124: It's either save them or die with them!

"Zizizi—zizi—"

Inside the command cabin of the black iron ghost.

The communication channel, which had been maintaining a stable transmission, suddenly erupted with a burst of piercing white noise.

It was an irregular, distressing crackle of static, like countless insects frantically scratching against the eardrums.

"Commander? Commander, please respond if you receive this!"

Su Qingyu pressed her communication headset tightly, her voice carrying a hint of unmistakable anxiety for the first time.

"Zizizi..."

No response.

There was no human voice; even the sound of heavy breathing had vanished.

Behind that damned static, only a deathly silence remained.

"The signal... is cut off."

Old Chen stared at the monitoring window in front of him, which displayed Jiang Ran's vital signs.

The green waveform, which had been rising and falling steadily.

Was now oscillating violently, as if hit by intense interference, before flatlining into a lifeless straight line without warning.

[Warning: nerve link signal lost.]

[Warning: Ultra-high energy radiation storm detected in the target area. Communication link has been severed.]

zero's usually perfectly rational electronic voice sounded exceptionally cold and cruel under the glow of the red alarm lights.

"What's going on? Why did it suddenly cut out?!" Old Chen's hands were shaking so violently that he even knocked over the teacup beside him.

"Beep—!!!"

Before Su Qingyu could answer, a massive, bright red emergency alert box popped up on the main screen.

Simultaneously, the lights across the entire ship went out instantly.

Only the emergency red lights spun frantically, casting a ghostly glow on everyone's faces.

"Rapid increase in external environmental heat detected!"

"Sonar has captured violent tremors in the seabed's crust! Epicenter: 'uss united states' reactor cabin!"

"Analysis result: core meltdown has entered an irreversible stage!"

"Cooling water is undergoing a flash evaporation reaction! A thermonuclear steam explosion is imminent!"

"Countdown: 150 seconds!"

"One... one hundred and fifty seconds?!"

Old Chen looked at the rapidly ticking red numbers on the screen, frozen in place as if struck by lightning.

In his cloudy old eyes, his pupils dilated to the limit, filled with the most primal fear of death.

He knew all too well what a "deep-sea thermonuclear steam explosion" was.

That wasn't an ordinary explosion.

At a depth of eight hundred meters in the high-pressure seabed, once that molten core at thousands of degrees released its energy and vaporized the surrounding seawater.

The resulting volume expansion would be catastrophic.

It would be a horrific disaster capable of overturning submarine mountain ranges and triggering a super tsunami.

And they were right within the absolute kill radius of the explosion.

"It's over... it's all over..."

Old Chen muttered to himself, his legs going weak as he nearly collapsed to the floor.

At this distance and with so little time, no matter how fast the black iron ran, it could never escape the range of the shockwave.

This place was about to become a literal hell.

And the man who had ventured deep into the heart of this hell was now completely unreachable, his fate unknown.

"Reverse! Reverse quickly!!"

Old Chen let out a shrill cry, his survival instinct instantly overriding all reason.

He lunged toward the power console, his calloused hand trembling as he grabbed the thrust lever.

Desperately trying to pull it back to the "Full Reverse" position.

"We have to run! There's still time if we go now!"

"If we just get out of the core of the shockwave, the black iron's armor might be able to withstand it!!"

Old Chen's eyes were nearly bulging out of his head. As he operated the controls frantically, he roared hysterically:

"That's a nuclear explosion in there! Steam at thousands of degrees!"

Jiang Ran is definitely dead!

We can't be buried with him! We have to survive! As long as there's life, there's hope..."

"Wong—!"

A very faint hum, yet one capable of freezing the soul, abruptly sounded right next to Old Chen's ear.

Old Chen's movements suddenly froze.

He felt a bone-chilling cold press against the carotid artery in his neck.

It wasn't the coldness of metal; it was the touch of death.

If he dared to move even an inch more, that thin layer of skin would be sliced open instantly, and hot blood would spray across the entire console.

"Let go."

Su Qingyu's voice sounded from behind him.

The voice no longer sounded like a doctor's, nor like the usually reticent woman's.

It was as cold as eternal ice, without a single shred of emotional fluctuation.

Old Chen stiffly turned his eyes.

He saw Su Qingyu, clad in the silver "Shadow Dancer" armor, having appeared behind him like a ghost at some unknown moment.

Her hand, covered in silver nanofibers.

Was holding a high-frequency Vibration Blade in a reverse grip, its edge pressed steadily against his carotid artery.

The blade was blurred from the high-frequency vibrations, but the bone-chilling killing intent was very real.

"Su... Girl Su... have you lost your mind?!"

Old Chen's voice was trembling: "That's a dead end in there! Wake up! The Boss, he..."

"He's not dead."

Su Qingyu interrupted him, her tone terrifyingly calm: "As long as I haven't seen a body, he's not dead."

She applied slight pressure with her wrist, and the edge of the Vibration Blade instantly sliced through a layer of skin on Old Chen's neck, a thin line of blood trickling down the blade.

