Chapter 68: Unpredictable
Through the glass window, a few dim lights flickered inside the Base No. 35 service station. It was already late at night, but inside, a crowd was still bustling about, frantically preparing for the impending war.
A mutant stood playing with a fireball, tossing it lazily back and forth. When it danced to his left hand, the flames receded; when he flipped it to his right, the blaze flared up instantly.
Sssss—
The security guard on duty at the service desk reacted with lightning reflexes, firing a sharp jet of water that doused the flame completely.
“What the hell are you doing? I’m practicing!” the fire-type youth snapped, thoroughly annoyed. After drinking the attribute-boosting coffee, his control over his flames had grown by leaps and bounds. He had been eager to show off his new skill, only to be ruthlessly shut down by the guard.
The security guard stared back with a stone face. “I thought you were trying to arson the place.”
The fire user rolled his eyes. Did he really look like a criminal?
As they bickered, massive fireballs suddenly began raining down from the pitch-black sky one after another.
The fire youth whipped his head up. High in the air, a massive bird was soaring through the dark, dropping a relentless barrage of blazing projectles from its back.
Within seconds, the Base No. 35 service station was completely swallowed by an inferno. The structural frame of the building buckled and groaned under the extreme heat. Windows shattered into dust, the roof collapsed inward, and electronic equipment exploded in a chain reaction of sparks. Terrified wails echoed through the night.
Chaos erupted across the station. Even with their superpowers, the staff stood completely helpless against the sudden onslaught of death. Several high-ranking officials of Base No. 35 were trapped and killed instantly in the blaze.
Nanjiao was right in the thick of it.
One second he had been typing an urgent update to Song Yuqing; the next, he was surrounded by a wall of fire as the burning ceiling crashed down upon him. He desperately tried to manifest vines to pull himself to safety, but the hungry flames gave him no quarter, consuming the vegetation and Nanjiao along with it.
The quick-witted security guard managed to keep his head, channeling every ounce of his energy to blast a torrent of water from his palms to combat the blaze. Tragically, his efforts were completely dwarfed by the roaring inferno.
Finally snapping out of his shock, the fire youth turned and sprinted toward the residential sector for dear life.
“Wake up! Fire! We’re under attack! Save them!”
Roused by his frantic screams, the base residents scrambled out of their beds and rushed into the streets, not even pausing to put on proper clothes.
Then, a fireball slammed directly into the residential area.
“Look up there! It’s that giant bird! That’s where the fire is coming from!”
The crowd spotted the avian beast, but desperation set in—none of their combat abilities had the vertical range to reach that altitude. Fortunately, the barrage over the residential zone was light, and by combining the forces of several water-type users, they managed to successfully extinguish the surrounding fires.
Xie Hao, Xie Zetian, and Shen She heard the commotion and ran out of their quarters bare-chested. In the distance, they saw the massive wall of fire and thick columns of billowing smoke.
“Brother Nanjiao is still inside!” Shen She cried, his face paling as he ran alongside the panicked crowd toward the ruins of the service station.
By the time they arrived, the building had been reduced to a smoldering pile of ash and debris. A heavy, weeping silence fell over the gathered crowd.
How could this happen?
Shen She’s eyes turned bloodshot as he clenched his fists tightly.
“It has to be Lin Han and his goons! They played dirty!” Xie Hao spat, gritting his teeth as he channeled his earth-type abilities to smother the remaining flames.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Xie Zetian muttered, his brow furrowed in a tight knot. “Nanjiao explicitly stated he had a lock on Lin Han’s movements. We were even monitoring their camp. How could they possibly ambush us like this?”
The service station was the sole lifeline connecting the base to the God’s Supermarket—it was Base 35’s strongest pillar of support. Losing it was a devastating blow, a grim foreshadowing of total defeat.
“I… I can’t let it end like this,” Shen She whispered, closing his eyes as hot tears streamed down his face. Over their long journey together, he had come to view Nanjiao as an older brother. He refused to accept that the man had been burned alive.
Go back, his mind screamed. Go back to before the disaster.
Having successfully executed the stealth strike, Conghui carried Lin Han and Ahu back down to the marching convoy.
“Wow! That was a spectacular show!” Lin Han yelled, sliding off Conghui’s back and nearly tripping over his own feet. He grinned wildly, looking up with a manic expression. “Thank god Ahu came along. If we had stuck to the original plan, we never would have pulled that off.”
