22: Chapter 22 The Mysterious Tracker, Wasteland Debris Recovery

Flames burned helplessly on the snow, emitting a crackling, eerie sound. Acrid black smoke shot straight into the sky.

The two Lv.2 encampment-class medium combat vehicles that once ran rampant in the Pale Shoals had been completely reduced to two twisted piles of scrap metal.

The vehicle on the left, its tracks snapped and crashed into an ice hill, was still wheezing and emitting steam.

As for the one on the right, which had its boiler struck directly by an armor-piercing Harpoon Cannon causing a sympathetic detonation, it had already burned into a glowing red iron frame. The crew inside was undoubtedly dead.

Creak.

The heavy scrap-steel door of the Polaris was slowly pushed open.

Lu Chen held the Black Powder Steam Repeating Crossbow, which reeked of machine oil and gunpowder smoke, in one hand as he stepped onto the snow, stained gray-black by the explosion.

His worn, thin sweater seemed completely out of place in the extreme cold of minus sixty degrees outside.

But he didn't care at all. The bitter cold that ordinary people could not endure served only as natural air conditioning, bolstered by the extreme satisfaction brought by his victory.

"City Lord! It's dangerous outside! They might still have survivors!"

Lin Wan clung to the bulletproof glass, her voice distorted by extreme tension.

She had witnessed this man crush two combat vehicles much larger than their own; in her eyes, besides awe, there was also a panic born of fear that her deity might be injured.

Lu Chen ignored her.

He walked with steady strides, crushing a frozen severed limb on the ground, and headed straight for the relatively intact enemy vehicle that had crashed into the ice hill.

For someone with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder like him, the battle was just a process. Cleaning up the battlefield, physically eliminating all hidden dangers, and converting them into resources was the perfect closed loop.

The cockpit door of the combat vehicle had already been warped and deformed by the impact.

Lu Chen raised his foot, clad in a heavy winter boot, and kicked it hard!

Clang!

The teetering iron door flew right off.

The cockpit was filled with the thick stench of blood and the foul smell of machine oil. Two lackeys had already had their internal organs shattered by the violent impact, and they lay dead in front of the console, bleeding from their seven orifices.

And on the central command seat, a man with a fleshy face and a hideous scar on his forehead was leaning against the deformed seat, coughing up mouthfuls of blood mixed with organ fragments.

It was none other than Black Wolf, the captain of the Third Squad who had been arrogantly shouting on the channel earlier.

The previous impact had allowed him to avoid the sympathetic detonation, but a broken steel bar had pierced his abdomen, pinning him firmly to the seat.

"Cough, cough... You... you damn monster..."

When Black Wolf saw Lu Chen approaching with the crossbow, his eyes bulged with fear, which was quickly consumed by a morbid resentment.

He spat out a mouthful of blood foam; his lungs were ruptured, and his chest rattled like a broken bellows.

"I only have one question."

Lu Chen stood still, expressionlessly raising the repeating crossbow in his hand. The pitch-black muzzle pointed directly at the center of Black Wolf's forehead.

"The ice storm just ended. My vehicle has a thermal insulation layer, so it cannot be scanned over a large area via thermal imaging. How did you accurately find my coordinates on the vast ice field?"

This was a hidden danger Lu Chen had to figure out. If his whereabouts could be locked onto at will, his strategy of keeping a low profile would become empty words.

"Cough, hahahaha... You want to know?"

Black Wolf let out a frantic, miserable laugh as he vomited blood. The laughter was particularly jarring on the empty wasteland.

"You think you can just kill a few of my men and steal some junk and get away with it? You ignorant bottom-feeder!"

"I might as well tell you! All core members of the Snow Shard Gang who go out on missions have been injected with trace amounts of Source Fire radioactive isotopes! This is a special type of tracking marker!"

"Once the host dies, that thing will attach itself to the person or vehicle that killed them, and it won't fade for half a month!"

Black Wolf stared fixedly at Lu Chen, revealing the gratification of taking him down with him.

