128: Unlimited energy! As long as the sea doesn't dry up, the Black Iron Ship will never stop!

"Buzz... buzz... cough cough!!"

A dull roar accompanied by a distinct trembling.

It traveled to every corner of the warship along the newly reforged, sturdy keel.

The sound did not seem majestic; instead, it carried a sense of strain and exhaustion, like an old cow pulling a broken cart.

"It's no use! It can't move at all!"

On the bridge, Old Chen was sweating profusely with anxiety.

His rough hands pushed and pulled at the power throttle before he finally slapped his thigh in frustration.

"Boss! This ship is too heavy now!"

"A dead weight of five thousand two hundred tons!"

"Just to overcome the static inertia and start moving, it's taking everything we've got!"

On the screen, the curve representing power output had already hit the red line.

But the numbers representing the speed were like a half-dead old lady, slowly crawling around the pathetic figure of '12 knots.'

For a destroyer that looked ferocious and majestic enough to take on the deep sea head-on, this was simply a disgrace.

"Our previous bio-power furnace was designed for a two-thousand-ton frigate."

Old Chen pointed to the engine overheat warning that was constantly flashing and complained with a bitter face:

"Now look at it; the body is twice as strong."

"It's become a two-meter-tall muscular man, but the heart is still that of a rabbit."

"How do you expect it to run?"

"Never mind fighting at full speed; it's a struggle just to crawl out of this pit."

"If we keep squeezing it like this, we'll die of a myocardial infarction before the enemy even hits us."

This was the price of evolution.

After devouring the aircraft carrier wreckage, although the black iron possessed enviable top-tier armor and a massive size.

The original energy system had completely become its shortest plank.

A small horse pulling a large cart was destined not to go far.

"I know."

Jiang Ran's calm voice came through the communication channel.

He was not in the Command cabin; the source of the voice was... the Bottom Power Room.

"Since it's a muscular man, it shouldn't use a rabbit's heart."

Accompanied by the sound of a heavy hydraulic airtight door opening.

Jiang Ran carried a heavy grey lead box with a high-radiation warning label on its surface.

He strode into the power core chamber, which was filled with the smell of engine oil and hot air.

He looked at the old-style bio-power furnace in front of him, which was groaning under the strain, its pipes glowing slightly red.

His gaze was as sharp as a blade.

"Shut it down."

Jiang Ran placed the lead box heavily on the metal console with a dull thud: "We are going to perform a heart transplant on this beast."

"Command confirmed."

"Main reactor... emergency shutdown."

As zero executed the command without any hesitation, the dull roar of the turbine that had been lingering in their ears quickly faded.

A few seconds later, the lights in the power cabin flickered twice.

Then they all went out, leaving only the red emergency lighting on the walls to cast a blood-like, dim glow.

The entire ship lost power.

The massive steel beast seemed to die instantly, falling into absolute silence on the dark seabed.

Only the spherical reactor in the center of the power room, which had already cooled down.

Stood alone in the darkness like a heart that had stopped beating.

"Click."

Jiang Ran reached out and unfastened the heavy Mechanical Arm lock on the lead box on the console.

The moment the lead lid was lifted, an eerie, demonic azure glow instantly overflowed.

It illuminated the entire dim power cabin with a ghostly clarity.

It was an irregular crystal only the size of an adult's fist.

It was not static like an ordinary gem.

Instead, like some kind of living tissue, it constantly contracted and expanded on an extremely microscopic level.

With every pulse, it released a visible ripple of blue radiation into the surroundings, making the dust in the air dance along with it.

[High-Energy Fission Core (Living)]

This was the essence of that Lv5 radiation sea beast, the source of its ability to squander energy at will in the deep sea.

Even through his protective suit, Jiang Ran could still feel the massive, scalp-tingling energy restless within.

It was like a dragon imprisoned in a crystal cage, longing to be released.

"Let's begin."

Jiang Ran took half a step back, his eyes as calm as a chief surgeon about to operate.

"Zzzzz—"

Four precision Mechanical Arms suspended from the ceiling started up simultaneously.

The high-energy laser cutters at the tips lit up with a blinding white light, accurately slicing into the thick lead shell of the old reactor.

"Chhhh—"

Accompanied by white smoke from vaporized metal and a piercing cutting sound, the reactor's shell was peeled away layer by layer like old, dead skin.

Ten minutes later.

The originally tightly sealed power furnace was completely "opened up."

Complex cooling pipes and control circuits were exposed to the air, like a patient whose chest had been cut open, revealing blood vessels and nerves.

The slot in the middle for placing ordinary nuclear fuel rods looked empty and exceptionally pathetic.

The Mechanical Arm steadily picked up the fission heart, which was emitting a terrifying blue light, and slowly moved it toward the cut-open gap.

