154: Chapter 154 Territory

Ming Shen stepped forward to inspect the shredded meat on the ground, his brow furrowed.

"A Lictor?"

As a veteran lore-hunter, Ming Shen immediately recognized the monster's identity.

"This kind of bug is the ultimate scout and assassin of the Tyranids! They not only possess near-perfect optical cloaking scales but can also obtain enemy memory intelligence by devouring brains!"

Ming Shen turned to look at Lin Li, his expression solemn.

"Administrator, the leader of the Genestealers was clearly killed by us. But there are actually Lictors active here!"

"This means... in this prison, or underground on this planet, there is definitely more than just that one Genestealer nest from earlier! The shadow of the Hive still lingers!"

Hearing Ming Shen's analysis, Lin Li nodded along with the flow.

"Indeed, these cunning heretics have not been completely purged yet."

Lin Li waved his hand and generously gave Ming Shen an order.

"I'm leaving it to you! Scour this city and the underground facilities of this planet, inch by inch!"

"As long as you can completely clear out the bugs here, this massive Abyss Prison can be used directly as the new base for your Scourge Legion in this star system!"

Upon hearing this promise,

the eyes of the players present instantly lit up, and they let out a deafening cheer.

"Holy crap! An entire prison as a guild base! This is freaking prestigious!"

"Brothers! Did you hear that? Grab your gear! Even if we have to dig three feet deep, we're going to drag those experience-point bugs out!"

The The Fourth Calamity of the Scourge Legion howled with excitement.

No mobilization was needed at all; groups of players immediately acted like a comb, charging into the dark underground passages of the prison with guns drawn, beginning a ruthless carpet search.

Meanwhile, the scattered players and mercenaries who hadn't joined the Scourge Legion were excitedly cleaning up the battlefield in the square.

Since Lin Li did not intend to station a regular Defense Force long-term on this godforsaken dusty planet,

he waved his hand and generously distributed all the stock in the prison's armory, as well as the captured Defense Force weapons, as campaign loot to the participating players and legions based on their merit points.

As for these players who would pluck feathers from a passing goose, whether they transported this scrap metal back to the Shelter to recycle for points or kept it for their own customized modifications was up to them.

Lin Li handed over the cleanup of the battlefield and the overall security coordination of the city to the steady Ushtan.

He himself took Iron Man 73, Stone Man Hong, and Sister Frannie back onto the sea breeze no. 9 yacht.

"73, start the ship."

Lin Li leaned back in his seat.

"Next, it's time for us to go see what kind of great treasure that Underground Incubation Room rewarded by the system task really is."

Lin Li was just about to ask 73 if it had scanned any relevant coordinate data.

*Beep—*

His pv terminal suddenly vibrated.

A high-definition satellite map of the planet popped up on the screen.

In a certain area near the planet's Arctic Circle, a golden point of light was flashing continuously, with the words 'Sole Entrance to the Underground Incubation Room' thoughtfully labeled next to it.

"Oh-ho."

Lin Li raised an eyebrow and remarked, "It seems the Shelter system is becoming more and more sensible. Knowing that I got a scare today, it even saved me the trouble of finding the way and gave the coordinates directly."

sea breeze no. 9 soared into the sky, flying at full speed toward the coordinates.

The ship flew over the thick dust for nearly forty minutes before finally arriving at the planet's Arctic Circle.

The climate here was even colder and harsher than near the equator.

But strangely, there was no thick accumulation of ice and snow on the ground; only a thin layer of frost covered the hard sand and permafrost.

sea breeze no. 9 lowered its altitude, flying close to the ground.

Finally, at the bottom of a massive circular crater, the ship landed steadily at a place that looked like an air-raid Shelter entrance.

The group stepped off the ship.

This metal entrance hidden under the permafrost was enormous.

It was ten meters high and over thirty meters wide, enough for three Gladiator Mechs to walk in side-by-side.

Just as Lin Li reached the alloy gate covered in the marks of time,

*Hiss—*

That heavy metal door, which had been tightly shut for over ten thousand years, made a dull mechanical clicking sound and slowly slid open to both sides.

Inside the passage, rows of cold-source sensor lights instantly lit up in sequence, dispelling ten thousand years of darkness.

Lin Li took a look inside.

The interior architectural style here—the orderly, utilitarian metal geometric cut surfaces—was exactly the same as the architectural style beneath the Fire Seed Shelter, a pure Golden Age military-industrial style.

For safety's sake,

Iron Man 73 released ten fully armed combat robots equipped with plasma heavy-firepower modules from the ship's cargo hold to lead the way in a tactical formation.

The group followed the wide passage deep down.

Finally, as another heavy blast door at the end opened,

a massive open underground space was fully revealed before their eyes.

At the forefront of this space was a core control room for a genetic laboratory, covering an area larger than a football field.

In the huge factory area surrounding the control room, rows of towering columnar incubation pods were neatly arranged.

Each incubation pod had a staggering diameter of five meters and a height of over ten meters!

This ridiculous specification was definitely not for cultivating humans.

