The wind was boisterous, howling past and slapping against people's faces.
Survivors, wrapped in their coats, filed into the two-story-high combat vehicle. The guards from the Guard Team stood silently and stiffly in place, like pillars straightening up.
The Rhino Chariot roared, its tracks churning up the earth, and in the blink of an eye, it disappeared from view, leaving only the shocking traces of its twenty-centimeter-deep ruts.
Rusty buses, chugging along, wobbled forward and, after two or three minutes, also vanished without a trace.
The men from the Guard Team remained silent until a light "pop" sounded in the air and one of the guards blushed, breaking the silence.
"Captain, are we just letting them go?"
Someone was clearly displeased, "Green Shadow deployed those terrifying war weapons just to escort these twenty or thirty people; there must be something special about them..."
"You think I don't know that!"
The Captain's face darkened, and he kicked the ground as if dropping a war axe beside the speaking team member.
Boom! The ground cracked, splitting open a two to three-meter-long fissure.
Panting heavily, like an enraged bull.
After a moment, the Captain deflated like a punctured ball and sighed resentfully, "We can't afford to offend them. Even without that war weapon, just the look in that woman's eyes sent chills down my spine, ah."
His voice carried deep melancholy.
My last shred of defiance was crushed frantically against the ground.
The Rhino Chariot was slower than the Floating Chariot, but after a journey of just over three hours, it reached Green Shadow.
Low-Middle Level Demonized Beasts encountered on the way failed to leave the slightest mark on the armor of the Rhino Chariot.
The combat vehicle slowed down, its roar becoming subdued.
Instead of heading towards the city's main road, the Rhino Chariot turned off towards the city's sprawling wall, entering from a side gate reserved for Corps vehicles, driving straight to the Corps parking lot, and stopping in an oversized parking space.
Here, three Rhino Chariots, two Floating Chariots, and various customized vehicles were parked, resembling a combat vehicle exhibition: the ferocious metallic bodies and mechanical power aesthetics were dazzling.
Tang Wenliang and the other survivors, who had stayed inside the Rhino Chariot and hadn't seen the outside world, were stunned upon disembarking.
Officials from the Municipal Department and Awakeners from the Guardian Corps who had been waiting in the parking lot greeted them and immediately led the survivors away.
Next, ideological education began, finally rejuvenating their spirits and kindling their fighting spirit...
With the allure of Source Crystals and a better life, it wasn't difficult.
Lan Qingya and the other personnel from the Intelligence Department didn't follow. Awakeners from the Guardian Corps disembarking from the Rhino Chariot glanced a few times but then paid no more mind, "Mission completed, it doesn't seem like there's anything else today. Should we take on the Trial Tower?"
Another member of the Guardian Team shook his head, "Forget it, haven't you been tortured enough by the Trial Tower? We've reached a bottleneck now; there won't be any breakthroughs soon. We might as well solidify our foundation, practice our battle techniques..."
At that moment, he felt a vibration in his pocket, picked up a simple communicator, and saw, "Well, there's work to do, the higher-ups want to check our mastery of the Combined Attack Skill."
Tang Yu stood on the training camp rooftop.
The piercing wind howled by but failed to lift a single hair.
On closer inspection, one could see a faint membrane, almost invisible to the naked eye, enveloping him, separating him from the wind.
This was an application of Source Power.
Ever since entering the Source Condensation Realm, Tang Yu had gained increasing fluency.
Awakeners from the Guardian Corps and the Investigation Corps had already assembled. Under the command of several Captain Level Awakeners, five small squads of ten lined up.
Three squads from the Guardian Corps, two from the Investigation Corps—the Sanctuary housed more Guardian Team Awakeners.
The inspection of Combined Attack Skills wasn't just a drill; it was also real combat.
The Awakeners of the five squads all possessed Fifth Tier Peak strength, and at this moment, several Captains from the Corps donned their equipment and slowly walked out in front of the lined-up teams.
Their combat sabers, shining with a sharp silver gleam, slowly drawn.
Their auras, no longer suppressed, burst forth like a spring, erupting in an instant.
One Captain stomped the ground, and the solid concrete field, as brittle as a biscuit, shattered.
The man, like a cannonball shot out of a cannon, blasted forward.
His combat saber was enveloped in a wave-like flow of White Flame, leisurely rising, as if the surging water was wrapping around the blade, its momentum reaching its peak at that moment.
On the rooftop, Tang Yu nodded slightly,
"Not bad, he has achieved Unity of Essence, Qi, and Spirit. What's his name?"
Luo Zhe replied beside him, "His name is Zhao Songming, an Awakener of Eighth Layer strength, his record in the Trial Tower is up to the sixty-third floor."
In the field of vision,
Zhao Songming charged out, and not far from the ten-man squad, each member holding a shield as tall as a person, ten shields side by side, forming a metallic wall.
They let out a low shout, and a thick Qi Blood Power erupted from within them.
The ten people, joined together, formed a long pillar of Qi Blood Power, rising instantly. The rune-inscribed shields suddenly lit up with bright rune patterns, connecting from the first to the last, forming a Source Power circuit, and in an instant, a simple Rune Array was formed.
The White Flame wrapped around the combat saber collided with the radiant rune shields, like a high-speed truck slamming into an invincible metallic wall.