Chapter 76 Dawn Base

Apart from the group right in front of them, only Shen Lie and Xia Ke were on this street, making them look somewhat out of place. However, Shen Lie had no intention of leaving. Instead, he craned his neck to look toward the radio. With his exceptional hearing, he had already caught what the man called Elder Long had said.

"This is the Dawn Base, located at East Bridge Mountain, twenty kilometers east of the city."

A moment later, a voice finally came from the radio once again, but it uttered only a single sentence, followed immediately by a burst of static crackling.

"Dawn Base? Is there really such a base?"

Everyone, including Shen Lie, was completely baffled. They had no idea where this Dawn Base had popped up from. The seven major survival bases established when the cataclysm struck seemingly did not include this place!

Moreover, the signal was far too brief—just a single sentence. If not for the solemn expression on Professor Long's face, Shen Lie would have genuinely thought this group was playing a nonsensical prerecorded tape.

"Has anyone here ever heard any information about this Dawn Base?" Professor Long looked around at the surrounding survivors and asked with a hint of anticipation.

However, he was destined to be disappointed; not a single person present knew anything about it. With no other sounds able to be picked up by the radio, he had to put the signal receiver down.

The reason they had set up this signal receiver was that a few days prior, a survivor in their team had accidentally discovered that his radio had picked up a vague, ambiguous audio clip. Although it was unclear, he was certain it was a signal!

Consequently, the survivor reported this finding to the team's leadership, who in turn escalated it to Professor Long. Taking it very seriously, Professor Long conducted tests himself and confirmed that the radio could indeed receive a signal on a certain frequency. He immediately mobilized the team's only military-grade signal receiving amplifier, making endless attempts every day. To his surprise, a clear voice had finally come through today.

Yet this very message had only plunged them into deeper confusion!

In the northwest of Beihe Province, there was a city named Shi. About twenty kilometers east of this city lay a scenic area quite famous before the cataclysm, called East Bridge Mountain.

However, this place no longer held its pre-cataclysm beauty. Various landscapes and buildings had been utterly devastated, and all the flowers, plants, and trees had lost their original appearances. Some had died off in large patches, while others grew with an eerie lushness—in short, nothing felt normal.

In a place like this, nearly twenty thousand people were gathered at this moment. A small fraction of them were soldiers in military uniforms, while the vast majority were ordinary survivors.

"Damn it, why did this ghostly thing have to activate at a time like this? This place is hardly a good spot!" a dignified man in a formal suit frowned, blurting out a curse as he looked down at a metal sphere about one meter in diameter on the ground.

"Indeed, and it's far too close to the Capital. The situation in the Capital isn't looking too good right now, either," a sturdy man beside the dignified man also wore a grim expression, seemingly worried about something.

"There's no help for it. This damned thing simply cannot be retracted. It seems we have no choice but to establish a base right here!" A trace of helplessness tinged the dignified man's tone.

"But Chief, what about the conditions here?" The sturdy man glanced at the surrounding environment, stopping short of finishing his sentence.

"It doesn't matter. Since I, Qiao Lianshan, was able to gather such a team in the apocalypse, I fear no hardship!"

"Old Wu, everyone has run until they're exhausted. In this world, monsters are everywhere, and it's the same no matter where you go. At least with this spatial stabilizer, we don't have to worry about spatial rifts appearing within the base. You must remember, whether it was Yang City or the Capital, spatial rifts suddenly erupted right in the middle of the cities. Yang City has fallen, and there's no telling how the fighting is going in the Capital right now. Pushing further ahead might not bring any sanctuary either. Since heaven has caused this bizarre object to activate here, we will simply have a showdown with those monsters right here!"

"Since the Chief has said so, I, Old Wu, am not one to fear death. We've fought our way all the way here from the research institute, and haven't we encountered enough monsters? We've lived through countless perilous ordeals, and it's about time we settled down. I just wonder if this thing is truly as miraculous as the analysis suggests—whether it can prevent spatial rifts from forming within a certain radius."

"It shouldn't be wrong. The researchers who brought this back originally could not have been lying. If this item was truly obtained from a world on the other side of a rift, then no matter how miraculous it is, anything is possible. Don't forget the Mechanical God of War, one of the four gods of war in our team; his Obliteration Divine Bow and Gold-Plated Armor are both products of that world." A hint of envy flickered in the dignified man's eyes as he mentioned these two items.

"Heh, those two weapons of Luo Kai's have made everyone in the team green with envy. Yet, Luo Kai is also a deeply awakened bloodline warrior who doesn't rely entirely on those two items. Still, I genuinely doubt whether this Luo Kai has really been to the world on the other side of the rift." Hearing the Chief mention Luo Kai, a satisfied smile spread across the sturdy man's face, for this Mechanical God of War currently served under his command.

"Old Wu, there are plenty of deeply awakened bloodline warriors, but why did Luo Kai and the others become the Four Divine Generals? Although our propaganda played a part, we must admit that all four of them possess extraordinary qualities of their own. However, we shouldn't concern ourselves too much with their personal secrets; we simply utilize their martial might. The crucial matter right now is that we need to absorb a large number of bloodline warriors to join our new base. With so many of us lingering here, I suspect a massive horde of monsters will soon seek us out!"

"By the way, Old Wu, didn't you say you found a frequency that can be used for transmission?" the dignified man asked with concern.

"We found it, yes, but the interference is far too severe. Even with that amplifier, we can only transmit a signal using a special method for a very short duration, and only one sentence at a time. Just how far it can propagate remains to be seen." The man called Old Wu shook his head awkwardly.

"That's already quite good. Have the technical team accelerate their breakthroughs in this regard. For now, repeatedly broadcast our location during this period and gather the nearby survivors first."

***

Standing on the outer edge of the crowd, Shen Lie listened to the commotion from the radio while silently pondering what the Dawn Base could possibly be.

The seven bases announced by the government at the onset of the cataclysm had all been established around the locations of military regions at that time. Back then, only seven or eight rifts had appeared nationwide, so no one had considered the possibility of rifts generating inside the gathering points; they had only taken military might into account.

Perhaps many small bases had existed initially, but the name "Dawn" did not sound like a geographical location, nor did it sound like the title of any organization. Could it have been established by survivors after the cataclysm?

A thought flashed through Shen Lie's mind, and the more he pondered it, the more plausible it seemed. If that were the case, the scale of this so-called Dawn Base certainly wouldn't be small, and it must possess a certain number of awakened individuals, otherwise they wouldn't be recruiting troops so ostentatiously.

Following this line of reasoning, the technological power of this base wouldn't be weak either. At the very least, judging by its capability to emit such a broadcast signal, it had to boast a cutting-edge research team, as this was currently the only discovered organization capable of broadcasting long-distance signals—something even colossal cities like Yang City and the Capital had failed to achieve!

"Boom! Rumble!"

Just as Shen Lie was still pondering the news of the Dawn Base, he suddenly heard a burst of distant artillery fire echoing from afar, coming precisely from the direction of Yang City!

"Everyone on high alert! Team One, come with me to take a look!"

Almost the moment the artillery fire sounded, the people clustered around the round table instantly transformed, becoming tautly tense yet orderly. A portion of them swiftly surrounded Professor Long in the center, while the remainder, led by a yellow-clothed man with an unusually large head, rapidly scaled the nearby high-rise building.