126: They returned battered and bruised! They brought back the bones of God!

Three hours later.

When the churning silt finally settled.

The violent turbulence gradually subsided, and this patch of deep sea returned once more to the deathly silence it had known for eons.

In the murky seawater, a scarred black warship looked like a ghost crawling back from the depths of hell.

Dragging its heavy body, it silently returned to the previous coordinates.

The black iron's current appearance was incredibly tragic.

The Starboard Stabilizer Wing was completely snapped off, leaving only a jagged, twisted metal stump.

Over 60% of the Biological Armor, which was originally smooth and tough, now displayed a shocking charred black color.

Large chunks of the cuticle were curled and peeling as if they had rolled through a fire, revealing the dark red muscle fibers and metal skeleton beneath.

It was "bleeding."

Repair Fluid mixed with the ship's own bodily fluids, trailing a faint streak through the seawater.

But it had returned nonetheless.

"Gulp..."

Watching the footage swept by the searchlights on the main screen.

Old Chen, in the pilot's seat, swallowed hard with difficulty, his fingers turning white from gripping the control stick too tightly.

"My god..."

In his field of vision, the originally towering undersea mountain range had completely vanished.

It had been replaced by an incredibly massive bowl-shaped Crater, over a kilometer in diameter.

It was as if God had reached down a finger and pressed hard into the deep-sea floor.

The rock at the bottom of the pit had a strange, vitrified texture—marks left by instantaneous temperatures of thousands of degrees.

The surrounding seawater was still turbid, filled with countless floating gray-white flocculent materials—

The remains of countless deep-sea creatures that had been instantly vaporized or boiled.

This was an absolute zone of death.

There were no fish, no plankton; even bacteria had likely been eradicated.

"Radiation levels at 3500 Sv/h. Still a lethal dose, but it's dropped by two orders of magnitude since just now."

Su Qingyu's voice rang out in the deathly quiet command cabin, carrying a hint of exhaustion and shock that she couldn't hide:

"If we had left even one second later... just one second..."

She didn't finish, but everyone understood the consequences.

If they had been caught in that pit, the black iron's fate would have been the same as the vitrified rocks around them—not even a scrap would remain.

"Do we... do we still need to get closer?"

Old Chen's voice trembled slightly; he felt an instinctive fear for this place.

This was the center of a recent nuclear explosion—the Reaper's backyard.

"Move in."

Su Qingyu looked at the man on the screen who, though unconscious, still had his brow furrowed in the medical pod.

Taking a deep breath, she made the decision for him:

"He risked half his life to take down this prey. If he doesn't see the corpse, he'll never be satisfied."

...Accompanied by the low hum of the thrusters.

Like a deep-sea scavenger fish that had caught the scent of blood, the black iron cautiously slid into the center of that massive Crater.

The blinding beam of the searchlight cut through the darkness, sweeping back and forth in the turbid water.

*Beep—*

The sonar echo outlined a huge and distorted shadow.

"There it is..."

Old Chen's voice carried a sense of awe, the kind felt when facing the ruins of a great disaster.

At the very bottom of the Crater lay the former overlord of the deep—the uss united states nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

However, its current form could no longer be called a "ship."

The originally towering island had completely melted in the high temperatures of the nuclear blast, turning into a puddle of solidified steel tears on the deck.

The reactor compartment in the middle of the hull had been blown open, leaving a massive hole dozens of meters in diameter.

The edges showed heart-stopping serrated tear marks, and the interior was still radiating a faint, eerie residual heat.

The entire ship looked like a dead fish whose spine had been violently snapped, with the bow and stern bent at an exaggerated ninety-degree angle.

But it still existed.

Even after enduring the dual devastation of core meltdown and steam explosions.

This steel behemoth, which gathered the highest crystallization of human industry from the old era, still retained its core skeleton.

"As expected, although the superstructure is completely destroyed, the main hull structure was not entirely vaporized."

zero's voice rang out at the appropriate time.

But in this cold electronic voice, there was a rare hint of... an appraisal-like flutter, as if looking at a peerless treasure:

"Analyzing wreckage composition..."

"Target material confirmed: Main keel is HY-100 High-Yield Strength Specialty Steel;"

"Flight deck and side armor layers contain large amounts of HSLA-115 Micro-Alloy Steel and Depleted Uranium Composite Armor Layers."

On the screen, a series of data representing material properties scrolled past like a waterfall.

Every parameter represented the peak level of metallurgical industry from the old era.

"This is truly... the jewel in the industrial crown."

Su Qingyu watched the dense analysis reports on the screen, her eyes flickering slightly.

