55: Chapter 55 Heated Showdown
The 3rd Patrol Squad scattered from beneath the ramp of the ring expressway break, bypassing the main road and cutting directly into the shadows of the buildings on either side.
Captain Zheng Feng led the way; his method of movement was the simplest: running.
Every step landed heavily, kicking shallow pits into the rubble-strewn ground, propelling him forward like a cannonball leaving the barrel.
His center of gravity was tilted forward, ready to sprint at any moment. That posture was the externalization of his combat instinct.
The Sixth Patrol Team pressed in from the direction of the subway station ruins. The distance between the two teams was rapidly shrinking, but they had not yet entered firing range.
The first to make a move were those setting traps.
On the 3rd Patrol Squad's side, a slim team member broke away from the group at the start, quickly weaving through an alleyway half-buried in rubble.
He was fast, his steps quick and choppy, changing direction frequently.
Every time he passed an intersection, he would stop and crouch for a few seconds, his fingers moving rapidly over the ground.
Zhen Lu could not see what he was doing, but he was definitely setting traps.
That person must be the Mechanic.
The Sixth Patrol Team was doing the same thing.
A stocky team member crouched behind a broken wall, hands pressed against the ground.
The rubble in front of him was slowly rearranging itself, as if invisible hands were setting up chess pieces.
Several sharp chunks of concrete were overturned, points facing upward, and buried into the loose soil.
It was a Psychic, using psychokinesis to directly control objects. Every time his fingers twitched, the rubble on the ground would jump in response.
Then, both sides began to test each other.
The Sixth Patrol Team made the first move.
A team member poked half his body out from behind the ruins, drawing a circle with his hands in front of him.
The air in front of him distorted, and a ball of compressed air shot out, whistling as it slammed into the building where the 3rd Patrol Squad was hiding.
The air bomb struck the outer wall, exploding into a cloud of grayish-white dust, blasting a half-meter-wide crater into the wall surface.
The 3rd Patrol Squad's response came quickly. A team member vaulted out of a window on the other side, tapped her toes on the windowsill, and shifted horizontally three or four meters.
While in mid-air, she gripped the air with one hand, a javelin made of pure energy forming in her palm, which she then hurled away.
The energy javelin, trailing a pale blue wake, struck toward the Sixth Patrol Team's direction, pinning itself into the ground less than half a meter in front of a team member and bursting into a blue flare.
The probing was over. The engagement began.
The Sixth Patrol Team's flank suddenly pressed up. Two people rushed out from behind cover, one to the left and one to the right.
The one on the left was a Martial Artist. He had no flashy skills; every time his feet landed, they sank into the rubble up to his ankles, and then he pushed off violently, causing rubble to explode behind him as he surged forward.
The one on the right had a faint yellow glow emerging on the surface of his body; every step he took caused temporary cracks to appear in the ground beneath his feet.
It was a reinforcement-type Ability User, outputting pure physical force.
Their target was the two team members on the 3rd Patrol Squad's left flank.
The Martial Artist arrived first.
He threw a punch downward, the wind of his fist blowing the rubble on the ground away.
The 3rd Patrol Squad member raised his arms to block, a pale blue halo lighting up around his body simultaneously. The punch shattered the halo and hit his arms with little force left, but the person blocking was still knocked back two steps.
Zhen Lu scanned over; a team member wearing a dark gray vest was extending one hand, fingers spread, palm facing the left flank. The halo was a shield provided by a Psychic.
Lu Ming and a team member wielding dual long blades charged out side-by-side, aiming straight for the Sixth Patrol Team's rear line.
They wanted to cut off the enemy's long-range support.
Lu Ming's movement was very steady; every step landed on load-bearing structures, never on rubble piles or loose soil. He was guarding against traps.
The team member with the long blades was the complete opposite; he did not care what he stepped on. With his blade held horizontally in front of him, he slashed at anything in his path. The two of them, one on the left and one on the right, quickly closed in on the Sixth Patrol Team's rear position.
The Sixth Patrol Team's defensive response was also fast.
The long-range firepower in the rear immediately turned toward Lu Ming, a pillar of fire erupting diagonally from the ground to seal off his path forward.
Meanwhile, a Sixth Patrol Team Psychic cut in from the side; the ground beneath his feet suddenly rippled like a water surface.
The concrete ground where Lu Ming had just landed suddenly softened, and his right foot sank in halfway.
As Lu Ming cursed and tried to pull his leg out, the team member wielding the long blades had already blocked in front of him, slashing his blade into the ground.
The blade energy cut a half-meter-deep trench into the ground, severing the softened area.
The Sixth Patrol Team's Martial Artist was intercepted by someone wearing light armor.
He rammed straight into him, and several metal plates embedded in his shoulder blades suddenly deformed and reorganized, unfolding into a small shield in front of his shoulder.
It was living metal. A Mechanic, specializing in individual combat.
After the collision, the Mechanic himself was knocked back two steps, and the Martial Artist's momentum was neutralized. A second attack was immediately interrupted by someone following up.
Both sides constantly redeployed personnel. After taking a round of charges on the left flank, the 3rd Patrol Squad quickly retracted, and Captain Zheng Feng personally filled the gap.
His fighting style was the simplest and most direct: fists.
Every punch thrown carried a muffled sonic boom.
The Sixth Patrol Team's Martial Artist traded a punch with him; the ground beneath both their feet exploded simultaneously, sending rubble flying to smash against the walls.
The Martial Artist stepped back half a step, but Captain Zheng Feng did not retreat.
From a more lateral direction, another group from the Sixth Patrol Team, taking advantage of the gap in the frontal assault, quickly wove along a drainage ditch.
They kept their bodies low, moving extremely quietly.
