127: Heart transplant surgery! Planting the fission heart into the reactor!

At the bottom of the dark, deathly silent crater.

If any painter among the human survivors saw this scene at this moment...

They would likely be able to paint a masterpiece for the ages titled 'Deep Sea Gluttony'.

The black iron, with a body length of just over forty meters and a displacement of only a little over two thousand tons...

Was currently lying quietly atop the wreckage of the uss united states, a carrier over three hundred meters long with a displacement in the hundred-thousand-ton class.

This massive disparity in size...

Was like a black leech clinging to the carcass of a whale, or a hatchling snake attempting to devour an elephant.

It appeared both arrogant and minuscule.

"Begin."

With Jiang Ran's order, this craziest feeding feast beneath the deep sea officially began.

"Guji—"

The ventral armor layer of the black iron, pressed tight against the carrier's deck, suddenly rippled strangely.

Immediately after, thousands upon tens of thousands of black tentacles, like living black asphalt, poured frantically from every gap in the hull.

They were no longer the few thick engineering tentacles from before.

Instead, they had transformed into countless fine, slippery, and highly corrosive hyphae.

These black hyphae used the black iron as their center.

At a hair-raising speed, they spread frantically toward the vast flight deck surrounding them.

In just ten minutes, looking down from above, the originally grayish-white carrier deck looked as if it had gone moldy.

It was rapidly covered by a thick layer of constantly squirming black fungal carpet.

"Zizizi..."

The fine sound of what seemed like ten million silkworms munching on mulberry leaves spread dully through the seawater.

That was the sound of strong acid reacting with metal.

"This... how is this repairing a ship..."

Old Chen leaned against the porthole, watching the overwhelming black tentacles slowly envelop the massive aircraft carrier.

His face was pale, and his voice carried a hint of fear of the unknown:

"This is fundamentally hunting... it's feeding..."

The scene before him had already exceeded his conceptual understanding of 'machinery'.

The black iron was like a deep-sea monster that had been hungry for billions of years, finally managing to catch such a massive and delicious carcass.

It wished it could swallow every piece of iron plating and every single screw into its belly.

"A snake swallowing an elephant is indeed unsightly."

Jiang Ran looked at the black network on the screen that almost covered the entire bottom of the crater, but his eyes held only satisfaction:

"But only a snake that can swallow an elephant is qualified to transform into a dragon."

Under the coverage of that skin-crawling black fungal carpet, the laws of physics seemed to undergo a bizarre distortion.

The area receiving the black iron's focused attention was precisely the most essential and sturdiest part of this carrier—the flight deck.

This layer of armored steel plate, tens of centimeters thick, was once the pride of the human metallurgical industry in the old era.

They were composed of HY-100 high-yield strength steel and HSLA-115 micro-alloy steel.

They could not only withstand the impact of carrier-based aircraft weighing dozens of tons landing violently at hundreds of kilometers per hour.

They could even endure the bombardment of semi-armor-piercing missiles.

Even the devastating deep-sea nuclear explosion from just now hadn't completely destroyed this hard turtle shell.

But now.

Before this power of biotechnology from the future, this 'industrial crown' was rapidly losing its dignity.

"Zizi—"

As the tips of countless tentacles secreted a high-concentration, eerie green Metal-Dissolving Enzyme.

The gray steel plates that had originally shimmered with a cold, sharp light actually began to soften and collapse rapidly, like butter meeting a branding iron.

The hard crystalline structures were dismantled layer by layer by chemical bonds.

After only a few minutes, that large section of indestructible deck turned into pools of thick, silver-gray metal slurry emitting intense heat.

"Gudu... Gudu..."

Those black tentacles instantly transformed from 'syringes' into 'straws'.

They greedily plunged into the scalding metal slurry, accompanied by rhythmic squirming and sucking sounds.

They continuously pumped these material essences, representing the highest strength of the old era, into the black iron's body.

Through the portholes, one could even see inside those semi-transparent transport pipes.

The silver-gray liquid metal surged like a rushing river, flickering with an enchanting luster in this dark seabed.

"So beautiful..."

Jiang Ran pressed against the glass, watching this scene with eyes as dazed as if he were appreciating a grand symphony:

"Every drop is 'liquid gold' purified by a nuclear explosion.

