Chương 176: Ash

"What did you want to discuss?" Vince cast a curious glance at Evelyn walking beside him.

"You even went out of your way to avoid your own people." Evelyn's footsteps paused at the question. She turned her head, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing her eyes. It wasn't shock at Vince's sharp intuition; she already knew he was perceptive. Rather, she was surprised by how bluntly he tore down the polite facade between them.

"You really are sharp," she said, holding his gaze.

"But I wasn't just avoiding my people. I was avoiding everyone. I didn't know what secrets you might be keeping from your own crew."

"My crew? I basically don't hide anything from them. If there is something, it's the kind of secret I can't tell a single living soul." Vince spoke with a completely clear conscience. Aside from his core secrets regarding the system—seeing Health Bars, getting loot drops from kills, and his spatial inventory—he barely kept anything from Claire, Zoe, and the others. His reluctance to explain the exact mechanics wasn't born out of paranoia about leaks or betrayal.

He simply felt the implications of his system were far too massive. Ignorance was a safer shield for them. He was certain they already harbored their own suspicions about his secrets. After all, he never actively hid his actions from them. Bizarre potions and crystals simply materialized in his hands whenever needed. Furthermore, he never carried his spear around; it only manifested during combat. The rest of the time, everyone conveniently ignored its absence as if it didn't exist.

The spatial inventory definitely didn't come with some built-in "mind-wiping" feature for stored items. Which naturally meant everyone was just tacitly turning a blind eye to the anomaly. After all, even Zoe—who was naturally the most clueless among them—hadn't pointed at him this morning and yelled, "Dage! You didn't bring your weapon!" Hearing Evelyn's question, Vince couldn't help but let a smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.

He suddenly realized that her laying her cards on the table and directly probing his boundaries was, in its own twisted way, a form of trust. It was vastly different from the unspoken, protective complicity he shared with Claire and his crew. This was a stark, almost clinical candor. Yet, this blunt honesty felt familiar. It reminded him of the night Zoe and the others had first returned, when a drunk Seth had confronted him with similar questions.

"You saw Joseph. Does that mean you were already there before our convoy passed through?" Evelyn asked, her brow furrowing.

"No, I arrived after you had already pushed through. I brushed past your convoy in the dark while rushing to the scene," Vince answered truthfully. He had a genuinely good impression of Evelyn's team. Plus, there were many logistical areas where he lacked expertise. If possible, he wanted to establish a long-term partnership with these veterans.

"When you found Joseph, he was dying. How exactly was he injured?" Evelyn pressed. Deductive analysis wasn't exactly Vince's strong suit. Consequently, he opted to lay out every single piece of intel he had gathered regarding the "Tree," alongside a detailed description of the gruesome scene inside the APC. He even recounted how severing those tentacles seemed to inflict severe damage on the "Tree."

He framed this observation as his battlefield intuition, ensuring Evelyn received the most accurate, undistorted picture possible.

"He was fifty at most. He shouldn't have looked that old. But it was definitely him," Evelyn said, piecing the clues together.

"This all ties back to whatever the 'Tree' was trying to accomplish. Those branches you severed were likely its core organs, or perhaps even its true main body." Hearing Vince's account, she recalled the blurry silhouette captured on the drone's monitor. She was now absolutely certain it had been him. She decided to share the detail about the drone footage with him.

"So, that silhouette we saw was you. You triggered the explosion. But how did a few pistol rounds cause a blast of that magnitude?" The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Because the immediate area around the tentacles' roots had been shrouded in a dense black fog, the drone hadn't been able to capture exactly what transpired inside. However, the massive explosion occurred mere seconds after the figure entered the fog. The two events were undeniably connected.

"That silhouette was me. And the gun was Colonel Zhou's sidearm," Vince admitted openly.

"As for the exact catalyst of the explosion, I can't share that with you right now. You just need to know that there conveniently happened to be a one-ton gasoline tank and a one-ton diesel tank sitting at the bottom of the crater with that monster."

"A ton of gasoline and a ton of diesel. Inside a deep crater..." Evelyn finally hit the opaque wall in Vince's story. She immediately understood this detail brushed against his deepest secrets. She gave him a long, meaningful look before smoothly steering the conversation away.

