60: Ro-Ro ship entrance

The high-lumen beam of the searchlight pushed through the murky red water with difficulty, like a dull knife trying to pierce through thick fog.

As the numbers on the depth gauge jumped to "145 meters," zero's cold notification sounded within the helmet:

"Approaching the target body; sonar imaging has overlapped."

Jiang Ran slightly raised the mecha's head.

Although he had seen the outline on the radar countless times.

But when this fifty-thousand-ton steel behemoth truly loomed before his eyes, the suffocating sensation that washed over him still made his heart race.

This didn't look like a ship at all.

It lay capsized in the deep silt of the riverbed.

The massive hull stood over thirty meters high, like a steel skyscraper that had collapsed during an earthquake.

The original anti-rust paint on the hull had long since peeled away completely, covered by a thick carpet of dark green fungal mats and unknown soft-bodied organisms.

Only a few occasionally exposed rib-like stiffeners reflected a dismal, deathly light under the beam.

Before this "underwater skyscraper."

The "Tyrant" mecha piloted by Jiang Ran was so small it looked like a piece of plankton clinging to a whale's carcass.

"Is this that... coffin?"

In the communication channel, Old Chen's voice lost some of its playfulness and gained a hint of awe for the giant object:

"Tsk, it's actually an 'Ocean' class Ro-Ro ship.

Back in the day, this thing could carry six thousand cars when fully loaded; it was practically a floating parking lot."

Jiang Ran controlled the mecha, slowly circling toward the stern.

There should have been a massive hydraulic ramp there for vehicles to enter and exit.

But now, that steel plate weighing hundreds of tons was long gone—

perhaps it fell off during the violent impact of the sinking, or perhaps it was dismantled by the master of this place.

In its place was a massive black hole over ten meters wide.

Seawater was still slowly pouring into that bottomless void.

Stirring up dark red whirlpools, as if this dead behemoth was still performing some eerie respiration.

"High concentration of metal ion reactions detected at the opening."

Watching the radiation readings jumping on his visor, Jiang Ran gripped the High-frequency cutting blade in his hand:

"Looks like we found the right door."

He adjusted the attitude thrusters on his back and pushed the mecha toward that dark, gaping maw that seemed capable of swallowing all light.

"I'm going in."

As the silhouette of the mecha vanished into the shadows of the hold.

The outside world was completely cut off, leaving only the low hum of the thrusters echoing in the deathly silent steel tomb.

Passing through that massive breach.

The view suddenly opened up, yet it also became even more oppressive.

This was the D-deck vehicle level of the Ro-Ro ship, a massive enclosed space hundreds of meters long and dozens of meters wide.

By the standards of the old era.

Thousands of brand-new cars waiting for export should have been neatly parked here, each one shining with the luster of industrial baked paint.

There were indeed cars.

But the scene before him caused even the well-traveled Jiang Ran to feel a wave of visceral revulsion.

The searchlight swept across, showing that those cars still maintained their neat formation, fixed to the deck.

However, they were no longer independent units.

Instead, they were forcibly connected by countless silver-gray "vessels" of varying thickness.

It was something akin to fungal hyphae, but it gleamed with a metallic cold light.

They grew out from the hood of one car.

Piercing through the door of the car next to it like tree roots, then snaking out from the chassis to connect to the steel beams on the ceiling.

The entire interior of the hold looked like it had been completely sealed off by this silver-gray spiderweb.

"Is this... the complete form of the Metal Parasitic Fungus?"

Su Qingyu's voice held a hint of trembling: "They've 'eaten' the entire ship."

Jiang Ran piloted the mecha closer to a "hypha" as thick as a thigh.

Through the translucent outer membrane, he could actually clearly see silver fluid flowing slowly inside.

It was like a biological blood circulation, or perhaps a transport pipeline for some liquid metal.

Gurgle... gurgle... following a scalp-numbing squelching sound, that hypha suddenly contracted.

Immediately after, the two cars connected to its ends simultaneously let out a groan of twisting metal.

As if the last trace of their essence had been drained by some invisible force.

"Truly spectacular..."

In the communication channel, Old Chen let out a fascinated sigh, showing no sign of fear whatsoever:

"Do you see it?

