Love, death, and false man

Chapter 15. Code Blood
"The Lord of Souls is watching you."

9/20—22:18
The flashback stopped abruptly.

Bai Zhe suddenly woke up with a start.

It felt like a very long time had passed, but it was as if I was too sleepy and my consciousness was disconnected for a moment before my brain was fully active at its highest threshold.

The semi-trailer truck crashed into the car, causing the vehicle to be completely deformed and the hood to be completely shattered, emitting white smoke. It continued to crash into a concrete utility pole before finally coming to a stop.

The gash on his skull was bleeding, and blood slid down his forehead, covering almost half his face. The windshield was shattered, and shards of glass pierced his face. One large piece of glass pierced his eyeball, causing complete blindness.

Bai Zhe struggled, but the car was slammed against a concrete post by the truck and turned into an hourglass shape, with the seats and steering wheel inside the car completely crushed and pieced together.

He struggled to leave, effortlessly pushing open the wrecked car door, but he couldn't get out. His right leg was completely stuck in the deformed car, held firmly by mechanical objects. The protruding bearing had completely penetrated his right knee, leaving him unable to move at all.

Fang Yan has a [forged] driver's license, but he can't drive. He can only start the engine and accelerate, which anyone can do.

Recalling the days when I was threatened by the Lord of Souls, and yesterday when I monitored his surveillance activities.

"I killed your mother..."

He took an MP5 submachine gun from his satchel, his expression gloomy, jumped off the truck, walked to the completely shattered windshield, aimed at the man in a suit in the driver's seat, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The pitch-black muzzle spewed deadly flames, and the constantly flashing bright yellow light reflected on that terrifying face, while the extractor hummed rapidly as it worked.

Enough to pierce through any carbon-based life form like a sieve.

It seems that this fake person has a different role than Dongni. He has algorithm analysis work and a certain degree of self-awareness. When the bullet hits him, the soul fire is converted into kinetic energy to generate a defensive red ripple force field, which weakens part of the bullet's force.

After a bullet enters the human body, it becomes unstable due to a sudden change in the medium and moves at high speed, pushing the surrounding tissues to expand outward and forming a temporary cavity with a diameter of 10-30 times that of the bullet. This cavity lasts for only a few milliseconds but is accompanied by multiple pulsations.

Although the bullet's power was weakened, it still created a cavity effect, turning the opponent's torso into a bloody mess, splattering soft tissue everywhere.

However, the opponent instinctively converted most of the heat from the soul fire into a force field to protect its head and heart, thus avoiding immediate death.

There was no time to hesitate.

Bai Zhe's blind left side of his head and shoulder blade torso appeared to have been severed into six pieces by a horizontal line. In an instant, these pieces transformed into six whip-like, exposed muscle fibers, each ending in an enamel bone knife. In a flash, they severed his right leg, and blood gushed from the large cut, as he continued to struggle to leave the sedan chair.

Soul Fire ←→ Subconscious ←→ Conscious
Soulfire can be converted into any form of kinetic energy, but it cannot be controlled autonomously; its peak value is passively triggered.

However, the characteristics of the Soulfire can be actively controlled by conscious awareness, but it can only stimulate the real-time intensity of the Soulfire, and within a certain range, it can only be converted into a specific form of kinetic energy.

Furthermore, when actively performing work through the characteristics of Soulfire, it increases entropy and causes irreversible mental damage.

Bai Zhe's special ability is Bloodhound, which helps in combat by automatically locking onto enemies and having a longer range. The heat of his Soulfire can be separated out, with one Soulfire splitting out for every 300 joules. His own Soulfire intensity can split into 5 Soulfires, allowing him to fight on multiple fronts.

The submachine gun fire continued unabated, emptying all 30 rounds of ammunition. Bai Zhe's body was mangled beyond recognition, flesh torn apart, tissues separated, organs ruptured, revealing stark white bones.

Fang Yan took out an extra magazine from his satchel. Not only neural signals and computer viruses, but even transmitting 1 byte back to the past via a gravitational particle accelerator would require a huge cost. So the most efficient way would be to tamper with DNA genetic information and become a fake human.

The fake human's vitality is exceptionally strong. Even if its head and heart are still intact, it will die from acute heart failure due to multiple organ failure after emptying another magazine.

Just as Fang Yan was changing his magazine, two blood-red, dense creatures, like hounds from a horror movie, suddenly pounced on him, their jaws wide open and filled with sharp teeth. One bit his arm, dangling it in mid-air and pulling it down, while the other bit his leg and pulled it backward, preventing Fang Yan from changing his bullets.

Bai Zhe finally managed to break free from the deformed carriage. The accident left him in a critical condition with serious injuries. He was the one who was exposed first and was preemptively attacked by the other party.

I can't force a fight anymore. I have to run to the abandoned factory and into the complex terrain inside so that I can use the properties of Soulfire to have more room to maneuver.

But his right leg was still in the car, so he had to use two genetically modified muscle fiber chains to support himself on the ground to help him move. But even this was not fast, not as fast as a standard adult male running. He had to move to a different position while the hunting dog held him back.