"Warning: Interface mismatch."

zero's prompt sounded: "This is not a standard industrial part and cannot be fixed through conventional slots."

"No interface is needed."

Jiang Ran looked at the blue heart hovering over the cavity, his voice low and certain:

"Cut all physical connection lines."

"Strip off the insulation as well."

"Stuff it directly inside, pressed against the main artery of power transmission."

"Don't install it as a battery or a part."

Jiang Ran, through his radiation mask and under the reflection of the blue light, revealed a somewhat crazed smile:

"Plant it... as a living organ!"

"Command executed. Implantation beginning."

Amidst zero's cold announcement.

The Mechanical Arm descended steadily, holding the fission heart that emitted a sinister blue light.

It was gently pressed onto the main energy transmission pipe at the bottom of the power furnace, which had already been stripped of its insulation to reveal a silvery-white metallic luster.

The moment they touched.

There were no expected flying sparks, nor was there the bang of an energy short circuit.

There was only a scene that was spine-chilling yet filled with a certain eerie sense of holiness.

"Guji—"

The sound was extremely faint, like a wet mollusk attaching itself to a rock.

The fission heart, which was originally in a solid crystalline state.

At the moment of contact with the metal pipe, its surface actually softened and began to wriggle as if it were alive.

Immediately after, countless hair-thin, vascular tentacles emitting a dim blue light frantically poked out from inside the crystal.

They were not making a mechanical connection; they were predating and parasitizing.

Those light-tentacles greedily lunged at all the cold metal objects around them—energy pipes, cooling pumps, control circuit boards... they were like a layer of glowing fungal carpet, quickly wrapping and entangling them, and secreting an unknown corrosive mucus.

Before this mucus, the hard special alloy actually softened as quickly as a sugar cube meeting strong acid.

"Zzzzz—"

Accompanied by a series of fine sounds, metal and flesh actually underwent an incredible fusion on a physical level.

The cold steel pipes gradually turned into translucent blue blood vessels with a biological texture.

The transparent antifreeze coolant that used to flow inside.

Now, under the reflection of the blue light, it appeared incredibly thick, like blue blood surging through an artery.

Within just a few minutes.

The power cabin, which was originally filled with the smell of engine oil and a cold, hard industrial style, had completely changed its appearance.

The four walls were no longer cold steel plates but were covered with a dense, pulsing network of glowing nerves like ivy.

An indescribable smell filled the air, like ozone mixed with a certain vibrant, rusty fishiness.

This was no longer a mechanical chamber.

It had become a giant, semi-mechanical, semi-biological chest cavity.

And the fission heart, which had been completely "planted" in the center and seemed to have expanded in size, was the sole ruler of this chest cavity.

It lay there quietly, with countless thick blue "arteries" connecting to every part of the warship.

Jiang Ran stood in the shadow cast by the emergency red light, watching this scene that was even somewhat SAN-draining.

Yet his face showed a fanatical expression, as if he were admiring a peerless work of art.

This was the most thorough desecration of the old era industrial system.

But it was also the greatest evolution of the new era.

"What a perfect combination..."

He reached out and gently stroked the slowly pulsing blue halo in front of him through the air, whispering:

"Wake up."

"Let this ship see what true... power is."

... "Boom—"

An extremely dull explosion erupted deep within everyone's eardrums without warning.

The sound was not sharp or deafening, but it carried an indescribable penetrating power.

It ignored the thick armor layers and the barrier of seawater.

It acted directly on human bones and hearts, triggering a wave of uncontrolled resonant tremors.

In the darkness, Old Chen suddenly clutched his chest; in that moment, he even thought his heart had skipped a beat.

"What... what was that sound?"

Before he could react.

"Boom—!!"

A second giant explosion followed.

It was louder, more powerful, and more violent than the first.

Immediately after, a terrifying flood of energy, like a burst dam, instantly surged through the long-dormant meridians of the black iron.

"Zzzzz—Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The internal ship lights, which had been dim and flickering due to insufficient backup power, suddenly increased in brightness tenfold.

They were as blinding as direct noon sunlight.

Then, because the voltage instantly overloaded, the rows of lighting tubes in the corridors exploded, bursting into brilliant showers of sparks.

But in the next second, the backup circuits automatically connected, and higher-intensity emergency lights lit up again, illuminating the entire warship with absolute clarity.

"Warning! Warning! Energy circuit pressure is too high!"

"Abnormal and violent energy input detected!"

"Voltage exceeds the standard by 300%!"

"Voltage regulators have overloaded and burned out!"

On the command console, the dashboard that had been paralyzed like a dead fish was now flashing frantically like a crazed disco ball.

In that instant, all the needles swung from the '0' at the far left.

