17: Chapter 17 The Radiation Rift at 13 Minutes and 22 Seconds

The timer hovered in the upper right corner of his vision, its scarlet digits ticking down mercilessly.

14 minutes and 47 seconds.

Lin Yuan's fingers gripped the controls of the Wanderer, his knuckles white from the strain. The assault vehicle's engine roared in protest under the 85% power limiter, tracks grinding over the weathered rock at the bottom of the canyon. Gravel was pulverized by the steel beast, kicking up a dust cloud that obscured his vision.

On the onboard radar, the blue ripple representing the Scavengers' orbital tracking ship's scanning grid was slowly but inexorably closing in. It was a precision net cast by high-altitude orbital sensors, scanning in 47-second intervals with a 50-meter coverage range. Once biological signatures were captured and cross-verified by the grid, a plasma strike from above would vaporize this canyon into vitrified slag within 0.3 seconds.

"Signs of a thermal fusion turret lock on the left rock wall." Scarface's voice came from the back seat, hoarse and tense. The former District 7 fixer was staring intently at his tactical tablet, where military frequencies intercepted from black market channels were flickering. "The leading edge of the scan wave is three hundred meters away; it will cover our current coordinates in forty-seven seconds."

Lin Yuan didn't look back. The Biological Armor on his left arm pulsed with deep red light inside the dim cabin, rising and falling in sync with the engine's energy readings, like some kind of symbiotic heartbeat.

At the edge of his vision, the line of numbers only he could see was burning.

[God-Emperor's Gaze: 1.2%]

And, that sound, growing louder.

Bypassing his eardrums, it vibrated directly inside his skull, as if someone were scraping his sulci with rusted nails.

"Turn left... thirty-seven degrees... dive..."

Auditory hallucinations. A side effect of mental erosion. When he was casting the carapace armor at the medical station, this voice had been nothing but a vague whisper, like the cries of the drowning heard through deep water. Now it had become precise, cold, and carried a non-human, geometric quality.

Lin Yuan's pupils contracted.

Conventional navigation showed a dead end ahead. The end of the Radiation Rift canyon was a vertical fault line; geological scans indicated it was a high-concentration radiation zone capable of frying the circuitry of unprotected vehicles within ten minutes. Behind him was the closing scanning grid, and on both sides were steep rock walls.

There was no way out.

Unless the coordinates provided by that voice were real.

"Turn left thirty-seven degrees," Lin Yuan said suddenly, his voice colder and harder than the canyon rock. "Full speed."

Scarface looked up sharply: "That's a radiation rift! The navigation says—"

"Navigation is based on the Scavengers' database," Lin Yuan interrupted, his fingers tightening on the control stick until his knuckles clicked slightly. "They've marked all known paths. That rift isn't on any map record."

"How the hell do you know there's a path there?"

Lin Yuan did not answer. He couldn't explain the voice that etched coordinates directly onto his cerebral cortex, nor the increasingly intense sense of alienation, as if he were becoming a component of some precision instrument.

He simply slammed on the accelerator.

The Wanderer let out a dying roar. The moment the 85% power limit was violently broken, a pungent smell of ozone spewed from the gaps in the hood. The assault vehicle, like a crazed steel bull, jerked to the left, its tracks scraping blinding sparks against the rock wall before diving headlong into the canyon rift covered by red warning markers.

Darkness engulfed his vision.

The absence of light was mixed with a more substantive, viscous sensation, as if he had been plunged into molten lead. Blue afterimages of the scanning grid lingered on Lin Yuan's retinas, and now they overlapped with the coordinates provided by the auditory hallucination, creating a nauseating double exposure.

The sense of reality was slipping away.

For a moment, Lin Yuan wasn't sure if he was really driving, or if he was just a marionette in the hands of some vast will. He saw his hands moving; the metallic touch of the control stick felt cold and distant, as if he were operating it through a thick layer of rubber gloves.

"Maintain dive... angle... twelve degrees..."

The voice became clearer, carrying a certain satisfied tremor.

Lin Yuan bit his tongue. The taste of blood exploded in his mouth; the pain was like a needle, briefly piercing the veil that separated him from reality. He saw the dashboard, saw the radiation counter soaring into the danger zone, saw the twisted expression on Scarface's face in the back seat, and saw Rat Eye's convulsing back in front of the STC workstation.

Real. This is real.

He regained control, forcing himself to focus on the terrain ahead. The rift was narrower than he had imagined; the rock walls on both sides were almost scraping the vehicle body, and the Wanderer's outer armor emitted a teeth-gritting sound of metal friction. A protruding shard of rock scraped across the roof, tearing open the newly repaired seal of the observation window, and a sharp whistling sound flooded the cabin.

"Metal debris!" Scarface yelled. "We're leaving a trail!"

"It doesn't matter," Lin Yuan's voice was terrifyingly calm. "Either we escape the grid within fourteen minutes, or we get blasted into atoms by the orbital cannon. Leaving a trail only matters if there's a tomorrow."

Time: 14 minutes and 15 seconds.

The scanning grid was closing in on the entrance. In the rearview mirror, Lin Yuan could see that eerie blue glow, like a net of death tightening, slow, precise, and inescapable.

Just then, the STC workstation suddenly emitted a piercing alarm.

Rat Eye was convulsing in front of the console. The young scavenger's left leg was still wrapped in blood-soaked bandages, a wound left over from the medical station explosion. He should have been lying down, resting, but he stubbornly sat in front of the workstation, his thin fingers dancing across the holographic keyboard.

