78: The Ark has arrived! It's an aerial gunship capable of crushing everything in its path.

Jiang Ran had just stepped through the mahogany doors, which were deformed from the blast.

A piercing red waveform suddenly popped up on the monitoring radar in the bottom-right corner of his retina.

[Warning: High-frequency encrypted pulse signal detected]

[Signal Source: 5 meters away, rear]

[Encryption Level: Military Grade I]

This signal wasn't sent through conventional communication frequency bands.

Instead, it pierced directly through the surrounding electronic fog, shooting straight toward the clouds above like a cloud-piercing arrow.

Jiang Ran paused mid-step and slightly turned his head.

Amidst the ruins where deathly silence and stench intertwined.

Golden Tooth, who had been slumped like a pile of mud, somehow found the strength to prop up half his body from the ground.

His face was covered in blood, but his mouth split into an extremely spiteful and crazed grin.

"Heh... Heh heh..."

Golden Tooth's cheeks puffed out, as if he had crushed something in his mouth.

That signature pure gold, diamond-encrusted molar had shattered, revealing the sophisticated micro-circuitry inside.

It wasn't a decoration; it was a death-soldier beacon that would trigger as soon as it was crushed.

"You think... taking the money... means you can leave?"

Golden Tooth's voice was hoarse and broken, sounding like two rusted iron plates rubbing together.

Incontinence caused by fear kept his lower body trembling, but a madness of mutual destruction burned in his eyes:

"That was... the account used to pay taxes to the 'Ark'... You touched it... and that means you touched those above..."

He tremblingly raised a blood-stained finger and pointed at the ceiling.

Then he pointed at Jiang Ran, finally letting out a tragic laugh like a night owl.

"They... are here."

The electromagnetic waves in the air were vibrating violently; Jiang Ran was very familiar with that unique frequency fluctuation.

It wasn't the garbage signals patched together on the wasteland, but orderly, domineering military code with forced access privileges.

[Signal Analysis Complete: Emergency SOS / Extreme Threat]

[Target Response: Ark Security Bureau 7th Patrol Team]

Looking at the data stream rapidly refreshing on his retina, Jiang Ran didn't show the panicked expression Golden Tooth expected; instead, he just lightly raised an eyebrow.

"So it's just a watchdog."

Jiang Ran withdrew his gaze, not even bothering to go back and deliver a finishing blow.

For a piece of trash who had lost all value and was about to be handled as a discarded pawn, wasting even one more bullet was a desecration of resources.

He looked up, his gaze passing through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the corridor, looking toward the layered, gloomy, and heavy sea of clouds.

The red dot on the radar was enlarging at an alarming speed.

It started as a subtle tremor.

The water in the decorative vases on both sides of the corridor rippled in circles.

Immediately after, the special bulletproof glass, strong enough to withstand a Category 12 typhoon, began to emit an overburdened low groan.

"Vrrr——"

That wasn't the sound of wind, but the low-frequency infrasound resonance produced by some high-power anti-gravity engine operating at extremely close range.

The sound bypassed the eardrums entirely, echoing crazily within the chest and skull, instinctively inducing palpitations and dizziness.

The originally dark and gloomy sea of clouds outside the window was now being churned by an invisible giant hand, boiling and tumbling violently.

In the next second, the light vanished completely.

A steel behemoth arrogantly tore through the heavy rain clouds, carrying a suffocating pressure as it slowly drifted into Jiang Ran's field of vision.

This was a 'judgment-class' Aerial Gunship belonging to the Ark forces.

It lacked any streamlined beauty; its entire body was covered in matte-gray composite armor, filled with the aesthetics of industrial violence.

The hull was eighty meters long, with massive ducted rotors on both sides spraying ghostly blue high-temperature particle streams, instantly evaporating the surrounding mist.

It hovered just outside the Floating City building like a floating island of steel, directly blocking the view of the entire floor-to-ceiling window.

A massive shadow instantly swallowed the floor where the restaurant was located.

The air currents hit like a mountain-toppling wave, slamming hard against the glass curtain wall with loud 'clangs.'

The steel structure of the entire building emitted rhythmic twisting sounds under the force of this close-range thrust.

The thick hydraulic landing gear retracted.

The weapon bay doors on the belly slid open slowly, revealing dense honeycomb-style missile launch tubes inside.

Along with a 30mm six-barrel rotary cannon that was rapidly spinning and preheating.

Before this gargantuan object, a tiny human was like a fly on a glass window; with just a light press, they would be crushed to pieces.

The darkness was instantly torn apart.

Without any warning, following several loud pops of capacitors charging, four high-power xenon tactical searchlights lit up simultaneously from the gunship's belly.

Those were blindingly pale beams of light, with an intensity high enough to burn retinas in an instant.

They precisely penetrated the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the originally dim and ambiguous restaurant like an operating table under shadowless lamps.

Every speck of dust suspended in the air, every drop of blood splattered on the carpet, and even the pores on Golden Tooth's face, twisted in terror, were revealed in minute detail under this cruel, intense light, with nowhere to hide.