They slammed into the red warning zone at the far right, even desperately trying to push further.

"My God..."

Old Chen gripped the handrail tightly, feeling the pulses beneath his feet that were growing stronger wave by wave.

That wasn't the high-frequency, fine vibration of a mechanical engine.

It was a grand, rhythmic rise and fall, like the breathing of a deep-sea leviathan.

With every pulse, he felt that this five-thousand-ton steel giant was as light as a feather.

"Power output... breaking critical value!"

zero's voice resounded throughout the ship, speaking as fast as a rapid-fire list, interspersed with a large amount of unparseable data corruption:

"Current power: 120%... 280%... 450%...!!!"

"Exceeding 500%! Still rising!!"

"Severe energy overflow! Conventional battery banks have been instantly filled!"

"Excess energy has nowhere to vent!"

"Forcing reverse charge into the Klein Field shield system!"

"Buzz—!!!"

Accompanied by a crisp hum.

On the surface of the black iron's hull, the light blue light shield that was normally only activated in combat.

Now, it was forced open automatically by the sheer pressure.

And its brightness was startling; it was no longer a thin layer as before.

Instead, it was as thick as a physical substance, emitting a dazzling blue light in the deep sea, like a burning blue star.

There was too much energy.

So much that it couldn't be used up, so much that it had to be wasted to prevent the ship from bursting.

This was the terror of that fission heart.

For a Lv5 deep-sea leviathan, this heart was used to support its ten-thousand-ton body for supersonic movement.

Now it was installed on the five-thousand-ton black iron?

This was essentially putting a space shuttle's rocket boosters on a sports car.

After an initial period of chaos and overload warnings.

That violent flood of energy, under the guidance of the newborn biological neural network, finally became steady and orderly.

But it still surged endlessly.

"Buzz—"

That heavy panting sound, like an old cow pulling a broken cart, had completely vanished.

It emitted a low, powerful hum, like the engine of a top-tier supercar at idle.

On the bridge, Old Chen reached out with a trembling hand.

He tentatively took the power throttle that had required all his strength to push earlier.

He pushed it forward gently by just one millimeter.

Only one millimeter.

"Boom!!!"

The entire five-thousand-ton steel giant lunged forward, and the massive inertia almost threw Old Chen, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt, into the ceiling.

Through the rearview monitor screen.

Everyone watched in dumbfounded shock as the two sets of massive main propulsion nozzles at the stern of the black iron did not spray conventional orange chemical flames.

What erupted were two nearly hundred-meter-long, eerie blue plasma jets that looked like physical lightsabers!

Those terrifyingly high-temperature jets instantly boiled and vaporized the seawater behind them, leaving a long-lasting blue light trail in the deep sea.

And this was merely at an "idle" state.

"Incredible... truly incredible..."

Old Chen leaned against the console, feeling that unprecedented sense of lightness beneath his feet.

It was as if they were piloting not a heavy destroyer, but a weightless space fighter.

"Ding—core module data update complete."

zero's voice sounded exceptionally solemn at this moment.

On the main screen, the progress bar icon that originally represented the remaining fuel percentage flashed a few times, and then... completely vanished.

In its place was a brand-new infinity symbol [∞] emitting a faint blue light.

[core Module: Biological Nuclear Heart (Integrated)]

[Current Status: Active (Excellent)]

[New Unique Trait: Eternal Blue]

[Trait Description: This is a living heart.]

[It no longer depends on traditional nuclear fuel rods.]

[Through the biomass energy conversion network, it can directly and efficiently extract deuterium and tritium from the surrounding seawater for fusion reactions;]

[At the same time, it can swallow high-energy radiation from the environment like breathing, converting it into pure kinetic energy.]

[Conclusion: As long as the sea does not run dry, as long as radiation remains, the black iron will—Never Stop.]

Silence.

A long silence fell over the Command cabin.

Su Qingyu stared intently at that [∞] symbol; usually calm, her breathing had also become rapid.

She knew all too well what this meant.

In this apocalypse, energy was everything.

The warships of all survivor factions, no matter how powerful, were tightly tethered by that invisible "fuel supply line."

But now, the black iron had broken free from its chains.

It had obtained true freedom... deep in the power room.

The blue glow rippled like water.

Jiang Ran stood before that massive, powerfully pulsing fission heart.

On the surrounding walls, within those dense biological vascular networks.

The blue energy liquid was surging and flowing, making a sound like a rushing river.

He reached out and pressed his palm against a thick, warm energy artery.

"Thump—thump—"

The strong, powerful pulse traveled through his palm to his entire body.

In this dim and sacred blue light, a satisfied, even somewhat compassionate smile appeared on Jiang Ran's face.

"Can you feel it?"

He whispered softly, as if speaking to a newborn baby: "Now, you are alive."