"False signal... need to maintain..." Rat Eye muttered, his voice dazed as if from a high fever. "The Saint... this is the Saint's trial..."

His fingers were trembling. The wound on his leg had burst open due to the prolonged sitting, and dark red blood soaked through the bandages, dripping onto the metal floor of the workstation with a soft ticking sound. With every heartbeat, more blood left his body.

But Rat Eye was smiling.

It was a fanatical, martyr-like smile. In his eyes, Lin Yuan's inhuman calmness was not madness, but a manifestation of divinity. Pain was the sacrifice, blood was the offering, and maintaining this false signal to deceive the orbital tracking was the highest form of worship he could offer to the Saint under the Emperor's gaze.

"Rat Eye! Your leg!" Scarface turned around, saw the expanding pool of blood, and his expression changed.

"Don't touch me!" Rat Eye screamed, a dangerous light flashing in his eyes. "I'm maintaining the shielding field! If it's interrupted, the grid will lock on immediately!"

His fingers typed in the final sequence of code. Outside the Wanderer, several pre-dropped signal decoys suddenly erupted with strong biological signature simulation waves, like blood bags thrown to tracking hunters, briefly diverting the scanning grid's attention toward the western rock wall.

The price was that Rat Eye's left leg went completely numb. He gritted his teeth, tasting the blood of his own cracking teeth, and left bloody fingerprints on the keyboard.

Time: 13 minutes and 45 seconds.

"Not enough!" Scarface stared at the tactical tablet, sweat dripping from his forehead. "The grid is covering ground faster than expected! This piece-of-junk vehicle's limiter has locked the power output; we can't outrun the scan wave!"

Lin Yuan glanced at him in the rearview mirror. The look was devoid of any emotion, as if he were evaluating the service life of a tool.

Audit protocol. Real-time synchronization monitoring. Scarface had hoarded anti-radiation agents at the medical station and implanted black-market trackers on the Wanderer; all his betrayals had been recorded. Now, under the shadow of death, the fixer was facing his final reckoning.

"District 7 encryption key," Lin Yuan said. It wasn't a question, but a statement. "The last piece of cargo you've been hoarding."

Scarface's body stiffened.

His fingers unconsciously reached toward his chest, where a micro-storage chip was glued to his ribs with biological adhesive. It was his final trump card, a military-grade key stolen from the District 7 database that could unlock the Wanderer's restricted power core and trade for a ticket off this wasteland on the black market.

But now, the audit log was flickering before his eyes. Lin Yuan knew. Lin Yuan had known all along.

The blue light of the scanning grid had already shone into the rift entrance. The 47-second cycle was about to end, and the next scan would cover their current position.

There was no choice left.

"You're a fucking devil," Scarface roared, tearing open his shirt and pulling out the blood-stained chip. "Take it!"

He inserted the chip into the console. The green light for key verification lit up, the Wanderer's engine let out an unlocking roar, power output instantly broke through the limit, and the G-force pinned all three of them firmly against their seats.

"Audit protocol updated," Lin Yuan's voice remained clear amidst the engine's roar. "You have been granted access to the basic armory. This is a limited authorization based on current risk assessment, adjusting your status from a real-time monitored subject to conditional trust. Remember, the key is a pledge of loyalty, not an indulgence. The price of betrayal is higher than you think."

Scarface gasped for air, his eyes a mix of fear and calculation. Conditional trust. Limited authorization. This meant he was temporarily removed from the "expendable" list and had become a partner with investment value. He had survived, finding a new position within the cold logic of the audit protocol.

Time: 13 minutes and 33 seconds.

The rift suddenly opened up ahead.

It was not a dead end. The auditory hallucination hadn't lied.

A massive underground cavity appeared on the radar, its ceiling composed of natural lead-zinc veins, sufficient to shield against orbital scans. And at the end of the cavity, that alloy gate disguised as a red rock wall was reflecting a cold light under the Wanderer's spotlights.

Station 17.

The Lin family's facility. The source of LY-000.

Lin Yuan's left-arm Biological Armor suddenly pulsed violently, resonating with some identification device on the gate. A laser scan swept across the assault vehicle's hull, then locked onto Lin Yuan.

[LY-000 Authorization Pending Verification]

Scarlet text lit up on the display above the gate.

But Lin Yuan did not immediately step forward to verify. His gaze drifted past the gate, looking up at the rock wall above.

There, turrets disguised as weathered rock were slowly extending. The automated defense system had been activated. That was not a welcoming gesture.

"Inside... life signs..." Rat Eye pointed weakly at the STC workstation screen, his face pale as paper, his left leg completely soaked in blood, his combat effectiveness reduced to 50%. "Thermal imaging... moving heat sources... non-human body types..."

Lin Yuan gripped the control stick tightly. The countdown for the Gene Lock reappeared at the edge of his vision. The pause time was about to end; he needed to inject a new dose of LY-000 immediately, or genetic collapse would cost him his life in the coming battle.

Time: 13 minutes and 22 seconds.

The blue light of the orbital scanning grid stalled at the rift entrance, then slowly moved away. They had escaped.

But the Wanderer's hood was smoking, and metal debris was scattered along the path they had taken, like a trail of blood leading to prey. The turrets in front of the gate locked onto the assault vehicle, and behind the gate, some non-human entity was moving.

Lin Yuan's fingers hovered over the verification panel.

The countdown stopped. Escape complete.

But the real test had only just begun.