"You just killed me, and now, the concentration of isotopes on your broken vehicle has soared to the extreme! As long as our boss turns on that miniature Geiger radar, you'll be a fucking searchlight in the dark night here in the Pale Shoals!"

"The Snow Shard Gang never lets a grudge go! We have hundreds of combat vehicles! We have heavy artillery! We have large Mobile Cities! I'll be waiting for you down below! It won't be long before our boss tears open your piece-of-junk tin can and takes you and that woman... ugh!"

His voice came to an abrupt halt.

"Too much nonsense."

Pfft! Boom!

Lu Chen did not hesitate at all and pulled the trigger.

The thick, solid steel crossbow bolt erupted at a distance of less than a meter, instantly blowing off Black Wolf's skull and completely shattering that face with its hideous smile.

Red and white matter splattered all over the deformed cockpit.

Lu Chen put away the repeating crossbow and stared at the headless corpse on the ground, his expression darkening.

Radioactive isotope tracking marker?

He looked down at his sleeve, which was stained with Black Wolf's blood.

Those invisible radioactive particles had likely already adhered firmly to every inch of the Polaris's armor, impossible to shake off.

You beat the young ones, the old ones come; when the old ones are all dead, it looks like even older ones will arrive soon.

He had kicked over a nest of vengeful hornets. A single hornet had limited lethality, but the endless harassment would sooner or later destroy the survival order he had established.

Since his whereabouts had been exposed, there was no hiding anymore.

Then he would just have to become larger, harder, and possess more terrifying caliber than them before their troops could surround him.

Lu Chen turned around, eyeing the two wrecks, which, though destroyed, still contained a large amount of steel and residual fuel.

As an infrastructure fanatic, he would never allow such ready-made resources to be wasted in the wind and snow.

"System, can these two junk cars be directly converted into Truth Points?"

[Ding! Host intention detected. Scanning remaining resource structure...]

[Scan result: Both vehicles are severely damaged, but still retain some inferior armored steel plates and trace amounts of boiler energy. Can be forcibly subjected to high-dimensional degradation and conversion.]

[Estimated conversion: 200 Truth Points! Execute?]

Two medium combat vehicles, and they only exchange for 200 points?

Lu Chen smacked his lips. But thinking about how the vehicle that had undergone a sympathetic detonation had been blown to bits, these 200 points could be considered an extra windfall.

Even a mosquito's leg is meat.

"Execute conversion."

As the command was issued, a ghostly blue light surged out, covering those two massive piles of scrap iron.

The steel gradually dissipated in the eerie material deconstruction, turning into golden data streams that surged into Lu Chen's retina.

[Conversion successful! Obtained 200 Truth Points.]

[Current account balance: 200 Truth Points.]

Added to the damaged primary beast core in his pocket that he hadn't had time to convert yet, all told, he was still a chasm of several hundred points away from the total Truth Points needed to upgrade to Lv.2.

Lu Chen braved the cold wind and returned to the warm cabin of the Polaris.

He hung up his heavy coat, feeling the 20-degree constant temperature enveloping his whole body.

His gaze swept past Lin Wan, who was loosening the soil around the roots of the cabbage in the corner, and then past the purple-glowing grade a seed vault.

Warmth, food, pure water, firepower.

The perfect closed loop he had built with his own hands was being targeted by a group of damn hornets.

The main force of the Snow Shard Gang was a Sword of Damocles hanging over his head. That unknown Source Fire radioactive isotope was a ticking time bomb, broadcasting his current coordinates to his pursuers every second.

Time was running out.

Lu Chen's gaze pierced through the bulletproof glass and cast toward the unknown darkness deep in the wind and snow.

He had to save up the remaining Truth Points as soon as possible. Only by unlocking all the core nodes and upgrading to Lv.2 could the Polaris have the confidence to go head-to-head with the Snow Shard Gang.

He gritted his teeth, his killing intent burning brighter and brighter.

"Snow Shard Gang... since you are in such a hurry to die, I will turn all of you into the nourishment for upgrading my fortress."