Su Wu switched the control panel screen back to the city map of Jianghe City. Since he had not yet issued an alert, the map still displayed the various light points representing the robots and workers under Su Wu's command, flowing in an orderly manner across the surface of the earth. Under the guidance of artificial intelligence, they continued with their usual tasks. Even though some of these places were just a few hundred meters away from the ongoing battle at Shelter 4, the workers there showed no signs of disturbance, as if the battlefield and their location were in entirely different worlds.
Feeling the heavy trust ordinary people had placed in him, Su Wu fell silent for a moment before issuing the order for artificial intelligence to begin evacuation. The upcoming battle had nothing to do with them, and they should not be involved. By evacuating them from the surface, avoiding potential explosions from conflicts, Su Wu could also gain more time to produce battle robots and set up more defense turrets near the Farm Shelter to increase his odds of success in future battles with the Xuefeng Mercenary Group.
Following Su Wu's command, medium-sized hovercraft began to speed toward various locations in Jianghe City. They collected the workers and robots operating on the surface and transported them back to their respective shelters.
On the eastern edge of the city's ruins, a medium-sized hovercraft, carrying over twenty workers and a dozen spider robots, bypassed a raised ruin and slowly headed south toward the Zhou Xiwang Shelter. The unmasked lights inside the cabin flickered in the dark rain, drawing the attention of a patrol boat from the Xuefeng Mercenary Group.
In the next moment, a hail of machine gun bullets rained down on the hovercraft. But because of the distance, not a single bullet hit the target. The closest few bullets only splashed water a few meters away from the hovercraft's side. After realizing that the machine guns had no effect, the gunfire ceased after a few seconds. Then, several rockets launched into the air, heading toward the hovercraft. With the help of advanced targeting equipment, the rockets crossed over three or four kilometers without any deviation, all heading straight for the hovercraft's cabin.
---
"Detected high-speed object."
"Threat detected."
"Starting anti-air mode."
---
At the hovercraft's rear, two spider robots equipped with miniature cameras suddenly flickered their red eye lights. The next moment, their electromagnetic rifles raised slightly, emitting faint blue electrical arcs. A dozen metal projectiles were accelerated to supersonic speeds in milliseconds, colliding precisely with the incoming rockets.
The rockets exploded in mid-air, sending a massive fireball that evaporated the rain in a radius of several dozen meters. The roar of the explosion sounded like thunder, startling the workers in the cabin, who instinctively crouched by the windows to try to see what was happening. But by then, aside from some faint remnants of flame, nothing else remained. The patrol boat in the distance did not resume its attack, and the armed spider robots aboard the hovercraft did not retaliate either. After detecting that the threat had been neutralized, they returned to standby mode as if nothing had happened.
3.5 kilometers away, on a patrol boat about twenty meters in length, a soldier wearing exoskeleton armor removed his hand from the rocket launcher button and shrugged helplessly at his colleague.
"Our patrol boat is pretty useless."
"We can't even take down a small civilian boat."
"So what should we do?"
"Chase after them and take another shot?"
His colleague replied sarcastically.
"Guess we'll just forget about it."
"It's okay for a little shooting game. But if we leave the patrol route, the boss definitely won't be happy when we get back."
The soldier shrugged nonchalantly. To him, it was just a fun distraction, like playing whack-a-mole, and whether he hit the target or not didn't matter.
Apart from this unnoticed minor conflict, the overall evacuation on the surface went quite smoothly. Soon, in less than an hour, all of Su Wu's affiliated shelters had pulled back their personnel working outdoors and securely closed their gates, allowing the shelters to quietly remain hidden underground.
The next day, the vanguard of the Xuefeng Mercenary Group, after spending the night looting Shelter 4, started unloading more soldiers from the ships onto the official Shelter 4.
Meanwhile, some of the tragic events occurring inside Shelter 4 began to leak out through the opened shelter gates to the external internet, causing an uproar throughout Jianghe City. Many people only realized at this moment that, while they were sleeping as usual, their city had already been invaded by an external force. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens found themselves plunged into the hell of war and chaos. What terrified them even more was that it wasn't a small civilian shelter that had been invaded—it was the official shelter, the one they believed to be invincible. At this moment, their worldview collapsed like a tsunami sweeping through their lives.
By noon, the shock from the fall of Shelter 4 hadn't been fully digested. Yet, squads of soldiers from the Xuefeng Mercenary Group poured out of Shelter 4, rushing like a tidal wave toward nearby civilian shelters.
Compared to the official shelters, which had managed some resistance, the civilian shelters, with little to no weaponry, collapsed almost instantly under the attack of these regular soldiers. The moment their gates were blown open, they had already entered the countdown to surrender. However, their weakness didn't earn them any leniency from the invaders. Much like the brutal pillaging and slaughter in Shelter 4, the same fate befell them. Countless families were torn apart by the savage soldiers in just one afternoon.
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