185: Chapter 185 The Gene Race

"To deal with monsters like the Tyranids that rely on consumption to snowball, we absolutely cannot let them eat anything! We must bleed them slowly, like cutting meat with a dull knife."

Lin Li's expression turned serious.

"Remember, this massive swarm is merely the Tyranids' vanguard fleet! The main force that can truly shroud The Galaxy is still behind them. We must take this opportunity to thoroughly master the tactics for dealing with these bugs!"

Ushtan stood at attention and saluted: "Understood! My lord. I am adjusting the maneuver formation."

Subsequently, Ushtan pulled up a sub-channel communication log.

"Additionally, the good news is that the vast majority of the clone warriors who forcibly boarded the ships have successfully survived. They are now riding that battered, knock-off Star Destroyer and returning toward our main formation."

Lin Li raised an eyebrow: "Oh? To make such a big commotion and not be wiped out entirely—these guys are really tough. Let them retreat to the rear and have a good rest."

"There is one more thing, my lord." Ushtan lowered his voice, "Our infiltration unit has successfully snuck inside the mother ship of the Hive Mind fleet."

Upon hearing this, Lin Li's eyes lit up.

The one who infiltrated was, naturally, the player who had acquired the shapeshifting ability—Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh!

During the previous melee, this kid took advantage of the Tyranids devouring ship wreckage to transform directly into a flawless Tyranid Warrior bug, swaggering right into the heart of the swarm's base!

"Good kid, he's got guts. As the first generation of bug-traitor, I hope he can dig up some valuable core intelligence for us." Lin Li nodded with satisfaction.

This first exchange of fire between the two sides resulted in unexpected losses for both. Especially for the swarm.

For the Tyranids, their survival logic is very simple and direct.

It's like a massive tiger; to maintain the operation of its terrifying muscles, it must hunt and acquire food at high density and high frequency.

And after capturing a large amount of food, the digested energy can, in turn, strengthen its muscles, forming a perfect virtuous cycle.

But today. This tiger suddenly encountered an iron-skinned porcupine.

The tiger bit down, not only failing to get any meat but instead getting its throat fiercely pierced by the quills on the porcupine, causing severe internal bleeding and infection.

This kind of loss where the output exceeds the input will not only break the swarm's energy cycle, but in severe cases, it could even lead to the collapse of this vanguard fleet's biological chain.

Driven by this primitive hunting instinct, the Hive Mind immediately made a tactical change.

Since touching those iron-shelled bipeds hurts its mouth, it would try its best not to touch them. It must attempt to find other softer, more biomass-rich prey to eat back the meat it had lost as quickly as possible.

Consequently. The massive Tyranids fleet stopped its meaningless pursuit of human warships.

They no longer tried to clear out those annoying orbital resistance forces but instead began circling the outer periphery of the agricultural planet, attempting to bypass the defense line and drop spores directly onto the surface.

Lin Li and the others quickly discovered the change in the bugs' tactics. "Want to bypass us to eat at a buffet? Not a chance!" Lin Li snorted coldly.

The Fire Seed fleet immediately followed from a distance like a shadow. If the enemy retreats, we advance; if the enemy advances, we retreat. Whenever there was nothing to do, they would fire a few shots from the railguns from afar, specifically targeting the unarmored bio-sacs and tentacles, annoying the bugs to no end.

Meanwhile. Deep inside the Hive Mind fleet's mother ship. Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh, who had successfully infiltrated the enemy's base, was currently transformed into a large Warrior bug, honestly lying among a group of bugs of various shapes.

This was the biomass recycling chamber of the mother ship. At this moment, inside this huge fleshy chamber, thousands of broken corpses of clone players were laid out. These were players who had been killed by the swarm during the previous boarding battle.

The surrounding worker bugs and devourer bugs were surrounding these corpses, tearing and gnawing at them in large chunks. After they had eaten until their bellies were bulging high.

These bugs would, like dumping Dumpling into a pot, turn and jump without hesitation into the huge digestive pool nearby, which was churning with strong acid, melting themselves along with the food into the purest biological nutrient solution!