"Old Chen, I don't want to kill you. But listen well."

Su Qingyu's cool eyes were now reflected blood-red by the alarm lights, showing a chilling madness and resolve:

"This ship has only one captain.

If he doesn't come back, this ship has no meaning to me."

"So, we either bring him back together, or..."

"I'll send you on your way first, and then I'll sail this ship to be buried with him."

"Choose."

Old Chen looked into those eyes.

He had spent his whole life at sea and had seen the eyes of countless desperate criminals.

But he had never seen eyes like Su Qingyu's right now—eyes that disregarded life and death, yet were possessed by a near-obsessive persistence.

She was serious.

If he didn't comply, that blade really would slit his throat in the next second.

"Madmen... you're all fucking madmen!"

"There isn't a single normal person on this ship!!"

Old Chen cursed in a breakdown, tears and snot smearing across his face.

But he didn't try to pull the lever back again.

Instead, driven by the threat of death and a lingering, inexplicable trust in that man.

He grit his teeth and let out a roar like a trapped beast:

"Aaaaaargh!!! Fuck!!!"

"If I die, I die!!!"

Old Chen's trembling hand suddenly exerted force.

He didn't pull back toward reverse; instead, he fiercely and resolutely pushed the power lever to the very top—Full Speed Ahead!

"Hold on tight! We're charging into hell!!!"

... "Boom—!!!"

With Old Chen's desperate push, the bio-nuclear thrusters at the rear of the black iron erupted in an unprecedented roar.

Two dazzling blue plasma jets scorched two vacuum tunnels through the deep sea.

The massive hull jolted violently under the immense reaction force.

Then, like an enraged steel rhino.

Disregarding any structural damage, it plunged headlong into the rapidly expanding white zone of death ahead.

It was no longer water. It was a boiling soup.

"Zizizi—crack!!!"

As soon as it charged into the high-temperature, high-pressure zone created by the runaway reactor.

A dense, scalp-tingling series of pops instantly drowned out the roar of the engines.

It was the shockwaves produced by hundreds of millions of cavitation bubbles constantly forming and bursting against the ship's hull.

Every second, the black iron's armor had to endure a baptism of tens of thousands of miniature explosions.

"Warning! Klein Field overloaded!"

"Shield capacity has plummeted to 30%!"

"Warning! External environmental temperature has exceeded 800 degrees Celsius! The ship's surface is melting!!"

zero's alarm was no longer a cold electronic voice.

It had turned into a series of rapid beeps, as if even the AI felt fear.

Through the explosion-proof porthole in the command cabin, which was already starting to develop thermal cracks, Su Qingyu saw a heart-stopping scene.

The black iron's tough, grayish-white "dead skin" armor, which had protected them for so long in the strong acid Dead Sea.

Was now like a piece of paper thrown into a furnace.

Under the horrific heat and radiation, the thick horny layer instantly blackened and carbonized.

Then, large chunks of it peeled off and curled, turning into ash and dissipating in the boiling white water.

Having lost its outer protection, the glowing red metal skeleton and still-twitching biological muscle layers beneath were exposed.

The entire ship was burning.

It was like a retrograde meteor, trailing a long black plume of flame made from its own flesh and blood.

Charging frantically through the white, high-temperature purgatory.

"We can't hold on! We really can't hold on!"

Old Chen looked at the structural strength readings on the dashboard, which were all in the red.

The flesh on his face was trembling.

But his hand on the helm didn't loosen even a fraction: "The temperature is too high!"

"The coolant is about to boil away!"

"Forget the temperature! Charge through!"

Su Qingyu gripped the handrail tightly, enduring the rapidly rising temperature inside the cabin.

Her eyes didn't blink as she stared at the massive shadow on the sonar screen representing the aircraft carrier wreckage:

"It's right ahead! That's... a gap!"

At the end of the white mist that the searchlights could barely penetrate, the outline of the mountain-sized "uss united states" wreckage finally emerged.

But at this moment, the path to the reactor core was completely blocked by collapsed steel beams and twisted decking.

There was no way through.

"No way through?!" Old Chen cried out in despair.

"No way through..."

Su Qingyu shoved Old Chen aside and slammed her hands onto the weapons console, her eyes flashing with desperate madness:

"Then we'll smash a way through!"

"Weapon system takeover! Engineering Mechanical Arm—Full Power Output!"

Su Qingyu's voice no longer trembled in the slightest; her hands, clad in silver nano-gloves, became a blur on the console.

Accompanied by the dull roar of hydraulic pumps, the heavy Mechanical Arm on the black iron's starboard side, which had been used to carry cargo and dismember the Crab King.

Reached out fiercely beyond the protection of the energy shield with an aura of certain death.

"Zzzzz—!!"

The moment it touched the scalding boiling water outside, the anti-corrosion coating on the Mechanical Arm's surface instantly vaporized.

