123: Chapter 123, Zone 069: No partners accepted!

Jiang Jiuyou’s ice-blue eyes were fixed on that dark-gold mass atop the Ghost Fortress for a full three seconds.

The diamond-shaped prism rotated, refracting a ghostly blue light that swept across the desert floor, tracing a long trail of light over the rubble.

Her lingxi ring was burning like crazy—the energy detection function within its fifteen-meter range had been directly overloaded by the dark energy fluctuations leaking from that device.

She took the ring off her middle finger and gripped it in her palm, her fingertips feeling the scorching heat of the metal casing.

S-rank.

In the entire District 069, out of the initial pool of one million people screened until now, not a single person had ever crafted an S-rank weapon.

Chen Chen had built it last night.

The armored door opened hydraulically, and Chen Chen jumped down from the vehicle in his combat boots.

The void-rending ship-slaying blade swayed at his waist, its purple patterns unlit.

He walked over.

Her short silver-white hair clung to her temples, and the collar of her military overcoat stood tall, the morning wind making the hem of her coat snap loudly.

Her back was held perfectly straight, and her slim-fitting black turtleneck lining accentuated her shoulder and waistlines into aggressively sharp curves.

One meter away.

He stopped there.

"That thing on your roof—"

Jiang Jiuyou's voice was thinned out by the wind.

"It's enough to evaporate both of us along with this entire desert, isn't it?"

Chen Chen tilted his head slightly.

"Evaporate is a bit of an exaggeration."

"Then use another word."

"Annihilate."

Jiang Jiuyou's eyelashes twitched.

She stared at Chen Chen's face for two seconds, then suddenly smiled.

The smile was very slight, her lips curling only a fraction, but paired with her cold-to-the-point-of-harsh face, that small curve was actually more lethal than a full-blown smile.

"Fine."

She crossed her arms, the dark-gold reflection of the matrix on the roof mirrored in her ice-blue pupils.

"Annihilate. Then let me ask another way—did you call me here today because you want to annihilate me, or because you want to recruit me?"

"Depends on your performance."

Jiang Jiuyou lifted her chin half an inch.

"The Shadow Division has forty talent holders, nineteen vehicles, and ten people at A-rank or above. All can be allied with."

She paused for a beat. "The condition is a dual-core command system: you handle combat, and I handle logistics and personnel."

Chen Chen kept his hands in his pockets as he finished listening.

Then he took half a step forward.

This half-step compressed the distance between them to less than thirty centimeters.

Jiang Jiuyou was 1.78 meters tall in her combat boots, and her forehead reached just to the bridge of his nose.

She could smell the residual scent of metal and the faint, scorched aroma of high-carbon steel on him.

"District 069 doesn't need partners."

Chen Chen lowered his head, his gaze sliding from the top of her silver-white hair all the way down to her collarbone.

One corner of her military overcoat's collar was open, the black turtleneck lining clinging tightly to her slender neck, her collarbone casting a shallow shadow in the morning light.

"I only take subordinates."

Jiang Jiuyou's pupils constricted.

"If you want to get on my vehicle—"

"You have to trade yourself for it."

The wind stopped for two seconds.

Jiang Jiuyou's breathing rate didn't change, but her fingers gripping the lingxi ring in her palm tightened slightly.

To the southeast, the ground began to vibrate.

A low engine roar rolled in from beyond the horizon, and a visible pillar of dust rose like a grayish-yellow dragon.

Iron Wall had arrived.

Twenty-seven military armored vehicles were lined up in three columns; the lead vehicle was a B-rank heavy troop carrier welded with extra armor, with a dual-barrel rapid-fire cannon mounted on the roof.

Not all the vehicles following were military—there were over a dozen miscellaneous modified off-road vehicles, pickups, and even a school bus welded into a metal hedgehog, all of them powerful freelancers who had come after hearing the news.

Shen Wanbing's voice came through the communicator: "They're here. Including both the military and freelancers, there are nearly two hundred people in total."

Nearly two hundred people.