In this resource-scarce post-apocalyptic world with technological gaps, finding steel of this caliber was harder than reaching the heavens.

This specialty steel, which could still resist the impact of thousands of degrees, was the top of the top in terms of hardness, toughness, and corrosion resistance.

And now, tens of thousands of tons of this top-tier metal, purified by a nuclear blast and stripped of impurities, lay before them completely unguarded.

This wasn't just some ruin.

This was clearly an exposed mountain of gold made of actual gold.

"If we can take these things back..."

Old Chen swallowed, the fear in his eyes gradually replaced by greed:

"Even just cutting off a few plates could upgrade the black iron's armor by several tiers!"

Just then, a rapid series of vital sign alarms interrupted their daydreams.

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

"Warning: Commander's heart rate is rising sharply!"

"Consciousness is forcibly awakening from a deep coma!"

Su Qingyu whipped her head around to look at the medical pod behind her.

"He's awake?"

...Inside the medical pod, the pale green high-concentration Repair Fluid was slowly receding.

*Pshhh—*

With the sound of the pressure valve opening, the layer of biological gel that had encased Jiang Ran like amber quickly dissolved.

As soon as the hatch opened a crack, a hand wrapped in bandages and covered in large patches of red, swollen burn marks...

...suddenly reached out from inside and gripped the edge of the hatch tightly.

"Cough... cough cough cough!!!"

A violent fit of coughing, as if he were trying to cough up his lungs, echoed through the cabin.

Jiang Ran, like a dying fish, stumbled and crawled out of the medical pod completely naked.

His entire body was steaming—the high temperature generated by his cells as they accelerated metabolism for repair.

"Don't move! You have extensive soft tissue contusions, internal bleeding, and the radiation cleansing isn't finished!"

Su Qingyu rushed over, trying to push him back into the repair pod.

"The bone..."

Jiang Ran shoved Su Qingyu's hand away.

His eyes were bloodshot, his pupils hadn't fully focused, and he was swaying, yet he exuded a heart-stopping obsession:

"My... that piece of bone... where is it?"

"..."

Su Qingyu's hand froze in mid-air.

Looking at this madman who couldn't even stand steadily but was only thinking about his loot, she didn't know whether to be angry or laugh for a moment.

"In the storage locker! It's lead-sealed! It's not going anywhere!"

She pointed crossly at the nearby weapon rack.

Lying there quietly was that super-alloy spine, over ten meters long, along with the storage box containing the fission heart.

Hearing those words and following her finger to see the loot still gleaming with a cold light.

Jiang Ran's nerves, which had been stretched to the breaking point, finally relaxed.

"Whew..."

He let out a long breath and collapsed onto the water-covered metal floor.

Leaning against the base of the medical pod, his face wore that familiar, reckless smile:

"As long as it's still here... as long as it's still here..."

"For these two pieces of junk, you almost lost your life and nearly turned us all into deep-sea ghosts."

Su Qingyu's face was cold.

While quickly checking his vital signs, she tossed a spare black tight-fitting combat suit onto him:

"Since you're not dead, get up already."

"The black iron's situation is very bad."

She pulled up a holographic projection showing the warship's real-time status map, filled with alarming red warning zones.

"Structural damage at 35%, keel slightly deformed, outer armor peeling over 60%, and the thruster nozzles are severely eroded due to overload. "

"Most importantly, our energy reserves are nearly depleted."

Su Qingyu looked at Jiang Ran and gave a serious suggestion: "We must return immediately."

"In our current state, any random sea beast could tear us apart."

"We need to get back to safe waters for a major overhaul."

"Return?"

Jiang Ran, who was struggling to put on the combat suit, suddenly stopped.

He looked up, and in his eyes, which had just regained a bit of clarity...

...there wasn't the slightest bit of worry upon hearing the damage report.

On the contrary.

A light even more fervent and greedy than when he was looking for the bone was burning wildly in the depths of his pupils.

"Why return?"

Jiang Ran used the wall for support and shakily stood up.

His gaze passed through the medical pod's porthole, staring straight at the massive Crater in the distance and the huge steel corpse at the bottom.

"Isn't the best 'doctor' right in front of us?"

"Doctor?"

Su Qingyu frowned, following Jiang Ran's gaze to the deathly ruins: "You mean... using that scrap metal?"

"Scrap metal?"

Jiang Ran looked as if he had heard the world's biggest joke.

Limping to the main console, he leaned his hands on the cracked screen, his eyes as fanatical as a starving ghost staring at a feast.

"Look closely, how is that scrap metal?"