"That explains the sheer destructive yield. I was thinking that even if a fully fueled APC suffered a catastrophic ammunition cook-off with two missiles, it wouldn't produce a blast wave like that." She nodded in understanding.

"So, you're going back now because you're worried that the monster might have survived even that."

"Exactly." Vince gave a firm nod.

"Then I can tell you right now—it's not dead," Evelyn stated with absolute confidence.

"Why?" Even though Vince harbored the exact same suspicion, hearing such a definitive conclusion from someone who hadn't even been there prompted the instinctive question.

"Because of that 'tree' I mentioned earlier. Right after capturing those photos, we immediately ordered its eradication using fifty man-portable thermobaric rockets..." Evelyn said, her tone entirely matter-of-fact.

"But it obviously didn't die."

"Otherwise the Jishan Quarantine Zone wouldn't have been wiped off the map, right?" Vince asked in return, nodding in quiet realization.

"Precisely," Evelyn agreed.

"The sheer spectacle of fifty thermobaric rockets going off might not compare to last night's explosion, but when it comes to raw lethality against biological mass, their destructive power is actually far greater."

"That's why I believe the true nature of the 'tree' is far more complex than just the physical portion exposed above ground. So, rather than calling it a 'monster,' it's more accurate to describe it as a 'phenomenon'..." Evelyn hesitated for a second before finally concluding:"A living phenomenon." The two of them maintained a brisk jog across the rooftops.

Whenever they encountered a wide gap or a sudden shift in building elevation, Vince would simply scoop Evelyn into his arms and either detour through the adjacent residential complex or leap directly across the chasm. At first, Vince could clearly feel her muscles tense beneath his grip. But after a few jumps, she grew accustomed to the sensation. She gradually relaxed, even seeming to view this superhuman mode of traversal as a fascinating novelty.

In less than ten minutes, they arrived on a rooftop directly overlooking the park. The facade of the building immediately in front of them was scorched pitch-black. The concrete on its roof had taken on a brittle, ashen-white hue. Worried it might collapse under his weight, Vince decided against pushing any further. The closer they drew to the epicenter, the thicker the layer of ash coating the rooftops became.

The cloying stench hanging in the air intensified, forming a sickening cocktail of acrid smoke, melted asphalt, and the putrid odor of charred protein. The immediate area looked as though it had just been swept by a massive dust storm. The rooftops had lost all their original color, buried beneath a heavy blanket of soot and black ash. Every step sank half an inch into the grime, kicking up choking clouds of fine powder that clung stubbornly to their pant legs.

Evelyn had already pulled two heavy-duty gas masks from her canvas bag. She strapped one onto her own face and handed the other to Vince. The surroundings were deathly silent. Not even a faint breeze stirred the air. The two of them stood near the edge of the roof, staring in mute contemplation at the park across the street. In reality, there wasn't much of a park left to look at. Even the landscaping along the roadside had been completely baked dry by the sheer heat.

The withered husks of the plants were smothered in dark grey ash. The intense temperatures had ignited the flammable materials inside the abandoned APC, cooking the entire armored chassis until it was covered in an ugly, rust-colored patina. The two massive, trunk-like tentacles that had stretched all the way from the park onto the street had been thoroughly carbonized last night. Now coated in a thick layer of pale ash, they looked like two colossal serpents lying dormant beneath a dusting of snow.

A massive crater dominated the center of the park. It was the undisputed epicenter of the blast. With the raging inferno tearing through the area last night, Vince hadn't been able to get a clear look at what had happened to the pit. Now, under the daylight, the devastation was clear. The violent explosion had widened the crater's diameter to several times its original size. It sat hollowed out in the earth like a gigantic serving bowl buried in ash.

A radius of several hundred meters surrounding the park looked like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. Even the zombies wandering aimlessly through the perimeter were caked in soot, the pale ash masking their scorched flesh and dried blood. Set against the backdrop of green trees and the bright blue sky in the far distance, this entire blast zone looked as if someone had slapped a circular, greyscale filter right over their eyes.

It felt as though a chunk of the retina's color receptors had simply died, completely leaching the vibrancy from the world. It would have looked like a perfectly desolate black-and-white photograph, if it weren't for the vibrant Health Bars floating above the zombies.