Chapter 753 - 402: Sacrificial Pawn (Part 2)
"Bang!" "Whoa!"
A muffled sound came from above. Huangfu Yi turned his head to see the sergeant walking over the roof of the vehicle.
"Jump with me."
Then, without giving Huangfu Yi any time to hesitate, the sergeant leapt off the high-speed magnetic levitation track.
Huangfu Yi had no choice but to follow immediately, launching himself out and instantly feeling the pull of gravity and inertia, tumbling down the tunnel with a clatter. Fortunately, the War Remains only restricted his strength, not his protective capabilities, so he rolled hundreds of meters without a scratch.
Barely getting up, he saw the sergeant swaggering over from not far away, removing his helmet as he walked, revealing a head shaved clean of hair and eyebrows like a glossy egg. He took a deep breath,
"Ah, the taste of freedom~~ Leave the helmet here, it’s bugged."
Huangfu Yi hesitated to take off his helmet, frowning immediately. The air was dirty, filled with dust particles and the pungent smell of rustproof paint and synthetic motor oil.
"Is it alright to escape by jumping off the vehicle like this?"
The sergeant chuckled,
"Of course it’s not alright. They’ll at least send a synthetic brigade to bring us back, but it’s no big deal, you’ll probably just be confined for a week."
"...Why would they confine me for a week?"
"Yes, I’m here to bring you back after all."
"..."
"Let’s go, we have at most half an hour to find a place to talk."
Having jumped off the vehicle, Huangfu Yi sighed and followed the sergeant out of the tunnel.
Although the underground structures were magnificent, space was limited. Following the logistics hubs and storage warehouses, they quickly saw numerous underground factories, and nestled in the crevices of multi-platform reinforced concrete like pigeon cages were densely stacked residential pods.
Clearly remodeled from standard containers for easy transportation and relocation, these residential pods were taped with electrical wires and covered in network cables and circulating water pipes, borrowing power management from nearby base factories. Looking around, hundreds of residential pods clustered like honeycombs in bridge cave cavities, lined along warehouses, factories, and railway lines, filling the underground space completely.
The sergeant, knowing the newbie must be curious, casually knocked on one of the pods as they passed, allowing Huangfu Yi to peek inside. The space inside the pod was more cramped than his War Remains Repair Chamber. Inside, aside from various machines maintaining moisture, oxygen, and temperature, there were at least twenty people lying down.
Perhaps they couldn’t even be called people. These Outer Heaven natives, large and small, young and old, male and female alike, were all uniformly wrapped in shroud-like plastic membranes, resembling plump, bulging insect eggs at a glance.
In simpler pods than the War Remains, these human ’insect eggs’ were secured, receiving synthetic nutrient fluid injections at intervals to sustain life, with their spines connected to thick cables like boas, probably plugged into the network, lost in some digital dream. The built-in cleaning drones periodically maintained hygiene, and should anyone die, their corpses were dragged out to decompose in organic nutrient pools.
Huangfu Yi looked at the people in the pod, then glanced along the dim underground track that stretched to the end of Nest City.
Worms, huh...
"There’s no helping it, it’s wartime. All resources must be prioritized for combat units; non-combat personnel can only be left like this for now."
The sergeant leaned against the residential pod with a grin, introducing,
"Apocalypse Survival System. Barring natural disasters or sudden illnesses, this system can operate for at least sixty years.
As long as the war ends within sixty years and enough living space is developed, they can draw lots online and revive in batches."
Huangfu Yi looked at him,
"Sixty years... What if the war never ends?"
The sergeant spread his hands.
I see... That’s true, after all, human lifespan is just sixty years...
The sergeant smiled, trying to comfort him,
"Don’t be discouraged, even if the world crumbles and everyone dies.
As long as that one in ten thousand privileged elite survives, humanity’s civilization can continue.
Isn’t that what you Immortal Palace folks seek, the path to immortality? Haha..."
Huangfu Yi glanced at him askance,
"No need to test me, I am indeed a guardian descendant, but I will no longer walk the path of the Immortal Palace."
The sergeant laughed,
"Why not? This path isn’t necessarily bad. When facing true apocalyptic disasters, with no way out, sacrificing the masses to let a small group of elites survive and carry the torch is the only way.
In any battle, there are cannon fodder; any chess game has sacrificial pieces. Sacrifice and offering can’t be avoided; how could everyone have a happy ending?
Even us ’Outer Heaven masters,’ born in the game, may inevitably be discarded one day.
A lifetime of cultivation, in the end, all we can hope for is to last a little longer on the board, not get captured so quickly. Understand?"
Huangfu Yi looked at him directly,
"Fine, if sacrifice is inevitable, then I’ll be the sacrificial piece that turns the tide.
Before being taken out, I will do my best to blaze more paths for the people."
The sergeant was initially stunned, then frowned, pinching his fingers to calculate, then nodded in realization,
"Oh, you punk, you have a hero complex?"