29: Chapter 29 A Colossus on the Horizon, the Winter Alliance!

At the end of the horizon, the pale snowfield was severed by a terrifying black shadow.

Within the telescope's field of vision, a massive architectural complex dozens of meters high was slowly grinding across the ice of the Pale Shoals.

This was the first time Lu Chen had witnessed a true Mobile City with his own eyes since transmigrating to this wasteland world!

The system detected that it was a standard lv.3 fortress-class Mobile City!

Its chassis was as wide as a football field. Hundreds of broad steel tracks churned frantically beneath it, each one thicker than the entire body of the Polaris.

As each track crushed the ice, it kicked up snow waves several meters high and emitted a world-shaking metallic roar.

The city's perimeter was a ring of towering, heavy black steel walls.

The surface of the walls was mottled by time and stained with dried, dark-red blood.

Countless thick industrial chimneys spewed rolling black smoke into the gloomy sky. That was the industrial exhaust produced by the combustion of countless sourcefire coal crystals.

On the armored belt of the city walls, which stood dozens of meters high, dozens of twin-mounted and even triple-mounted heavy artillery arrays were densely packed!

Those dark muzzles had calibers large enough for a person to stick their head inside, exuding a grim aura of war.

Directly in front of this fortress-class city, a massive flag snapped loudly in the wind and snow.

On the flag, an emblem composed of gears and snowflakes was embroidered with silver thread.

The Winter Trade Alliance.

The name flashed quickly through Lu Chen's mind.

The original owner's memories contained legends about this behemoth.

A community of interests formed by several large and super-large commercial Mobile City-states.

They monopolized the mining rights of high-grade sourcefire coal crystals and the excavation of ruins from the previous civilization.

Using massive armed caravans, they roamed between small cities and wanderer camps, extracting every valuable resource through severely unequal trade.

The lv.3 fortress before him was merely a mid-to-low-tier caravan under the Winter Trade Alliance!

"City Lord... is that a lv.3 fortress-class Mobile City?"

Lin Wan had approached the window at some point, staring at the steel fortress that blotted out the sky in the distance.

"Yes, and it's a monster that could grind us into meat pies." Lu Chen lowered his telescope, his eyes showing no ripple of emotion.

His proud Polaris, even with ten centimeters of scrap steel armor added, was nothing more than a pebble that would be crushed in an instant before this fortress.

The caliber of any secondary gun on their walls was enough to tear his painstakingly built defenses to shreds.

Facing such an overwhelming difference in scale, so-called 'over-level kills' were a joke.

"Kill the engine. Maintain silence." Lu Chen decisively issued the command.

Run? On the flat snowfields, a micro-vehicle could not escape the lock-on of a fortress-class radar. Once it triggered a misjudgment from the opponent, a round of saturation shelling would turn him to ash.

The way of survival comes first; never proactively provoke an insurmountable enemy.

The roar of the Polaris's engine instantly faded, retaining only the most basic idling state. Lu Chen parked the vehicle beside a massive ice rock, attempting to blend into the background.

However, the opponent's radar was far more sensitive than he had anticipated.

When the Winter Trade Alliance's fortress was still several kilometers away from the Polaris, the fortress's bottom armored doors slowly opened with a piercing hydraulic hiss.

Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!

Accompanied by the roar of engines, three high-speed armed snow SUVs with pure white liveries charged out from the fortress's lower bay! Their designs were streamlined and they were incredibly fast, moving like arrows released from a bow.

These SUVs were mounted with heavy machine guns of exaggerated caliber, and the Winter Trade Alliance emblem was painted on both sides of the vehicles.

They carved three violent lines in the snow, racing toward the ice rock where the Polaris was parked at speeds exceeding eighty kilometers per hour. Their target was clear.

"We've been spotted." Lu Chen's facial muscles tensed.

He didn't touch the fire control joystick. Opening fire within the range of the opponent's main guns was no different from suicide.

Soon, the three armed SUVs formed a surrounding formation and came to a halt with sharp tail-flicks less than thirty meters from the Polaris, kicking up snow dust that pelted against the Polaris's scrap steel armor.

Several low-level caravan guards wearing sophisticated cold-weather gear jumped off the vehicles, holding high-quality rifles and wearing windproof masks, their chins held high in an arrogant posture.

One of the leading guards looked the Polaris up and down. The crude scrap steel armor covered in rust and scratches made him unable to resist a sneer, and he picked up a portable megaphone.

"Hey! Listen up, you rats hiding inside!"

That voice, full of mockery and disdain, echoed across the open snowfield through the megaphone, sharp enough to make one's eardrums ache.

"In this freezing weather, you're driving a country bumpkin's iron coffin around and haven't frozen to death yet? Let us lords see if there's any scrap in that junk of yours worth our Merchant Alliance recycling!"