This is the 'digestive system' I was talking about.

This ship is no longer a ship; it's a massive, feeding stomach.

These hyphae are decomposing those cars into pure metal ions and transporting them to the deepest part of the nest to feed those crabs."

Jiang Ran looked up.

In this boundless underwater labyrinth, thousands upon thousands of cars were connected in this manner.

Accompanied by that eerie "gurgling" sound, the entire space seemed to vibrate slightly with the rhythm of some heartbeat.

This was a living steel tomb.

And they were walking through the intestinal tract of this giant monster.

"Radar is just for show here."

Jiang Ran glanced at the detection display, which looked like a screen full of static.

The metal density here was simply too high.

Coupled with the electromagnetic interference generated by those strange fluid hyphae, all the echoes had blurred into a jumbled mess.

He simply turned off the active radar and relied entirely on optical sensors and intuition to navigate through the array of cars.

This was like scouting a path through a dense forest of steel.

All around were semi-dissolved car wrecks; some had been entwined by hyphae until only the frames remained.

Others still barely maintained their original shape.

The mecha's heavy footsteps on the deck kicked up a thick layer of silt and dust.

"Watch out on the left."

Jiang Ran's gaze locked onto a black sedan ten meters away.

It was a government vehicle from the old era; although the paint was mottled and corroded, its general outline was still relatively intact.

Only... its hood seemed to bulge unnaturally, as if the engine underneath had suddenly swollen to twice its size.

Furthermore, the angle of the yellow license plate hanging from the front was also very strange.

"zero, scan that area."

"Optical camouflage analysis in progress... Target contour fusion with surroundings at 94%. No heat source reaction detected."

A cold-blooded animal.

Or rather, a piece of cold-blooded metal that knew how to use room-temperature stealth.

Jiang Ran didn't lower his guard; the High-frequency cutting blade in his hand was slightly raised, and the thrusters were pre-heating, ready to burst at any moment.

He controlled the mecha, approaching that eerie black sedan step by step.

Five meters.

Three meters.

Everything seemed normal.

It was just a scrapped car, lying quietly in the tomb waiting to rot.

Not until Jiang Ran's Mechanical Arm reached out, attempting to push aside a hypha blocking the way, did the car's "bumper" suddenly move.

No, that wasn't a bumper.

Accompanied by a tooth-aching sound of metal grinding, the entire "front" of the sedan actually split open like a giant mask.

That crooked yellow license plate flipped over abruptly, revealing a pair of crimson compound eyes hidden beneath.

There was no biological emotion in those eyes, only cold killing instinct.

Immediately after, that bulging "hood" also lifted—

it wasn't a car hood at all.

It was a massive crab claw covered in heavy armor, which had been disguised as part of the car body, guarding its front tightly.

"Screech—!!"

A sharp screech instantly pierced the underwater silence.

That wasn't a dead thing at all.

It was a hunter that had perfectly disguised itself as a car wreck, just like a stone suddenly opening its eyes.

Before Jiang Ran's warning could be shouted out, that "hood" had already slammed down fiercely, bringing with it a whistling current of water.

"Clang—!!!"

With a loud bang, Jiang Ran instinctively raised his left arm to parry.

The massive impact force caused the entire "Tyrant" mecha to jerk backward; the deck beneath his feet instantly cracked, kicking up a large cloud of murky silt.

That was by no means a biological bite force.

Through the close-up lens of the visor, Jiang Ran clearly saw that the inside of the crab claw had no serrations.

Instead, it was a smooth, mirror-like double-edged structure—

it was a standard industrial hydraulic shear design, specifically meant for cutting through steel bars and car beams.

If that blow hadn't been blocked by the shield generator, even composite armor would have been sliced open like a soda can.

"Zzzzt—"

The energy shield burst with a blinding blue light under the massive shearing force, and alarms instantly blared.

"Shield strength decreased by 15%!

Warning, melee unit count surging!"

The attack of the first crab was like toppling the first domino.

The surrounding, previously silent car array instantly boiled over.

The "taxi" on the left suddenly flipped its roof, and two dark shadows crawled out from under the chassis of the "SUV" on the right.

