58: Chapter 58 Iron Spine

Before dawn, a horn blast sounded on the city wall.

One blast after another, it spread from the center of the city gate to the arrow towers on both sides, as if an invisible thread had strung the entire six-kilometer-long city wall together.

"Wake up," Mecha Captain Zhao Tiesheng's voice came from the arrow tower entrance. "There's something to see."

Below the No. 1 arrow tower on the eastern section of the city wall, a temporary platform had been erected.

The platform wasn't large; it was pieced together from rough wood and iron nails, with an old red carpet salvaged from a warehouse spread over the surface. The carpet had faded, its edges frayed, but in this city filled with gray-white rock and black iron everywhere, that small patch of dark red stood out strikingly.

As the sky just began to brighten, the city wall was already packed with people.

Some civilians—old men, women, and children—dressed in coarse cloth clothes and wrapped in old blankets, crowded onto the steps on the inner side of the city wall, craning their necks to look toward the platform. Some were whispering, some were coughing, and a child sat on his father's shoulders, chewing on a piece of dry rations, his eyes wide open.

In the center of the platform stood a mecha.

It was twenty meters tall.

Its gray-white skeletal frame gleamed coldly in the morning light, and the dark red muscle fibers slowly rippled across the skeleton, like a beast just waking up and stretching its limbs. Its shell was more complete than the mecha in the stronghold, and the armor plate on its chest was a single, massive bone plate.

At the foot of the mecha stood a young man.

He was about twenty-five or twenty-six, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a sleeveless leather top that revealed two arms covered in scars. He stood in the center of the platform, slightly tilting his head to look at the mecha, a faint smile on his lips.

Around the platform stood several groups of people.

They were dressed in gear similar to Lin Yan and his companions; they were all Awakened.

Some leaned against the battlements with their eyes closed, resting; some were whispering; others were adjusting their weapons. They saw Lin Yan's group of four walking over from the arrow tower, and their gazes swept over them, lingering for a moment on Lin Yan's height of over three meters before quickly moving away.

In this Dungeon, a height of over three meters was not surprising.

"Who is that?" Qin Chuan asked.

"He Chen." Mecha Captain Zhao Tiesheng stood beside him. "He started piloting giant mecha three years ago and has killed countless giants to this day. That new mecha is the one he pilots."

"What's the new mecha called?"

" 'iron spine'. We spent ten years building it." Mecha Captain Zhao Tiesheng paused. "It uses the best giant materials we can currently find. The skeleton is from a twenty-five-meter-class giant, and the muscle fibers were carefully selected from over a dozen giants of different specifications. Theoretically, its performance is stronger than any mecha we currently have."

He Chen began to speak.

His voice was loud, loud enough for everyone on and below the city wall to hear without amplification equipment.

A rough, hoarse voice, as if brought back from the battlefield, rang out.

"I know what you are thinking," he said.

He stood on the platform, his gaze sweeping over the many civilians, over the old men with clouded eyes, over the numb and bewildered women, and the children full of longing.

"You are thinking that the giants are about to launch another full-scale attack! How long can this city wall hold, how long can our Mo Xiong City still hold out!"

The city wall fell silent for a moment.

No one spoke, but everyone's expression said the same thing: do we really still have hope?

"I will give you the answer." He Chen turned around and patted the thigh of the mecha behind him. The muscle fibers slightly indented under his slap, then slowly bounced back.

"Hold out until this mecha can no longer move, hold out until I am dead."

He jumped onto the edge of the platform, facing everyone on the city wall, his voice rising a notch.

"Three years ago, when I first piloted a mecha, my legs were shaking with fear. This thing connects your nerves to a giant's corpse, making you feel its hunger, its bloodlust, the chaos, and its instinct to devour you. When I first connected, my mind was full of the giant's voices—eat, kill, smash. I almost went crazy."

He extended his arm, the dense scars on it standing out clearly in the morning light.

"These scars I bit into myself. Every time I couldn't control the voices in my head, I would..."

Someone on the city wall gasped.

"But I don't regret it." He Chen's voice suddenly lowered, low enough that it sounded like he was telling a secret. "Because if we don't pilot them, no one else can. If we don't stand on this city wall, no one else will. Behind this wall are you, your parents, your children. If we retreat one step, they advance one step. When we retreat to the point where there is nowhere left to go, behind us is your home."

No one applauded.

But some were crying; an old woman covered her eyes with her sleeve, her shoulders shaking. A young woman held her child, who didn't know what was happening and reached out to touch the tears on his mother's face.

He Chen jumped off the platform and walked to the bottom of the mecha, his hand resting on the cockpit ladder. He looked back one last time, his gaze sweeping over the civilians on the city wall and the Awakened squads.

"This 'iron spine', today is its first time on the battlefield; it is more powerful and agile than all previous mecha." He Chen and his teammates climbed onto iron spine, his voice coming down from above. "I will use it to prove to you that the giants' attacks will only be crushed by us time and time again! Long live Mo Xiong City!"

The cockpit hatch closed.

The bone spur needles of the pipelines popped out from the seat and pierced into He Chen's neck and spine. His body stiffened abruptly, muscles tensed, veins bulged, and he gritted his teeth until they creaked. Three seconds, five seconds, his body relaxed, leaning back into the seat. When he opened his eyes, a layer of dark red light had appeared in his pupils.

"iron spine, activate."

The muscle fibers contracted violently, the skeletal frame emitted a dull roar, and the mecha stood up from the platform, its twenty-meter-tall body casting a huge shadow in the morning light.

The civilians on the city wall began to retreat, clearing a path. Some raised their arms, some were shouting something—the voices were too chaotic to hear clearly—but the emotion was uniform: it was not fear, but a roar, defiance, and hope.

"Good!" someone shouted.

"Kill them all!" another shouted.

"Long live Mo Xiong City!"

"Long live Mo Xiong City!"

...

He Chen did not respond; the mecha turned around, facing outside the city. The dark red muscle fibers gleamed in the morning light like a statue that had been set on fire.

Other mecha began to activate as well. The iron gates deep in the barbican opened one by one, and the mecha walked out from within, each step causing the ground to tremble.

Lin Yan made a rough count; there were over nine hundred.

Nearly a thousand living weapons made from giant corpses were neatly lined up in the barbican and on the city wall. The sight of the muscle fibers collectively rippling in the morning light was like a dark red ocean slowly heaving.

Qin Chuan's mouth had been hanging open the whole time.

"Nine hundred..." his voice was a bit airy, "I was wondering before, how could they possibly hold off thousands of giants with just those cannons and muskets? So, the trump card is here."

Shen Xin, on the other hand, had eyes shining with excitement, her hands trembling with thrill.