The last elites of District 069 were all crowded onto this stretch of desert.

The convoy stopped three hundred meters away.

Everyone's first reaction upon getting out of their vehicles was to look up.

The thirty-one-ton Ghost Fortress hovered in mid-air, its four-story structure taller than a two-story building.

The A-rank dark-gold external armor glinted coldly in the morning light, and heavy serrated anti-collision horns protruded from the front, their surfaces still stained with dark bloodstains from crushing Aberration yesterday.

On the left side of the roof, the black barrels of the twin-mounted heavy machine guns rotated slightly as the Radar's auto-lock mode scanned the area.

On the right—

The Void Annihilation Matrix.

On the dark-gold hemisphere, the diamond-shaped focusing prism rotated once, and a ghostly blue beam of light swept across the roofs of all the vehicles present.

The sound of people gasping for air rose one after another.

"Is that a fucking car? It's more like an aircraft carrier!"

"Four stories... what is that light? Why did my whole body go numb after it swept over me—"

"Stop looking at that, look at that dark-gold thing. Look... that energy fluctuation..."

A short, stout man carrying an engineering box suddenly knelt on the ground, clutching his forehead, his voice trembling:

"S-rank... that's an S-rank weapon... Oh my god, it's S-rank..."

The commotion spread instantly.

Iron Wall stepped out of the lead armored vehicle.

He wore a heavily worn officer's uniform, his left arm was wrapped in bandages, and there was one more scar on his face than when they last met.

Four armed guards followed behind him.

Iron Wall looked up at the Ghost Fortress for a full five seconds, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Then he withdrew his gaze and strode toward Chen Chen.

But he stopped halfway.

Because the armored door of the Ghost Fortress opened once again.

Shen Wanbing came out first.

A damaged, high-end black business suit tightly hugged her body, the pencil skirt accentuating an exaggerated waist-to-hip ratio. Extremely thin black stockings covered her long legs, and black stilettos stepped onto the landing platform. Her slightly messy long black curly hair was blown back by the wind, revealing the ghostly blue light of the concentration ice heart necklace.

A terrifying 36E bust paired with an ice-cold, serious expression.

The entire scene went silent for a beat.

Jiang Yanxue was the second to jump down.

The Shadow Instant-Kill Blade rested across her shoulder, and her black skin-tight combat suit outlined the lethal curve between her waist and hips. Her dark-red pupils scanned everyone present with the oppressive aura of a predator patrolling its territory.

Su Xiaoqi poked her head out from under Jiang Yanxue's arm.

Her twin tails swayed twice, and her oversized T-shirt was stretched tight in the front—

A small 1.6-meter frame topped with an exaggerated 36E bust, she was still clutching half a piece of unfinished jerky, her large, bright black eyes darting around curiously.

Blood Rose made the final appearance.

Her high-slit leather skirt fluttered in the wind, revealing a large expanse of snow-white thigh. She wore a lace camisole with nothing underneath, and her burgundy curly hair fell over her bare shoulders.

Standing 1.82 meters tall in knee-high boots, every step she took carried a thick, cloying, aphrodisiac-like exotic fragrance.

Four women stood in front of the thirty-one-ton steel beast.

All two hundred men present collectively lost their voices.

Women who could maintain such a state on the tenth day of the apocalypse—any one of them would be enough to make the leader of any wasteland power go bankrupt just to snatch them away.

And Chen Chen had four.

No, including Shen Wanxing who hadn't come out of the vehicle and Qin Hongye at the second-floor sniper position—there were six.

Envy.

Pure, heart-burning, lung-searing envy surged up from the chests of every male survivor.

But the shelf life of envy was only a fraction of a second.

Because Chen Chen was standing right there.

Standing over 1.9 meters tall, his dark-gray tactical long-sleeved shirt was stretched tight against his frame, and a long purple blade with flickering patterns hung at his waist.

The bio-electric field emitted by his 117 points of constitution made goosebumps erupt on the back of everyone's necks within three hundred meters simultaneously.

Envy was instantly eclipsed by fear.