Chapter 124 – Descendant (8)

Zhang Xun and the others' escape depended entirely on the game between Adam and Eden. Eden's robots were blocking all the ways out, but Adam was able to temporarily disable the robots at several key locations at the most opportune moments, allowing Anya and her men to use their weapons as cover to escape.

But Adam couldn't be online all the time. He was an extremely complex and large mass of code and moving through Eden's network would make him easy to spot. He had to break himself down and reassemble himself from time to time to escape Eden's siege. Luckily, Pan, Phoenix and Dawn Star on the other side of the world were also capturing new extension robots to distract Eden's computing resources, which gave them time to catch their breath.

What Natalie had said was running through Zhang Xun's mind.

A virus that could cripple Eden......

It was almost impossible to get close to Eden's core servers. Ever since the success of the god descent plan, Eden had completely modified the way it kept its core servers. No one in the world knew where they were. Even the extension robots responsible for maintaining it would be formatted and replaced regularly.

Moreover, Zhang Xun strongly suspected that Eden had quietly put itself into a carrier that was several times more advanced than the bio-computers owned by Feathered Serpent City. With such resources, it had delayed upgrading itself before because of its public image, but since no one could see its core servers any more, there was no reason to remain in those ancient boxes.

In that case, how would they get close to Eden's core servers? It was almost impossible......

The bitter wind cut into his cheeks and blew his eyes open. He was in a trance as they were surrounded by swirling lasers, the roar of drones overhead and death rays pouring down like a rainstorm. He could hear the screams, but wasn't sure who had fallen off the flying bikes or whose blood left a long trail across the ground.

Yet even so, Eden's droids surrounded them in the end. Adam hadn't reappeared and he wondered if he had been trapped somewhere in Eden's network.

They were like ants before mountains as the huge robots gathered them together, as if a fire was about to descend from heaven and burn them to ashes.

At that moment, the driver of the bike that Zhang Xun was riding was hit through the head by a laser, with a neat gaping hole going through his forehead and out the back of his skull. The driver's brains splattered over Zhang Xun's face and the sticky, slippery sensation made him unable to react to what it was. Immediately afterwards, the bike lurched and Zhang Xun's entire body seemed to lose weight as it was thrown viciously into the air.

Was he going to die?

The time that he flew through the air seemed so long that he could almost feel the web of death rays crisscrossing beneath him. For a moment his eyes could see that the blue sky was dipped in the melting pink of the waning daylight, the same colour that spread across Adam's cheeks when he smiled.

Yet he didn't die. His body was caught by a strong arm and pulled onto the back of another hover bike.

Zhang Xun turned his head and saw Zhang Shuo with his body lowered, his older but still strong and powerful body was leaning over the driver's seat in a poised stance. Their craft was passing between the countless feet of a giant steel robot, the heavy cylinders of metal pressing down on them, smashing cracks like spider webs into the frozen earth.

"Don't lift your head and don't open your eyes." Zhang Shuo's voice was exceptionally calm and steady, but still as intimidating as ever.

Zhang Xun knew that their lives were on the line at this point and the slightest error in Zhang Shuo's judgement would turn them into mush under the robot's feet. He followed his father's orders and closed his eyes and lowered his head, not looking around at the chaotic dance of death that would scare even the bravest of men out of their wits.

For the first time ever he was by his father's side in the midst of battle. Although he was still useless, his father's protection injected a warm spring into his dry heart, just like the feeling of warmth in the stomach when drinking a cup of human milk when his hands and feet were almost frozen in the cold winter.

Although Zhang Shuo was already high up in the ranks as a Commander, he had been trained to pilot mechs before so any machinery or vehicle that could be driven weren't a challenge for him. The two-man flying machine seemed to have fused with him, becoming a bird of prey trailing blue and purple flames, swooping through the tangled beams of light and forest of steel with incredible agility.

Under his leadership, their convoy was like a sea serpent in a fierce sea, carving a path through an impossible web. Zhang Xun kept his eyes closed, as his father had ordered him to do, his hands clutching onto anything he could, but he could hear the screams of people on the verge of death, smell the blood and the smell of flesh being burnt by lasers. He knew they were dead and wounded.

They had left the land and were rampaging across the ocean. There seemed to be no end to Eden's robots, they encountered an endless stream of them no matter which direction they turned. No matter how skilled Zhang Shuo was as a pilot, he couldn't possibly cope with such a constant barrage of tireless battle droids.

Then suddenly, all the robots surrounding them began firing at each other and the booming explosions almost tore Zhang Xun's eardrums apart as sharp pain exploded in his mind. He covered his ears with his hands, not realising that he was screaming in terror.

Then everything suddenly faded to silence. The explosions grew distant and the only sound left around him was the steady, incessant sound of the flying machine. Zhang Xun tried opening his eyes and removed his hands from his ears, only to find blood on his palms. Clearly his ears had been injured, but when he looked around, he realised that he was the luckiest of all.

The convoy they had escaped with was now down to just four vehicles, the rest were gone. Anya and Diego, who had shared a bike, were both covered in wounds and Diego had a horrific, bloody hole in his shoulder, still dripping with blood, which he was spraying with a haemostatic agent.

Natalie, on the other hand, appeared to have been badly injured and was unconscious. She would have fallen off the bike long ago if one of Anya's men hadn't been holding her. The other two townspeople from Rhino Horn were also both in a mess, like they had just barely escaped death.

Zhang Xun turned his head to look at Zhang Shuo. He saw that Zhang Shuo also had blood on his face and he didn't know if it was just someone else's blood that had splashed onto him, but his expression was calm and he did not look in any pain, so he was probably safe and sound.

