By the time Chen Feng and the "Red Vulture" finished their preparations to navigate the mutilated, earthquake-ravaged rainforest, the sky was almost dark. The world had been broken, and the jungle was doing its best to swallow the pieces. The groaned like a dying beast, its Adamantine hull screeching in protest as it shouldered through a necrotic thicket of fallen, phosphorescent trees. Their shattered trunks leaked a sickly violet light, painting the mud and the vehicle's scarred flanks in a lurid, fungal glow.

  Chen Feng had anticipated difficulty navigating the post-devastation forest, but not until the "Red Vulture" re-entered the rainforest did he discover the environment's harshness far exceeded his previous imagination.

  Before his cryogenic sleep, Chen Feng had attended a summer camp in the Middle East. He had spent considerable time in the deserts of Egypt, where Saharan winds could push temperatures to over forty degrees Celsius, and in extreme cases, even past fifty degrees. But that was a dry heat, bearable in the shade.

  But this 25th-century rainforest was a humid hell that consistently tortured him with its oppressive, wet heat. The earthquake had shattered the forest's structure; the once-orderly canopy and undergrowth were now a chaotic snarl of fallen giants and shattered saplings. The delicate saplings and broken, century-old trunks were mixed together like noodles, forcing Chen Feng to use a more primitive method to clear a path for the "Red Vulture."

  An axe. A mother-fucking axe.

  Feldwebel Alina Ludwig stood rigid in the commander's cupola, her knuckles white on the cold grips of the secondary weapon station. The shame and humiliation of the infantry compartment had been cauterized, sublimated in the forge of her fury into something new, something brittle and sharp. Her gaze, hidden behind the helmet's blank visor, was locked on the single figure clearing their path ahead. Under her breath, a low, continuous mantra was just audible over the internal comms, a distorted whisper through the vox-grille.

  "...liberate the oppressed... crush the capitalist yoke... purify the land with their blood..."

  In Chen's opinion, she was borderline insane.

  Flora's voice cut over the comms: "Obergefreiter, why are you not using the laser cutter?"

  Chen Feng, dripping with sweat and knowing he couldn't silence Flora without satisfying her academic curiosity, answered despite his fatigue: "Because that thing is a heat cutter, and this is wet wood! Do you know what happens when you apply heat to wet lignin and cellulose? Smoke. Carbon monoxide. Heavy air-born organic particles. A signal fire visible for tens of kilometers. You call it 'advanced' and 'efficient'; I call it an invitation to our dear capitalist enemies."

  To , he switched his to its 'lighter' mode and ignited a nearby trunk. Thick, pitch-black smoke billowed skyward.

  Flora: "Odin's teeth! Was that demonstration necessary? Extinguish it! Extinguish it now!"

  Chen Feng didn’t know where this uncharacteristic panic came from, not until months later.

  Chen Feng had chosen to set off at dusk to seize the initiative and adapt to the terrain under cover of darkness.

  From the previous tunnel exit to Saint Aurora, the straight-line distance was approximately twenty kilometers (they had measured it earlier with instruments). Chen Feng estimated that even at the most pessimistic expected speed—2 km/h—it would take about ten hours, roughly a day, plus short breaks, to arrive.

  The "Red Vulture" squad had night-vision equipment and other advanced observation and targeting systems superior to those of local mega-corporations, making a night assault an inevitable choice. Chen Feng calculated that by setting off in the evening, they would have an extra twelve hours as a buffer. After twenty-two hours, they would reach the vicinity of Saint Aurora by the following evening. Therefore, departing immediately at dusk would also grant them an extra afternoon to adapt. Moreover, the area near the tunnel exit was relatively safe; even if mistakes were made while unfamiliar with the post-earthquake rainforest environment, the consequences wouldn’t be too severe.

  The plan was sound in theory, but reality dealt Chen Feng a harsh blow. He had assumed that thirty-two hours would be more than enough to reach their destination, but the actual situation proved otherwise—if they could make it in one hundred and forty-three hours, it would already be quite an achievement.

  Shortly after entering the rainforest, darkness fell completely—a pitch-black, impenetrable darkness. While the "Red Vulture" squad had night-vision gear, ensuring basic mobility wasn’t an issue, mosquitoes and various other flying insects swarmed around them in overwhelming numbers after nightfall. Chen Feng nearly emptied an entire bottle of insect repellent but still couldn’t keep the mosquitoes at bay. In the end, he had no choice but to "humiliatingly" don the APt-3 power armor, which he had always looked down upon.

