The light on the metal sphere flared brilliantly, like a searchlight, and its angle of illumination widened significantly.
The piercing beam lit up every detail of the concrete walls on both sides, making even the smallest textures stand out.
Yulianka had just dived into the water from the top of the train like a fish, vanishing without a trace. He might still be somewhere within the dam, or maybe the torrent of muddy water had already swept him outside.
Turning on such a bright light would expose Pei Ran's position—but that was the point. If she couldn't hide, neither could Yulianka, provided he was still nearby.
With the super-bright light in tow, Pei Ran followed the tracks inward.
The light was surprisingly considerate—no matter how her body swayed with her steps, the beam remained steady, always directed forward, even sweeping automatically up and down.
After walking about fifty meters, a surreal sight appeared ahead.
It was a small house—quirky, almost like something out of a fairy tale. The structure was made entirely of red bricks, with white bricks used only for the door and window frames, creating an interlocking contrast. The door was wooden and painted red.
But the house wasn't sitting on the ground.
It looked as though it had been ripped out of the earth by its roots, foundation and all, and now hung in midair—two to three stories high. Half of it was embedded into the adjacent concrete wall, the other half suspended in the open, like it had dove headfirst into the wall and gotten stuck.
Pei Ran tilted her head up. "Is that it?"
W answered with certainty. "I've seen photos in the archive. That red-brick house is the control room."
It looked like the dam's fusion process had swallowed it when the structure shifted.
Pei Ran eyed it. "It's in ruins. Wonder if it still works."
W replied, "It should have a signal transmitter inside with its own power source. If it wasn't destroyed during the fusion, it might still be functional. We'll have to try our luck."
The black lens of the metal sphere scanned the wall.
The control room was positioned high up, and the concrete wall slanted slightly inward.
"How do we climb up there?" it asked.
It didn't know—but Pei Ran did. Her mechanical hand jabbed into the concrete.
The wall recoiled slightly at her touch, like a living thing pulling away.
But hiding was no use. Bits of concrete crumbled away under her mechanical fingers as she quickly carved out a shallow foothold.
She made a few more indents at various heights, then tested them—gripping one with her fingers, stepping into another with her foot. Soon she was off the ground, hugging the wall.
She moved nimbly, like she was simply climbing a ladder.
It was like scaling an indoor rock wall, W thought.
He did a quick scan of the surroundings for threats, then focused the lens back on her. For a human, she was terrifyingly strong.
Pei Ran kept chiseling out footholds, carving a path upward along the slanted wall. She climbed like a gecko, and soon reached the height of the control room.
She touched the broken edge of the foundation. Testing its strength, she pulled herself up with a burst of arm power.
She perched steadily on the narrow ledge in front of the red door—just wide enough for half a foot.
Standing upright, she was about to open the door when she heard a faint noise inside.
A rustling, sliding sound.
Like snakeskin scraping across the ground.
It was eerily familiar—exactly like the noise she'd heard in the train car earlier, when the train had stopped in the dark.
Yulianka.
No wonder he hadn't shown up in the blinding beam of the searchlight—he was hiding here. How he'd managed to climb into this control room, suspended high in the air, was a mystery.
Pei Ran gave the door a light push. It was locked.
Without hesitation, she swung her mechanical elbow into the lock.
The wooden door couldn't withstand the blow. With a crack, the lock and part of the doorframe broke off, and the door swung open.
W's spotlight lit up the interior.
The room was strange—half of it had fused into the dam wall. Cabinets were sliced cleanly in half, one window stood wide open, and a desk sat just beneath it.
But the strangest thing was the "person" standing—or rather, slumped—over that desk.
It was Yulianka. Or at least, his face was still recognizable. He was still wearing his lab coat, but his body lay limp over the desk, like he had no bones at all.
Hearing the noise, he twisted his upper body around—unnaturally flexible.
The front of his lab coat had fallen open, revealing something grotesque underneath: from the waist down, his torso was fused with a spiraling, pipe-like structure, covered in ridges like a snake's body. It trailed downward, coiling on the floor.
Pei Ran recognized that spiral pipe.
She'd seen it before—at the entrance to Night Sea Station No. 7. Inside the metal turnstile housings, these same spiraled pipes connected the row of gates together.
The thief.
He was the one who'd stolen the green light—the one that had been powering the gate. The one that had eaten her fried chicken.
