Lure and Capture

His two teammates were both this formidable, and both were big names in the Pioneer Team. He'd have plenty to brag about to his brothers when he got back.

Yao Bei looked down at the map projected from her communicator. What had been a cluster of red circles was now reduced to a few scattered dots.

"Let's head to Qing'er County."

...

Compared to the danger and difficulty of eliminating the alien creatures in the first few days, things got much easier afterward.

They cleared out the hook snake-type aliens in various locations with the speed of an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves.

Tu Ran improved rapidly, her various abilities advancing by leaps and bounds.

On the ninth day, all squads completed their tasks ahead of schedule, thoroughly eliminating the seventeen types of alien creatures scattered across Regaken State.

Eight squads participated in this alien elimination operation, and Tu Ran's Fourth Squad killed the fewest types of aliens.

Every other squad eliminated at least two types, and the Second Squad even took down four.

However, in terms of sheer numbers, their Fourth Squad had killed the most.

Because hook snakes reproduced extremely quickly and spread over a wide area, according to Zero's statistics, the Fourth Squad had killed a total of 1,322 hook snake-type aliens in those nine days—ten times the combined number killed by all other squads.

The operation also claimed many innocent human lives. The Pioneer Team lost eight members; some were killed by their teammates after being possessed by aliens, while others died in direct combat with them.

The number of casualties among Regaken State's security guards was as high as half, especially in the Fourth Squad, where most of the guards who died were possessed because they lacked experience.

The governor of the Federal Government's Regaken State branch specially held a memorial service for the security guards who died honorably in the operation and gave their families consolation money.

In addition, the second task of the Pioneer Team in Regaken State—finding the second gate leading to the Threshold that had descended—was completed by the squad led by Xie Xu.

This gate was different from the one in the Federal Center.

The gate in the Federal Center was a wall so tall its top could not be seen.

The gate in Regaken State, however, was a transparent air barrier.

Invisible and intangible.

But through air pressure detection equipment, they could detect a high-pressure air belt one kilometer long and about half a meter thick.

Through a series of experiments, Xie Xu proved that this was indeed the gate to another world.

The Federal Government's Regaken State branch had already dispatched troops to guard the area.

The Federal Center had also sent important officials there to discuss how to build a large capture trap to lure creatures from inside the Threshold into it, so that the Research Institute could have the freshest living specimens for study.

All the fruits of success belonged to the real rulers of the Federal Government—the plutocrats. Only death and pain belonged to ordinary people.

The day after the Regaken State mission was completed, all the Pioneers boarded helicopters and returned to the Federal headquarters.

The mission had lasted ten days. During that time, the Threshold's gate had opened once, and the Pioneers who had not chosen to go to Regaken State had already entered.

The remaining Pioneers, including them, could only enter the next time the gate opened.

As a reward, the government gave them three days off.

After the debriefing meeting, Tu Ran took a maglev train home.

Xi Chunzhi had already gone to the Threshold, so Tu Ran had to shelve many of the questions she wanted to ask.

Entering her home, looking at the familiar yet unfamiliar scene, Tu Ran couldn't tell for a moment whether she was a soul that had crossed over from another world into this body, or if she had always lived in this world and had merely, by chance, obtained a memory that didn't belong to her.