145: A silver swarm of insects! They devoured a 10,000-ton nuclear submarine like a buffet! Not even a bone was left!

"Zizi—zizi—"

Inside the Command cabin of the Ark flagship, "poseidon-01."

There was no earth-shattering explosion as expected, nor was there fire or thick smoke.

Only one sound filled the eardrums of all the crew members.

It was the high-frequency noise of millions of tungsten alloy serrated teeth frantically grinding, cutting, and gnawing on the titanium alloy armor plates.

That sound was everywhere, dense and pervasive.

It felt like countless fingernails scratching a blackboard, or thousands of miniature electric drills boring holes into one's skull simultaneously.

It drilled into the ears, piercing through the auditory nerve straight to the cerebral cortex, making teeth ache, hearts race, and Sanity values plummet.

"Damage Control Team! Hold on! Hold on!"

"Pressure imbalance in Compartment One! Pin-hole leak in Compartment Three! Compartment Four... the hull of Compartment Four is thinning!"

The shouting coming over the broadcast was already tinged with a sob.

The interior of the submarine was like hell at this moment.

Damage control members, armed with quick-dry cement and sealant guns, frantically lunged toward the bulkheads where water mist kept spraying out.

However, it was a completely futile nightmare.

Just as they plugged a high-pressure leak the size of a needle eye, the steel plate next to it would suddenly bulge inward.

Then, with a "pfft," a new hole would be bitten through.

Worse still, when a crew member tried to use an alloy patch plate to seal a crack,

He discovered in horror that within five seconds of applying the patch,

Its surface was covered in dense silver bite marks,

And it quickly melted and shattered like a piece of butter in a hot pan.

"They're eating metal... they're even eating the damage control equipment!"

"We can't stop them! We can't stop them at all!"

Colonel Recker slumped in his command chair, his once-crisp uniform now soaked in cold sweat.

He tilted his head back, staring fixedly at the 80mm-thick special titanium alloy ceiling of the Command cabin, which had always been regarded as an absolute safety barrier.

There, a tooth-aching "creak" was currently sounding out.

In the final image on the sonar imager, the submarine had been wrapped into a silver cocoon.

Those thousands of mechanical piranhas known as "Hunters" were, with astonishing efficiency,

Turning the solid armor—sturdy enough to withstand the pressure of two thousand meters deep—into a brittle cracker full of holes.

"Is this... that monster's method?"

Recker watched a drop of water seep from the ceiling; it fell onto his forehead, bone-chillingly cold.

"Crack."

The first visible crack appeared on the main load-bearing beam overhead, like a slithering venomous snake.

That wasn't ordinary metal fatigue.

That was the wail of steel.

That was the sound of the Grim Reaper tapping on a dinner plate at the table.

"Boom—!!!"

The loud bang didn't sound like metal snapping; it was more like a dull thunderclap exploding inside a narrow tin can.

Directly above the Command cabin, that main load-bearing keel, which had long been overstrained,

Finally lost its last bit of support under the relay gnawing of thousands of mechanical mouths.

The heavy titanium alloy plate, like a fragile piece of paper, suddenly collapsed inward.

"Zzz—pfft!!!"

Two thousand four hundred meters deep meant two hundred and forty atmospheres of pressure.

This terrifying pressure instantly found a vent.

A pale, high-pressure water jet instantly pierced through the crack,

Cutting into the Command cabin like an invincible liquid lightsaber, accompanied by a piercing howl.

The sonar chief, standing directly beneath the crack, didn't even have time to scream.

The water jet instantly transfixed his body,

Splitting him and the metal control console beneath him neatly in half, like cutting tofu.

Before the blood mist could even disperse, it was washed away without a trace by the violent current.

"Seal the cabin! Seal the cabin quickly!!!"

Colonel Recker was knocked to the floor by the blast of air, clutching his head and roaring in the turbid water.

But it was all too late.

The breach was like an ant-hole in a collapsing dam, expanding instantly under the tearing force of the water pressure.

Immediately after, a scene occurred that froze the souls of all the survivors.

Accompanying the influx of seawater was not icy darkness, but a mass of shimmering, seemingly living "silver liquid metal."

It was the Deep Sea Hunter swarm.

They swarmed in through the crack like a silver mudslide, instantly filling the upper space of the Command cabin.

"Buzz buzz buzz—"

Thousands of pairs of crimson electronic compound eyes lit up simultaneously under the dim emergency lights.

