harleyscars 050 Arrival
050 Arrival
Ling leaned down, placing one hand on Lu Mingfei's stiff arm and the other on his forehead, feeling its coolness. It was comforting, and she felt a deep sense of nostalgia.
"For the past ten minutes, you have been in a deep coma. While you were unconscious, I gave you a high-intensity massage. It's normal for you to feel pain in your limbs."
Lu Mingfei saw sweat beading on Zero's forehead and his face flushed, but his tone remained calm: "For the next ten minutes, you should try to relax your body to prevent cramps."
"Thank you, Zero."
"You can close your eyes and rest for a while longer."
"No need, I'm fine just watching over you. I feel at ease with you here."
The torrential rain outside filled the silence. Ling sat next to Lu Mingfei, intently watching the IV drip, her blush never fading.
With another violent rocking motion, the water in the hold had risen to waist level, and floating engine oil spread out in a colorful film on the surface. The damage control timbers began to deform slightly under the pressure of the bulkheads, like matchsticks about to break.
"Hold on! Substitute!"
The deformed bulkhead gradually pushed out the wooden wedges. Chief Engineer Kumagai Kijiro was pressed against the supporting wood, his bones creaking under the immense pressure. He could no longer hear the roars around him, only feel the icy seawater slowly engulfing his nostrils.
The sailors worked in groups of three: two held the supporting beams in place, while the third used a hammer to drive the wedges into the gaps. In the tense atmosphere, the only communication was in short, concise words: "Up," "Hammer," "Change men."
"Crack!" A load-bearing log, unable to withstand the weight, sprang up with a sharp splinter and pierced the shoulder of a nearby sailor.
Before he could even scream, the sailor plunged headfirst into the floodwater and lost consciousness.
"Pull him up! Cover for him!" Kumagai Kina grabbed the sailor by the collar, his arm muscles bulging, and threw him to the people behind him.
"Pfft, cough cough!" The water pump suddenly choked, and a plume of black smoke shot out of the exhaust pipe.
"The water pump is broken!"
With a "snap," cabin number two was plunged into darkness.
"Short circuit!" someone shouted in the darkness.
"Pull the lever! Pull the lever now! Cough cough..." Kumagai Kina shouted in the darkness, accidentally choking on river water. "Cough cough, all personnel evacuate to the outside of bulkhead number two! Seal the compartment!"
There was no navigation technology to speak of. The whole ship was like a broken bathtub being played with by a giant hand. Every time it fell on a wave crest, it felt like the keel was going to be broken in two.
"Azimuth 180! Directly below! It's drifting, it's creating cavitation bubbles!"
Ye Sheng lay slumped over the control panel, his words becoming slurred as he spoke the last few words, his pupils dilating.
"Ye Sheng! Don't sleep!" Selma screamed and pounced on him. She grabbed the tactical tourniquet tied around Ye Sheng's thigh with both hands and twisted the wrench hard.
"Ah—!" The metal handle dug deep into his flesh, and the excruciating pain felt like a red-hot wire piercing his nerves. Ye Sheng screamed and tilted his head back, being pulled back from the brink of unconsciousness.
"Report the coordinates! Keep reporting!" Selma shouted through her tears.
In the crack in the lower deck, Mans knelt in the water, his chest heaving violently.
The impact came again without warning. Mans slammed his palms on the water, and the Word of Power: Dustless Land instantly took shape.
An invisible repulsive field collided violently with the impact force of tens of tons of solid material. The main beam groaned and twisted, and the air filled with peeling paint powder and flying metal fragments. Mans groaned as he was thrown to the top of the cabin, then crashed heavily onto the deck, which was covered in shattered glass, spitting out a mouthful of blood mixed with pieces of internal organs.
On the upper deck, Second Officer Gunaya kicked open a jammed heavy machine gun. The barrel was red-hot, emitting white smoke in the rain. Piles of spent shell casings tumbled down the sloping deck into the Yangtze River.
"The barrel is overheating! We've run out of bullets!" Gunnar shouted in despair.
Aki knelt in the wind and rain, her vision blurred by the backlash of the "blazing sun," able to see only swaying shadows. She clutched two alchemical torpedoes to her chest; these were her last heavy weapons.
Ye Sheng's bloodshot eyes widened suddenly. "Starboard! It's out of the water! Charge straight ahead! Seventy knots!"
Grayson desperately lunged at the steering wheel, but there was no room to even turn it to full throttle.
"Aki! Drop the bomb!" Gunnar shouted.
"Back off..." Aki bit her lip and shouted in the howling wind, "Wait until it's right in my face! This is the last thing!"
The river roared and surged backward, the dragon warriors parted the water walls, tearing through the night. The extreme speed of seventy knots transformed this behemoth into a heavy torpedo, and the suffocating feeling of death instantly gripped everyone's throats.
Thirty meters.
Twenty meters.
Fifteen meters.
Aki closed her eyes in despair and pulled out the safety pins of the last two torpedoes.
However, the expected loud thud of steel tearing apart did not come.
"Zheng—"
A hexagonal light shield, radiating blinding golden light, appeared out of thin air in front of the dragon servant's nose without warning. Immediately afterwards, two more were superimposed. Three golden geometric light walls, each two meters wide, were forcefully wedged between the dragon and the Moniah.
The pureblooded ancient dragon, weighing tens of tons, crashed headfirst into the first wall of light at a speed of seventy knots.
"boom!"
The first wall exploded along with the dragon scales. The golden light flashed and then disappeared. The dark blue scales crumbled like ceramics struck by a hammer, and the dragon's head broke through the barrier.
Its speed decreased by more than half, but its remaining momentum was still enough to smash everything in its path. The dragon servant, covered in broken scales and blood mist, crashed into the second golden hexagon.
"Click-clack—"
The dragon servant's flesh and blood, along with shattered scales, sprayed out in a fan-like spray, and the light wall shattered silently once again before the dragon servant's twisted body.
The terrifying force, enough to shatter the main keel, struck the third light wall. The enormous recoil sent the once-mighty beast flying straight back into the churning river, like a bird hitting bulletproof glass.
Everyone who was still breathing stared blankly at the miraculous scene in mid-air.
Under a stormy night sky, Lu Mingfei stood in his Kassel College uniform. His face was pale, and there was a bandage on the back of his hand. He stared at the dragon servant who had crashed into him, as if he were watching a fly swarming into tempered glass.
Just minutes before, he was being held down in a physiotherapy chair by Zero. The tinnitus, threatening to send him into shock, made him momentarily disoriented, unsure if he was in the Yangtze River or Tokyo-3. In his dazed state, he saw Shinji roaring inside Unit-01, and Rei Ayanami launching a suicide attack with an N2 bomb.
He returned carrying the memories of the previous world, so why does he have to repeat this absurd, death-defying script?
Lu Mingfei sighed irritably, his eyes revealing extreme weariness and resentment.
The raging wind and rain were repelled by an invisible force within half a meter of his body. One by one, golden hexagonal light panels lit up beneath his feet, then silently extinguished after he passed. He stood on the golden steps, blocking the wrecked Moniah from the giant dragon that was rolling and wailing in the water.