Chapter 57: Acquiring Critical Data

The moment the allied team stepped into the energy core, the sensors of all sixteen battle armors shrieked in unison, a piercing wail like the horn of the underworld that left everyone's eardrums aching. Crimson radiation warnings flickered frantically across the tactical visors, resembling countless bloodshot eyes staring fixedly at them. Beneath the cobalt-blue dome, a prism-shaped storage device floated in the center of a dark-purple energy field. The halos surged like imprisoned nebulae, every pulsation accompanied by a slight distortion of space. With each flash of the runes flowing across the device's surface, the surrounding space cracked like a shattered mirror into cobweb-like folds, from which deep, fathomless darkness leaked, as though opening into another unknown realm. Lin Yu's breath condensed into white mist inside his helmet, his gaze locked onto the winding energy conduits at the base of the device. Those conduits were pumping viscous, emerald-green fluid, and the high-pitched shriek of the flowing liquid matched the sonic frequency of the extraterrestrial creatures they had previously encountered with eerie precision—a bizarre coincidence that sent a chill down his spine.

"Quantum entanglement index has breached the critical threshold!" The armor of the Entropy-Void Sentinel leader flashed with a warning red light, twelve energy veins pulsing furiously across his torso like angry, fiery serpents. "This is a central node connected to the dark matter network of the entire universe!" His voice carried unconcealable shock. Old Zhou dropped to one knee, his calloused fingers slashing through the air to summon a holographic interface. Each streak of command light was instantly vaporized by the extreme heat, leaving a faint, scorched odor in the air. "The Cthulhu alloy shell has four hundred and eighty built-in nano-scale self-destruction devices; any brute-force decryption will trigger dimensional collapse." His voice trembled with tension, and the garbled code constantly popping up on his goggles devoured all decryption attempts like a black plague, every pulsing character proclaiming their impending doom.

Sudden disaster struck! The runes on the surface of the device instantly morphed into a burning galaxy, their blinding radiance too intense to bear. Twelve dark-purple energy beams shot skyward, intertwining at the dome to form a continuously spinning hexagram array, whose glowing lights flickered like countless pairs of malicious eyes. Accompanied by the shrieking tear of space—a sound resembling a giant's death rattle—the elite troops of the mysterious organization poured down from the void, clad in black armor like messengers from hell. Their weapons spewed black spears condensed from dark matter; with every impact against the floor, they blossomed into miniature black holes that swallowed the surrounding light, warping and twisting adjacent space as if it were being wantonly kneaded by an invisible giant hand. Lin Yu's pulse rifle grew scorching hot during continuous firing, the heat transferring through his gloves to his hands. The splattered purple blood floated into bizarre crystals that refracted an eerie iridescent glow in the zero-gravity field, light that felt like a demon's smile. "Old Zhou! We can't hold out for three minutes!" His roar, mixed with the roar of explosions, made the communicator crackle fiercely, laden with anxiety and despair.

"Use this!" Old Zhou snapped the quantum key necklace from his neck. On the archaic silver pendant, the family's heirloom quantum entanglement patterns resonated with the device, casting a faint glow across its surface. The instant the key was plugged in, the light throughout the entire core distorted into the shape of a Klein bottle, folding space into an infinitely looping labyrinth. The device emitted a mournful cry reminiscent of an ancient behemoth awakening—a sound capable of piercing the soul and chilling the bone. Simultaneously, the Entropy-Void Sentinels deployed golden energy cages; amid the swirling runes, the swarming enemies were temporarily trapped within the grid of light. The radiant barrier stood in stark contrast to the foes' black armor. Su Yao's assault squad moved like black lightning, their shock daggers plunging precisely into enemy joints, the splashed silver bodily fluid corroding smoke-emitting holes through the energy cages with a sound like a demonic whisper.

With a crisp snap akin to breaking glass, the energy barrier on the device's surface disintegrated completely, its fragments scattering like shooting stars. Old Zhou's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard in a blur, his eyes glued to the screen as sweat dripped continuously from his brow. The data download progress bar surged at a pace visible to the naked eye, every single percent granting the team a glimmer of hope. Yet just as the progress reached seventy-three percent, the ground split open with cobweb-like fractures, and corrosive purple mist spewed forth. The vapor rolled and spread across the floor with a life of its own, causing the alloy deck to emit a teeth-grinding sizzle wherever it touched, as if groaning in agonizing pain. "Anti-matter self-destruct countdown initiated! One hundred and eighty seconds remaining!" Amid the Space-Time Administration commander's scream, the entire base began to vibrate violently, rubble tumbling down from the ceiling as everyone struggled desperately to maintain their balance amidst the violent swaying.

At that exact moment, an encrypted transmission suddenly popped onto the holographic screen. Within the display, symbols composed of warped space-time lines rotated slowly, against a backdrop of countless galaxies twinkling like pieces on a chessboard, conveying the utter insignificance of humanity against the vastness of the cosmos. A voice, altered and layered with a metallic mockery, spoke: "Did you truly believe that eliminating these pawns could alter the outcome? The entire universe is nothing more than dust upon our chessboard..." Before the sentence finished, the image was swallowed by corrupted code, but Old Zhou had already hoisted the data storage device high, his face drenched in sweat and wild triumph: "Download complete! But that vortex..." His voice cut off abruptly, his eyes wide with terror.

Following Su Yao's trembling finger, Lin Yu looked up to see a hundred-meter-wide black vortex mysteriously materializing within the collapsing dome. Purple lightning flashed incessantly within the vortex, and the whispering voices emanating from it struck directly at the depths of the soul, as though countless eyes were peering from the void, chilling one to the bone. Ah Ken's bolt carrier clicked empty repeatedly, his voice fraught with unconcealable dread: "That's not a naturally formed wormhole... It's a cross-dimensional prison they've opened!" His voice shook violently, and the weapon in his grasp trembled uncontrollably, as though it might slip from his control at any second.