An hour of tinkering later, the first armed train was assembled and inspected. The troops boarded, entering a state of readiness.
The mechanical soldier responsible for filming also boarded, moving from car to car, capturing interior views for the commanders.
Cen Yemeng's expression was stern.
Jiang Ye, however, suddenly found himself amused.
"What are you laughing at?" Cen Yemeng turned to look at him.
"Look at these soldiers on the train. Mine are very relaxed, even brewing tea. Yours are sweating profusely from tension," Jiang Ye said with a smug expression.
"Tch, what's there to brag about? Only your soldiers have seen the world?" Cen Yemeng pouted.
The station broadcast suddenly blared an urgent bell. The soldiers outside the train saluted in unison, and the soldiers inside, preparing for departure, returned the salute. The train's headlights and side lights illuminated simultaneously. The bell signified that Huang Bingyan had issued the official departure order.
The train began to move, almost silently, as smooth as one piece of ice sliding on another. In mere seconds, the train left the station, heading towards the boundless, dark wasteland.
The soldiers inside the carriages moved to their combat positions, waiting behind machine guns and cannons.
Cen Yemeng nervously clenched her hands.
Jiang Ye stood up, went to the pantry to get crystal cups, poured two glasses of lychee juice, and brought them back, handing one to his wife.
"Don't be too nervous yet. This station is in the capital city, and there aren't many beasts nearby; they've all been cleared out," Jiang Ye said. "The fighting won't start for a while."
Cen Yemeng nodded, took the crystal cup, and took a small sip.
As if to confirm Jiang Ye's words, the train suddenly amplified its side lights several times.
Under the intense yellow light, the area within tens of meters on both sides of the tracks was illuminated clearly.
Inside the carriage, there was a collective gasp.
Dozens of meters away, the grassland was covered in corpses, piled high like burial mounds. The bodies were of some kind of alien beast, larger than pigs, covered in black fur, lacking heads but possessing six legs, resembling wolf spiders that had been piggified. The nearby grass was splattered with purplish-black blood plasma, and the grass itself had been scorched to death.
Some black crows hopped on the piles of corpses, their bodies so bloated from feeding that they couldn't fly. The train's lights startled the crows, and they stood atop the corpses, gazing at the train like ghosts watching a boat drift across the River Styx.
The soldiers in the carriage were stunned.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng watched the video in the office. They couldn't smell anything, but it was likely a mixture of blood and rot.
The hills of corpses stretched for over a thousand meters before ending, giving way to a vast grassland with occasional shrubs.
Cen Yemeng tapped her phone a few times and held it up to Jiang Ye's face.
The phone displayed information about the corpses.
Prison Tigers, one of the endemic species of Crocodile Star, reproduced by laying eggs, laying hundreds of eggs annually. They were domesticated and improved carnivorous creatures, their bones for soup and their innards for cooking being highly sought-after delicacies by the Crocodile people.
These Prison Tigers could reach a charge speed of eight meters per second over a hundred meters, faster than Bolt. Their limbs possessed immense strength, capable of easily crushing human skulls like smashing oranges with a hammer. Moreover, they had thick hides and high vitality. For humans to fight a Prison Tiger with knives and swords was essentially charging with toothpicks.
The train continued to speed forward.
An alarm suddenly sounded.
A clattering noise echoed from the roof as hundreds of drones simultaneously ejected, like launched missiles.
These drones flew rapidly forward, suddenly hovering at a certain point, and then projecting bright searchlights downwards.
Under the combined light of the drones, the soldiers saw them: on the plain a kilometer away, large groups of black Prison Tigers were charging!
The carriage immediately became busy. Mechanical soldiers retrieved ice cannonballs weighing over ten pounds from the cryogenic cabinets and loaded them into the cannons. The thunderous roars of the cannons erupted one after another, and the entire train was firing. After firing, the train cannons did not eject spent shells, merely leaving a small puddle of water. The mechanical soldiers reloaded and fired again in less than two seconds.
Distant parts of the beast horde could be seen being hit, with many white ice fragments exploding. One Prison Tiger after another fell to the ground, moaning, their cries sounding remarkably like African elephants. The beast horde began to accelerate, but at this moment, the ice bullet chains were produced in the carriage, and the gunners immediately opened fire. Ice machine guns furiously spat out bullets.
The entire armed train unleashed its full firepower. The roaring sound was like an entire division firing, shells and bullets flying wildly, streaking across the plain like pouring rain, smashing into the charging horde.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng could see through the video that under the train's lights, the fired shells were clear white lines, while the bullets were an eye-dazzling barrage like rain, their sheer number overwhelming.
The horde's advance was clearly slowed. Large numbers of Prison Tigers fell with screams, but those behind continued to charge desperately.
The train suddenly began to decelerate.
At the top of each carriage window, the train commander's latest order was displayed in red text.
[Open fire with full force, this train will withdraw shortly]
Some veteran soldiers immediately cursed, "What's there to be scared of!"
The new recruits merely glanced at the order and continued to fire desperately.
After decelerating and stopping, the train immediately accelerated in the opposite direction, retreating along the original route.
While advancing, they hadn't felt the urgency of the situation, but now, with the retreat, Jiang Ye's heart pounded.
The beast horde behind them had already surrounded them, now only three hundred meters from the railway. The movements of the Prison Tigers could be clearly seen as they ran.
The soldiers turned their machine guns, firing towards the direction they had come from, desperately trying to prevent the horde from reaching the railway.
Jiang Ye reached out and tapped the holographic projection, bringing up satellite imagery.
He now understood why they had to retreat.
This wave of the beast horde was as vast as an ocean. If the train hadn't retreated and continued forward, it would have encountered a derailed and overturned train in a few minutes. Repairing that section of track would take at least two hours.
In those two hours, at least hundreds of thousands of Prison Tigers from all directions would have converged, piling up and overwhelming the train.
Moreover, the beast horde seemed to be coordinated. As the train moved along the railway, the hordes a kilometer ahead and behind were desperately closing in on the railway line, giving the impression of an encirclement.
The train retreated at full speed, simultaneously unleashing suppressing fire on the surrounding beast herds. The scene was truly breathtaking.
Another blood-red order appeared on the window.
[Airborne Egress]
The soldiers were stunned and all ceased firing.
The train fell silent.
Immediately after, the noise and wind-breaking sounds of flapping wings filled the air.
The soldiers inside the carriages lifted the aisle floor, pulled out a ladder, and installed it directly in the middle of the carriage.
Above the ladder, the carriage roof immediately sprang open, and a long black rope extended down.
The first soldier grabbed the rope, stepped onto the ladder, and began to climb.
Climbing out of the carriage onto the train's roof, he looked up and saw the flap-winged aircraft. Each carriage had one on its roof, and many more flap-winged aircraft were circling in the sky, using their lights to sweep across the beast horde, causing chaos.
The soldiers climbed out of the carriages one by one and boarded the aircraft.
As the last soldier departed, the beast horde had already reached the railway line. Then came a series of crashing sounds as the Prison Tigers desperately leaped and slammed into the train. With resounding clangs, their bodies tore apart, and they were flipped back. More Prison Tigers surged forward like a dark tide.
The train was now empty, but it maintained its high speed. Many Prison Tigers had already climbed onto the tracks ahead. The train's front blade met the impact, swiftly slicing through one giant beast after another, blood plasma spraying into the wind and drenching the front of the train. The snow-white front quickly became covered in spray-like bloodstains.
The first combat mission had failed. The train, which had reached a maximum of two hundred kilometers outside the capital city, was forced to retreat. Its retreat speed was not fast enough, and the soldiers had to abandon the train.