Zhen Lu only managed to detect the movement of that group thanks to his passive tracking perception. This group had circled around a great distance, aiming directly for the 3rd Patrol Squad's rear.
The Psychic in the 3rd Patrol Squad's rear suddenly slapped both hands on the ground, and a pale blue ripple of psychokinesis spread out from his palms, laying out a sensor layer on the rubble-covered ground twenty meters behind the team.
The moment the infiltration team stepped onto the sensor layer, the pale blue light exploded violently. Captain Zheng Feng glanced back and immediately reassigned a team member to fall back and defend. The infiltration failed.
Both sides continued to pull and tug in this manner.
"You lure me into a trap zone, and after I see through it, I lure you back."
Whoever's redeployment was anticipated by the opponent first would lose their position.
Zhen Lu saw the Sixth Patrol Team deliberately expose a team member alone at an intersection as bait. The moment the 3rd Patrol Squad's assault trooper rushed up, the light of charging energy lit up in the buildings on both sides simultaneously.
But the assault trooper braked in time; he noticed the bait's stance was too steady, not like someone who was alone.
After he braked, he withdrew, and two energy beams struck the ground in front of his feet, blasting two craters.
Both sides were anticipating the other's anticipation.
Then, the melee began. It erupted at multiple points simultaneously.
On the left flank, two Martial Artists collided, punches landing flesh-to-flesh, the sound of bone hitting bone so dull and heavy it made one's teeth ache.
On the right flank, energy javelins were incessantly hurled into the opposing position, and the enemy's Gauss rifles fired back again, blue trajectories cutting through the ruins and blasting half of the cover to rubble.
In the center, the team member wielding the long blade had already broken into the Sixth Patrol Team's rear, his blade glowing with a scorching red light, every slash accompanied by a wave of searing heat.
During his charge, he took a psychokinetic impact to his right ribs, which exploded inside his body through his tactical vest, causing blood to seep from the corner of his mouth instantly.
His hand gripping the blade did not tremble, his pace did not slow, and his blade work became even more fierce.
Using the remaining force of the impact to turn, he swung his blade upward from below, the blade energy cutting a charred fissure into the ground and forcing the Psychic to retreat repeatedly.
Just as the Psychic steadied himself, another 3rd Patrol Squad member cut in from the side, driving a short blade into his shoulder.
The Psychic groaned, clamped one hand onto the opponent's wrist, and condensed a ball of psychokinetic energy in his other hand, blasting it into the opponent's chest at point-blank range.
Both of them collapsed simultaneously.
The two Martial Artists on the left flank were fighting without any technique anymore, using their bodies to brute-force the opponent's attacks while simultaneously forcing their own attacks into the other's body.
Both were wounded, blood dripping from their mouths, eyes bruised, but their punch speed had not dropped, and their footwork remained steady.
The 3rd Patrol Squad's Martial Artist drove a knee into his opponent's abdomen, and the moment his opponent hunched over, he changed moves and slammed an elbow strike onto the back of his neck.
He dropped to one knee, hands supporting himself on the ground. The opposing Martial Artist did not pursue; his ribs had been broken by the knee strike—at least two of them—and he was bent over, gasping for breath.
Two seconds later, both of them raised their heads and collided again.
An energy beam shot from afar passed through a gap in the ruins, striking the 3rd Patrol Squad Martial Artist squarely in the back. He looked down at the hole pierced through his chest. This was a melee; there was no fairness to speak of.
Captain Zheng Feng was caught in a pincer attack by two people, taking a punch to his left shoulder. The force of that punch traveled through his bones to his feet, crushing the rubble beneath his soles into powder.
He caught the opponent's fist with his shoulder blade, then slammed a punch into the opponent's chest; the sound of shattering ribs could be heard from far away.
That Martial Artist flew backward, crashing into a wall, and had already breathed his last before even hitting it.
The other one did not retreat, slamming a punch onto Captain Zheng Feng's right arm, bone fractures spreading from his elbow to his wrist.
Captain Zheng Feng turned sideways and elbowed the opponent in the side of the neck. The opponent fell backward, the back of his head hitting the rubble as he landed, and he stopped moving.
Captain Zheng Feng's right arm hung limp, blood dripping from his elbow to the back of his hand.
His right arm was useless now, so he switched to gripping his fist with his left hand, blocking a frontal impact from a Psychic.
The shockwave exploded in front of his feet, rubble spraying, and he staggered slightly.
Then he took a step forward and slammed his left fist into the Psychic's chest, taking the Psychic out instantly.
Captain Zheng Feng turned around; the last Martial Artist of the Sixth Patrol Team was charging toward him.
He met him with one arm, the two collided, and their fists slammed into each other simultaneously. It was a mutual destruction.
The final signal flare exploded. The red mist trailed a curved arc across the gray sky.
The battle was over.
Zhen Lu leaned against a pillar of a tall building, watching the pockmarked Ruined City.
The dust on the battlefield was still suspended in the air, slowly settling down.
Traces of the battle were scattered across the rubble-strewn ground: broken blades, overturned concrete blocks, dried bloodstains.
There was no one left standing.
After a while, a 3rd Patrol Squad member slowly walked out from the shadows of the distant ruins.
He was dragging one leg, half of his tactical vest was torn off, and his face was covered in dust.
He walked to the center of the open space, sat down, and looked up at the sky, gasping for air.
On the other side, a figure also stood up from behind a broken wall. It was the Sixth Patrol Team's Mechanic; the shield on his shoulder blade was already shattered, metal shards dangling from his shoulder. He stood leaning against the wall for a few seconds, then slowly slid down to a sitting position.
The two looked at each other from tens of meters apart, neither saying a word.
Old Gu walked over. His gaze swept across the ruins, and he waited for a moment, but no third person stood up.