120: Chapter 120 One Hundred and Eighty Seconds! Steel Grows Before the Eyes of 30,000 People

The second the Polaris engine cut out, all sound vanished with it.

The boiler flames died down.

The diesel engine's RPM dropped to zero.

The electric lights, which had been on for less than five minutes, went out again.

The last wisp of white steam in the piping was sucked back into the pipe walls.

The carriage plunged into silent darkness.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

A vibration followed.

A low-frequency, continuous resonance traveled upward from the modular reinforced chassis at the bottom of the vehicle.

Lu Chen sat in the driver's seat, his hands resting on the now-powered-down steering wheel.

The three screens of the fire control hub were completely black, the radar panel was dark, and the indicator light above the red all-weapon-linkage volley button extinguished simultaneously.

"City Lord!"

Lin Wan's voice came from the direction of the planting area, repressed and tense.

"I've got hold of it!"

"The upgrade program has started! One hundred and eighty seconds! Don't let go!"

"I'm hugging the cold storage pillar!"

"Hold tight."

The darkness inside the carriage lasted until the fifth second.

Light surged forth; this was not the light source of electric lamps, but a blue radiance seeping out from between the molecular gaps of the vehicle's steel plates.

Every inch of surface on every armor plate was glowing.

From the cockpit control panel to the outer wall of the boiler in the rear power zone, from the left cold storage frame to the right hydroponic planting rack, the entire Polaris was evenly saturated with blue light from the inside out.

The pale blue turned into indigo, the indigo shifted to deep blue within ten seconds, and the deep blue continued to darken, approaching the critical purple-blue color gamut.

Lu Chen watched the changes before him.

The left wall of the cockpit began to move outward in the blue light, steady and continuous, extending two to three centimeters every second.

The right wall shifted outward simultaneously.

The ceiling was rising, climbing upward from a height of three meters at one centimeter per second.

The floor was expanding.

Driven by the blue light, the windshield in front of the console extended forward, the glass area grew larger, and the steel frame grew along with it.

"It was like this the last time it upgraded."

Lu Chen's voice pierced through the blue-light-filled cockpit.

"But the intensity is much greater than last time."

On the side exit platform of the fourth level of the Black Rock City-State, Lin Xiao stood at the very front.

He rested his hands on the steel railing, the dust on his military uniform kicking up in the night wind.

This City Lord stared at the glowing war vehicle one hundred meters away.

Zhou Yuan stood at his right hand, clutching a pair of binoculars.

Horton stood at his left hand, limping, using an iron pipe salvaged from the ruins as a crutch.

Hundreds of people crowded behind them.

The news spread throughout the entire fourth to seventh levels within minutes.

That small vehicle which had stopped two lv.3 fortress vehicles was undergoing a massive transformation in the blue light.

"City Lord."

Zhou Yuan lowered his voice.

"I see it."

Lin Xiao's fingers tightened on the railing by half a degree.

"He said one hundred and eighty seconds."

"Yes! Did he tell you that?"

"He said it when it upgraded from Lv.1 to Lv.2 last time! One hundred and eighty seconds of forced offline!"

Zhou Yuan raised the binoculars to his eyes to focus.

The silhouette of the Polaris in the lenses was changing.

The surface of the vehicle body was wrapped in a layer of flowing blue light, and the steel was expanding outward beneath the glow.

This was not a violent expansion caused by an explosion, but growth—stable and uniform, with every inch of steel extending outward at the same rate.

"It's getting bigger."

Zhou Yuan's voice came from behind the binoculars.

"How big is it?"

"The vehicle length has already exceeded thirty meters! It's nearly ten meters longer than before!"

"Is it still growing?"

"Still growing."

Zhou Yuan's wrists were trembling, not because of the cold, but because what he was seeing through the binoculars was continuously refreshing his understanding of physics.

"The width is increasing too! It was eight meters! Now it has already exceeded fifteen meters!"

"What about the height?"

"The height has risen from three meters to over five meters."

