Chapter 154 – Time Stands Still

Night fell very quickly. The environmental changes brought by the damage to Earth’s Protective Layer seemed to be becoming more and more obvious. It was still summer season, yet the time when the sky turned dark had already moved forward by quite a bit. And at night, even Su Lifeng would not go out lightly. In the pitch-black city, Xenospecies would definitely be more active, while for humans, both vision and physical strength would be affected after night fell.

Those dark high-rise buildings gave people the feeling of huge mouths ready to devour flesh and blood. And in reality, within these huge mouths, countless dangers did indeed exist.

“Judging from what I saw today, there are still quite a few people who actively or passively remained outside the Quarantine Zone. Regardless of whether it was voluntary, these people can be considered abandoned by the military,” Su Lifeng thought.

After Su Lian’s computer connected to the Quarantine Zone’s network, they did learn quite a lot from the military’s webpage. The military probably had not expected that at a time like this, someone would still hack into their website, so they had not taken any protective measures. As a result, Su Lian succeeded very easily.

If their programmers knew that when Su Lian successfully opened the webpage, she had arrogantly cursed “weak trash” through the air, who knew whether they would be angry enough to jump up.

The information occupying the most space on the website was mainly of two kinds. One consisted of speeches by Lv Zifeng and some senior military officers. They mentioned records of some survivors in the Quarantine Zone causing trouble. What surprised Su Lifeng somewhat was that in response to this kind of situation, the order Lv Zifeng gave was not to pacify them, but to directly arrest the ringleaders and drive them out of the Quarantine Zone.

This method would definitely make some people dissatisfied, but its deterrent effect was beyond doubt. And once these people were thrown outside, it was basically no different from sending them to their deaths. To say nothing else, eating alone would become a major problem. Unless they were like Su Lifeng and Gouzi, who had begun storing food in advance, most people would actually find it very difficult to gather enough food to maintain life in the current Ningnan.

The other type of information consisted of various terrifying images captured by satellite. Jiang Yushi and the other two watched them with pounding hearts, while Su Lifeng’s expression remained calm. At the moment of Awakening, he had seen far more images than these pictures, and they had been much more immersive.

“Ge, come look at this.” Su Lian suddenly stopped the mouse, then quickly clicked a small icon. What she brought up was a television news segment, and on it was a speech by a certain high-ranking figure from Huaxia.

This scene immediately drew Su Lifeng’s attention as well. Judging from the images he had seen in his precognition, Huaxia’s various regions were almost riddled with devastation. But from the news footage, this elderly man, who looked very dignified, still held his body straight, as if he had not been beaten down.

“Our country will establish large-scale refuge areas… The first step is to eliminate the Xenospecies in one city. At present, we have already achieved this step. With this as our foundation, we will continue to retake the next city. This is a battle for humanity’s survival, unrelated to anything else. All humanity must strive for this! No matter how many people can hear or see these words, I only want to tell you: do not give up…”

This speech was very short. From the meaning, it should have been broadcast simultaneously over radio, perhaps even on a loop. Its content was concise and to the point… Huaxia had already established a safe zone, and next it would do its utmost to expand it. If anyone wanted to go to the safe zone, they could follow the address and head there. But one could imagine that the difficulty of doing this was no less than crossing a battlefield on foot. Yet a thread of hope and complete despair were still two different things.

“That isn’t strange. As long as Xenospecies and ordinary people can be separated, the combat power of human firearms is still very strong. Although Xenospecies can perfectly imitate humans, they still don’t understand much about our human modes of war,” Jiang Yushi said.

Seeing Su Lifeng look toward her, she asked with some confusion, “What is it? Was what I said… wrong?”

“Of course it’s right… But the Xenospecies couldn’t have failed to think of this. At first, I also underestimated their intelligence, but to turn the entire world into this in such a short time… how could this kind of life form be underestimated? Thinking about it now, perhaps they don’t care about humans establishing Quarantine Zones or safe zones. Perhaps to them, digesting those left outside first is the first step,” Su Lifeng said.

Judging from the scenes he had “seen” when he Awakened, what he said might truly be fact…

“Ge is right. Countries like America have also taken similar measures, and these messages will keep being broadcast. But quite a few small countries have directly lost all news. Those countries didn’t have much military to begin with. They might have had a little ability to resist ordinary Xenospecies, but how are they supposed to resist those enormous monsters? If those huge things in the sky make a move, perhaps the situation will become even worse,” Su Lian sighed and said.

“But didn’t Lifeng say before that the purpose of Xenospecies coming to Earth is absorption and evolution? So those monsters in the sky probably won’t participate, right…” Cheng Xiaomei said, but her tone was not very certain. No matter what, their existence alone was already terrifying enough…

After they ate a simple meal, Su Lifeng once again felt for the sensation of slowing time.

Time slowing was only subjective to him. In other people’s eyes, nothing had actually changed.

Su Lifeng looked out the window and began recalling the feeling from that moment of life and death.

At first, he entered the state very slowly, but the moment he thought of the monster rolling through the clouds, he found the feeling.

“Magnify it. Magnify it again…” Su Lifeng continuously recalled every detail he had seen then. When he remembered lightning writhing like snakes in the sky, Su Lifeng’s body seemed to be electrified, every pore stimulated open.

“Ha…” A breath sprayed from Su Lifeng’s mouth. In his eyes, this breath dispersed very quickly at first, but slowly, its speed slowed. It was like wisps of white vapor had solidified before him.

The sound of the wind outside the window also seemed to stop. The leaves being blown by the wind also halted at this moment.

At this instant, Su Lifeng felt that with himself as the center, everything seemed to have stopped.

But very soon, he felt a dizziness in his head as if it had been hollowed out, and this wondrous sensation immediately disappeared.

“Huff, huff…” Su Lifeng panted hard twice, then raised his wrist and looked at the electronic watch he wore.

“One second…”

But Su Lifeng’s face still could not conceal his excitement. All along, time had been something humans could not control. And what he had just accomplished was time stop!

Within this brief second, he was the one defining the future for his opponent!