Chapter 677: Echoes of the Fallen

White Bone. An endless expanse of white bone.

Almost the moment he made contact, Yenir froze. Through the lens of his mental power, he even felt as if a dreadful whiteness had enveloped his view.

It’s impossible to count the bones. If the entire Underground Base spans tens of thousands of square meters, then this pile of bones forms a towering wall that completely cloaks it!

Yenir had often wondered where the missing Awakeners had vanished. But even if the corpses of over a million people were amassed, it couldn’t account for so many bones!

Humans are so tiny! Once dead, their skeletal remains can only be piled within a small space. According to Nie Fei’s data, the Military always reanimated clothing—meaning the bodies were likely reduced to ashes or transformed long ago!

Moreover, Yenir noticed that these bones aren’t even of human size!

A shock surged through him. Yenir drew in a deep breath and swiftly ran his fingers along the gaps between the bones, attempting to reconstruct their structure in his mind.

Worried that breaking the wall might alert the cleanup crew, he almost wished he could dig a hole just to see it firsthand.

“It’s a Sea Beast…”

“A Sea Beast, really!?”

Soon, Yenir’s expression wavered as he stared at the mental image he had pieced together in disbelief.

Even though the bones were haphazardly piled and most had shattered beyond recognition, in the largest clusters he clearly recognized the flat, distinctive shape of a fish skull.

Worse still, deep in the pile lay a nearly hundred-meter-long fish backbone that confirmed his suspicion.

By his rough estimate, these Sea Beasts were no less than Second-Stage fighters!

Based on the numbers, Yenir wondered if all the Sea Beasts in the Tianjin Port sea area had perished here!

“How can these be Sea Beast carcasses? Isn’t the Mother supposed to be here? Shouldn’t it be… it shouldn’t be…”

He paused, shocked.

Yenir instinctively believed that the Mother regarded Sea Beasts as kin—even if only akin to high-level mutations coexisting with zombies.

The Mother would never slaughter its own, and even accepting Sea Beasts as kin was normal.

But suddenly, Yenir realized he might have been mistaken all along!

“No… I once thought the Mother was connected to humans and Sea Beasts, later finding it fused with Sea Beasts. Yet both theories were wrong! Perhaps the Mother doesn’t even see itself as human or a Sea Beast, but as an entirely different life form?!”

“Damn… I got trapped in linear thinking.”

While not a major problem, this meant his judgment about the Mother had been significantly off.

Suppressing the swirling doubts, Yenir exhaled slowly and began to methodically explore this eerie graveyard.

Though explaining the corpses as Sea Beasts slain by the Mother made some sense, Yenir still couldn’t fathom why there were so many remains.

The bones spanned a vast range of death—from recent to over a decade old. This indicated that these Sea Beasts weren’t just recently killed, but that the carnage had begun long ago.

“Could the Mother be devouring Sea Beasts? Does eating them confer strength? Even eating humans?”

“No… that can’t be right.”

“If it’s consumption, the sheer number of corpses suggests the Mother must be colossal to digest them all. Damn, unless it’s tens of thousands of meters in size, it’s impossible. Even with extreme digestive power, it can’t be continuously eating for over a decade!”

For Yenir, his suspicions had always centered on that silver-haired youth.

After all, the Mother had once been sighted near the Capital, meaning it still maintained human proportions. Yenir quickly ruled out that possibility.

And the idea of gaining strength by eating humans… just didn’t add up.

If the Mother were constantly feasting on people, the Rebel Peak Third-Stage fighters would have been wiped out long ago. Data from the Capital Military shows that many of the older Rebel Third-Stage fighters are still alive.

“Experimentation? Or extracting something?”

Yenir’s brows knotted as a memory from the East Sea Laboratory flashed before him.

The bones were too fragmented; if only he could dig a hole and take a closer look, he might confirm his theory.

He recalled that the East Sea Laboratory had once created a batch of Sea Beasts—those merged with human cells might very well be what the Mother had indicated.

Before Yenir could delve deeper, a message from Fang Hao flashed through his mind.

“Yenir!”

“According to our Military spies, several neighboring countries have suddenly started mobilizing their troops!”

“Can you get more precise intelligence? I suspect they might be planning to invade our Battle Zone amid the chaos!”

Speaking rapidly, aboard a fighter jet en route to the Border, Fang Hao glared at the satellite images the Military had just sent at breakneck speed.

In the images, instead of the usual outlines of surrounding battle zones, there were magnified points of light and a burst of exploding flames.

Their satellite had been destroyed.

It was beyond imagination.

The Asian No. 2 Satellite, rebuilt at great cost, was downed by a group of Third-Stage Awakened using an unthinkable method while flying over the Southeast Battle Zone!

That group soared their Third-Stage fighters high into the troposphere and then used improvised anti-satellite weapons to shoot the satellite down!

About fifteen minutes ago, the Chinese Military lost control of the Asia Battle Zone!

“Damn it! These bastards are definitely up to something big!”

“We’ve been patient for too long—don’t they know the importance of that satellite?!”

Inside a massive Spiritual Energy Fighter, a Military Third-Stage fighter couldn’t help but curse aloud.

It wasn’t that he was naive enough to think the enemy wouldn’t target such strategic assets; thirty years ago when the Asian nations began their doomsday rebuild, strict regulations were imposed to absolutely prohibit attacks on satellites and key military bases!

This wasn’t just to protect national interests but to safeguard all of Asia’s survivors!

Without satellites, there’d be no early warnings for corpse waves or sudden outbreaks of mutants—not to mention the threat of the most dangerous Sea Beasts!

Even with ground patrols, deploying all the Third-Stage fighters wouldn’t suffice!

If disaster were to strike now…

Fang Hao took a deep breath, gazing at the gloomy clouds outside, sensing that a colossal upheaval was imminent.

…

“Stop obsessing over it—all of this will come to pass eventually.”

“Our top priority now is to determine why our neighboring countries are mobilizing. Is it linked to the Rebels? What’s the troop strength, from which direction are they advancing, and how many nations are involved?”

Clenching his fists, Fang Hao quickly composed himself, knowing that they could not afford to lose focus at this critical moment.

The Military has already lost its satellite advantage, and the operatives they’ve embedded over the years rarely reach the upper echelons of foreign governments.

But…

Thinking of the group of Enemy Country Third-Stage fighters that Yenir had tracked, Fang Hao felt a flicker of hope.

“Yenir—maybe he’s our answer!”