  Additionally, Chen Feng had originally planned to have two vanguards—himself and Alina—leading the way at the front. However, he quickly abandoned this idea. The rainforest floor was littered with tangled saplings and vines, as well as grass blades with sharp serrated edges. To move forward, they had to clear a path with an axe. Deploying two vanguards in different directions would mean having to clear two paths.

  Reluctantly, he settled for a single vanguard: himself. The only consolation was the APt-3's enhanced strength, making the brutal work of path-clearing marginally more efficient.

  Even though Chen Feng acted as the vanguard, he couldn’t maintain a distance of a hundred meters from the main group—the ideal scenario described in one of the Republic’s Tactical Handbooks. The rainforest made it impossible to move in a straight line, with various obstacles forcing them to zigzag. Moreover, if they were more than twenty or thirty meters apart, Alina would completely lose sight of Chen Feng.

  Chen Feng tested this, or rather, simulated it: he issued a warning from over a hundred meters away, marking a target in his line of sight, then immediately turned off his headlamp and maintained radio silence. The "Red Vulture" squad switched to night-vision devices and quickly moved toward Chen Feng, using the simulation marking function to "engage" the target. The entire process took a full half hour.

  The narrow path hacked through the dense vegetation was barely a path at all. Although Chen Feng could maintain radio contact with the IFV behind him, the others couldn’t determine his direction or trace the route he had just taken. As a result, they stumbled around aimlessly like headless flies.

  Maintaining a hundred-meter distance as the vanguard from the main force proved an unattainable goal. Through testing, Chen Feng and the others found that the optimal distance for him as the vanguard at night was between twenty and thirty meters. Any farther, and it became pointless.

  Profuse sweating caused Chen Feng to drain all the water he carried within just an hour of entering the rainforest. His clothes clung to his body, mosquitoes swarmed relentlessly, and his stamina depleted at an alarming rate despite the powered exoskeleton. These factors forced Chen Feng to abandon his initial plan of marching for six hours.

  "Stop advancing! Everyone, gather on me!"

  After shouting weakly, Chen Feng stood panting on the spot until the angular and brutalist form of the "Red Vulture" emerged from the narrow path he had hacked through the grass. Alina leaned out from her cupola.

  "What’s wrong? Why did you stop?"

  Chen Feng took out his navigational auspex, checked it, and let out a bitter laugh. "Folks, we’ve covered 2.7 kilometers in distance traveled, but the straight-line distance is only 1.2 kilometers."

  Alina flew into a rage. "What?! Two hours for this? What the f— A bug!" she sputtered, an insect flying into her mouth.

  Chen Feng shared her disbelief. Their pace was slow, but 2.7 kilometers was absurdly low. He had estimated they would have covered at least four kilometers by then.

  "We can't keep going like this," Chen stated. "I didn't anticipate the earthquake's... consequences. The fallen trees have compressed into a dense mat. It's worse than I calculated. If we don't find a way to move faster, we'll lose our advantage over Teodulo's disorganized forces."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The Leir Cade company's forces were thrown into disarray, but only because of the quake. He believed Leir Cade must have contingency plans for such a 'black swan' event, so the "Red Vulture" squad had to move quickly, or the opportunity would be lost. And if that happened...

  Alina abruptly interrupted his thoughts. "Move. I'm taking over."

  Alina jumped down from the "Red Vulture"—without her power armor—snatched the axe from Chen, strode forward, and swung at a trunk. It rebounded, hitting her head with a solid . Feldwebel Alina Ludwig wobbled and collapsed into the swampy water, unconscious.

  Chen Feng looked down at her: "...I think you need some sleep, ."

  Flora: "Chen, shut it."

  In the end, they took shifts in the power armor. After struggling through the night, a straight-line ten kilometers still lay between them and their destination.

  As they drew closer to the enemy's location, Chen Feng and the others heightened their vigilance and moved with increased caution.

  Over the past nearly twenty hours, only about one-third of the time each person had been spent clearing obstacles. Chen Feng's physical condition was fine, aside from some numbness. However, the monotonously repetitive scenery made it difficult for him to maintain a high level of mental focus.

