17: Chapter 17 New Weapon Acquired, Zerg Suffer Setback

The cannon barrel was still smoking, and the air was filled with the smell of burnt metal and the fishy stench of Zerg bodily fluids.

Chen Wuwang didn't move. His right hand was still resting on the firing valve, his knuckles white. He stared at the crack on the distant Broodmother—ten meters long and bottomless, with ghostly green liquid dripping down. But the creature didn't fall; it didn't even retreat a single step. It simply turned around slowly, its ring-shaped fissure aimed at the battery as if locking onto a target.

"The first shot was to test feasibility," he whispered, as if speaking to Chen Tiezhu or perhaps just to bolster his own courage. "Next comes the real battle."

As soon as he finished speaking, a sharp humming sound suddenly echoed from the sky.

Swaths of Worker Insects surged out from the cracks in the ground, as dense as a black cloud pressing down on the land. Their speed was unlike that of flesh and blood, resembling more a mechanical swarm driven by some program.

They didn't charge the battery; instead, they circled the edge of the mining area at high speed, as if mapping, calculating, and searching for weaknesses.

Chen Wuwang narrowed his eyes. His mechanical prosthetic eye automatically zoomed in, and a stream of data scrolled rapidly: "Movement trajectory follows a swarm algorithm model, energy distribution is uniform, no individual fluctuations of will—typical collective consciousness dispatching."

"They're not here to fight to the death," he sneered. "They're here to assess the threat Rank."

Just then, a clear shout rang out from behind.

"Patriarch! I'm here!"

The heavy mecha 'po shan' slammed into the ground, kicking up a ring of dust. The cockpit popped open, and Chen Xiaodao jumped down, rushing up to the battery in three steps. He carried a modified Psionic Cannon on his shoulder, its muzzle glowing with a dark red aura.

"I modified this based on the drawings you made last night. The cooling fins are three inches deeper, and the charging rails have double-layered rune shielding." He set the cannon down firmly, his voice crisp and decisive. "Shall we do a test fire?"

Chen Wuwang glanced at him. The youth's face was expressionless, but his eyes were frighteningly bright. There were still uncleaned oil stains on the joints of his left mechanical arm; he had clearly just rushed over from the workshop.

He nodded: "Test it."

Chen Xiaodao turned and leaped back into the cockpit. The hatch closed, and the mecha started up. The hydraulic System hissed, the energy pack on its back lit up red, and the Psionic Cannon slowly rose, locking onto a low-altitude swarm three hundred zhang away.

"Charging initiated—" a mechanical female voice announced.

The cannon barrel trembled slightly; the speed of the energy convergence was nearly twice as fast as the previous shot.

Ten seconds later, fire erupted.

Boom!

The projectile traced a straight red line, crashing into the center of the swarm and exploding instantly. Worker Insects within a hundred-meter radius were vaporized instantly. The shockwave sent dozens more on the periphery flying. Severed limbs and broken wings filled the air in a gruesome scene.

Yet, after only three breaths, the insects that had been blown away actually beat their wings again. Their mangled bodies pieced themselves back together as they continued to advance.

Further away, new Worker Insects were continuously crawling out from underground, as if that shot just now had been nothing more than swatting a nest of ants.

The observation array sent back data: "Lethal radius 107 meters, survival rate 73.6%, reconstruction speed exceeds expectations."

Chen Xiaodao shut down the weapon System, and the mecha slowly landed on the open ground beside the battery. He jumped down and walked to Chen Wuwang's side, his brow furrowed. "It's not enough."

"It's not that it's not enough." Chen Wuwang shook his head, his fingers unconsciously tapping the edge of the console with a steady 'da, da, da' sound. "It's a waste."

He pulled up the thermal map of the explosion and pointed to the energy dissipation area. "Look, 68% of the energy was lost to atmospheric vibration and ground conduction. We aren't fighting a war; we're giving the earth a massage."

Chen Xiaodao frowned. "Then what? Increase the charge? Change to a larger caliber barrel?"

"The Materials can't handle it," Chen Wuwang interrupted. "No matter how big the cannon is, it won't withstand an energy burst of the Egg Core level. What we need isn't more power, but more precision—cram all the energy into a single point, and then..." He made a fist-clenching motion, "compressed detonation."

Chen Xiaodao was stunned for a moment. "You mean, let the shell fly out like a fist and only explode after it hits?"

"Smart." Chen Wuwang grinned, grabbed a dagger, and began scratching onto the console. "A conical energy-focusing structure, an outer shell made of high-density rune alloy, and an inner layer embedded with guiding rune arrays. It maintains energy restraint during flight and triggers reverse flow at the moment of impact, shoving all the energy forward."

He drew extremely fast. The lines were crude but precise, as clean and efficient as a programmer writing code.