He pointed at the twisted aircraft carrier wreckage on the screen, his voice raspy with extreme excitement:

"That's tens of thousands of tons of top-tier military alloy that was vacuum-smelted and then underwent secondary purification in the high temperatures of a nuclear blast!"

"That's HY-100!"

"It's a strategic resource that even the current Deep Sea United Fleet is reluctant to deploy in large quantities!"

Jiang Ran suddenly turned around and spread his arms as if to embrace the ruins:

"The black iron is like a patient who's seriously injured and in urgent need of nutrients."

"You want it to drag its broken body back now just to drink porridge?"

"What a waste!"

"There's a ready-made buffet right here, why not eat?!"

Old Chen listened in stunned silence and stammered, "But... but Boss, that's an aircraft carrier!"

"With something that big, how... how do we fix it?"

"Are we supposed to cut off plates and weld them onto the ship one by one? We don't have that kind of equipment..."

"Weld?"

A cruel and greedy curve hooked the corner of Jiang Ran's mouth.

He reached out his still-bandaged hand and made a sharp grasping motion in the air:

"Old Chen, you still haven't figured out what the black iron really is."

"It's not some rigid mechanical ship. It's alive."

"For a living thing, how do you treat an injury?"

Jiang Ran's gaze suddenly became sharp, and a chilling command left his mouth, carrying an unquestionable scent of blood:

"Naturally—you eat meat to mend meat."

"zero! Activate the [Metal Devour Protocol]!"

"Target: 'uss united states' wreckage."

"Command: Full ship descent! Land right on top of it and open all digestive rootlets!"

"Eat it for me, skin and bone, until nothing is left!"

..."Understood, Commander."

zero's electronic voice seemed to carry a hint of an excited tremor.

In the dark deep sea, the black iron's scarred hull slowly descended.

It didn't deploy its landing gear;

Instead, like a giant deep-sea octopus preparing to feed, it pressed its belly directly against the massive aircraft carrier corpse below.

The difference in their sizes was stark.

The black iron, barely dozens of meters long, landed on the flight deck of the supercarrier, which was over three hundred meters long—

It looked like a black leech clinging to the carcass of a whale.

*Boom!*

With a dull thud, the black iron fully settled onto the twisted and deformed flight deck.

"Devour Array—deploy."

Jiang Ran ordered in a low voice.

The next second, a hair-raising scene unfolded.

The black iron's smooth bottom armor suddenly split open like petals, and countless thick, black tentacles with a metallic sheen—

...burst out from the ship with a sickening scraping sound.

*Psh! Psh! Psh!*

The tips of these tentacles weren't drills, but some kind of molecular blades in a state of high-frequency vibration.

They pierced through the layers of incredibly hard HY-100 specialty steel plates without resistance, rooting deep into the "flesh" of the aircraft carrier.

Immediately after, an eerie green "Metal-Dissolving Enzyme" was injected into the carrier's wreckage through the tentacles.

Under the effect of this specialized biological enzyme,

Those top-tier alloys that had survived deep-sea pressure and nuclear temperatures,

Now seemed like butter meeting a hot knife, quickly softening and decomposing until they turned into streams of scalding silver-gray metallic slurry.

*Sizzle sizzle sizzle—*

Through the semi-transparent transport tentacles, it was clearly visible:

Streams of metallic essence, representing the peak of old era industry, were being greedily extracted and sucked into the black iron's body.

"Does it taste good?"

Jiang Ran watched the resource collection data jumping wildly on the screen, his lips curling slightly.

The entire black iron was vibrating—a joyful roar of "chewing" and "digestion."

As a massive amount of high-purity alloy was injected, the charred wounds on the black iron's hull began to heal at a rate visible to the naked eye.

New armor layers grew out, their color deeper and their texture denser.

They even faintly shimmered with a cold steel-gray similar to the aircraft carrier's deck.

[Hull Structural Repair Progress: 30%... 60%... 85%...]

[High-quality HSLA-115 Micro-Alloy Steel intake detected, assimilating material properties...]

[Armor strength increasing... Keel toughness strengthening...]

At this moment, this place was no longer a grave; it was the black iron's buffet.

Jiang Ran looked at the energy bar, which had not only filled instantly,

But was even showing signs of overflowing, along with the evolution progress bar. A glint of ambitious light flashed in his eyes.

The [Lv6] threshold that had stuck him for so long, and which he thought would take much longer to reach,

Finally emitted a loosening crack under the nourishment of this unprecedented gluttonous feast.

"Eat. Eat your fill."

Jiang Ran lightly stroked the slightly trembling console, as if petting a beast in the middle of a meal:

"Once you've had your fill, it'll be time for us to give this world... a little shock."