Chapter 29.

Chapter 29.

The progress bar for the transfer of command authority moved swiftly. Jie Linyuan drove, keeping an eye on the progress numbers on the operator screen from the corner of his eye. His heart thumped vigorously, its presence overwhelming, causing his chest to numb and his eardrums to buzz.

Why would Wu Yin do this? Would he suddenly stop?

He was half-expecting Wu Yin to suddenly cancel the operation and ask with a wicked smile, "What were you hoping for?"

Was this a test?

Should he stop Wu Yin and once again express his loyalty to gain his trust?

Jie Linyuan's mind was a mess, and soon he had no energy left to analyze Wu Yin's motives. His entire focus was seized by the narrow progress bar on the screen. His breath halted, his brain turning blank after extreme chaos, feeling as if walking on clouds, dangerously driving.

Those brief seconds felt like decades, each change in the numbers enough to startle his heart, stretching time so long that his limbs ached.

If Wu Yin really retracted his decision now, Jie Linyuan didn't know what he would do…

Fortunately, Wu Yin seemed to have no intention of doing so. He leaned tiredly against the passenger seat, too lazy to move even a finger, letting Xiaomei handle the operator with its leaves and stems acting as a stand, holding it in front of Wu Yin.

At the moment the progress bar reached 100%, the operator screen and Jie Linyuan's left eye display suddenly popped up a red warning, "Risk alert: Z1932's supreme command authority transfer to Mechanical War God experimental body Z1932 detected. Please proceed cautiously."

Yawning, Wu Yin, like dismissing an annoying ad, rapidly clicked the screen without reading. But the warning stubbornly reappeared, forcing the operator to read the terms and highlighting the dangers of unrestricted use of the Mechanical War God, strongly advising the owner to cancel the operation.

"Annoying…" Wu Yin almost wanted to smash the operator.

Jie Linyuan slowed down, watching Wu Yin repeatedly and resolutely click 'confirm', his eyes bloodshot, turning crimson unknowingly, teeth gritted. Catching Jie Linyuan's gaze, Wu Yin saw a giant white rabbit with red eyes staring ahead, seemingly indifferent, but his left hand was twisting the steering wheel into a twist.

Wu Yin chuckled, slightly cheered up by his poor mood.

After the final click, transferring the authority, Wu Yin found a 72-hour final confirmation cool-off period set by the system. During this time, the operator could still change his mind and cancel the transfer. Tsking, he looked around and saw the Black Knight's dog-like head eagerly pawing at the window, panting.

Wu Yin let Jie Linyuan lower the partition between the front and back seats and waved the operator at the Black Knight.

The Black Knight immediately sat obediently, tail wagging furiously.

The humanoid head was napping, control of the body given to the other head. Wu Yin smiled, petted its head, murmuring praises, then threw the operator into its mouth.

The Black Knight crunched on it, thoroughly enjoying its meal.

The warning pop-ups in Jie Linyuan's left eye finally ceased, leaving only a 72-hour countdown, reluctantly ticking in the corner. His excited and agitated emotions also settled in the silence of everything being resolved, fading away to nothing.

It's over, he thought. When the Beacon Shelter at the northern camp bought out his usage rights completely, all his information was deleted from the northern camp's database, and no backup of the highest authority was left. The team responsible for the Mechanical War God system at the northern camp had completely lost control over him.

This means that if the supreme authority device in Bilel's possession is damaged, the only option would be to contact the North Camp to replicate the device. However, beyond the 72-hour time limit, a critical requirement is that the current holder of the supreme authority, Bilel, must be present to activate the new system with his personal information.

—Bilel won't live that long.

He is about to break free from the shackles that have bound him for twenty years, gaining the personal freedom that every human being should inherently enjoy.

The army green SUV finally arrived at the outermost checkpoint. The journey there was mostly unobstructed, thanks to "Bilel's" facial recognition, but at this final checkpoint, the attitude of the nearby garrison troops changed drastically from cautious to aggressive, unleashing a barrage of bullets at their vehicle.

Spiked barricades lay on the ground, vowing to deny them any return.

The vehicles following them changed batch after batch. In fact, the gunfire and chaos behind them started earlier and were more disordered than with them at the checkpoint, indicating that Reagan could no longer wait for instructions from the leader.

"A mutiny." Jie Linyuan sneered. A shelter governed by the principles of banditry and militarism, where subordinates harbor double intentions and seize the moment of the leader's peril to rebel and reshuffle the power within the shelter, is not incomprehensible. That's why Jie Linyuan was certain of Bilel's inevitable death; even if Bilel miraculously escaped from them, his former subordinates would surely take his life.

Jie Linyuan shielded the driver's seat with his left arm and pulled Yang Mo over, "You drive."

"I, I, I..." Yang Mo's head shook like a rattle, turning to see Z1932 had already opened the window and flipped out through the narrow opening. He gasped, frantically trying to control the steering wheel that was twisted into a twist.

The sound of machine-gun fire rang out above them, and Yang Mo only saw the windshield peppered with bullet holes, thankfully not shattered. Ahead, the ground was littered with mud, blood, and severed limbs, the windshield wipers working non-stop, but he still couldn't see clearly, driving blindly in panic.

