111: A shipwreck feast! Trillions in assets? Sorry, it's all mine!

The category 17 typhoon did not stop just because a war had ended.

The gale continued to roar, and the rain still fell in torrents.

But at this moment.

The most eye-catching thing in this sea area was no longer the crashing waves, but the massive corpse slowly sinking into the abyss.

The "ship" had broken into two.

The uplifted bow was like a giant tombstone, standing lonely amidst the black tides.

As it rose and fell with the waves, it made a heart-pounding "glug" sound.

Countless bubbles, mixed with oil slicks, debris, and corpses that hadn't had time to escape, gushed out from the massive fracture.

Dyeing the surrounding several kilometers of the sea surface into a turbid mess.

It was a tragedy.

But on the wasteland, it was a feast.

"Boss, we have to withdraw quickly."

Old Chen looked at the expanding concentric circles of the sinking vortex on the radar and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with lingering fear:

"A ship this big sinking will create a vortex that could pull us in too."

"And... although their communications are cut."

"The Ark must have sensed something is wrong; reinforcements could arrive at any time."

In his understanding, hitting and running was the survival law of pirates.

"Withdraw?"

Jiang Ran sat in the command chair, his deep blue eyes staring intently at the section of the stern that hadn't fully submerged yet.

What showed in his eyes wasn't fear, but a greed similar to a hungry wolf seeing fresh meat:

"Why withdraw?"

"Look at those things, Old Chen."

He pointed at the wreckage on the holographic screen, which was tilting and still flickering with faint lights:

"That's twenty thousand tons of high-strength special military steel."

"That's the Ark's top fire-control radar chips from the past few decades."

"Expensive missiles that haven't been fired yet, and countless rare metals and electronic components we've only dreamed of."

Jiang Ran's voice was low and raspy, carrying a near-obsessive fanaticism:

"For a scavenger, throwing these things into the ocean floor to feed the fish is the ultimate crime."

"But..."

"No buts. Move closer."

Jiang Ran interrupted Old Chen's dissuasion, his hands operating rapidly on the console, adjusting the posture of the black iron.

The black warship was like a vulture circling a corpse, using Fluid Control to skillfully avoid the turbulence created by the sinking ship.

It hovered steadily less than fifty meters away from the wreckage of the "ship".

At this distance, one could even hear the crisp snapping of steel components inside the other ship's cabins.

"Before it sinks to its ultimate depth, eat as much as we can."

Jiang Ran licked his lips and pressed the black button labeled "Predation":

"Time to eat."

"Kaka kaka—"

Following a tooth-aching sound of mechanical grinding.

The black iron's originally smooth and flat belly armor suddenly peeled back layer by layer like fish scales, revealing dense honeycomb-like launch ports beneath.

"Release the Predator Swarm."

"Collection Mode: Indiscriminate Plunder."

Along with Jiang Ran's cold command, countless tiny black dots gushed out from those holes.

The scene was both terrifying and spectacular.

They weren't drones in the conventional sense, but millions of fingernail-sized nanomechanical bugs.

Under the dim deep-sea searchlights.

This massive swarm was like a cloud of spreading black ink, or a black undercurrent with its own consciousness.

Fighting against the turbulent seawater, they lunged frantically toward the massive sinking corpse.

"This... this is truly hair-raising."

Old Chen stared at the clusters of black shadows on the screen and couldn't help but shiver.

Compared to the blood-pumping artillery battle just now, this silent devouring carried a more primitive horror.

"Shasha shasha— shasha shasha—"

A strange sound came through the sonar, like the echo of millions of silkworms chewing mulberry leaves, magnified thousands of times.

That was the sound of metal being forcibly decomposed.

The cloud of black "ink" spread out rapidly the moment it touched the wreckage of the "ship".

Enveloping large swathes of the hull.

Like a school of starving piranhas that had caught the scent of blood.

The hull's surface, originally painted with grayish-white anti-rust paint, blackened and peeled at a visible rate.

Hard alloy steel plates were softened by the highly corrosive acid secreted by the nanoswarm.

Then they were bitten off by countless tiny mechanical mouthparts and decomposed into basic metal particles.

Thick copper cables were torn apart, and precision circuit boards were pried open.

In the face of this black metallic plague, nothing could remain intact.

"Faster, even faster."

Jiang Ran watched the rapidly dropping depth readings on the screen, his brows furrowed:

"It's sinking too fast."

"Forget about those outer shell steel plates! They're trash! Have the swarm burrow inside!"

"Go to the core area! Go to the Combat Information Center! Go to the missile magazine!"

Following his will, the black swarm clinging to the wreckage seemed to understand the command and immediately changed tactics.

They gave up on devouring the heavy outer armor.

Instead, they followed the blasted cracks and broken pipes.

Like black mercury, they frantically burrowed into the "ship's" internal organs.

A precise, surgical-style plunder targeting high-value objectives began.

"Warning: Target is accelerating its descent."

"Current depth: 120 meters."

"Warning: Water pressure is rising; signals from some collection units have been lost."

zero's cold notification tone sounded like a death countdown, but Jiang Ran turned a deaf ear.