They didn't drift aimlessly with the current;

The moment they entered the water, they activated their attitude control engines.

Adjusting their direction nimbly in the water, they were like a pack of miniature sharks that had caught the scent of blood.

They instantly locked onto every heat-emitting living thing in the cabin.

"Ah—! Don't come over here! Stay back!"

The first mate pulled out a pistol in terror, firing frantically at the mass of silver mist.

The bullets hit the tungsten alloy shells of the mechanical piranhas, sparking a few weak flares.

In the next second, the silver cloud suddenly contracted and then lunged down like a giant net.

The first mate's figure instantly disappeared into the dense swarm of mechanical insects.

There weren't many screams, because it only lasted for a brief moment.

There were only countless fine, dense, hair-raising sounds of chewing and cutting.

It sounded like countless scissors cutting through fabric simultaneously.

It wasn't just submergence.

It was consumption.

These tireless mechanical monsters were turning this small, air-filled space into an Asura field... "Da-da-da—crack!"

A fully armed internal guard soldier tried to resist by using the cabin door as cover.

Just as the submachine gun in his hand spat out a few tongues of fire, two silver mechanical insects pounced onto his barrel.

There was no intense struggle.

Only a tooth-aching sound of metal grinding.

That hard gun barrel was like a carrot in a shredder, instantly ground into a pile of twisted scrap metal.

Immediately after, more silver points of light covered him.

They attached themselves to the soldier's Kevlar body armor, and plasma cutting claws instantly generated temperatures of several thousand degrees.

They sliced through the ballistic plates like a hot knife through butter.

tungsten alloy mouthparts followed, drawing the armor along with the flesh inside into high-speed rotating cutting chambers.

The screams lasted for less than two seconds before turning into gurgling bubbles, finally subsiding into dead silence.

They didn't even spit out the bones.

This wasn't a battle at all; it was an efficient process of industrial-grade degradation.

To this swarm of mechanical piranhas, human bones and submarine pipelines were no different—they were all just "matter" to be processed.

They darted through the water, biting through sparking cables, shredding oxygen supply lines, and tearing apart hydraulic control valves.

The entire massive "poseidon-01."

At this moment, it was like a bull that had accidentally fallen into the Amazon River, besieged by tens of thousands of piranhas.

Its "flesh" was rapidly disappearing, its "tendons" were being torn apart inch by inch, and its "blood" stained the surrounding seawater red.

The command center, originally full of high-tech aesthetics,

Turned into a slaughterhouse floating with severed limbs and metal scraps in just dozens of seconds.

Colonel Recker huddled in a corner, his hand tightly clutching the pistol that had already run out of bullets.

He watched helplessly as that silver storm swept over the first mate's position.

When the storm moved away, only a red stain and a few floating metal buttons remained.

"This... this isn't war..."

Recker tremblingly raised the barrel to his own temple, his eyes filled with utter despair:

"This is... predation."

...The scene shifts back.

In the silent deep sea eight hundred meters away from "poseidon-01," the black iron ghost still hovered in the shadows of that fault zone.

Like an indifferent bystander, it watched the cruel feast taking place right before its eyes.

Through the high-magnification optical periscope,

This once-unrivaled Ark flagship now presented a bone-chillingly eerie beauty and horror.

It was no longer a submarine.

Under the beams of the searchlights from the two terrified, swaying wing-ships,

It looked more like a giant, glowing silver hive, or the carcass of a whale being gnawed on by countless glowing maggots.

The originally black and smooth anechoic tile hull had long since vanished, leaving only a titanium alloy skeleton full of holes.

Countless large and small breaches riddled the ship's body, making it look as precarious as a sand sculpture after a rainstorm.

Tens of thousands of red-glowing Deep Sea Hunters tirelessly darted in and out of the wreckage.

They would dive into a hole and emerge from another moments later, bringing out strings of bubbles and metal debris.

The sight was like silver blood circulating within the body of this behemoth.

Except this circulation brought not life, but total oblivion.

"Zzz... Thump."

With a dull sound of disintegration,

The massive nuclear reactor cooling tower at the stern of the submarine,

With its support structure gnawed hollow, detached directly from the hull and fell into the bottomless abyss below with a series of electrical sparks.

Having lost its final buoyancy control,

This ten-thousand-ton steel beast finally ceased all struggle.

Its bow slowly sank while its stern tilted high.

Through those dense holes,

One could even see directly into the darkened cabins and the empty corridors that now consisted only of metal keels.