The entire thick metal arm, baked by temperatures of thousands of degrees, turned a heart-stopping dark red at a visible rate.

It looked like a fire poker just pulled from a forge.

But it didn't stop.

Under Su Qingyu's near-manic control.

That giant alloy steel claw, already glowing red-hot.

Was inserted with pinpoint precision into the gap in the carrier's side armor that had been squeezed and deformed.

"Open... for me!!!"

Su Qingyu's sharp cry seemed to overlap with the roar of the Mechanical Arm.

"Creeeeeak—Bang!!!"

A soul-shaking sound of tearing metal echoed through the deep sea.

That was top-tier aircraft carrier steel from the old era, super armor designed to withstand torpedoes and anti-ship missiles.

But before the terrifying, nuclear-driven strength of the black iron.

Under the tearing of that red-hot Mechanical Arm.

This special steel plate, hundreds of millimeters thick, actually behaved like a piece of thin, brittle sheet metal.

Sparks exploded in the water, and bubbles churned frantically.

Twisted steel beams let out a death-rattle groan, and snapped rivets flew everywhere like bullets.

In those suffocating few seconds.

Su Qingyu forcefully tore a gruesome hole several meters in diameter in that desperate high wall of steel!

"Boom!"

As the final obstructing armor plate was violently torn away, an even more blinding and lethal stream of pale light.

Gushed out from deep within the hole.

That was the core zone.

That was the starting point of the impending destruction.

"The way is open! Charge in!!"

Su Qingyu ignored the alarms about the Mechanical Arm starting to melt from overheating and roared at the still-dazed Old Chen:

"Now! Quick!!!"

The black iron's massive hull squeezed into the hole torn by the Mechanical Arm with a piercing screech of friction.

Before them was a chaotic world composed entirely of high-pressure steam, radiation flows, and boiling seawater.

Visibility was near zero.

Everything was a blur of white, and the intense turbulence caused the multi-thousand-ton warship to toss violently like a leaf in the wind.

"Countdown: 30 seconds!"

zero's alarm had become mechanical and numb, as if counting down for this suicidal mission.

"Where is he... where exactly is he?!"

Su Qingyu stared intently at the snowy, distorted screen, her hands frantically switching detection frequencies on the console.

The searchlight beams swept wildly through the milky boiling water, but could only illuminate tumbling wreckage and bubbles.

No response, no signal.

That sense of despair was like being strangled by the throat.

"Is he... has he already been blown to bits?" Old Chen's voice carried a sob; he was on the verge of a total breakdown.

"Shut up!"

Su Qingyu barked. Just then, her gaze suddenly locked onto a corner of the screen.

In the center of that chaotic, violent white turbulence that could tear anything apart, there was an unusual glimmer.

It wasn't the blue light of the reactor, nor the fire of an explosion.

It was an extremely faint, yet exceptionally stable dark-golden glow.

Like the last unextinguished candle in a storm, or the lingering warmth in the depths of ash.

As the searchlight beam focused, the tiny figure finally appeared.

Jiang Ran was floating quietly directly above the reactor ruins.

His powered armor was already shattered, and more than half of his body was exposed to the lethal heat.

But he hadn't been boiled, nor had he been torn apart.

On the contrary, that dim dark-golden pattern wrapped around him like a sacred film.

Maintaining the last spark of life in the eye of this destructive storm.

He had his eyes tightly closed.

His hands still gripped that heavy Alloy Spinal Column tightly, as if it were a trophy he would never let go of.

"Found him!!!"

Su Qingyu's shout almost cracked her voice.

She didn't hesitate for a second.

Maneuvering that red-hot, even melting Mechanical Arm, she reached toward that tiny figure.

"Hold on... you must hold on..."

In that heat capable of melting steel.

The Mechanical Arm's servo motors let out a death-rattle groan, their movements becoming slow and sluggish.

But under Su Qingyu's extreme micro-management.

This massive and clumsy steel claw showed surgical precision and gentleness at this moment.

"Click."

Three red-hot alloy fingertips carefully closed together.

They avoided Jiang Ran's body and precisely hooked onto the remaining armor attachment points and that spinal column.

Securing him firmly within its palm.

"Got him!!!"

The contact feedback from the sensors caused Su Qingyu's overstretched nerves to finally snap, and tears burst from her eyes.

"Countdown: 10 seconds! core criticality!!" zero's final ultimatum sounded.

"Old Chen! Retreat! Retreat now!!!" Su Qingyu screamed with all her might.

"Hold on tight!!!"

Old Chen, who had been ready, slammed the power lever into full reverse.

"Rumble—!!!"

The thrusters at the rear of the black iron erupted in a brilliant blue light.

Trailing a long wake, it shot backward like a startled giant beast through the gap that was about to be destroyed.

The very second they cleared the aircraft carrier wreckage.

Behind them, that ball of white light, compressed to the limit, finally lost its last restraint.

Destruction had arrived.