Zhou Yuan lowered the binoculars and turned his head to look at Lin Xiao.

"City Lord! How long has it been?"

"Around forty seconds."

"It doubled in forty seconds?"

"Keep watching."

Lin Xiao's gaze remained locked on that war vehicle.

The crowd behind the platform emitted hushed discussions.

Dozens of people stared into the darkness at the orb of blue light one hundred meters away.

The blue light showed no signs of weakening, and the vehicle's growth showed no signs of slowing down.

Thirty-five meters, forty meters, fifty meters.

Horton leaned on the iron pipe, the dust clinging to his beard clearly visible under the illumination of the blue light.

His mouth opened and closed.

"Horton."

Lin Xiao did not turn his head.

"Yes."

"How many years have you worked in The City-State?"

"Twenty-three years."

"Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Horton stared at the blue light for three seconds.

"No."

His throat felt parched.

"I've never seen it in my life."

The distant piles of ruins cast long shadows under the illumination of the blue light.

The Polaris roof dome expanded in sync within the blue light, new panels generated in the gaps between the transparent composite material plates, and the arched top of the dome continued to rise.

The full-spectrum LED light strips inside the dome extended along with it, and warm light leaked out from the elongated dome.

A growing steel behemoth spread in all directions on the ice of the Rustwind Wasteland.

Thirty thousand people watched all of this.

"Sixty seconds."

Zhou Yuan announced the time.

"How big is it?"

He raised the binoculars again.

The image in the lenses made him hold his breath.

"Seventy meters."

"What?"

"Seventy meters in length! Width over thirty meters! Height over ten meters!"

The force of Lin Xiao's fingers on the railing increased slightly.

"Still growing."

"Still growing."

Zhou Yuan's hand lowering the binoculars was trembling.

"City Lord! At this speed! How big will it be when the one hundred and eighty seconds are up?"

Lin Xiao did not answer; he stared at the blue light.

The color of the blue light was deeper than ten seconds ago, and the speed of the steel expansion was faster than ten seconds ago.

The number of people on the fourth-level exit platform rose from one hundred to three hundred, and the count was still increasing.

The passageway was packed with City-State residents who had rushed over upon hearing the news.

There was no movement to maintain order.

Everyone was watching quietly, watching the steel lifeform inside that orb of blue light one hundred meters away extend its boundaries at a speed of several meters per second.

"Battalion Commander Zhao."

Lin Xiao pulled the communicator to his mouth.

"Here!"

Zhao Tiezhu's rough voice came through the communicator, with the low-power hum of the iron wall engine in the background.

"Where are you?"

"The iron wall is parked two kilometers east-northeast of The City-State."

"Can you see the Polaris?"

"I can see the blue light! From two kilometers away, I can see a large orb of blue light on his side!"

"Then watch carefully."

Lin Xiao's voice was deep.

"Lu Chen's Polaris is upgrading."

"Upgrading? Upgrading to what level?"

"From Lv.2 to Lv.3."

The other end of the communicator was silent for three seconds.

"He can upgrade to Lv.3?"

"It is upgrading."

"Fortress-class?"

"Fortress-class."

Zhao Tiezhu's heavy breathing came through the communicator.

"My iron wall spent eight years at Lv.3 before barely qualifying! He's been here for thirty-three days and is already upgrading to Lv.3?"

"You'll know when you keep watching."

Lin Xiao placed the communicator on the railing, his gaze falling back onto the orb of blue light.

The vehicle length reached seventy meters at the sixty-second mark.

Seventy-five, eighty, still growing.

In the cockpit, Lu Chen watched the surrounding walls retreat outward at a steady rate.

The ceiling had already exceeded six meters.

The space in front of the console had changed from the original three-meter depth to ten meters.

Brand new structural beams hung down from the ceiling, the steel self-weaving into I-beam support frames in the blue light.

He heard a sound, a resonant sound coming up from the depths of the entire Polaris skeleton.

Dull, long, and continuous.