  Chen Feng checked his watch; it was already 2:00 PM the next day. He had rested for eight consecutive hours. Alina was driving from the commander's position, and Flora had been clearing trees ahead for four hours. It was time to relieve her so the "Red Vulture's" warrant officer could rest.

  "Flora, hold position. I'm coming to take over."

  After informing Flora via the intercom, Chen Feng jumped out of the vehicle and moved forward. Flora was only thirty or forty meters away, so he could reach her quickly.

  Chen Feng held his at the ready and had just advanced a dozen meters along the path Flora had cleared when he suddenly felt the hairs on his neck stand on end, the uncanny sensation of being .

  "Contact, take cover!"

  Flora trusted Chen Feng completely in this regard, so she immediately dropped prone. Her APt-3 power armor-clad body landed with a loud splash in the swampy, irradiated mud.

  Chen Feng immediately crouched down as well, but upon scanning the surroundings, he could see nothing. He couldn't spot the technical warrant ahead, nor could he see the "Red Vulture" behind him. He was in a rather awkward position.

  Then, the secondary systems in his armor activated, and the edges of his field of view were highlighted in red by the tactical projection. Soon after, Flora's voice came through his headset: "Infantry radar detects two contacts, forty meters. No visual. Affiliation and exact numbers unknown."

  Finding two people didn't necessarily mean there were only two. It was highly likely that they were part of a larger group. The wasteland wanderers in these areas typically moved in squads of around ten people. So, if two were spotted, the most probable scenario was that there were more people around them. The most troublesome part was not knowing the positions of the others.

  By the way, in this world, for a Republic scouting team traveling through the irradiated wasteland, the most likely faction they would encounter was not the mega-corporations, but a group known as the Scanvangers.

  According to the message left by Arana Waylane, Chen Feng learned that Earth's current state originated from an economic-political entity that was commonly referred to as the "First Magacorp." This entity dominated Earth via military conquest around 2170 and collapsed about a decade later due to internal power struggles. During the infighting, the First Magacorp unleashed its vast destructive capabilities upon the Earth. Global nuclear exchanges, biological weapon releases, and climate collapse ensued. The nuclear winter lasted for decades, sunlight was blocked out, and the oceans acidified. All agricultural systems of the old civilization were completely wiped out. 96% of the population died within the first few decades due to radiation, famine, plague, and mutual slaughter. The survivors numbered less than a billion, scattered across isolated, hellish shelters and ruins.

  In the centuries that followed, humanity went through a "post-collapse period" which involved an anarcho nuclear wasteland with nothing significant happened—there were simply too many conflicts and too many factions, any none of them had done anything meaningful to the grand scheme of things. But eventually, the world's order slowly stabilized around 2350, that is half-feudal and half-capitalistic. By 2474, technology in this world was sharply polarized. Within corporate enclaves and their domed arcologies, energy weapons, anti-gravity vehicles, gene editing, and advanced cybernetics were commonplace; while in the vast wastelands, people still used homemade firearms, salvaged laser guns, and traded centuries-old junk.

  The last faction mentioned above is the so-called "Scavengers," paramilitary organizations that Chen Feng jokingly referred to as "Cyber Trash-Pickers." They are typically tribal nomadic gangs, surviving by scavenging and plundering, with a brutal tribal culture based on survival and pillaging, and evidently in their own system, a self-consistent moral code.

  Some opinion is: many of the "Scavengers," or in the local slang term, the "Scavs," has longer history than most living megacorporations in this day.

  Chen Feng believed they might have encountered such a gang, and all he could do now was crouch down and listen carefully.

  Crouching on the ground, he quietly switched the safety off his gun, magnetically secured the spare batteries for quick reloads, and prepared himself. Then, in a whispering voice, he said, "Everyone, maintain silence. Avoid firing if possible. If engaged, and you observe the other party is armed, you are free to choose your response."

  "This is Flora. I've spotted a group of twenty or more hostiles, still advancing. Direction unclear. They should be about fifty meters away from me."

  Flora had already started referring to the detected individuals as enemies. Her position was separated from the main force, a situation with both advantages and disadvantages. While Flora had detected the movement of the presumed enemy early, she couldn't precisely relay their location to Chen Feng and Alina.

  After Flora reported her findings, Alina's voice came through again.

