84: Chapter 84 Holy crap, who uses a sixty-year-old professor as a human shield?!

Fuyang Section.

10:17 PM.

The last rail spike was hammered into the sleeper.

Old Zhang's hammer stopped in mid-air, not falling. Because there were no more spikes left.

He straightened his back, his knees cracking twice. He didn't know where his gloves had gone long ago; his ten fingers were swollen like carrots, the gaps between them filled with cracked blood scabs.

Behind him, over three thousand mud-covered figures stood under the searchlights.

No one spoke.

It was quiet for about two seconds.

Then the walkie-talkie at the dispatch station exploded with noise.

"Fuyang Section—fully connected!"

Cheers erupted from the construction site, soaring into the night sky. The sound of over three thousand people roaring at once made the mountain walls hum, and several night birds, startled, fluttered out from the treetops.

Old Zhang didn't shout.

He crouched down, placed the rail spike hammer that had been with him for thirty-eight years beside the sleeper, and patted the handle.

"That's it."

The news spread online, and the barrage comments exploded within a second.

"It's fixed!!! It's actually fixed!!!"

"Twenty hours! Eight hundred meters! The god of Dragon Kingdom infrastructure forever!"

"I'm crying, brothers, I'm actually crying!"

Then the subtitles at the bottom refreshed.

Cold white numbers.

[Evacuated: 10,826,447 / Remaining: 2,773,553 / Countdown: 3 days 01 hour]

The barrage comments went quiet.

Two million seven hundred and thirty thousand.

Three days.

Hangzhou center, temporary assembly point.

Converted from a stadium.

The thirty-thousand-square-meter space was packed with people.

Rows upon rows of cots, the aisles so narrow one could only walk sideways.

The air was thick with the smell of instant noodles, sweat, and baby formula.

A large LED screen hung on the front wall, the red countdown ticking down second by second.

73 hours.

The crowd was divided into color blocks.

Red wristbands went to the high-speed railway station, blue to the airport, and yellow waited for long-distance buses.

Everything was orderly.

But everyone's complexion looked bad.

A volunteer wearing a fluorescent vest leaned against a pillar, holding half a cup of cold instant coffee.

She had been standing for nineteen hours; her calves were swollen, and her lips were cracked and bleeding.

The walkie-talkie in her hand rang every thirty seconds; she answered every time, her voice growing fainter.

The security guard next to her was dozing off on the floor.

Three seconds later, when the walkie-talkie rang, he reflexively sprang up, running into the crowd before his eyes were even fully open.

The transport capacity was sufficient.

High-speed rail had resumed, flights were still being added, and buses hadn't stopped.

Calculating the figures on paper, one million a day, exactly three days.

But this was the most ideal state.

Eleven days.

Drivers, attendants, security, volunteers, traffic police, railway workers—everyone was working non-stop.

People aren't machines; machines have overheat protection, but people don't.

Efficiency and speed would eventually slow down.

No one spoke; they knew the country had done its best.

They could only hope to successfully evacuate in the final time remaining.

A young mother holding her child sat on a cot, the red light of the countdown reflecting on her face.

The child was asleep, little fists clutching her collar.

She didn't cry.

She just held the child a little tighter.

No one said that sentence.

But everyone was thinking the same thing—

"Will it be in time?"

Torch Base. Training Grounds.

Liu Yuyan didn't waste a word.

The moment the silver-white holy armor covered her body, the Sword of Judgment was unsheathed, and the holy runes on the blade lit up section by section.

An energy pressure far exceeding Tier 1 spread out, pushing the golden light in the cracks of the stone bricks to retreat to both sides.

"Watch out."

A light flick of her wrist.

A solid, crescent-shaped holy light slash swept across, skimming the ground.

Without exaggerated momentum, the stone bricks along the path were silently carbonized by the high heat, leaving a pitch-black scorch mark.

The silver-blue data stream deep in Lin Xiaoman's pupils screamed a warning, her brain roaring "dodge" within 0.1 seconds.

Her body couldn't keep up at all.

The holy light slash slammed solidly into her armor's chest.

She felt as if she had been hit head-on by a high-speed truck, flying backward over ten meters, her back slamming heavily against the boundary marker, the stone bricks beneath her shattering like a spiderweb.

On the other side, Henry's figure had already circled to Liu Yuyan's right rear.

His sixty-two-year-old body, under the Tier 1 enhancement, erupted with speed completely inconsistent with his age, a heavy, fierce straight punch aiming directly for her heart.

Liu Yuyan didn't even turn her head.

With a shake of her left arm, the Oath Tower Shield popped out from thin air, the shield face accurately meeting the fist.

"Bang!"

Amidst the dull sound of impact, Henry felt his fist slam into a red-hot iron plate, the bones of his entire arm wailing.

