115: Chapter 115 Rescuing the Veteran Gunner from the Ruins! 30,000 People Homeless

Polaris circled around to the front of the Black Rock City-State at a speed of forty kilometers per hour.

There was no trace of a city left on the front side.

The piles of wreckage and scrap metal scattered everywhere resembled the ruins of a factory that had been violently dismantled.

Steel fragments and broken armor plating were piled up on the ice, forming mounds of ruins ranging in height from three to fifteen meters.

Flames emerged from several gaps in the ruin mounds; it was the fuel and lubricant from the third-level storage area burning. The temperature wasn't high, and the scale wasn't large, but it was billowing thick smoke.

The orange-red firelight reflected off the broken steel cross-sections, making the entire front look like the entrance to a giant furnace.

Lu Chen parked Polaris fifty meters in front of the ruin mounds.

The Mechanical Arm extended from the vehicle body.

One of the hydraulic lines on the second joint of the left arm had snapped, leaving it with only sixty percent of its output, while the right arm remained intact.

The gripper on the right arm latched onto a piece of armor debris on the outermost layer and moved it aside.

A deformed I-beam support beam was revealed underneath; he moved it aside, and then moved another.

"Zhou Yuan, where is Horton located?"

"About five meters deep below the No. 7 gun emplacement at the northwest corner of the city wall!" Zhou Yuan's voice came through the communicator.

"How many people have arrived in the rescue team?"

"Six people! They only have crowbars and jacks! The city wall fragments are too heavy to move!"

"I've arrived."

Lu Chen operated the right arm, grabbed a piece of the city wall fragment weighing about two tons from the ruin mound, and moved it to the side.

A blue light lit up as the fragment left the gripper.

He did not choose to degrade it.

Now was not the right time.

"Lord Lu Chen!" a young voice rang out from the other side of the ruin mounds.

Looking through the periscope, Lu Chen saw six personnel from The City-State wearing gray-blue work uniforms, digging diligently on the ruins.

One of them recognized Polaris.

"It's Polaris! He's here to help!"

"Move aside!" Lu Chen activated the roof loudspeaker and shouted, "I'll use the Mechanical Arm to clear the upper debris, you search for people underneath!"

The six people quickly backed away.

The right arm grabbed seven large fragments in succession, forcibly clearing out a three-meter-wide passage.

"Horton!" the leader of the rescue team lay at the opening of the passage and shouted downwards.

"I'm down here!" Horton responded from five meters deep under the ruins. Although his voice was muffled, he still sounded full of energy. "My left leg is pinned by a crossbeam! It doesn't hurt! I just can't pull it out!"

"What about your three gunners?"

"They're all right next to me! Xiao Tian's arm is broken! Old Liu and A-Qiang are fine!"

"Stay steady!"

Lu Chen extended the right arm into the passage, aimed the gripper at the broken crossbeam, thirty centimeters in diameter, that was pressing on top, and maxed out the hydraulic power.

The crossbeam was pulled out little by little.

Sounds of metal clashing and rocks sliding came from below.

"Move another one! The thing pressing on my leg is an inner wall panel of the city wall! It's bent at a corner and is stuck right between two ribs!"

Lu Chen extended the right arm to the bottom again, and the gripper firmly latched onto the edge of the bent inner wall panel.

He activated the hydraulic system to pull with force. Accompanied by a sharp, screeching friction sound, the inner wall panel was dragged out from between the ribs.

"It's out!" Horton's rough voice surged from the depths of the passage. "I can move my leg! Xiao Tian! I'll pull you!"

Two minutes later, Horton and the three gunners were pulled out from the passage opening one after another by the rescue team.

The pant leg on Horton's left leg was covered in pressure marks, but there was no obvious deformity to the bone.

His thick beard was covered in dust and rust powder.

This veteran gunner stared at Polaris, which was parked in front of the ruins, his expression dazed for a long while.

"Lord Lu Chen!"

"Captain Horton, can you walk?"

"I can walk!" Horton stood up straight with a limp. "When the city wall collapsed, I crawled into the inspection cavity of the turret base! That was a reinforced structure left by the pre-civilization, three times thicker than the surrounding city walls!"

"You're lucky."

"Lucky my ass!" Horton plopped down onto a piece of wreckage and looked up at the collapsed city wall.

Under the reflection of the firelight, his eyes welled up with moisture.

It was the grief of a veteran gunner watching the city wall he had guarded for most of his life turn into scrap metal.

"One hundred and twenty cannons," Horton said, his voice raspy. "Cannons I've calibrated for fifteen years."

He sighed.

"Now they're all gone."

Lu Chen remained silent, operating the Mechanical Arm to move through and clear the ruins, and dug out four trapped logistics personnel in two other locations.

All survived.

These people had injuries of varying severity, but at least their lives were saved.

"Zhou Yuan, has the headcount for the whole city been finished?"

"Preliminary count complete!" Zhou Yuan's tone was half a notch steadier than a few minutes ago. "There are 30,427 people registered in the city. Currently, 29,811 are confirmed safe, 37 are seriously injured, 162 are slightly injured, and 19 are missing."

"Death toll?"

"Currently confirmed as zero."

"Zero?"

"Zero!" Zhou Yuan's voice raised, revealing a hint of disbelief. "Six tons of explosives plus ammunition detonated, and the death toll is currently zero!"

"It's all thanks to City Lord Lin Xiao ordering the evacuation in advance! If he had ordered it three minutes later, the seventy people on the first level and the thirty people on the second level would all have been in the blast zone!"

Lu Chen flipped the physical switch to change frequencies.

"City Lord Lin Xiao."

"I'm here," Lin Xiao replied on the other end of the communicator; his voice was even raspier and harder to distinguish than before.

"Your people are all alive."

"I know."

Lin Xiao gave a dry cough.

"Thirty thousand people, all alive."

"But the city is gone."

The communication channel fell into silence.

Three seconds later.

"Brother Lu Chen, I have a question."

"We are thirty thousand people with no city," Lin Xiao's words squeezed out intermittently from the bottom of his throat. "The front wall of iron wall is ruined, and Zhao Tiezhu says it can't be repaired at all."

"I know."

"The temperature in the Rustwind Wasteland drops to minus fifty degrees after nightfall. The heating system of the Black Rock City-State is barely holding on with auxiliary engines, and can only maintain the temperature for areas above the fourth level."

"Thirty thousand people are all crammed into the fourth to seventh levels."

"The space is barely enough."

"Even if they fit, they can't last for long," Lin Xiao's voice dropped to a low point. "The food is all in the third-level storage area; some was destroyed in the explosion, and the rest is still on fire. Even if we salvage it all, it's only enough for thirty thousand people to eat for two months."

"What do we do after two months?"

"The Iron Hoof Legion will arrive in two months."

"A stranded City-State."

"A City-State without a towering city wall for cover."

"A City-State that has lost all its firepower and has defenses as thin as paper."

"How are we supposed to deal with that wonder-class monster with nothing?"

Lin Xiao stopped speaking.

The only thing left on the communicator was the noisy sound of firefighting in the distance.

"Brother Lu Chen, we are homeless."