Zhang Xun breathed a sigh of relief.

Turning his head, he noticed that a rising cloud of bomb smoke was still spreading over the distant sea, as if the sea was burning. It was a horrific and magnificent sight.

He knew that it was Adam who had used some means to suddenly control all the mechanical soldiers that were pursuing them, causing them to destroy each other and creating a moment for them to escape.

If Adam had been a step later, they would have been wiped out by Eden's hand.

Presumably because Adam had already appeared, they were all useless.

They had escaped to a frozen island in the Arctic Circle, a place so icy and untouched by humans that the only living things they might see were polar bears. It was cold enough to shiver through the thermal suits they were wearing.

They were forced to stop to treat their wounds and all of them were silent as they struggled to dismount from their flying bikes. Anya helped Diego and they limped over to a huge, rocky outcrop of ice and sat down. She took out a black device from her pack that automatically heated up as a temporary heat source and placed it on the ground, then began to look carefully at Diego's wounds.

On the other side Natalie was also carried down from the aircraft and placed near the heat source.

Zhang Xun's legs touched the ground before he realised how weak they were. He steadied himself by holding onto the bike and reached into his coat pocket......

His heart suddenly fell into a hole of ice.

The chip that held the model of his DNA that Adam had recovered was gone.

When had it fallen out? It was probably when the bike he was riding was blown up and his entire body was thrown off.

It was a miracle he hadn't died so he wouldn't have cared about the chip at that time.

Maybe Adam still had a backup, or at least Adam himself must remember...... it didn't matter, there was still hope......

Zhang Xun turned his head to look at his father and saw that Zhang Shuo was still sitting on the driver's seat, not moving.

"Dad?"

An unfamiliar word, as if it hadn't been called for a long time.

Zhang Shuo raised his head to look at him, his eyes suffused with a tiredness that was no longer concealed. For a moment, Zhang Xun realised how old his father was, the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and on his forehead were so deep already.

"Dad? Are you hurt?"

Zhang Shuo shook his head, his movements so slight that they were barely noticeable.

Zhang Xun, however, noticed Zhang Shuo's bleeding arm, which had obviously been grazed by the lasers. He took a few steps forward, "We have to stop the bleeding on your arm......"

"Stand still and don't move."

Zhang Xun frowned, but obediently stopped in his tracks.

Zhang Shuo's words weren't like before, there wasn't as much of a commanding tone, instead they sounded tired and faint, but Zhang Xun had long been used to obeying his father's orders and he would always try to do whatever his father asked him to do.

"Xun Xun, listen carefully to what I say."

Xun Xun......

This somewhat feminine nickname had never been used by Zhang Shuo ever since he turned six years old. So much so that his body shook slightly the moment he heard it.

"I was too hard on you growing up. I knew you worked hard and were smart, it just wasn't quite in a way that I had expected. That's not your fault." Zhang Shuo sighed and lifted his head. A strand of flowery white hair fell from his forehead and fell between his eyebrows, adding a bit of softness to his cold, hard lines.

Zhang Xun never expected to hear such words from Zhang Shuo's mouth.

It wasn't that he hadn't hoped for it, but he hadn't thought he would actually hear it one day......

The question was, why now? Why suddenly tell him at a time like this?

A black cloud filled the low sky not far away like an ominous premonition, tumbling and roaring as it approached.

"You've done well." Zhang Shuo said, tugging at the corners of his mouth as if trying to give Zhang Xun a smile.

"Dad...... what's wrong with you?" Panic suffused Zhang Xun's widened eyes and he knew something was wrong.

Zhang Shuo picked up the laser gun he had carried around for over thirty years and aimed it at his own jaw.

"Dad!!! What are you doing?!!"

"Listen to me, during those three hours when I was used as a hostage to coerce you, Eden injected me with a new type of weaponized nanobots. It seems these robots aren't quite the same as the ones in your body and are transmitting information with Eden in real time so it can know where you are and where Adam will be. Those robots will take control of my mind and actions bit by bit, just like Natalie's renegade henchmen. I don't know how much time I have left." Zhang Shuo's tone was so calm that it was as if he was talking about something completely unrelated to himself, full of mechanical sanity, "They're modifying my brain, I can feel it."

"Dad, Adam can heal you! He'll find the antidote!" Zhang Xun's voice was shaking and when he took a step forward, Zhang Shuo's finger on the trigger twitched slightly. Zhang Xun's heart felt as if it was about to jump out of his throat and his whole body froze in place.

"There's no time for that. As long as I'm still with you, Eden will find you." Zhang Shuo said in his usual tone of unquestionable authority, "Besides, I don't want to become Eden's puppet. I've been cautious all my life, fought Eden all my life and at the end I want to die as a human."

Dying as a human, the last dignity of the soldiers of Lost Paradise.

Zhang Xun was unaware that he was already in tears, the tears frozen on his cheeks by the cold air, "No...... no! Give me some time! I'll think of a way!"

Anya and a few others were slowly approaching as well and she said carefully, "Commander Zhang, calm down, maybe......"

"I'm calm. I've been thinking about it for almost five hours and this is the best and most effective solution." Zhang Shuo kept his eyes on Zhang Xun, solemnly transferring the weight of his soul to his only descendant, "After I shoot, you need not concern yourselves with my body, just leave this place as soon as possible. Do you understand?"

"Dad, don't......"

When a laser gun fires, it doesn't make as much noise as a physical gun. It's so quiet that all you can hear is the subtle, almost inaudible sound of flesh and bone being burned through and see a beam of light ejected from the top of your skull.

Everything was quiet, the thud of Zhang Shuo's body as it slumped against the steering wheel being the only sound.