424: Chapter 424 The war was extremely brutal.

The voice was steady, even carrying a mechanical sense of deep training. This person's body was on the verge of collapse, but his brain was still executing the last command it had received.

More wounded soldiers emerged from the darkness. Ten, twenty, fifty. Some supported each other, some were dragged by companions, and a few were tied to makeshift stretchers, already unconscious.

Lin Yu's gaze locked onto one of them.

It was an officer whose rank insignia was no longer legible because his entire chest cavity had been nearly hollowed out.

This was no hyperbolic rhetoric. It was literal—his sternum was shattered, his ribs were flared outward, and at least a third of his internal organs were missing. A semi-transparent energy membrane barely maintained his vital signs, but that membrane flickered every few seconds, growing thinner with every flash.

He was dying.

But his hands were death-gripping a fist-sized crystal. The surface of the crystal was carved with dense micro-inscriptions, emitting the same blue-white fluorescence as the corridor beneath their feet.

A Node Token. One of the core anchors maintaining the connection between the Void Corridor and Blue Star.

The officer's fingers had turned a bruised purple, and two of his fingernails had fallen off, yet his ten fingers remained embedded in the grooves of the crystal's surface, motionless. Black corrosive patterns were spreading along the edges of the crystal; every inch they drew closer to his fingers, his body would twitch once more.

He was using his remaining life force to prevent the corrosion from invading the token.

Lin Yu stood in place, watching all of this.

Qin Zhan turned around.

He faced the Fangs members and the tens of thousands of soldiers following behind him, demonstrating for the first time before Lin Yu something that transcended individual martial prowess.

“All members of Fangs, hear my command.”

No amplification equipment was needed. The way his voice propagated through the Void Corridor defied physical common sense—it did not attenuate or echo, falling precisely into everyone's ears.

“Assault formation. Protect the wounded behind us.”

The Fangs members gave no unnecessary reaction. Zhong Huai was the first to move, his figure cutting out from Qin Zhan's right to lock down the right wing of the corridor. Wen Yan shifted three steps to the left, tucked his mobile terminal into his pocket, and placed his right hand on the weapon at his waist. Yan Pojun pulled a broken saber from his waist, the blade reflecting a cold light under the blue-white fluorescence; he used his left arm, which was in a sling, to brace the back of the blade as he stood at the very front of the formation.

A heavily wounded, one-armed soldier stood in front of everyone.

Qin Zhan's gaze swept across the wounded soldiers in deep crimson armor who were still pouring in continuously.

“The battlefield will not retreat to Blue Star.”

His right hand pressed against his sword hilt, the red of the sealing strip becoming eye-searing at this moment.

“Behind us are people who are not warriors. There are parents, children, and ordinary people who have never touched a weapon. They built cities, grew crops, and opened schools, taking hundreds of years to turn ruins into a home.”

No one spoke.

“This home cannot be destroyed in our generation.”

Qin Zhan took out a row of injectors from the tactical pouch at his waist. The transparent tubes were filled with a pale gold liquid that vibrated slightly, emitting visible energy fluctuations.

“Liberation Potion. After injection, it can offset the level suppression of the Blue Star Barrier for six hours, releasing the full limit of all attributes.”

He paused for a moment.

“The price is irreversible physical wear. Every use shortens one's lifespan by three to five years.”

The injectors were passed down one by one. No one hesitated, and no one asked if it was worth it. The faint sound of metal needles piercing skin rose and fell throughout the corridor.

An injector was handed to Lin Yu.

He did not take it.

The soldier handing out the medicine froze for a moment. Before he could speak, Lin Yu had already looked down at his system panel.

The numbers on the panel had stopped fluctuating.

It wasn't that they had stabilized; rather, the values in all attribute columns had brightened simultaneously. Strength, Agility, Constitution, Spiritual Power—the invisible ceiling that had originally existed behind every piece of data had vanished silently the moment he stepped into the Void Corridor.

To be honest, the attribute values and combat power of these people were mostly far higher than what the Blue Star suppression allowed, so they needed the potion for liberation—but he didn't.

The kid was still Level 0, and his average four-dimensional attributes didn't even exceed a thousand.

Lin Yu pushed the injector back.

“I don't need it.”

The soldier opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

At the other end of the corridor, the last batch of wounded was escorted to the rear of the formation. The officer with the hollowed-out chest was supported by two comrades, his hands still death-gripping the Node Token. His breathing was so weak it was almost inaudible, but his fingers did not loosen by even a millimeter.

An officer in deep crimson armor walked up to Qin Zhan and stood at attention.

His right eye was covered in bandages and his left eye was bloodshot, but his posture was ramrod straight.

“Frontline Liaison Officer of the Eighth War Zone, Abyss Domain Pioneer Army, salutes the Fangs Commander-in-Chief.”

He raised his right hand and gave a standard military salute.

“There are people waiting on the other side of the passage; they will arrange everything.”

The salute was not lowered.

“Humanity lasts forever.”

Qin Zhan returned the salute.

The two salutes were lowered silently in the void.

The Pioneer Army officer who called himself the Liaison Officer said no more. He turned and led the remaining troops behind him, passing by Qin Zhan's unit.

Deep crimson armor and black uniforms intermingled.

No one looked back.

No one spoke.

Only the sound of metal friction and the suppressed breathing of the wounded intertwined in the deathly silent corridor, before being swallowed together by the darkness behind.

Qin Zhan lowered his salute, turned, and faced the end of the Void Corridor.

There was a distorting screen of light.

He took the first step.

Lin Yu followed behind him. The energy path beneath his feet began to grow unstable under the influence of the light screen, and the blue-white fluorescence rippled.

Just one step away.

He stepped through the light screen.

A solid sensation came from beneath his feet.

It wasn't the feedback of solidified energy like in the Void Corridor, but a physical ground mixed with grit and metal fragments.

The wind blew against his face, carrying a mixture of gunpowder, engine oil, and thick blood, filling his nostrils.

Lin Yu looked up.

The sky was cut by a straight midline.

On the left was a blue sky with white clouds and warm sunlight; one could even see a few clouds stretched into wisps by the wind. This was a projection realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing.

On the right was a dark red rock ceiling covered in cracks. Several bottomless spatial rifts hung there like scars that would never heal, oozing an unsettling dark glow.

Half was an illusion of home, the other half the reality of hell.

So this was the Abyss Domain—half of it had been modified to look no different from Blue Star, while the other half remained in its original state.

Withdrawing his gaze, he saw devastation everywhere.

This was a massive plain camp.

Or rather, a graveyard for vehicles.

Hundreds of heavy tanks and armored personnel carriers with blown-off tracks and flipped turrets sat on the plain in various states, forming a forest of steel wreckage.

The war was being fought with extreme tragedy.