Even from the ceiling above, several crabs that had been hanging upside down disguised as ventilation ducts dropped down.

They were only the size of a millstone; among these iron-eating creatures, they could only be considered "cubs" or "Scouts."

But the variety of camouflages on their carapaces—

some wore half a rusted car door, others carried deformed bumpers.

There was even one with a Mercedes three-pointed star emblem perfectly embedded in its forehead—

making this group of monsters look both absurd and terrifying.

"Whoosh—"

A crab carrying a yellow taxi license plate used its low profile to glide like a ground-skimming ice puck.

It instantly slid through the gap between two scrapped cars, its Hydraulic shears heading straight for the mecha's vulnerable knee joints.

On this narrow and crowded vehicle deck.

Jiang Ran's three-meter-tall heavy mecha seemed clumsy, while these flat killers were like fish in water.

"Trying to saw off my legs?"

Jiang Ran's eyes sharpened as he suddenly made the mecha jump.

At the same time, the auxiliary nozzles at the ankles erupted with a blast of high-pressure air.

Slamming into the back of the ambusher, blowing it over to tumble in the mud.

But these things were extremely agile.

Eight walking legs covered in sharp metal spines pushed off the deck, instantly adjusting their posture and launching again.

Dozens of "Hydraulic shears" waved in the dim water, making heart-stopping "clack-clack" sounds.

As if they were a group of crazed car dismantlers, eager to dismantle this foreign mecha and put it into storage.

"Playing at dismantling with me in a junk pile?"

Jiang Ran snorted coldly, and the "Tyrant" mecha, which had been in a defensive stance, suddenly moved.

The moment that "taxi" crab launched itself again.

Jiang Ran didn't back down; instead, he lunged sideways, and the High-frequency vibration blade on his right arm, which had been pre-heating, snapped out instantly.

"Vrrr—!!"

The blade sliced through the water with high-frequency vibrations of twenty thousand times per second, drawing an afterimage in the air that was almost impossible for the naked eye to catch.

There was no sense of resistance.

Even a metal carapace capable of withstanding small-caliber bullets was as fragile as a soaked newspaper before the high-frequency thermal blade.

The crab was still in mid-air when it was neatly sliced in two.

The cut was as smooth as a mirror; the high temperature even instantly sealed part of the wound, and only two seconds later did the green acidic body fluid gush out.

"Sizzle—"

The highly corrosive crab blood splattered onto the floor and surrounding car wrecks, instantly sending up a plume of white smoke.

The hard steel deck was etched with bubbling deep pits.

But this was only the beginning.

Jiang Ran's silhouette moved like a phantom through the narrow car array.

He was no longer the clumsy giant being besieged, but a surgeon performing a dance of death.

Side-slip, dive, upward-slash.

Every strike precisely cut into the weak points of the crab shell joints.

In just ten seconds.

The five "Scouts" responsible for the hunt had all turned into twitching chunks of flesh.

The already murky water was dyed even darker by the green crab blood, and the surroundings were filled with pungent acid mist and the smell of charred chitin.

"Good blade work."

Old Chen, who had been watching the show, let out a rare whistle: "Clean and efficient, didn't even leak too much crab roe.

Looks like you've done this kind of dirty work plenty of times before."

Jiang Ran flicked the residual slime off the blade, not relaxing because of the victory.

On the contrary, his expression became even more solemn.

Because the surroundings had not quieted down.

The brief and intense sound of battle just now was like a hammer blow inside a massive bronze bell.

The originally faint "clacking" sounds suddenly stopped. In their place, from the depths of the Ro-Ro ship...

from the lower decks, or perhaps even the bottomless bottom of the hold...

came a low, heavy, thunder-like rumble.

Thump... thump... thump... the entire giant vessel was vibrating.

Rust fell from above in showers, and those silver-gray hyphae connecting the cars began to twitch frantically like a group of startled snakes.

The interference on the radar screen instantly surged to its peak, and the previous static suddenly turned into a sea of crimson.

"Looks like that was just the appetizer."

Watching the massive shadow rapidly approaching from the depths, Jiang Ran gripped his combat knife, a cold arc curling at the corners of his mouth:

"I knocked on the door; now, the master has awakened."