All the precision instruments, pipelines, and even human bodies inside had been "digested" away in that silver storm.

Only a pale, empty metal skeleton remained.

"Is this... the so-called 'cleanup'?"

Old Chen watched the massive skeleton slowly sinking into the darkness on the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty, his voice dry:

"It's too clean... not even a scrap left. This is scarier than being hit by a nuke."

Compared to the instantaneous destruction of an explosion,

The process of witnessing a giant ship being "eaten hollow" alive within minutes

Had a visual and psychological impact that was simply devastating.

"Decent efficiency."

Jiang Ran stood before the command console, the sunken skeleton reflected in his deep blue pupils.

His expression showed no ripple of emotion, as if he were merely evaluating the performance of a meat grinder:

"For trash that doesn't need to be recycled, this is the most environmentally friendly disposal method."

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze passing over the wreckage to look at the two Ark submarines still hovering in the distance:

"So, how is the audience reacting?"

...Fear is a plague that spreads faster than a virus.

If the battle just now was a contest between equals,

Then what was unfolding before the other two Ark submarines

Was a supernatural horror film that transcended the limits of their cognition.

Witnessing the flagship being "eaten" into a skeleton alive by those silver insects in just a few minutes,

And hearing those final few shrill screams over the sonar,

The psychological defenses of the crew members on the remaining two Poseidon-class nuclear submarines completely collapsed.

"Monsters... those are monsters!!"

"Run! Leave these waters quickly!! They'll eat us too!!"

There was no tactical evasion, nor any cover or coordination.

The human instinct for survival completely overrode military discipline.

Poseidon-02 and Ark-03 practically reversed at full power simultaneously.

The cavitation noise from the propellers was as loud as beating gongs and drums in the deep sea.

They didn't even bother to retract their towed sonar arrays.

They cut the cables directly, like two rabbits startled by a shotgun, and regardless of whether they would expose their positions, they turned their bows and began to flee at full speed.

"Pfft pfft pfft—"

To block a non-existent pursuer, they frantically ejected acoustic decoys and jammers behind them.

The deep sea was instantly blasted into chaos, but this did nothing to hide the pathetic sight of their frantic flight.

"Boss, they're running!"

Old Chen stared at the two rapidly receding red dots on the screen, his fire control radar already locked onto their tail propellers:

"Exposing their backs like that is just asking for it!"

"With just two torpedoes, I can keep them both here!"

"Keep that big guy from earlier company!"

To Old Chen, an opportunity to beat a drowning dog like this absolutely could not be passed up.

Since these guys dared to come and besiege the black iron, they had to be prepared for total annihilation.

"No."

Jiang Ran reached out and gently pressed down on Old Chen's finger, which was already red from exertion, releasing the fire control lock.

"Let them go."

"Why?!" Old Chen's eyes widened in confusion. "You're letting the tigers back to the mountain, Boss!"

"Tigers?"

Jiang Ran looked at the two fleeing light dots, a contemptuous sneer curling his lips:

"Those are two rats that have had the courage scared out of them."

He slowly walked back to the command chair and sat down, his gaze profound:

"Dead men tell no tales, Old Chen."

"If we kill them all, the Ark will only think we possess a powerful secret weapon,"

"And then send an even larger and stronger fleet to seek revenge."

"But if we let these terrified survivors go back..."

Jiang Ran's voice was low, carrying a malice that saw through human nature:

"They will spread the horrific sights they saw today to everyone, with plenty of exaggeration."

"They will tell everyone in the Ark that there aren't just enemies in the deep sea, but also a 'silver demon' that specifically eats submarines."

"Fear is the best messenger."

"I want this fear to spread through the interior of the Ark like a plague."

"So that every time they dive in the future, every time they hear the sound of metal grinding, they won't be able to help but wet their pants."

Having said that, Jiang Ran no longer concerned himself with the two deserters.

Instead, he turned his gaze back to the massive skeleton on the holographic screen that was slowly falling toward the abyss.

Although most of the cabins had been eaten hollow,

There were some specially reinforced core areas that the Hunters seemed to have intentionally avoided.

"Rather than chasing two rats, we have more important things to do."

Jiang Ran stood up, straightened his collar, a sharp glint flashing in his eyes:

"zero, recall the swarm. Prepare for deep-dive operations."

"That ship may be dead, but its 'brain'... that is, the central database, should still be there."

"Go and dig out its memories; let's see what kind of shady business the Ark is still plotting."