Standing beside Wan Youzhi, Ruan Fanfan and Zhang Lei looked profoundly grim.
Right before Lin Han had set off, Zhang Lei had intercepted him to pitch this far more ruthless alternative. The three men had completely ignored her protests, utterly indifferent to the fact that her own family was still inside Base 35. It had taken a desperate mix of persuasion, threats, and bargains on her part to finally extract a promise from Ahu that he wouldn’t drop fireballs over the civilian residential sectors.
“Conghui, get back here!” Ruan Fanfan commanded sharply. The bird obediently shrank and hopped onto her shoulder.
“Only this once,” Ruan Fanfan muttered under her breath. She would never let anyone else command Conghui again; a creeping fear told her that the bird was beginning to grow distant from her.
“Your strategy was flawless, Zhang Lei. This victory is officially ironclad,” Wan Youzhi laughed, clapping his hands in delight. This outcome was far more exhilarating than the stale future he had originally foreseen.
With the black water deployed and the command center turned to ash, Base 35 would fall into their hands without them breaking a sweat.
“Pick up the pace! Move out while they’re vulnerable!”
At Lin Han’s shout, the convoy accelerated into the dark. The long-awaited siege was finally underway.
Roughly half an hour prior, Song Yuqing had received a frantic snippet from Nanjiao about a massive fire breaking out. She had fired back multiple follow-up pings, but the line had gone completely dead.
What happened? Panic gripped her. Had Lin Han actually managed to burn Base No. 35 to the ground?
She had sent over a dozen frantic messages before a reply finally popped up on her monitor.
[Nanjiao]: Sorry about that, I just died for a minute.
Song Yuqing: “…”
[Nanjiao]: Do you want a front-row seat to watch Lin Han get absolutely slammed into the pavement?
[Song Yuqing]: Obviously.
[Nanjiao]: Perfect. Screen-record the whole thing. We can edit it later and add a voiceover to humiliate Lin Han, Ruan Fanfan, and their lackeys on a global scale.
This was Nanjiao’s petty form of retaliation.
He fired over a video stream link. The moment Song Yuqing clicked it, a live feed materialized on her screen. Nanjiao and the Xie brothers were huddled in the frame, flanked by a young man in his early twenties who looked strangely familiar.
“Hey there~” Nanjiao waved cheerily at the lens. “Long time no see.”
“Wait, is the battle over already?” Liu Xiaona popped into the frame from her side, her face hogging most of the camera space. Little Meat Bun and Gaha scrambled up right behind her, crowding the webcam to get their faces on screen.
“Nope. We’re just about to get started.”
“What do you mean?” Song Yuqing asked, her brain still short-circuiting over Nanjiao’s casual remarks about a fire and “just dying.”
“It’s a long story.”
Nanjiao cut straight to the chase, explaining how Ruan Fanfan had abetted Lin Han in launching a devastating aerial strike on Base No. 35, using her giant bird to drop fireballs that incinerated the service desk. The command center was completely leveled, breaking their connection to the outside world, and he along with several senior officials had perished in the flames.
But thanks to Shen She channeling his temporal attribute, he had successfully reversed the local timeline, snatching everyone back from the jaws of death.
“Wow, Shen She is incredible!” Song Yuqing replied, her tone distinctly perfunctory. She strongly suspected Nanjiao was pulling her leg. Shouldn’t someone who experienced a time-reversal lose all memory of the overwritten timeline?
“Wait, where is Shen She anyway? Did he go somewhere?” Liu Xiaona asked, tilting her head at the screen.
An abrupt, heavy silence fell over the video feed.
“Uh…” Song Yuqing blinked, entirely lost. Her mind inexplicably flashed back to the deepfake face-swapping scam calls from before the apocalypse. “Look, if you guys are totally fine, I’m going to log off. I need to get back to work.”
“Oh my god… did little Shen She sacrifice his life to save you guys?!” Liu Xiaona gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in horror.
Hearing this, Nanjiao and the Xie brothers frantically shook their heads in unison, paused for a beat of awkward realization, and then gave a slow, solemn nod.
“What is that supposed to mean? Where is he?”
The group on the other side of the monitor silently shifted their gazes, looking directly at the familiar stranger standing right beside them.
Look closely, their eyes seemed to say. That tall guy right there—that’s Shen She.