His hands swiped rapidly across the large screen, marking red "restricted zones" on the ordinary hull structures.

"Throw away those scraps of iron!"

"Don't waste time on that damn hull!"

Jiang Ran looked at the swarms still devouring the deck on the screen and shouted in frustration:

"That's scrap metal worth two cents a pound!"

"I want the brains! The fangs!!"

With the update of the instructions, the previously aimless black swarm instantly became orderly.

They quickly abandoned their preoccupation with the outer steel plates.

They converged into two black torrents, lunging straight for the two most valuable core areas of the "ship's" wreckage.

The first torrent rushed toward the integrated radio frequency mast that had long since broken and was now hanging by a few steel cables off the side of the ship.

That was the "ship's" eyes and brain.

"Dismantle it! Pry those blue crystal plates off for me!"

Under the gaze of the macro probes, countless nanobugs, like a team of precision surgeons, quickly sliced open the mast's skin.

Ignoring the circuits still spraying sparks, they burrowed directly into the interior of the radar array.

They peeled off the fingernail-sized yet priceless Gallium Arsenide T/R modules one by one, intact.

These active phased array radar chips, representing the Ark's highest technological achievements.

At this moment, they were being carefully harvested by the swarm like ripe corn kernels.

Meanwhile, another even larger torrent bit firmly onto the area beneath the stern deck.

Buried there were the "ship's" final fangs—two sets of unfired eight-cell Vertical Launch Systems (VLS).

"Cut the retaining bolts! Dig the entire module out for me!"

This scene was enough to make any Mechanic feel suffocated.

Tens of thousands of nanobugs secreted high-energy acid, drawing a perfect rectangle along the edges of the launch silos.

The deck armor, dozens of centimeters thick, rapidly melted and fractured under the acid and devouring.

Immediately after, a shocking scene occurred.

Those two missile launch modules, weighing dozens of tons and still loaded with live ammunition.

Were actually lifted by the combined efforts of countless tiny nanobugs.

Like a swarm of army ants carrying an elephant's corpse.

Braving the immense deep-sea water pressure, they pushed these two massive metal blocks, slowly detaching them from the mother ship that was falling into the abyss.

"Yes... just like that."

Watching those two massive black shadows drifting toward the black iron, Jiang Ran's pupils constricted slightly from extreme excitement:

"The heart has been dug out."

"Next, it's time for a blood transfusion."

...As the nanoswarms returned laden with spoils, surging back into the black iron's belly like a black tide.

The main screen inside the Command cabin instantly turned into a green waterfall.

Data was roaring.

It was no longer a simple metal recycling report, but a data explosion titled "Crystallization of Civilization."

"Zizi— Analysis beginning."

"Data restructuring in progress."

zero's usually emotionless electronic voice actually sounded a bit hurried, as if overloaded.

"Ding!"

The first highlighted notification popped up, instantly occupying the center of the screen.

【Analysis Complete: Obtained "sea star" H/LJG-346A Active phased array radar blueprint (92% complete)】

【System Evaluation: S-rank. Current core detection technology of the Ark fleet. Solves our current "blind" status.】

"Ding! Ding!"

Before Jiang Ran could clearly see the complex radar array structure diagram, two more notifications arrived in quick succession.

【Data Extraction: Obtained "Aegis" Multi-Target Fire Control Locking Algorithm】

【Effect: Can simultaneously track 128 targets and guide 16 missiles for beyond-visual-range attacks.】

【Physical Reverse Engineering: Obtained MK-41 Universal Vertical Launch System (Incomplete)】

【Status: Launch silo covers damaged, but ejection mechanism intact.

Contains 6 unfired "sea red flag-9B" long-range anti-air missiles and 2 "Yu-8" anti-submarine missiles.】

Watching these notifications flood the screen, even the usually calm Su Qingyu couldn't help but cover her mouth, her eyes wide.

"This... this is hollowing out the Ark's fortune from the past few decades!"

She looked at the blueprints and algorithms representing top military secrets, her voice trembling:

"To develop this radar system, the Ark Academy of Sciences burned through tens of billions in funding and exhausted three generations of engineers.

"For that fire control algorithm, they conducted tens of thousands of live-fire tests... and now, it's all ours?"

This was the joy of a plunderer.

No need for long development cycles, no need for astronomical budget investments.

One only needed to find the right opportunity to take a massive bite out of that giant corpse.

"This is the dividend of war."

Jiang Ran looked at the word "Obtained" still scrolling on the screen, the smile on his face growing wider.

It was the ecstasy of a nouveau riche, yet it carried a rational coldness:

"They build ships; I steal them.

They develop; I take."

He reached out his hand, as if grasping something substantial within the virtual data stream:

"Originally, we were just a speedboat with a pistol, only able to win through sneak attacks and luck."

"But with these..."

Jiang Ran's gaze fell on the final notification:

【Resource integration complete.

Hull evolution conditions met.

Whether to begin assimilation?】

"Confirm."

He pressed the confirmation button without hesitation:

"From now on, we can be considered qualified to sit at the table called 'Regular Army'."