He was lifted off the ground by the immense force from the shield, flying backward three meters.

Four seconds.

Both fell to the ground at the same time.

Su Chen sat on the stone steps, a notebook spread on his knees, not even looking up.

"Again."

The seventh time.

Lin Xiaoman lay in the pile of rubble, the crack in her armor's chest slowly healing under the flow of runes.

She panted heavily, but in her mind, she was frantically replaying every frame of the scene just now.

"Wrong."

0.2 seconds before Liu Yuyan swung her sword, the holy rune on her right shoulder armor would light up first.

Energy gathered from the core to the shoulder, then poured into the blade.

That was the pre-swing for energy mobilization!

"Professor!"

Lin Xiaoman sprang up from the ground, her voice hoarse but urgent,

"Before Sister Yuyan swings her sword, the right shoulder armor lights up first! The energy flow goes from the core to the right arm!"

On the other side, Henry was pushing himself up by his knees, his gold-rimmed glasses crooked on the bridge of his nose.

He closed his eyes for a second, activating "Life Perception".

"Her heart rate will spike before attacking, 0.3 seconds in advance."

Henry pushed up his glasses, his voice steady,

The two looked at each other from over ten meters apart.

Lin Xiaoman grinned, a trace of blood still hanging from the corner of her mouth.

"Enough."

The fifteenth time.

The tactics changed.

Henry no longer tried to attack but actively met Liu Yuyan's sword edge, acting as a meat shield.

He used his standard armor to take the first blow head-on, his knees slamming into the stone bricks, just to create that 0.5-second observation gap for Lin Xiaoman.

Lin Xiaoman utilized this 0.5 seconds, frantically analyzing the energy trajectory of the holy light slash.

For the first time, she successfully predicted the landing point of the slash, rolling to the side in advance.

Although the next second, she was slapped away by Liu Yuyan's ghost-like shield bash.

But Su Chen's fingers tapped lightly on his knee.

"Interesting, it seems a new way to play the transcendent sequence has been found."

The sixty-eighth time.

Liu Yuyan no longer used long-range slashes.

She charged directly.

The Tier 2 transcendent's speed erupted completely, the silver-white figure leaving trails of afterimages on the Training Grounds, so fast that Lin Xiaoman's data stream began to lag.

Every swing of the Sword of Judgment carried terrifying power capable of slicing through armor.

Henry and Lin Xiaoman were completely suppressed, able only to block and dodge in a sorry state, even standing firm became a luxury.

There were more and more cracks on the armor, and the self-repairing runes could no longer keep up with the speed of the damage.

Every block was like hitting a wall, every dodge exhausted all their strength.

The one hundred and fourth time.

"One last time."

The two looked at each other and charged up simultaneously.

Henry in front, Lin Xiaoman in the back.

Liu Yuyan's figure turned into a stream of light again, the sword tip pointing straight at Henry's chest.

This time, Henry didn't block.

He poured all his strength into his legs, his feet digging firmly into the stone bricks, using his entire body to meet that fatal blow!

"Clang!"

The sword tip hit his chest armor precisely.

He was pushed backward by the immense force for a full five meters, his feet plowing two deep grooves into the hard stone bricks.

But he didn't fall.

Gritting his teeth, he used his life to hold open an absolute safety zone of 0.5 seconds for the teammate behind him.

Within this 0.5 seconds, Lin Xiaoman sprang out from behind him!

She didn't charge toward Liu Yuyan.

But charged toward the stone groove Henry had plowed, extending her fingers—

Touching the residual, not-yet-dissipated holy light energy at the edge of the groove!

0.1 seconds of contact.

The silver-blue data stream surged in frantically along her fingertips!

Tier 2 holy light's energy structure, decay frequency, particle vibration mode...

All core data was instantly read and modeled by her transcendent perception!

The next second, the edge of the tower shield swept over.

Lin Xiaoman flew out again, rolling three times on the ground before stopping.

But lying on the ground, she grinned.

"I know..."

Her voice was hoarse, mixed with blood foam.

"Tier 2 energy... so that's how it operates..."

Su Chen's pen tip stopped on the notebook.

He looked up, watching Lin Xiaoman, who was lying on the ground, covered in injuries, yet smiling like a child.

In the "Team Coordination" column, he drew an upward arrow.

Liu Yuyan's transcendent sequence was designed for the Paladin path, with added melee experience bonuses.

While Lin Xiaoman and Henry's transcendent sequences were designed for support,

sacrificing melee experience bonuses to strengthen the sequence attributes, allowing them to have passive abilities even at Tier 1.

Liu Yuyan sheathed her sword.

Her gaze swept over the two deep grooves on the stone bricks, then over Lin Xiaoman lying on the ground.

Her eyebrows twitched slightly.

"Not bad."