95: Two minutes of life-or-death race!

"Brother Feng! Did you hear that? Th-that voice said... it's going to disintegrate?"

Inside the golden pipe, Wang Dalong's voice had completely changed pitch; fear almost made him bite his own tongue.

Although he didn't understand a single word of that ancient and majestic language, the destructive meaning inherent in the words "disintegrate" and "countdown" was a universal language etched into the genes of all intelligent life!

"I heard it."

Lin Feng's response was unusually calm, but his footsteps didn't falter for a second; instead, he suddenly accelerated, the sound of the wind he kicked up whistling through the narrow pipe.

One hundred and twenty seconds!

Only one hundred and twenty seconds!

From their current position, sprinting all the way to the planned main waste discharge outlet would take at least ten minutes, even if they ran until their legs broke!

Time was completely insufficient!

It was a dead end!

Lin Feng's brain was working frantically at an unprecedented speed.

Countless streams of information exploded in his mind; the city's 3D map and the spiderweb-like pipe network map overlapped, intertwined, and merged instantly. He frantically performed data filtering and path analysis; every node and every fork was lit up in his mind and then instantly discarded.

There must be a closer exit!

There must be!

A conventional ground exit? Forget it; rushing out now would just be delivering their heads to those mechanical lumps. The main waste discharge outlet was too far... what was left?

An overlooked possibility suddenly leapt out from the deep sea of his memories!

Emergency escape passage!

In Lin Feng's mind, a picture instantly froze.

It was a fragment that had flashed by in the countless illusory memories he had received. The chief engineer of the Zhuojin Civilization, while reporting the city's final design plan to the High Council, had mentioned a top-secret backup plan.

To deal with the most extreme situations, such as the city being captured by foreign enemies or the energy core being destroyed, they had secretly built an Emergency Evacuation Dock near the underground river on the outskirts of the city for the evacuation of civilization's seeds!

Several small Escape Pods that could instantly break free from the city's gravitational pull were parked in that dock!

That was it!

The entrance to that dock... where on earth was it hidden?!

Lin Feng's footsteps suddenly stopped, and he stood frozen on the spot.

He closed his eyes, cutting off all external interference, and immersed his entire mind into the vast sea of memory fragments, forcing himself to search for that crucial coordinate!

Images flashed back rapidly in his consciousness—grand buildings, crisscrossing streets, complex energy circuits, and countless obscure Zhuojin Symbols... There!

Found it!

Lin Feng snapped his eyes open, a sharp light bursting forth!

The entrance to that dock wasn't on the ground at all! For absolute concealment, it was directly connected to a main energy conduction pipe, and its entrance was disguised as an inconspicuous, ordinary maintenance station!

He quickly scanned the symbols engraved on the pipe wall beside him and immediately determined his current coordinates!

"This way! Change route, follow me!"

Without a word of nonsense, Lin Feng grabbed the still-dazed Wang Dalong, abandoned their original route, and turned to rush into a wider main pipe with thicker walls nearby.

At the very moment they changed direction, this great Golden City officially began its death overture.

"Rumble—!"

A vibration so violent it was indescribable suddenly came from all directions, from the deepest part beneath their feet!

This time, it was no longer the previous energy shock, but an irreparable disintegration originating from the very structural foundation!

"Holy crap!"

Wang Dalong stumbled, nearly sent flying by the massive force, but fortunately, Lin Feng held onto him tightly. Still shaken, he instinctively shone his phone upward.

He saw that the indestructible golden pipe above his head had actually begun to show fine, spiderweb-like cracks!

The golden dust was no longer just scattered specks; it was pouring down from the cracks like rain, making it hard to keep one's eyes open.

"Brother Feng! The top... the top is going to collapse!" Wang Dalong's voice was full of horror... At the same time, above ground.

Osiris and his party, who were in the middle of breaking out, were also completely thrown into disarray by this sudden, earth-shaking transformation.

"Boom—!"

A golden building dozens of stories high groaned under the heavy metallic strain during the violent shaking. Then, like a tower with its blocks pulled from the middle, its waist suddenly snapped, and the upper half collapsed with a roar, crashing down toward Osiris and the others!

Dust and golden powder filled the sky, blotting out the sun!

"Scatter!"

Osiris's guards showed extremely high professionalism, scattering instantly and narrowly avoiding the main body of the collapsing building.

Countless mechanical guards that didn't have time to dodge were buried directly under the terrifying ruins, crushed into flat discs.

And this was only the beginning.

The collapse, like the first domino being knocked over, spread rapidly throughout the city at a frantic speed.

Skyscrapers snapped and collapsed one after another. Wide streets cracked down the middle and sank, revealing bottomless ravines below.

But this was no ordinary collapse.

Looking closely, one would find that this was an orderly, programmed "disintegration."

The golden modules that made up the grand buildings were actively losing their connection to each other; they detached from the buildings, turned into the most primitive components, and then, the moment they hit the ground, further decomposed into even finer golden powder.

This city, once brilliant to the extreme, was now thoroughly reducing itself to cosmic dust in a resolute manner.

"Boss! We have to speed up! We're about to be buried alive!" Night Owl's anxious voice crackled through the headset; even he couldn't remain calm in the face of such an apocalyptic disaster.

Osiris did not answer.

There was no expression on his face; in his grayish-blue eyes, there was only one path—the evacuation exit on the south side of the city that he had already set!

There, they had their parked Shuttle!

However, just as they were about to rush out of the collapse zone, a massive figure slowly stood up amidst the screeching sound of twisting metal from the ruins of a building that had just collapsed ahead.

Everyone instinctively stopped in their tracks.

It was a giant Golden Warrior over five meters tall!

Its size was far larger than any ordinary warrior seen before, and in its hand, it no longer held an energy blade, but a giant battle-axe flashing with terrifying electric light!

On the axe blade, blue-violet electric arcs leaped frantically, making a terrifying "zizi" sound that scorched and distorted the surrounding air.

On its golden body were energy patterns a hundred times more complex than those of an ordinary warrior, and the diamond-shaped energy core in its chest emitted a red light whose brightness and energy fluctuations were several times those of an ordinary warrior!

This was an elite unit of the Golden Guard, a Regional Commander responsible for guarding an area!

Its appearance was like an insurmountable mountain, completely blocking Osiris's only way out.

The mirror-smooth metal mask slowly turned toward Osiris and his party, and it raised the giant battle-axe, which was taller than a person, and pointed it at them.

A cold, emotionless consciousness, like a sentence, once again rang directly in everyone's mind.

【...Clear... all intruders...】