Lansi watched as Li Si's call was suddenly disconnected.
After Michael hung up, Li Si stared blankly at the communicator in disbelief. Then he blinked, and tears quietly began falling from his eyes.
"Don't cry… are you okay?"
Lansi felt a little sorry for him.
In Lansi's eyes, Li Si was basically an innocent fool who had been deceived by a manipulative liar.
After all, not everyone could accept discovering one day that the person sleeping beside them had been hiding an entirely different self the whole time.
Once that happened, all the sweet memories they shared would instantly change flavor. What once felt like a heartwarming romance could suddenly turn into some terrifying psychological thriller.
Li Si cried silently for a while before wiping away his tears.
After calming himself down, he forced a smile at Lansi.
"It's fine."
He stood up, took a deep breath, and temporarily suppressed the gloom on his face.
"If there's nothing else, you should leave now. I still have work to do."
While they were speaking, several more injured people were carried into the clinic.
Li Si clearly intended to bury himself in work to numb his emotions and avoid thinking about Michael for the time being.
As for the matter between him and Michael…
They could deal with it slowly later.
"Well then, I really should go now."
After hesitating briefly, Lansi nodded.
He had already been away from the military camp for quite a long time. If he delayed any further, his captain would probably think he had died somewhere.
After deciding to leave, Lansi reached out and tugged at Matt, who was still sitting nearby.
"Let's go."
Matt ignored him completely.
Sitting on the stool, he snorted coldly.
"No. I'm staying here."
Right now, he simply wanted to remain in the clinic and irritate Li Si.
Why are you acting so childish?
Lansi sighed internally.
Then he calmly pulled the baton from his waist and rested it lightly against Matt's neck while smiling faintly.
"What did you just say?"
Matt instantly felt the pressure against his throat.
"…I'll sit for five more minutes."
Boom—!
At that moment, a deafening noise exploded outside.
The entire clinic shook violently.
The tremor was so intense that for a moment everyone thought it was an earthquake.
But the shaking disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Aside from the buzzing vibration of the glass windows, there was no follow-up movement.
This definitely didn't feel like an earthquake.
Everyone inside the clinic—including Lansi—looked confused.
The patients began whispering nervously among themselves, and anxiety quickly spread through the room.
Almost at the exact same moment the loud noise occurred, both Lansi's and Li Si's communicators rang simultaneously.
As the only two people in the entire clinic carrying communicators, they exchanged a glance before opening the messages at the same time.
The expressions on both their faces changed instantly.
Li Si's communicator displayed an emergency evacuation warning.
Meanwhile, the communicator in Lansi's hand showed an urgent military assembly order.
But both messages confirmed the same thing:
The high wall had been breached.
And according to the map attached to the alert, the breached location was extremely close to them.
Li Si reacted first.
He immediately shut off his communicator and began organizing the evacuation inside the clinic.
Under his instructions, the large men guarding the entrance quickly started moving patients and equipment in an orderly manner. Their actions were swift and practiced, as though they had already gone through situations like this countless times before.
Meanwhile, Lansi hesitated.
Technically, he was still a reserve soldier now.
Did that mean he had to obey the Alliance's orders?
But in the end, Lansi glanced at Li Si running around the clinic anxiously—
And slowly relaxed his brows.
After thinking for a moment, he sent his current location to both his captain and Wen Yu.
Then he turned toward Matt and said,
"I don't know how you really feel about your brother…"
Lansi paused briefly before continuing,
"But if you still care about him at all, then protect Li Si."
"Why?"
Matt widened his eyes immediately, unconvinced.
"Because they care about each other."
Lansi said softly,
"If they end up separated forever because of this incident, they'll regret it for the rest of their lives."
After speaking, he patted Matt on the shoulder again.
"You're actually a lot like your brother. Neither of you knows how to express your feelings honestly."
During the time he had spent with Matt, Lansi had already noticed it clearly.
Matt, much like Michael, was the type of person who cared deeply but could never express those emotions directly. Proud, awkward, and stubborn to the core.
"Talk to your brother properly."
Lansi sighed helplessly.
"Otherwise things will just keep getting worse."
Looking at Matt, Lansi suddenly felt a little pity for the two brothers.
They were clearly blood-related siblings.
One had abandoned the other, yet the bond between them still kept trying to pull them back together.
Both of them cared about each other in clumsy, twisted ways.
Did Michael truly hate Matt?
If he really hated him, why had he allowed Matt to blackmail him successfully for so many years?
If Michael truly despised his brother, then why hadn't he simply sent someone to kill him long ago?
And did Matt truly only see Michael as someone to extort?
If that were true, then with the amount of money Michael had given him over the years, Matt should have at least been living comfortably.
Yet even now, he still lived inside a shabby, leaking house that flooded during rainy days.
His life had never improved at all.
And earlier, the only time Matt had genuinely developed killing intent toward Lansi was when Lansi threatened Michael in return.
…Though unfortunately for Matt, he had later been beaten half to death by Lansi instead.
The two brothers were completely different in personality and behavior, yet blood ties still bound them tightly together.
That kind of awkward, tangled relationship was enough to make anyone watching feel a headache.
Perhaps outsiders truly saw things more clearly than those trapped within the situation themselves.
Unable to hold back anymore, Lansi finally said directly,
"It's already the end of the world."
His tone became unusually serious.
"No one knows whether the world will still exist in the next second."
"So don't leave regrets for yourself."
Matt froze.
Perhaps this was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him like this.