Wounds on Yulianka's forehead and upper abdomen—where W had previously shot him—were now completely healed. No wonder W had said he was no longer human, more like a deranged fusion entity.
Pei Ran was confused.
She remembered how the turnstile fusion had still been alive earlier, its green light intact.
If Yulianka had been behind the hypnotism of Inaya and the others, and possessed the power to control minds, then he must've contained a piece of Order-type green light.
That meant his body had held at least two lights:
An Order-type green light (for controlling others),
and a Madness-type green light (from the turnstile fusion).
Pei Ran herself had swallowed three Madness-type green lights from the pipe workers, and the only result was the fusion core ate them like takeout. She'd remained fine.
But after swallowing the turnstile's Madness-type green light, why had Yulianka ended up like… this?
When he saw Pei Ran, Yulianka jerked forward with shocking speed, slithering across the desk and slipping out the open window like a silk ribbon.
Pei Ran lunged to the window. Looking out, she saw him sliding down the outer wall toward the main dam.
His body moved fluidly along the surface. The spiral piping expanded and contracted like a snake's scales gripping the wall, moving him rapidly downward.
Most crucially—he still had arms.
And he was clutching a black box, about 40 centimeters square.
Pei Ran asked, "Is that the track switch signal transmitter?"
W had already noticed. "It is."
Pei Ran rushed back to the doorway and began her descent, climbing down the wall using the same footholds she had carved on the way up. Her thoughts were filled with frustration.
Yulianka had turned himself into some horrific half-man, half-creature—and he still had the presence of mind to steal the transmitter.
He clearly knew Night Sea No. 7 inside and out—even the control room and the switch box.
Why was he so desperate to prevent it from rerouting northwest?
What grudge did he have against the train?
Pei Ran moved even faster than before. As she neared the ground, she leapt from the wall, landing in a sprint.
Ahead, Yulianka was already on the ground, still slithering forward.
He moved like a snake, clutching the transmitter, spiral pipes writhing and stretching beneath him.
He couldn't be allowed to escape.
Pei Ran sprinted after him.
Yulianka swam deeper into the dam. Fortunately, W's beam was bright and steady, keeping him visible the whole way.
After a short distance, Yulianka suddenly veered and vanished—into the wall?
No—there was a stairway, slanting upward along the wall. Yulianka had slithered onto it.
His serpentine shape slowed him down slightly on the stairs. Pei Ran charged after him.
The stairs stretched on endlessly, nearly a hundred meters long, ending at what looked like a square exit.
Yulianka climbed ahead; Pei Ran chased close behind.
Bang, bang—W opened fire, aiming at Yulianka's chest and abdomen, trying to locate the mutated heart.
No response.
"I'll try his eye," said W.
"Do it," Pei Ran replied.
Two shots—straight through the head.
A second later, the holes sealed shut. No blood, no slowdown.
Yulianka had perfectly inherited the turnstile fusion's shapeshifting ability.
Pei Ran pushed herself harder, closing the gap fast. They were nearing the top when the stairwell began to ripple, undulating like waves.
The Tanggu Dam was moving.
RUMBLE—
A deep quake rumbled through the structure. Something massive was shifting, fracturing inside the dam.
In such chaos, crawling on the ground turned out to be an advantage—Yulianka's low profile made him nearly immune to the tremors. He vanished through the exit.
Pei Ran braced herself against the walls and kept going.
She burst out into the open—cool, fresh air hit her face, tinged with the metallic scent of water.
She was on top of the Tanggu Dam.
The dam stretched across the wide river like a wall. To the side was a massive reservoir, its moonlit surface gently rippling from the tremors.
Yulianka was already near the edge.
Then Pei Ran realized his plan.
He was going to throw the transmitter into the reservoir.
Just like those three pipe workers who were obsessed with extending the piping into others—
Yulianka, having become a Madness-type fusion, seemed equally obsessed with keeping the Night Sea No. 7 on its current route.
He was determined not to let it switch tracks.
What vendetta did he have against the train?
They couldn't let him toss the transmitter. If it sank, there would be no way to switch the tracks.
W kept shooting—this time aiming for Yulianka's arms.
But the bullets punched through, and the wounds sealed almost instantly.
Nothing worked.
