Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 589 3. Gold
Is there anything more bizarre than encountering a giant truck barreling straight at you in the Badlands?
It was probably like that in a sandstorm, your vision was blocked by the yellow sand, the car body was half buried, and you watched the big truck still crushing towards you without slowing down.

This scene seemed like a fragment extracted from some absurd nightmare, with a suffocating sense of oppression.

However, none of the three people in the car - Carl, V and Jack - were afraid of the threat posed by the big truck.

After all, in their eyes, this steel behemoth that could easily send people to "reincarnation" in Carl's past era would probably not last even a few seconds in front of them before being turned into scrap metal.

Carl's monomolecular wire, V's katana, or the power of Jack's violent form, any one of them can turn this truck into a pile of harmless scrap metal, but the problem is not whether they can deal with this truck, but the car they are riding in at the moment - it is not that strong.

The fate of this car is what is really troubling.

Although the sand brought by the sandstorm buried part of the car body and barely provided some cushion, the impact force of the big truck was still enough to twist and smash the small car, and it might even crush it completely. Unfortunately, this car was not owned by Carl and his friends.

It was Panam's baby, her most cherished car. Because of this mission, Panam lent the car to V and handed the key to him with trust. If the car was scrapped in this collision.
Although according to Panam's personality, she would probably be more grateful that V, Carl and Jack were safe instead of worrying about the loss of a car, but even so, the three people involved could not help but feel stressed.

After all, this truck carries not only steel and an engine, but also Panam's trust. If it becomes a pile of scrap metal, how can they explain it to Panam? This sense of responsibility is more stressful than the threat of a big truck.

"There's no other choice, get off the car!" Carl made a decisive decision.

The big truck on the Badlands, just by looking at its huge outline and heavy armor, Carl had already guessed its origin.

It is most likely the military-tech truck that was controlled by the automatic control system and lost its way, and it was also loaded with the assembly parts of the magic lizard.

Speaking of which, the durability of methanol fuel these days is indeed amazing. It was originally thought that the truck had long been buried in the dust and disappeared in the boundless desert, but it was unexpected that it had been wandering in this area, like a mechanical giant that had lost its way.

This self-driving truck, which was made of military technology, had apparently gone wrong in its programming after losing its way. It was not known whether it had mistaken Carl and his crew for the random swordsmen who were carjacking, or whether it was simply a system failure, but it was heading straight towards the three people.

Despite being in a sandstorm, the huge car body remained motionless, without any deviation due to the raging wind and sand.

There are seven seconds left until impact.

The wind was howling, and Jack pushed open the car door that was buried in the sand and seemed extremely heavy. He quickly took out several grenades from his waist and threw them in front of the truck without hesitation.

The military-tech truck is well protected from the explosion of a regular grenade, but Jack's target is not the truck itself.

The truck's forward momentum is so strong that even if it is damaged, its inertia is enough to keep it moving forward. To stop it, you have to attack its path.

The grenade exploded in the ground in front of the truck.

Fortunately, most of the sand here was temporarily accumulated with the sandstorm, and the bottom layer was still bad soil. Jack deliberately increased the charge of the grenade. The impact of the explosion instantly lifted the surface sand and formed a huge pit nearly four meters in size. The self-driving truck rushed into the trap without any defense. If it were an ordinary light vehicle, it might be able to jump over the pit by accelerating, but in the strong wind of the sandstorm, they could not keep their balance at all. Although this big truck can resist the wind and sand because of its weight, it has advantages and disadvantages. Because it is too heavy, it cannot jump over the pit at all.

The front of the truck suddenly plunged into the pothole, and the body of the truck tilted with the rear wheels lifted high.

Jack has a keen interest in vehicles and often watches racing videos. He once noticed a detail in a heavy truck race: although a heavy truck can crush all obstacles on the road, as long as the obstacle slightly changes its trajectory, the truck's own weight will magnify this tiny deviation, causing the entire vehicle to lose control.

This is exactly the situation we are facing.

The moment the front of the car fell into the pothole, all the weight of the rear was pressed on the front wheels. Accompanied by a harsh sound of metal twisting - "creak, crunch" - the front end of the truck was completely twisted and crushed under its own pressure.

Carl had just got off the car and before he could move, a metal rod that was ejected due to metal deformation flew past his chest. If Carl had not dodged a little, he would have been pierced through the chest by the metal rod.

After roughly judging the strength of the metal rod, Carl looked at the truck again and found that it had stopped completely, like a tamed beast, lying quietly in the sand.

"It seems that this phrase can't describe the current situation. How should I say it, Carl?"

V wanted to describe the current situation in one sentence, but couldn't think of anything appropriate.

“When you reach the end of your rope, you may think there is no way out, but you will find another village when you are facing difficulties. I remember this saying is used to describe that when one method does not work, you can try another method to solve the problem. But it does not seem right.”

Carl thought for a moment and said, "It should be a lucky coincidence. We were originally planning to look for the car everywhere, but we lost contact with other people because of the sandstorm. As a result, we happened to encounter the missing truck under such circumstances. This description should be correct."

"Is that so? That's hard to understand."

V glanced at the car coming down: "But at least it's okay."

Then he looked at Jack and said, "Jack, you reacted really quickly. I was thinking about whether I should try to chop the truck with a knife."

"After all, Jack Wells has a big, shining head that looks like gold."

Jack laughed and tapped his head with his fingers, "And this is just right, there are so many ideas."

"How can a mere gold compare to your intelligence, Jack?"

Carl flattered his friend and walked towards the truck in the sandstorm: "Okay, let me check it. Don't damage the goods inside."

(End of this chapter)