In today's wasteland world, this is a priceless treasure."

"Eat, eat to your heart's content."

He lightly tapped the glass.

As if whispering to that greedy black beast: "Melt this crown of the old era and cast it into your bones."

...Simply eating that layer of surface armor was clearly not enough to satisfy the appetite of this deep-sea starving beast.

Once the thousands of tons of flight deck were digested and exhausted.

The black tentacles did not stop; instead, they were like scavengers that had caught the scent of bone marrow.

Following the massive explosion hole in the carrier's deck, they scrambled to drill into the bottomless interior of the ship's cabins.

Their goal was clear and cruel—aimed straight at the 'spine' of this hundred-thousand-ton behemoth.

That was an ultra-heavy alloy keel several meters in diameter that ran through the carrier from bow to stern.

It was the soul of this ship, the absolute core that supported this city on the sea.

"Kacha—!!!"

Accompanied by a dull snapping sound.

Hundreds of thick tentacles tightly entangled that main keel, which had long been twisted and deformed in the nuclear explosion.

"Begin the replacement."

Jiang Ran's voice was soft, but the command was as heavy as a thousand jun.

At this moment, a heart-palpitating sound of metal grinding suddenly erupted from within the black iron.

"Gezhi— Gezhi—"

This sound did not come from the outside, but from deep beneath the floor under their feet, from within the hollows of the walls.

Old Chen jumped up in fright, looking around in terror: "What's happening?!

Why is the ship making noise? Is it going to fall apart?!"

"No."

Su Qingyu held onto the shaking control console.

Her cold eyes were now filled with shock as she looked at the frantically jumping structural diagrams on the screen and murmured:

"It is... changing its bones."

Yes, changing bones.

The black iron was actively disintegrating its own internal skeleton of ordinary steel that lacked sufficient strength.

Simultaneously, the scalding HY-100 high-yield strength alloy solution extracted from the carrier wreckage...

...Was being pumped under high pressure into the skeletal molds that had just been vacated.

This was akin to a full-body skeletal replacement surgery without anesthesia.

Old, fragile bones were crushed and expelled;

New, stronger, and harder alloy skeletons were being cast and formed on-site within the body.

Every vibration represented the rebirth of a rib.

Every grinding sound signified a qualitative change in the hull's strength.

Gradually, the fine cracks originally caused by the nuclear explosion's impact...

...Were completely healed under the filling of the silver-gray metal torrent.

The sensation of the whole ship's vibration began to change, no longer the previous loose clattering sound.

Instead, it became a dull, heavy low hum, like a solid iron ingot hitting the ground.

An unprecedented sense of sturdiness was being transmitted from every inch of the deck beneath their feet.

It had become heavier.

And it had become stronger.

"Warning! Material filling rate has reached 120%!"

"Warning! Internal density has reached the critical value! Insufficient hull space!"

"Requesting... lifting morphological restrictions, beginning 'Size Reconstruction'."

Following zero's string of urgent prompts, a heart-palpitating tremor suddenly swept through the entire command cabin.

This vibration was different from any before.

It wasn't from an external impact, nor was it the roar of the engines.

It was a 'gezhi' sound originating from deep within every atom of the hull, like bones lengthening.

"Kalala—!!!"

An extremely sharp hiss, like metal being forcibly stretched, suddenly rang out.

"What's going on?! Is the hull cracking?!"

Old Chen was so scared he grabbed onto a seat bolted to the floor, the fat on his face trembling along with the ship's violent shaking.

"No... it's not cracking..."

Su Qingyu stared intently at the holographic structural diagram in front of her, her pupils slightly dilated from extreme shock:

"It is... growing taller."

Before her voice could fade, a terrifying scene occurred.

The windshield frame in front of the command cabin suddenly let out a loud bang.

Then, the metal walls on both sides actually acted like living muscle.

Accompanied by the ear-piercing sound of friction, they were squeezed and expanded outward by brute force.

The originally narrow and cramped command cabin, which felt crowded with just a few people, was visibly becoming wider and taller.

And on the outside, this change was even more drastic and terrifying.

The black iron's black hull, which was originally only forty-some meters long, finally burst through its original physical shackles after devouring a massive amount of material.

"Beng! Beng! Beng!"

The old armor plates on both sides of the ship cracked and fell off because they couldn't withstand this violent expansion.

