Chapter 118: The Unmarked Residence

“Captain, I need to be honest with you.” Ji Cheng turned to Yao Lun, every expression from his eyebrows to the corners of his mouth radiating sincerity.

“I was actually planning to nuke you.”

“Then why did you abandon that plan?” Yao Lun sneered coldly, the veins on his forehead bulging one by one.

Ji Cheng’s frankness surprised him, but the cruelty of the plan filled him with rage.

“Theoretically, I haven’t abandoned it…”

“What do you mean!” Yao Lun’s face changed instantly, his triangular eyes widening into ovals.

Ji Cheng glanced at the time, dejectedly saying, “It’s eight o’clock. The launcher will activate next, the nuclear missile will fly… with each step, we only have about ten seconds left for a brief farewell.”

Originally, these low-yield tactical nuclear bombs were not designed for human warfare. Their targets were various mutated animals, so portability was the main concern, and activation speed was not given much consideration.

Ji Cheng pointed toward the northwest sky. “Do you see those black dots up there?”

“Those are the incoming nukes… and the person?”

He barely turned his head before noticing Yao Lun sprinting in a direction at incredible speed. Damn, he’s running faster than me!

Ji Cheng immediately urged Shana at top speed, “Quick, help me locate the nearest ability user’s residence!”

He had been too focused on running to watch his path and was now somewhat disoriented.

Ji Cheng’s speech was rapid, almost without pauses, but Shana understood perfectly.

“The closest residence with an underground safe house is 1.6 kilometers away. Considering the time to reach it and bypass the safe house door, it will be too late.”

Her gentle voice turned anxious.

Every living being has an instinct for survival. If Ji Cheng died, the data-based Ether Body bound to him would cease to exist as well.

“Green Tea Na,” An Chan hummed in Ji Cheng’s mind, “Since the three of us will die together anyway, what’s there to fear?”

“I’m not afraid of death… I just—”

Shana was cut off by Ji Cheng.

“Where is Yao Lun heading?”

“It’s an area not marked on any map, a vast region with no labels around it,” Shana replied swiftly.

“Then I’ll follow him!”

Upon hearing this, Ji Cheng pushed off the ground with all his remaining strength, sprinting after Yao Lun by following his footprints in the grass.

There was no doubt that in the face of true death, all the usual important things—hatred, pride, restraint, dignity—became as light as a feather.

Death is the killer of reason for most people. Even someone as ruthless and vicious as Yao Lun, when confronted with death, was left with nothing but panic.

Wherever he was rushing reflexively must be a place he believed could help him survive.

Though Ji Cheng’s heart had been pounding wildly earlier, he now calmed down.

In a brief moment, he weighed his options and did not gamble on whether he could reach the underground safe house 1.6 kilometers away and crack its door before the nuclear explosion.

Instead, he chose to follow Yao Lun.

“Faster!”

To maintain his top speed, Ji Cheng bit his teeth until he drew blood.

The tearing pain in his leg muscles sent sweat pouring down his back and forehead. Seconds felt like an eternity.

“What’s that?”

Rounding a bend, Ji Cheng suddenly saw a large mansion.

Trees surrounded the estate, with wooden scaffolding nearby. Three walls had houses built against them, the lime plaster peeling off in many places, covered with moss and lush vines. The shutters and doors hung half-open.

“There’s an ability user’s residence here that isn’t on any map!”

Ji Cheng’s heart surged with joy as he charged inside.

Most buildings in this era felt devoid of human warmth, and this place was no exception.

The courtyard was open and unobstructed, covering six to seven hundred square meters, cold and quiet, evoking a deep sense of loneliness. Through a gap in a bamboo grove, an artificial lake was visible, covered with blue-green algae.

Ji Cheng paid no attention to these details; his anxious gaze darted among the three rooms.

Without difficulty, he found Yao Lun’s footprints—mud churned up in large clumps, curving into one of the rooms.

“Three rooms… so this mansion must have at least three underground safe houses. Judging by the tracks, Yao Lun went to the outermost one. I’ll go to the innermost.”

Ji Cheng dashed desperately inside the room, finally breathing a sigh of relief.

This underground safe house, like his own home’s, was accessed by descending an elevator first.

Given the safe house’s depth and the nuclear blast’s power, simply taking the elevator down—even without entering the safe house—would be enough to survive, thanks to the thick soil layer and his current physical condition.

“I made it.”

Ji Cheng stared at the elevator, a mix of tension and relief swelling within him.

He slapped the adjacent wall hard.

The elevator button was recessed into the wall, embedded with a strong keypad lock, but the wall itself was not very sturdy.

After several strikes, the concrete resounded loudly and soon cracked open.

After pressing the button, a simple facial recognition followed. With Shana’s help, he bypassed it instantly.

Just as he was about to step into the elevator, the ground suddenly trembled.

Ji Cheng instinctively turned back and looked out the door.

The smoky gray sky was suddenly illuminated.

A shimmering, flame-like glow appeared nearly a thousand meters high in the sky, fleeting like fireworks on a festival night.

Before he could blink, the light flared again—this time a thousand times brighter than the sun—washing out the surrounding landscape, turning everything pale and faint. Even from ten kilometers away, Ji Cheng’s eyes were blinded by the intense white light.

It was the dazzling release of uranium atoms.

Second, third… fifteen bursts of light erupted instantly in the sky.

The explosion.

Before the mushroom cloud could rise, the shockwave tore everything apart like a raging storm. Clouds vanished within seconds, countless mutated creatures were consumed by the light, reduced to flying ash before they could even scream.

Streets lay barren, buildings twisted and deformed, countless objects crushed, melted, and burned; the earth seemed to have been stripped of its skin.

Ji Cheng jumped into the elevator, frantically pressing the close-door button.

As the elevator descended, he leaned against the cabin wall, gasping violently. Those last precious seconds nearly drained all his strength; his legs were weak and burning, barely able to lift.

“Never doing this again. Almost lost my life for a tiny bit of primal assimilation…”

In his prior plans, he hadn’t anticipated being entangled with Yao Lun for so long, nor that this guy would hide his strength so deeply.

Any hesitation in that moment would have meant being obliterated by the nuke outside.

“But after this desperate fight and chase, my Tier Two primal assimilation rate should be over 30%.”

The primal gene body has a baseline assimilation rate upon injection, usually no higher than 20%, but after days of pushing himself with stress-induced methods, surpassing 30% was a conservative estimate.

Ding.

With a soft sound, the elevator doors suddenly opened.