"I want new shells within three days."

"Three days?" Chen Xiaodao's eyes widened. "The workshop doesn't even have enough coolant right now!"

"Then pull an all-nighter." Chen Wuwang stood up, his gaze sweeping over the swarm still gathering in the distance. "They won't wait for us, and we shouldn't expect anyone to save us. If we want to survive, we have to carve out a bloody path for ourselves."

He turned and walked toward the temporary command platform, his steps steady and his back straight.

Chen Xiaodao stood there, staring at the messy design for a long time. Suddenly, he raised his hand and roared into the communicator:

"Listen up, everyone! Stop all non-emergency projects and concentrate all resources on building this thing! If anyone dares to slack off, I'll personally dismantle their prosthetic limbs!"

Three days passed just like that.

On the evening of the third day, the western horizon glowed with a dark red light, like burning clouds or some kind of omen.

The new shells had arrived.

They were shorter and thicker than before, their surfaces carved with fine spiral patterns. The tips were conical and the bodies pitch-black. The material was indistinguishable, but holding one, one could feel a suppressed vibration, as if a Vicious Beast was trapped inside, ready to break free at any moment.

Chen Xiaodao personally loaded it into the shoulder-mounted cannon slot of the 'po shan' mecha. After finishing the calibration, he drove the mecha out of the workshop and headed straight for the open ground at the front line.

Chen Wuwang was already waiting there.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready anytime," Chen Xiaodao's voice came through the communicator, calm in a way that didn't seem to belong to a nineteen-year-old youth.

"Aim further out." Chen Wuwang pointed his hand toward an open area to the northwest. "There's a simulated swarm formation there. Don't hold back."

"Understood."

The mecha steadied itself, its feet digging into the ground. The energy pack on its back opened to full power, and the muzzle slowly rose.

The charging progress bar soared all the way, finally stopping at 99.8%.

"Fire."

BOOM—!!!

This time, the shell flew exceptionally steady, its trajectory straight like a black meteor tearing through the dusk. There was almost no glow during its flight until the second before it hit the target, when the shell head suddenly deployed a three-layered ring structure and snapped inward.

Bang!

There was no massive roar, only a dull crack. Immediately after, a ring-shaped shockwave violently expanded from the point of explosion.

Within a thousand meters, dust billowed, the ground cracked, and the rock target area where the simulated swarm was located collapsed into a massive crater. Rubble from the edges was thrown into the air before falling back down like rain.

The thermal map showed: "Effective lethal radius 987 meters, core temperature Breakthrough 3,000 degrees, all simulated units annihilated."

Chen Wuwang stood on the command platform, his mechanical eye constantly refreshing data as the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.

"It's a success."

He pressed the global communication button: "All observation teams, keep a close eye on the swarm's movements."

The screen switched.

Multiple monitoring nodes on the front line captured anomalies simultaneously:

- The northern swarm, which had been rapidly approaching, collectively froze for three seconds the moment the explosion occurred;

- The roaming units to the east began to turn, their movement trajectories falling into chaos;

- The Worker Insects in the southern assembly area stopped sending reinforcements and instead retreated;

Five minutes later, the entire swarm began an orderly retreat, their movements synchronized and without hesitation.

"They... are retreating," the observer's voice trembled.

Chen Wuwang didn't speak. He just stared at the screen, his fingers still tapping the console, the rhythm getting faster and faster.

He pulled up the image of the Broodmother's last known position—that hundred-meter-tall giant shadow was still suspended in the sky, but its ring-shaped fissure was no longer rotating. Instead, it was fixed firmly toward the mining area, as if staring, or perhaps... wary.

"It's not fear," he whispered. "It's a reassessment."

"Now, it's our turn."

He turned to look at the western landing zone.

The 'po shan' mecha had just landed. The hatch opened, and Chen Xiaodao jumped down. He looked up, his eyes showing no fatigue, only Battle Intent.

Chen Wuwang nodded to him.

The next second, a purple light suddenly flared in the distant sky, followed by a second, a third... dozens of flare signals rose one after another, piercing the darkening sky.

That was the alarm signal from the front-line patrol—new swarms were regrouping from three directions, larger in scale and faster in speed.

Chen Wuwang stood back before the command console, his right hand resting on the master control lever. His mechanical eye switched to tactical mode, and data streams cascaded across his vision like a waterfall.

"Notify all combat units." His voice wasn't loud, yet it cut through the wind, clearly entering every communication channel. "Level one combat readiness. Prepare to engage."

Chen Xiaodao vaulted back into the machine. The hatch closed, and the energy pack lit up with a piercing red light.

The wind kicked up sand and dust, battering the metal walls of the battery with a rustling sound.

Chen Wuwang stared at the black shadows emerging on the distant horizon and tapped the console one last time.

Da.