But beneath those cracks, it wasn't a fragile internal structure.

Instead, it was the already fully grown, even thicker new armor.

The entire ship was like a giant python shedding its skin.

Its spine was lengthening, its keel was extending. The originally compact hull was being forcibly pulled apart by a tyrannical force.

Fifty meters... sixty meters... seventy meters... this was a 'growing pain' that defied human industrial common sense.

Steel was supposed to be a dead thing; once shaped, it stayed that way for life.

But under the dual effects of biological metal and devouring evolution, this warship was performing a violent solo dance of evolution in the deep sea.

"It's hit the limit... why hasn't it stopped yet!!"

Old Chen looked at the hull parameters skyrocketing on the dashboard, his eyes nearly popping out:

"If it grows any more, our power furnace won't be able to handle it!!"

"It will handle it."

Jiang Ran stood before the still-extending command console.

Feeling the sense of expansion filled with explosive power from beneath his feet, his eyes flashed with a fanatical light:

"Because that 'heart', I have also prepared it for it."

With his words, deep within the hull...

...Something was waking up, cheering, and roaring for this larger, more powerful new body... This gluttonous feast beneath the deep sea lasted for a full ten hours.

When the last drop of valuable metal essence was squeezed dry.

The once-invincible hundred-thousand-ton super carrier uss united states had completely turned into a hollow, shriveled, massive carcass.

Its essence—the hardest decks, the strongest keels, the thickest armor—was all gone.

All that remained was a riddled shell, like rotten wood hollowed out by termites.

Lying quietly at the bottom of the crater, awaiting final decay.

"Weng—"

With a low, powerful engine roar, like a deep-sea whale waking up.

The black warship that had been lying on the carcass slowly retracted all its tentacles.

Using counter-thrust, it slowly rose and hovered above the ruins.

Piercing searchlights shone upon it.

At that moment, Old Chen and Su Qingyu in the command cabin both held their breath.

Rebirth.

If the previous black iron still carried some traces of being pieced together and patched up...

...Then what appeared before them now was a seamless, perfect work of art filled with the aesthetic of industrial violence.

Its entire body presented a deep matte black that seemed capable of devouring all light.

The brand-new armor layer was no longer a mosaic of blocks.

Instead, it was as smooth and fluid as biological skin, and so thick it inspired fear.

Every line was filled with a sense of power, as if ready to tear through the darkness of the deep sea at any moment.

But the most direct impact was still its size.

It had grown larger.

So large it felt unfamiliar.

"Beep— Data panel refresh complete." zero's voice sounded exceptionally pleasant at this moment.

Old Chen looked at the main screen with trembling eyes.

When he saw the new parameters jumping on it, his already somewhat loose dentures almost fell out in shock:

[Hull Status: Perfect (Reconstruction Complete)]

[Length: 82 meters (Originally 45 meters)]

[Width: 16.5 meters (Originally 9 meters)]

[Standard Displacement: 5,200 tons (Originally 2,100 tons)]

[Armor Material: HY-100/Bio-active Composite Armor (Ultra-high strength)]

[Comprehensive Evaluation: ...]

Old Chen rubbed his eyes hard, staring fixedly at that last line, his voice cracking from excessive excitement:

"Five... five thousand two hundred tons?!"

"This build... this tonnage... how is this still a frigate?!"

Su Qingyu stood beside him, her cold eyes now burning with an indescribable shock.

She looked at those terrifying stats, enough to crush the vast majority of surface vessels from the old era, and softly uttered that awe-inspiring title:

"Destroyer."

Yes, a destroyer.

After devouring the essence of an entire aircraft carrier, the black iron had finally completed its leap in life tier.

From a light frigate that could only perform hit-and-run tactics in coastal waters, it had evolved into something capable of facing the deep sea head-on—

A five-thousand-ton class ocean-going destroyer.

"The shell is ready."

Jiang Ran stood on the brand-new, spacious command platform, feeling the steady, mountain-like weight beneath his feet.

His gaze passed through the porthole, looking toward the deeper, darker distant waters.

He raised his hand and touched the lead box in his inner chest pocket.

There, it held a scalding [fission heart].

"Next,"

Jiang Ran's lips curled into a wild, arrogant smile: "It's time to install a heart truly worthy of this beast."