Chapter 113: Life-and-Death Speed
A fireball erupted in midair, and the shockwave nearly flipped the bus! The shattered missile fragments, propelled by the violent explosion, rained down like metallic shrapnel.
Inside the bus, the recruits tightly covered their ears. The close-range explosion nearly ruptured their eardrums, and as the bus shook violently, luggage from the overhead racks came crashing down, creating chaos in the cabin.
At that moment, Lin QiYe's eyes suddenly widened!
In the next instant, an intense darkness erupted around him, spreading rapidly from his center and quickly enveloping the entire bus. The dark energy continued to expand, forming a hemispherical shield around the bus.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—!!
Countless missile fragments flew out, their speed comparable to bullets, embedding into the darkness. The moment they entered the Shadow Void, they froze in mid-air.
Even the few that managed to slip through were slowed to a crawl by Lin QiYe, their velocity reduced to the bare minimum, like razor blades embedding themselves into the metal roof, without a single shard penetrating the interior of the bus.
Once all the missile fragments were blocked, Lin QiYe released the Shadow Void, half-kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath. His back was drenched in cold sweat.
No one knew what Lin QiYe had just experienced in those brief few seconds.
After the missile exploded in midair, the intense force from the explosion sent the fragments flying at speeds exceeding 200 meters per second. That meant from the moment the fragments broke apart to when they would have pierced the recruits' bodies inside the bus, there would be no more than two seconds.
In those two seconds, Lin QiYe's mind raced. He immediately recognized the inevitable threat of shrapnel and, without hesitation, opened the Shadow Void at full speed. He had less than one second to act.
This was Lin QiYe's first time using the Shadow Void, and it took him five seconds to cover an area of ten meters. Had he not just broken through to the "Pool" realm half a minute ago, he would have never been fast enough.
Even though he managed to open the Shadow Void in time, the speed of the missile fragments was unbelievably fast! From the moment they entered the Shadow Void, to when they could potentially penetrate a recruit's body, it took no more than 0.1 seconds. And with so many fragments, blocking them all would have been an impossible task!
Fortunately, having reached the "Pool" realm, Lin QiYe's spiritual perception range was expanded to a hundred meters!
When the fragments crossed into his spiritual perception's boundary, just before they reached the bus, Lin QiYe, with his brain operating at incredible speeds and enhanced dynamic vision, predicted their trajectories. He then trapped them all in the Shadow Void!
Missile explosion, opening the Shadow Void, predicting each fragment's path, and capturing them all!
That was Lin QiYe's experience in those two seconds.
In those two seconds, Lin QiYe saved the lives of nearly fifty recruits on the bus.
For the others, those two seconds felt like the blink of an eye. But for Lin QiYe, it was as though he had lived through a century.
"What just happened? What was that?"
"Yeah, I saw everything go dark for a moment, then—"
"Fragments! The missile fragments fell down!"
"What's going on? If those fragments had exploded, the bus's metal shell wouldn't have stopped them!"
"Did we just narrowly escape death?"
"…"
Most of the recruits had no idea what had just occurred. Only three people understood: BaiLi Pangpang, Cao Yuan, and Instructor Hong, who was sitting in the front.
As the entire bus remained in confusion, Lin QiYe, who had exhausted his mental energy, turned pale. He felt as though stars were flashing before his eyes, and everything around him began to fade into darkness...
"QiYe, QiYe! Lin QiYe!" Instructor Hong rushed to Lin QiYe's side, his voice full of urgency. Lin QiYe's consciousness sank, and he passed out cold.
...
The training camp was shrouded in a faint golden membrane, which had protected all the instructors and logistics personnel inside, saving their lives. The buildings were completely unharmed, but the other half of the camp had been reduced to a fiery inferno.
Yuan Gang, dressed in military uniform, stood before the sea of flames, his golden aura slowly fading. His furious eyes reflected the towering firestorm before him.
His fists clenched tighter and tighter.
"Commander!" A trainer hurriedly approached from the distance, holding binoculars in his hands. "The other two missiles landed on the exit route!"
"What?!" Yuan Gang whipped around, his expression darkening. "What about the recruits?"
"It seems one of the 136th squad members shot down a missile with a single shot. Then, a black shadow flashed by, and in the end, all the buses are intact, no one was injured!"
Yuan Gang sighed in relief, but the fire in his eyes only grew more intense.
"The recruits just left the training camp, and missiles were fired at them almost immediately... There's definitely a traitor among us!"
With a heavy step forward, Yuan Gang plunged into the heart of the flames. Golden light erupted around him, and in an instant, the firestorm that engulfed half the camp was extinguished.
Among the shattered ruins, Yuan Gang adjusted his military cap, gazing into the deep sky above.
"But what I don't understand… how did they mobilize the missiles?" he muttered to himself, his expression grave.
Several hundred kilometers away from the training camp.
Missile Base 39.
The shrill sound of alarms echoed throughout the entire base. Red warning lights blinked erratically. This highly secretive missile launch base had, at some point, fallen into enemy hands.
"Base 39, please respond immediately!" a frantic voice came through the comms.
"This is HQ! Base 39, report your status immediately!"
"Calling Base 39! Calling Base 39!"
"Do you copy? Respond!"
"..."
Inside the large control room, only the intermittent sound of the comms calling out echoed through the room. Under the flickering lights, pools of blood stained the floor, and broken stone statues groaned in agony.
At the center of the control console sat a seductive woman, casually holding a bloodstained, handleless blade. She tossed it in the air, caught it, tossed it again, and caught it again...
She lifted her head and looked at the satellite monitoring screen in front of her, a strange smile curling at the corners of her lips.
"So they decided to release the recruits from the training camp… This group is smarter than I thought."
"Those fools in Cangnan made too much noise, they must have leaked something and alerted them," a deep male voice came from a phone nearby.
"Doesn't matter. This only makes things more interesting…" The woman grinned, her long, crimson tongue darting out like a snake, licking her lips.
"Since that's the case, I'll go to Cangnan personally and meet this guy."
She stood up, her eyes gleaming with a pathological excitement. With a casual swing of her arm, she shattered a hunched, stone statue of a man nearby. The broken fragments of flesh and stone scattered across the floor, a sight that was both grotesque and repulsive.
On the floor of the enormous control room, a large amount of blood was used to draw a menacing snake's eye.