Pei Ran shouted in her mind: "W! Have Heijing send a text message to Yulianka's wristband! Quick!"
There was no way W didn't have Yulianka's wristband number—he probably even knew how much the man paid in veterinary taxes.
"Got it," W replied.
A moment later: "Sent."
Up ahead, just as Yulianka was about to reach the edge of the dam, a small virtual screen suddenly popped up in front of him.
The screen glowed brightly in the night, displaying an image with black text on a white background—the very same warning graphic the Federation had first broadcast.
Back at the entrance to Night Sea Station No. 7 earlier that day, Pei Ran had seen Kirill's message appear on Yulianka's wristband. He hadn't disabled the dangerous feature that automatically projected incoming messages.
That function could easily get someone killed—but then again, sending a message was suicidal too. Hurt the enemy by 800, lose 1,000 yourself.
But it was different with Heijing. W had said Heijing could still safely send text out.
Yulianka froze, dazed. Who knew if it was because he was surprised a message had come through at all, or shocked that someone was able to transmit text at a time like this?
Pei Ran didn't know what would happen if someone received a text-based message either.
The best-case scenario was a direct explosion. The energy impact wouldn't be too damaging to the human body, and since it was designed specifically to target human neurology, it wouldn't even affect the wristband, let alone the transmitter.
But Yulianka didn't explode.
Instead, the words appeared on the screen: Divine punishment comes in waves.
In the next instant, a flash of white light burst out. A column of blue smoke rose from Yulianka's left wrist.
The energy blast had struck his wristband, the high heat melting it instantly—along with most of his forearm, which charred into a piece of blackened coal.
His scorched arm could no longer support the heavy transmitter, which tumbled to the ground beside him.
Another tremor rocked the dam—like some massive beast slowly waking. The crest of the Tangu Dam rippled and warped like a wave, making it almost impossible to stay on one's feet.
Despite his burned arm, Yulianka didn't scream. Like one of those deranged fusion hybrids, he didn't seem to feel pain. His body twitched a few times. Then, with a sickening crack, the blackened part of his arm fell off.
But the remaining limb didn't stop there—it elongated and reshaped itself, like a security gate locking into place, rapidly regenerating into the shape of a hand.
He twisted forward again, reaching for the transmitter with both reconstructed "hands."
But the moment of delay had been enough.
Pei Ran scrambled toward him, using both hands and feet to claw her way forward through the trembling ground. With a desperate lunge, she grabbed hold of the ridged pipe-like tail that formed Yulianka's lower half.
The tail's strange texture made it slick, and it nearly slipped through her fingers.
Without hesitation, Pei Ran drove her mechanical hand deep into the tail, and with another leap forward, tackled Yulianka to the ground.
Yulianka was tall and muscular, further enhanced by his mutation—he wasn't weak. He thrashed and rolled beneath her, the two of them locked in a violent struggle.
Pei Ran seized an opening, flipped herself on top, and clamped her mechanical hand around his throat.
She squeezed.
A loud crack rang out—his neck broke.
His head twisted to one side, but his body still moved.
His pale eyes locked onto her with a dead stare, and a faint green glow shimmered inside his half-open mouth.
Pei Ran knew that her own green light had always manifested only inside her mind. Yulianka shouldn't have known she had any abilities—if he had, he would've done something to use them against her long before now.
It seemed he could only control others' powers if he knew they had them—though she still didn't know how it worked exactly.
That didn't matter right now. Once she took his green light, she could test it herself.
He had probably seen her ability when she ripped through the inner dam walls earlier. Now, with death looming, he was trying to seize control of her power—whatever for, she didn't know.
But it didn't matter.
Her own "Green Light No. 1" had already exhausted itself tearing down those onion-like layers of concrete and had gone dormant, refusing to wake no matter how she called for it.
He wouldn't be able to wake it, either.
Her black mechanical hand tore into Yulianka's abdomen. The mutated heart wasn't there.
Pei Ran reached further inside, groping upward—finally, near the base of his neck, she found it. No wonder W's bullets hadn't touched it.
That grotesquely deformed heart was tangled with a network of bluish veins. She yanked it free.
Then, with her fingers wrapped tight around it, she squeezed.
In the instant that the heart burst, Yulianka's frenzied, mutated mind suddenly cleared.
That final moment stretched infinitely.
How had it come to this? he wondered, dazed.