With the current industrial mother machines of the Fire Seed Shelter, even at full capacity, it would be absolutely impossible to build such extra-large biological equipment.

But unfortunately,

as the lights came on, Lin Li found that these huge incubation pods were empty; there were no ancient behemoths or super soldiers soaking inside.

"Detection complete. Fully matches Golden Age creation underlying protocols."

The red light in 73's eyes scanned the entire space. "The power supply from the nuclear fusion reactor here is normal. No life signs detected, no defensive traps or dangers found."

"Let's go look in that core lab." Lin Li pointed to the control room ahead.

Stone Man Hong nodded.

She was the first to walk into this genetic laboratory, which was several times larger than the B3 level of the Shelter.

She walked to the main console with practiced ease, her fair fingers dancing quickly over the buttons, directly waking the sleeping supercomputer through underlying protocols and beginning to rapidly read various archived data while checking the power connections of the incubation pods.

About ten minutes passed.

Hong stepped away from the main console, a rare trace of excitement in her eyes.

"Creator. Based on the currently decoded data,"

Hong reported,

"this is a standard Golden Age [Interstellar Bio-Incubation Room]. In the factory area outside, there are a total of about three thousand large-scale recombinant incubation devices in perfect standby condition."

"This is absolutely a massive treasure trove. But unfortunately, past experimental records and culture specimen data have been completely lost during the physical network disconnection of the Age of Strife."

Lin Li rubbed his chin. "In other words, this is an oversized genetic lab with an arsenal assembly line?"

Hong shook her head, her flawless face showing a hint of scholarly rigor.

"Creator, you seem to be slightly underestimating this laboratory."

"The underlying computational logic stored here can basically deconstruct the underlying genetic map of all carbon-based life forms in this universe directly at the molecular level!"

"A large portion of the cross-dimensional speculative data within was something even human researchers at the peak of the Golden Age hadn't had time to fully digest and understand."

Lin Li crossed his arms and asked pragmatically,

"You're talking it up so much, but I just want to ask one thing: what's the practical use? Can it directly deconstruct the genes of those Tyranids from earlier and then build us a batch of big bugs to use as meat shields?"

"Theoretically, it is entirely possible."

Hong nodded, giving an affirmative answer, but then she changed the subject.

"But the problem is, the reason Tyranid biological weapons can run rampant in the universe is that they all have a massive Hive Mind acting as a cloud computing command center."

"If we only replicate the bug's physical body without linking to the Hive Mind, then what we create will just be a group of wild beasts that only know how to follow eating instincts, or even idiots who don't know how to walk. They would have zero tactical value on the battlefield."

"Then let it sit and gather dust for now." Lin Li waved his hand. "Let's not talk about that for now. Maybe we'll be able to use it someday."

Lin Li suddenly remembered another more important matter.

"Right!"

Lin Li slapped his chest.

"When I killed those two Lictors with two slaps in the square just now, my level seemed to break through to Level 30. That is to say, my Genetic Development Progress has reached the 30% milestone."

"I feel like my body is a bit different right now; my bones are itching. Since the medical equipment here is so complete, why don't you give me a comprehensive deep checkup right here? Let's see what my stats look like now."

"Alright, Creator. Please stand on the scanning platform." Hong immediately pulled up the testing program.

The two of them walked into the scanning room deep within the laboratory.

The others stayed outside the door to wait of their own accord.

Lin Li had thought that such a trans-dimensional deep scan would at least be like getting an MRI on Earth—stripping naked and lying in a cold instrument pod while being scanned by various rays, and maybe even having a few vials of blood drawn for testing.

However,

he just stood fully clothed on a metal disk designated by Hong for less than five seconds.

A soft white light overhead flashed with a *whoosh*.

"*Beep*—Scan complete."

That was it?

Not even the clichéd process of stripping down?

This made Lin Li, who had mentally prepared himself, feel somewhat awkward.

Golden Age technology really lacked a sense of ceremony!

A short while later, Hong stood before the main console and obtained a long detection report.

However,

when Hong saw the physiological data displayed on the screen, which looked like a heavenly script,

this Stone Man beauty, who had always been expressionless and devoid of emotional ripples, actually gasped and let out an incredible exclamation!

"Heavens! This... how is this possible?!"

Hong whipped her head around, staring fixedly at Lin Li, the light in her electronic eyes flashing wildly.

"Incredible physical strength! Your calcium bone density, without relying on any metal implants, has actually reached the limit of molecular-level compression!"

Hong's voice was somewhat hurried due to shock as she pointed to a series of red lines on the holographic projection.

"And your muscle tissue fibers! They have densified to the edge of the physical limit that a pure carbon-based organism can withstand!"

"Is this only 30% Genetic Development Progress?!"

Hong spoke a long string of hardcore biological academic terms in one breath.

Clearly, Lin Li's set of freakish, superhuman data had completely shattered her common-sense knowledge as a top-tier Golden Age scholar!

Looking at Hong's 'I've seen a ghost' expression, Lin Li felt a bit uneasy.

"Stop, stop, stop!"

Lin Li quickly interrupted her,