Fang Yan has gradually come to understand the rules of the game. The passively activated soul fire can be regarded as [A] composed of force field, and it is without consumption. It can also unleash the power of active attack at the moment of life and death, but it is uncontrollable and related to instinct. It may depend on the so-called reptilian brain (instinctive brain). It is all inherited from primitive genetic memory, which is very primitive and crude.

The characteristic of Soulfire is that it is a controllable form of attack, which may depend on the so-called rational brain (neocortex), and the forms are diverse.

People like themselves and their opponents, when not in combat, have their Soulfire intensity not at its peak, and the characteristics they unleash are only within a very weak range. In normal times, they are basically no different from ordinary people. In combat, their Soulfire characteristics can unleash power close to or reaching their peak.

These strange hunting dogs are a characteristic of this imposter, but they have already consumed some of his soul fire's heat. Furthermore, he had already crippled the target by ramming him with a semi-trailer truck, forcing him to injure himself to escape—this was devastating destruction, and he had to press his advantage.

The hunting dog that was biting Fang Yan's hand tightly did not injure his skin because Fang Yan also had [armor]. Furthermore, the hunting dog had no actual static weight; it was purely kinetic energy.

But without this layer of armor, an ordinary person would have their flesh and bones crushed by the immense bite force of this hunting dog.

The hunting dog prevented Fang Yan from reloading, biting his hand and refusing to let go. Fang Yan ignored it, even with one leg being pulled by the dog, and continued running towards the limping Bai Zhe. Although Fang Yan was not fast, he was much faster than Bai Zhe and gradually closed in on his prey.

Although genetic recombination can transform, Bai Zhe suffered three injuries: a car accident, a submachine gun, and self-harm, leaving him extremely weak. He used his still-undeformed arm to pull out a pistol and pull the trigger at the pursuers behind him, but the violent shaking made his aim extremely poor, and he missed three shots in a row.

He couldn't separate any more hounds, otherwise he wouldn't be able to handle the situation ahead. Even if the previous two hadn't separated, it seemed they were already...

It's too late to turn the tide.

Two muscle fiber chains needed to support the ground to stabilize their bodies, while the other four flew towards the pursuers. Even though they were imbued with the kinetic energy of soul fire, they were too weak due to their severe injuries and were all repelled by the force field of black water ripples on Fang Yan's body.

Fang Yan suddenly leaped off the ground and pounced on the terrifying monster, using his momentum to knock it to the ground. He then pulled out a switchblade from his jacket pocket, pressed the button, and stabbed Bai Zhe in the heart a dozen or twenty times.

Blood splattered all over Fang Yan's face. The target gradually stopped moving, and the muscle fiber chain blades stopped twitching and swinging. But Fang Yan was still frantically stabbing Fang Yan's chest and abdomen with the switchblade.

A drop of blood splattered into his eye, like a mental patient seeing double.

……

The pitch-black sea, even more desolate than the night, rippled with waves. The deep-sea fishing vessel tossed and swayed in the torrential rain. Even this heavy oil tanker was like a lone boat on the vast ocean, bobbing its bow up and down in the giant waves.

Captain's interior.

"I just want to go back..."

"You stay hidden over there and don't do anything. They won't kill you since you're a student. But if anything happens to you, that old bastard will skin me alive."

Ji Jianguo's mission was to guard the captain's cabin and the communication equipment, preventing anyone from contacting the outside world, and killing anyone who tried to break in.

He was holding a squid-killing knife, a long, thin, and sharp knife used to slice squid. It's a dagger, not for cutting people, but for stabbing.

In a state of extreme panic, Fang Yan used a satellite phone to call the Maritime Safety Administration for help. Under the hellish self-suggestion and psychological pressure, he was unaware that he had entered the wrong number.

However, what came through was a voice that sounded like a high school girl, saying █████████████.

……

9/20—22:22
It appears that the [Hunter Channel] was jammed, or that the Salvation Army's base station was briefly disrupted, or something else entirely.

Fang Yan experienced severe tinnitus and dizziness. Despite not being injured in the battle, he felt as if he had been given some kind of high-priority command or psychological suggestion from the past or future.

He himself was unaware of what had happened, and stood up in alarm, staring at Bai Zhe's corpse.

His own soul fire went out of control and transformed into two enormous arms, as black as seawater, completely beyond his control. One large hand gripped the target corpse's waist, and the other gripped the corpse's head.

boom……

With extreme violence, the head and spine were ripped out, blood gushing out. Finally, the head was squeezed in the palm of the hand and completely crushed, absorbing data like the noise of a CRT television.

This is not an electronic target generated by the Salvation Army; it's a different color.

It was a string of scarlet code, not branded into the eyes, but rather into the consciousness.

The Bloodhound.EXE file has been generated.

By some strange twist of fate, Fang Yan chose to run the executable file, since EXE is the file extension for executable files.

It wasn't something they learned, but rather something they instinctively used. From the heat of the soul fire, four black hounds separated out. Their fur was speckled with the dark seawater under the light, and their gaping maws were full of sharp teeth.

(End of this chapter)