Chapter 171: Crush with One Step

Chapter 171: Crush with One Step



The white-robed leader didn't retreat. Instead, he took several steps forward.

He released something.

From the second floor, Morrison felt a physical discomfort, as if every cell in his body was being compressed.

Rivera dropped to his knees—not out of submission, but because the ligaments in his knees suddenly lost all tension.

Three soldiers in the hallway started retching violently. Blood streaked through what they vomited up.

Biological pressure—it worked by applying force to the water molecules inside the human body, subjecting each cell to pressures several times greater than normal.

The white-robed leader said to Wayne, "Kneel down and press your forehead to the ground. I can let your daughter live three more years."

Wayne didn't kneel.

His walking pace didn't change. Same as always—each step deliberate and careful.

The white-robed leader intensified his attack. Water droplets began seeping from the concrete beneath them. A damp mist spread across the entire plaza.

Ten meters.

Wayne entered that zone.

Based on previous observations, within ten meters, all metal would liquefy and people would lose the ability to move.

But Wayne carried nothing metal. He'd given the patch to Jenny. No gun. The communicator sat on a windowsill.

He walked straight into the zone.

When the white-robed leader struck for the first time, he raised his right hand, palm facing Wayne.

The human body is seventy percent water. Death by dehydration would occur within three seconds.

Wayne didn't respond. He kept walking.

The white-robed leader's hand began trembling as it touched Wayne's field, and he felt a force pushing back at him.

"Impossible." The white-robed leader took a step back. "You have no shielding device. How can your body withstand molecular interference?"

Wayne spoke as he walked, his voice quiet. "How long were you asleep under the ice?"

The white-robed leader didn't answer.

Twenty years ago, when Griffin embedded backdoors into weapon firmware worldwide, he'd done something else too.

Wayne stopped three meters from the white-robed leader.

"He buried a biological resonance protocol in my neural synapses."

The white-robed leader's hand had stopped moving, but though his palm faced Wayne, he couldn't release any force.

"You control water molecules through frequency resonance. When my body receives your frequency, the protocol automatically generates an inverse wave."

"Whatever frequency you emit, I produce the corresponding reverse signal."

Wayne raised his right hand—the one missing a finger—and touched it to the white-robed figure's forehead.

"Your field is ineffective inside my body. But I can use the same method to restrict molecular movement in yours."

The white-robed leader tried to take another step back, but his foot wouldn't lift.

Not because something on the ground held him—but because the muscles below his knees had stopped contracting.

The white-robed leader looked down. "My legs."

The other two moved simultaneously. One circled left, the other rushed from the right.

They didn't advance at human speed—more like projectiles, reaching maximum velocity instantly without acceleration.

Wayne lowered his hand.

Morrison on the second floor didn't see the entire sequence.

What he saw: Wayne's right hand vanished from where it pointed at the leader's forehead, then point-one seconds later, when the two white-robed figures closed in from both sides, they both lost function in their lower bodies.

Their spinal columns were extracted from their bodies at the same moment.

Two spines trailing blood and flesh—Wayne pulled them from the white-robed figures' backs with both hands, one after the other.

Without a spine, a human body can maintain an upright position for only three seconds.

As if their insides had been hollowed out, they collapsed to the ground. No self-detonation.

Self-detonation required neural signals to reach the biological core, but with the spines separated from their bodies, the signals couldn't transmit.

Wayne dropped both spinal columns to the ground, then turned to face the leader.

The white-robed leader couldn't move below the knees, but his upper body still functioned.

So he braced himself with his hands to keep from falling.

"What did you do?"

Wayne didn't answer the question. Instead, he placed his right hand on the white-robed leader's head.

Five fingers gripped the skull. The bone stub where his finger had been pierced through the leader's scalp. Blood flowed through the gaps between his fingers.

The white-robed leader's body began convulsing.

Morrison saw the leader's mouth moving, but no sound came out.

Wayne touched others with his body to extract all the memories from their brains.

The entire process took about four seconds.

When Wayne released his grip, the white-robed leader stopped convulsing. His eyes went wide. A gray-white liquid flowed from his mouth and nose.

Forcibly reading brain tissue caused irreversible damage. Though the person was still alive, his brain had become a ruin.

Wayne lifted his foot and pressed it down on the leader's head.

After seeing this, Rivera felt strength return to his knees—the biological pressure had disappeared.

Wayne applied force through his boot.

The white-robed leader's skull shattered under the military boot, fragments scattering across the plaza.

Brain matter and gray fluid mixed together, splattering onto Wayne's pants.

Wayne stood beside three broken bodies, gazing north.

By the time Morrison ran downstairs from the upper floor, Rivera had come down as well.

"Commander." Rivera stood in the doorway, something in his voice he couldn't control himself.

Wayne didn't turn around. Instead, he said something toward where the communicator was.

Though the communicator sat outside the fourth-floor window, Isaac picked it up on a backup radio inside the building.

"I've got the coordinates. What happens beneath the Arctic ice cap is no longer within observation parameters."

Isaac asked, "What does the Commander mean?"

Wayne turned and walked toward the hospital entrance.

As he moved through the soldiers on the plaza, he crouched down and patted one soldier's shoulder.

The molten iron clinging to the soldier had caused some degree of burns, but the man was still breathing.

Wayne stood up and called to the white-haired doctor upstairs. "Doctor, please come down and treat the wounded."

The white-haired doctor came downstairs carrying a first-aid kit.

When Wayne walked through the entrance, Morrison blocked his path.

"Commander, what did you read from his brain?"

Wayne paused.

"Everything under the Arctic will fully awaken in three months. By then, its control range will cover all water sources in the Northern Hemisphere."

Morrison frowned. "So what do we do now?"

Wayne walked past Morrison and headed toward the elevator.

"Wait for it to wake up. Then wipe out its nest."

Morrison hurried after him. "How did you block that force and extract the spines?"

Wayne pressed the elevator button. After the doors opened, he said something else.

What Griffin had done was more extensive than he'd imagined.

He'd thought it was a weapon. Actually, it was a key.

When the elevator doors opened, Wayne stepped inside. Before they closed, his last words to Morrison were "Goodbye."

"Even if it were a true god, I wouldn't be afraid. Much less some tiny organisms parasitizing ice."

After the elevator doors closed, Morrison stood holding the communicator without speaking. Five seconds passed before he caught his breath.

Rivera said to him, "He still counts as human, right?"

Morrison shoved the communicator into his pocket. Without answering that question, he turned to help the white-haired doctor move the wounded.