  "'Red Vulture's' scanners detected movement on our left flank, about forty meters out. Numbers unknown, no vehicle signatures detected. Unable to gather more information."

  Flora was ahead, and the "Red Vulture" with Alina aboard was behind, but both had detected movement. Chen Feng's first thought was that they were surrounded, but he quickly dismissed it. If the enemy was aware of their presence, they wouldn't still be moving; they'd be lying in ambush.

  The group on the left was likely advancing in several echelons. It was unclear if they would head towards Chen Feng's team, but he thought it unlikely. In the vast rainforest without clear paths, yet with potential paths everywhere, encountering another group was already a huge coincidence. Even if they were only forty or fifty meters apart, as long as his team remained hidden and quiet, the other group would likely pass by without noticing.

  Chen Feng thought they just needed to wait quietly for the other group to pass. However, after ten minutes of silence, he heard the splashing sound of boots in water and the squelching noise of steps in mud.

  The sound of water made Chen Feng's heart sink. He didn't know if there was a stream or swamp nearby, but anyone encountering such terrain would likely detour slightly.

  Chen Feng aimed his rifle towards the source of the sound and whispered into the radio, "This is Chen Feng. Movement on the left flank, heard water sounds. Be advised, they might turn towards us."

  After issuing the warning, Chen Feng listened intently to the footsteps from the left. He heard two alternating sets of footsteps gradually approaching him.

  Just what he feared was happening. Chen Feng had very much hoped to pass by the unidentified group without contact, but as luck would have it, not only had they encountered another group in the vast jungle, but terrain was now forcing them closer.

  Chen Feng's biggest worry was that the group they encountered belonged to his target, Teodulo, with " Cyber Trash-Pickers " being the secondary concern. If they engaged Teodulo's forces prematurely and failed to eliminate them all, Teodulo would certainly heighten his alertness. This wouldn't only significantly complicate their mission but might also prompt Teodulo to dispatch large numbers of troops to hunt them down.

  At the very least, the Republic's military had precedents of successfully establishing communication with Scavengers ("Cyber Trash-Pickers")... although the credibility and trustworthiness of these "Cyber Trash-Pickers" was practically non-existent.

  If he had a choice, Chen Feng would absolutely not open fire. But to his dismay, the footsteps grew closer. Finally, two heads appeared above a patch of lower grass in front of Chen Feng. But as soon as the two heads appeared, one of them suddenly shoved the person beside them and immediately crouched down.

  Chen Feng hid himself in the grass, confident he hadn't been spotted immediately. Yet one of the two individuals had instantly taken evasive action. Chen Feng didn't know if they had spotted him or if it was for another reason.

  Chen Feng glanced to his right and immediately identified the problem. To his right was a freshly cut vine stump left behind when his team cleared the path. The two individuals must have seen the severed vine.

  Although it was only a brief moment, Chen Feng had confirmed that the two people opposite him were armed combatants. One had their face covered in camouflage paint and wore a cloak made of local plant material, with a respirator covered in moss. The other wore a modified corporate helmet. He didn't see their weapons, but ordinary people wouldn't dress like that, and standard corporate armed forces didn't either. The most likely possibility was that they were Scavengers.

  Chen Feng remembered an old adage: if you encounter armed personnel in the rainforest who aren't your own, just shoot; don't overthink it. He assumed the people he just discovered followed the same logic. Although Chen Feng was sure he was well hidden and hadn't been spotted, once the other side saw the cut vine, they would inevitably conduct a search. If their mindset was indeed as he predicted, then a firefight was unavoidable.

  The two figures had crouched mere meters away—dangerously close. Chen Feng's response was instantaneous, yet devoid of panic. His left hand snapped to his thigh armor, retrieving a grenade and slotting it into the electromagnetic catapult built into his right vambrace in one fluid motion. A flick of his neural interface set the rough range—thirty meters. There was no wind-up, only a sharp as the grenade was launched on a flat, precise trajectory toward the enemy position. As it flew, his voice was cold and level in the team's comms, "Position compromised. Enemy is armed. Weapons free."

  Chen Feng was certain he hadn't been exposed, so after throwing the grenade, he didn't move immediately. He planned to find an opportunity to shoot after the grenade exploded. But as he launched the grenade, he also saw a dark object being hurled from the opposite patch of brushes.