Immediately after, the sound waves from the external speakers hit the building's outer wall like a sledgehammer.

"Illegal armed personnel inside, listen up!"

The voice, physically amplified through an expansion array, carried the distortion and indifference unique to metal diaphragms, shaking the crystal chandeliers in the restaurant violently and causing glass cups to shatter one after another.

"This is the Ark Security Bureau 7th Patrol Team.

You have been locked on by fire-control radar."

"Disarm immediately! Put your hands behind your heads and kneel for scanning!"

"Repeat! Disarm immediately!"

Dense red laser aiming dots swarmed into the room, dancing crazily on Jiang Ran's chest, forehead, and the surrounding floor.

Outside the window, that six-barrel rotary cannon had already begun to idle slowly, emitting a heart-palpitating 'zzzt' electric sound—the sound of the Grim Reaper sharpening his blade.

"You have ten seconds."

The cold countdown echoed in the empty heights like a death warrant.

"Ten, nine, eight..."

There was no room for negotiation, nor was any explanation needed.

In the logic of the Ark forces, lives in the Lower District did not possess the right to judicial explanation.

If you didn't kneel, you were dust that had to be eradicated.

"Otherwise, we will conduct indiscriminate fire coverage and completely level this floor."

The intense light stretched his shadow extremely long against the wall behind him.

And deep within those pitch-black pupils, countless ghostly blue data streams were refreshing at a dizzying speed.

It even outshone the brightness of the external searchlights.

"Seven, six..."

The countdown from the loudspeaker continued, without any emotional fluctuation, as if reading out a death notice.

Facing this desperate situation that would make any normal person collapse, Jiang Ran did not put his hands behind his head and kneel as requested.

He just slightly turned his body; the micro-drones he had just hacked flew out from the building.

Three coin-sized, pitch-black disc-shaped objects fell into his palm.

"Go."

Jiang Ran flicked his fingers.

Under the cover of the massive engine roar, three nearly imperceptible black shadows instantly flew close to the ground.

Braving the violent air currents outside the window, they struggled through the cracks in the window frame that had been shaken open by the pressure.

Jiang Ran didn't look at the massive hull outside; his gaze lowered, focusing on the tactical assistance interface popping up on his retina.

At this point, the image in the top-left corner of the interface had switched to three shaking, low-pixel black-and-white static images—

This was the first-person perspective sent back by the drones.

He quickly issued a command in his consciousness.

[Command Confirmed: Physical Bridge Mode]

[Target Locked: Ark-T 4.2 Fire-Control Radar Array Base (External Maintenance Port)]

In the images, the massive gunship's belly armor plates appeared cold and hard in the gale.

The three tiny Mechanical Insects, relying on magnetic suction legs, struggled to crawl to the gap in the radar base.

"Bzzz——"

The faint sound of mechanical operation was masked by the roar.

High-strength diamond probes extended from the drones' bellies, violently piercing the outer waterproof skin and stabbing hard into the exposed data bus cables beneath.

[Physical Link: Established]

[Warning: Military-grade firewall detected, local computing power insufficient to crack]

Looking at the red warning popping up on his retina, Jiang Ran remained expressionless.

He naturally knew that with the portable equipment on his person, he couldn't instantly breach a warship's firewall.

But he was never fighting alone.

"Call the black iron."

Jiang Ran gave a cold order in the internal channel: "Transfer master control permissions."

"AI zero, take over the data stream."

In the next second, five kilometers away, inside the black iron anchored in the shadows of the river, the indicator lights of the massive server clusters flashed frantically.

[Command Received]

[Remote Data Link: Synchronized]

[AI zero: Intervening...]

The assistance interface before Jiang Ran's eyes changed instantly.

The original red firewall warning was as fragile as paper under the impact of the LV5 warship main brain's massive computing power.

A waterfall of data streams crazily scrolled across the screen.

It wasn't him hacking; it was the strong artificial intelligence on the black iron conducting a dimensionality reduction strike on this outdated gunship.

"Three."

The countdown on the broadcast continued.

The behemoth hovering outside the window seemed to lose patience, and the motor speed of that six-barrel cannon suddenly increased.

But on Jiang Ran's assistance interface, the progress bar was already full.

[Underlying Protocol: Rewritten]

[Fire-Control Permissions: Forcibly Stripped]

"Two."

The infrared laser dot that had been dead-locked on Jiang Ran's forehead suddenly flickered without warning.

Immediately after, that imperceptible jitter quickly turned into violent twitching.

Over a dozen laser beams, as if drunk, began to scramble wildly across the restaurant's walls, ceiling, and floor.

Amidst the roar of the engines outside, a discordant noise suddenly mixed in—

That was the metallic wail caused by logical conflicts after the servo motors' parameters were tampered with by AI zero.

Jiang Ran looked at the green [AUTHORIZED] text displayed on his interface and let out a soft breath.

At this very moment, the massive computing power had completed the 'soul-snatching' of this steel behemoth through those three tiny drones.

"Got you."

Jiang Ran looked at that pile of scrap metal outside the window, his tone calm:

"Now, no matter whose dog you are, the leash is in my hands."