And for once, he truly began to think seriously.
There was nothing more Lansi could do after that.
He glanced once more at Matt before turning around and leaving the clinic.
The moment he stepped outside and looked into the distance, Lansi suddenly saw an enormous black shape hanging against the high wall far away.
It was—
A giant whale.
Lansi froze in shock.
The high walls built by humanity had originally been designed to stop sea monsters capable of coming ashore from invading Alliance territory.
That was why the walls were built incredibly tall and reinforced with massive electrical grids on the outer surface.
But clearly, the architects who designed them had never imagined such a bizarre scenario:
The wall had been breached because a giant whale had literally fallen from the sky and smashed into it.
"Wooooo—"
The whale let out a mournful cry of agony.
Its massive body was stuck halfway across the high wall, tangled within the electrical netting. Powerful currents surged through the grid continuously, electrocuting the whale until its enormous body trembled violently.
The electricity burned patches of flesh black.
Bright pink wounds split open across its skin as blood poured out continuously.
The whale desperately struggled, swinging its massive tail again and again, but its body remained firmly wedged against the wall.
Every violent movement caused chunks of stone and debris to crumble from the structure.
Lansi stared blankly.
He couldn't understand how such a gigantic whale had suddenly appeared above the high wall.
Even from this distance, merely hearing the whale's cries made him instinctively cover his ears.
The whale was crying.
Not roaring.
Not attacking.
Crying.
And Lansi could tell—
It wasn't a sea monster.
It had simply wandered here by mistake.
It was a pilot whale.
One of the most recognizable features of pilot whales was their large, rounded foreheads. Their bodies were mostly black, and they belonged to the larger whale species.
Like many whales, pilot whales also lived in groups.
After the first whale slammed into the wall, more heavy impacts soon followed from behind the high wall.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Lansi couldn't see what was happening on the other side, but judging from the tremendous crashing sounds, more enormous whales were likely colliding against the wall as well.
"Wooooo—"
The pilot whale hanging on the wall struggled several final times.
But it could not free itself.
At last, after releasing one final shrill cry, its tail slowly dropped limp.
The whale died.
Bright red blood flowed from its wounds, dripping down across the pale surface of the high wall.
The corpse of a giant whale was irresistible bait for scavengers.
Not long after the whale died, several scavenger birds began circling overhead.
Lansi stood there from afar, silently watching the whale's death.
Sadness and regret filled his chest.
And unconsciously, he remembered the young killer whales he had encountered before in the ocean.
What happened to that little stranded killer whale before?
It should have been rescued safely… right?
"What are you spacing out for?!"
A powerful slap suddenly landed on Lansi's shoulder, jolting him back to reality.
The moment he looked up, he saw the captain gripping his shoulder tightly while roaring at him,
"The situation's already this critical and you're still standing around in a daze?!"
"Captain?"
Lansi blinked blankly.
Only then did it feel as though his thoughts had finally returned from the distant whale hanging on the wall and settled back into his own body.
At that moment, he suddenly realized—
The collapse of the high wall did not only bring suffering to the whales.
It had also become humanity's disaster.
Under the guidance of reserve soldiers, civilians flooded through the streets trying to escape, while injured people lay scattered everywhere.
The giant whale corpse hanging from the wall had not only attracted mutant creatures—
It had also destroyed the electrical grid protecting the high wall.
Mutated birds, including flesh-eating species, were no longer restricted. They swooped down from the sky one after another, attempting to snatch away fleeing humans.
And this was only the beginning.
The whale carcass hanging on the wall, combined with the countless humans trapped inside the city, would soon attract even more starving creatures from outside.
Once the wall truly fell, the entire Alliance would be torn apart.
Perhaps today would become humanity's true apocalypse.
"…Forget it. Just protect yourself."
The captain originally seemed ready to order Lansi to evacuate together with the civilians.
But after remembering Lansi's terrifying combat ability—and the fact that they were still reserve soldiers—he swallowed those words back down.
Instead, he simply said quietly,
"Stay alive."
The captain looked once toward the distant high wall before turning back to Lansi.
Grinding his teeth, he added,
"I don't want to get reassigned to a different squad in the future."
After saying that, the captain turned around and moved against the fleeing crowd, heading directly toward the breached high wall.
Lansi froze.
Looking at the captain's retreating figure, he suddenly sensed a tragic determination from his back.
At this moment, countless mutant creatures had already climbed onto the high wall itself.
From above, they stared greedily down at the panicked humans fleeing below, restless and eager to pounce.
Yet amid that chaos, reserve soldiers wearing blue uniforms continued charging upstream through the crowd.
Even though they clearly understood that once they went there, they might never return—
They still gritted their teeth and rushed forward for the sake of protecting their home.
Humans really were strange creatures.
Sometimes they scattered like loose sand.
But when faced with life and death, they could cast aside fear and sacrifice themselves without hesitation.
Lansi felt deeply moved.
For the first time in a while, he thought—
Perhaps humanity truly still deserved to exist.
Then he suddenly began running toward the high wall as well.
Not because he wanted to fight the mutant creatures.
But because he needed to find Wen Yu.
Whales did not normally beach themselves for no reason.
And from the current situation, it looked even more as though something had deliberately guided the whales into smashing themselves against the wall.
The only being capable of something like that was Wen Yu.
However, Lansi instinctively felt that Wen Yu—that special existence—would not do something so cruel.
Something about this entire situation felt wrong.
But before thinking any further, he needed to find Wen Yu first.