the ground, his hands clutching tightly into the mud, his fingernails breaking. He forcibly used pain to maintain the last shred of consciousness, staring intently at the dark forest ahead.

There, there was a footstep.

Very light, very steady.

No stealth, no camouflage.

It was just like taking a walk in the park after dinner, unhurried and slow.

The darkness was stripped away.

A young figure wearing a black combat suit walked out slowly.

He had his hands in his pockets, watching this bloody, brutal, hell-like scene of mutual slaughter, without even a trace of unnecessary expression on his face.

It was just like… watching a pack of wild dogs tearing at each other to fight over rotting meat.

"Who… who exactly… are you?!"

Butcher used all his strength to squeeze this question out of his throat, which was full of blood foam. His body was trembling; it was the fear of an apex predator deep within his genes.

Lin Yuan stopped, walking up to Butcher.

He crouched down, his gaze level with the half-kneeling monster. Looking at the other's face, twisted and deformed by fear, Lin Yuan tilted his head and pulled a simple, harmless smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Me?"

He reached out and pointed at himself.

"I'm just a scrap collector."