Then, he heard a weak voice from the passenger seat, "Floor the gas."

Yang Mo glanced at him, breathing heavily, "Leader...why are you..."

"Stop talking, floor the gas." Wu Yin struggled to extend his hand, reaching into Yang Mo's pocket under his gaze, pulling out the saline solution previously taken from a small store near Dongxin Lake.

Yang Mo didn't know why this was in his pocket, dodging bullets in panic, "There's a barricade ahead! Forcing our way through will blow the tires and flip the car!"

Wu Yin chuckled softly, "Trust in the war god."

Before his words fell, several missiles directly blasted a hole through the barricade ahead, obliterating those daring to intercept them. The SUV rolled over various sized holes, jostling the small beauty from the dashboard to under the seat.

"Ugh..." Wu Yin groaned in pain, faint black lines appearing around his eyes. He squinted painfully, his fingers weakly scratching, clutching at Black Knight's fur.

The dog-like head tenderly licked the back of his hand, then was pushed away by the humanoid head. Amber eyes met Wu Yin's for a few seconds before it bowed its head, taking the saline bag from his hand.

Wu Yin wanted to smile at it, but his expression uncontrollably flickered between panic, anger, and smiles. Black Knight growled warily, and Yang Mo, as if watching a horror movie, trembled silently in the driver's seat, daring not to make a sound.

Bilel's consciousness was about to break free from Wu Yin's control and return to his body.

At that moment, the passenger side window shattered from the outside, the vehicle shook, and amidst the flying glass, an armed hand reached in. Jie Linyuan hung upside down on the side of the vehicle, coldly aiming a gun at Bilel's forehead.

"You, you—" Bilel's beard trembled with a shocked and fearful expression, clearly having regained control of his body, only to face such a cruel dead end upon return.

Yet, Jie Linyuan saw in Bilel's eyes a look all too familiar to him: a peculiar calmness, a morbid fascination with the unfolding events, and a mocking understanding of his true nature.

Wu Yin's consciousness still lingered, visible in those irritating eyes.

Jie Linyuan's gaze turned colder, and without hesitation, he pulled the trigger against Bilel's forehead.

The bullet exploded in Bilel's brain, splattering blood, brain matter, and flesh across the cabin. Yang Mo, covered in blood, nearly turned the SUV into a bumper car. The speedometer's needle swung to the far right, trembling. After Jie Linyuan threw Bilel's body out of the car, no one was following them anymore, but Yang Mo, still in shock, floored the gas, speeding away.

Only when Jie Linyuan jumped back into the cabin and yelled at him to hit the brakes did Yang Mo snap out of it, emitting a choked sob before slamming on the brakes. Three minutes later, they stopped completely in a desolate, uninhabited field.

Yang Mo gasped for breath, unsettled, but before he could wipe the blood and flesh from his eyelashes, the sound of a gun being loaded exploded next to his ear. He looked up in terror to see Z1932, expressionless, aiming a gun at his temple.

The mechanical war god was covered in blood, with several minor scrapes on his cheeks and arms, underneath which sparks from precise metalwork shimmered.

The fear of death descended upon him like the night.

In the brief standoff, amidst the heavy scent of blood, Jie Linyuan suddenly smelled something foul. He glanced down dispassionately to see a wet patch on Yang Mo's pants.

He pursed his lips in disgust, his cold gaze shifting to the back seat.

Black Knight painfully closed one set of eyes, while the other head hung out the rear window, violently vomiting. The small beauty huddled inside a mineral water bottle, looking like a wilted green radish.

Various data were collected and analyzed in his left eye. Seconds later, the handgun disassembled and reassembled into a metallic mechanical hand. Jie Linyuan no longer cared about concealing his mechanical half with a skin-colored coating from the gaze of others.

He had broken a middle finger in the melee, its rough, exposed end visible. Jie Linyuan, unconcerned, sat in the passenger seat, scanning the wound with his left eye screen, then pulled out tools from his elbow, biting a screwdriver as he began to repair his broken hand.

Apart from breathing, the SUV was as silent as the grave.

Wu Yin was gone.

Bilel was dead and hadn't returned to Yang Mo's body. After all, Jie Linyuan was convinced that even if Wu Yin could disguise himself, he couldn't have faked wetting himself in fear.

Could Wu Yin have parasitized an animal or a plant?

Should he just kill them all to eliminate future troubles?

Or, was Wu Yin now hiding inside his body?

...If so, what could he do to rid himself of this problem, even more troublesome than the supreme command?

Ten minutes later, Jie Linyuan had repaired his mechanical hand, its fingers as flexible as before.

He stepped out of the vehicle, gazed at the setting sun about to dip below the horizon, the orange glow so warm it made his entire body tingle. He stretched lazily, exhaled a breath of stale air, turned around to open the SUV's trunk, casually picked a bag of chocolate, and popped it into his mouth.

Black Knight appeared beside him, the dog-like head nudging a box of dog food. Jie Linyuan opened a large pack for it, and Black Knight immediately started wagging its tail, clutching the dog food.

Yang Mo also climbed down, weak in the knees, watching Jie Linyuan from a distance, hesitant to come closer.

Jie Linyuan chuckled, tossing him a pack of chocolate: "Find a place to sleep."