This is the Tyranids' most terrifying recycling mechanism. While recycling energy, the Hive Mind would simultaneously conduct in-depth analysis of the food's genes. Not only could it absorb the excellent genes of those powerful creatures to strengthen the Tyranids as a whole, but it could also incidentally research the physiological weaknesses of the prey, thereby rapidly mutating lethal biochemical weapons targeting that race!

However. When the Hive Mind began to digest these thousands of player clone bodies, the development of events exceeded the comprehension range of these cosmic locusts.

The Hive Mind was surprised to find that although these shells had a very high energy density and were very high-quality rations. But! It simply could not extract any useful evolutionary genes from these bodies! Because the underlying genes of these clone bodies had long been completely locked, making them impossible to be parsed externally!

Not only that. When the Hive Mind's neural tentacles attempted to read the residual memory fragments in the brains of these dead, searching for human weaknesses. A mental meme belonging to The Fourth Calamity, abstract to the extreme and fanatical to the extreme, like an invasive virus, rushed directly along the neural link into the Hive Mind's sea of consciousness!

In the massive stream of consciousness, it was filled with the outrageous thoughts of these silly players: "As long as I die now and hurry back to the city! Then I won't have to die later!" "Hey you! Quick, whip me with your tentacles! Yes! Harder!" "I make myself pregnant?" "Wait! Brothers, I suddenly realized something! Since pigs eat feed, and we eat pigs! Then why don't we just eat the feed directly? That way, there's no middleman to make a price difference!"

"..." Facing this kind of abstract logic that could be called mental pollution. The local Hive Mind responsible for this vanguard fleet almost suffered from indigestion on the spot, and even fell into severe mental confusion!

You have to know, this was just a vanguard fleet acting as a scout! They didn't have a Norn Queen with super-high intelligence capable of commanding the overall situation. This local Hive Mind was merely running based on simple hunting instincts and genetic algorithms.

Encountering such a mental meme that was completely illogical and filled with perverted and self-destructive tendencies, its poor biological brain simply couldn't handle it. It directly fell into a system crash state.

Slaanesh, hiding in the shadows, keenly sensed the momentary stiffness and chaos of the surrounding swarm. "What the f*ck? How did these bugs get epilepsy from eating a meal?" Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh muttered internally.

On the other side. Just when the Tyranids were falling into slight mental confusion because they had eaten the players. The players, however, were frantically taking advantage of the bugs for benefits!

Abyss Prison planet, underground incubation room. The Minotaur Makabazi excitedly purchased a large batch of various Tyranid organ samples cut off from the boarding battle at a high price from Flame Fist and his group.

Carrying a bloody bag, he ran straight into the laboratory and dumped all the samples in front of Hong. "Big sister! Take a look! These are fresh, hot bug materials just won from the front line!" Makabazi rubbed his claws excitedly.

The silver-haired girl Hong's eyes lit up when she saw these samples. She immediately sent the samples into the deconstruction instrument and began to analyze them rapidly. Not long after, Hong walked out with a data report.

"The samples obtained this time are very rich." Hong's silver hair fluttered, and she crossed her arms, listing the good things like someone reciting a menu:

"First, there is psionic-sensitive chitin combined with non-The Galaxy crystals. This is an extremely sharp weapon core. This crystal comes from outside The Galaxy; we currently have absolutely no record of it in our database, making it best for melee weapons."

"Second, there is arthropod high-pressure muscle tissue combined with neurotoxin glands. This should be a component of some bug's tail genes; if implanted into a mecha, it can make your attacks carry a strong neuro-paralytic toxin."

"There is one more thing, giant acidic biological vesicles combined with chemically unstable seed genes. This is the most powerful; it can be used to create acid-filled ticks. Once one explodes, even the thickest Gladiator Mech currently available won't be able to withstand that layer of adamantine armor for more than a few seconds!"

Hong looked at Makabazi and asked seriously: "Which new mutation sample do you need to select to add to your living armor? I suggest..."

Makabazi widened his bull eyes, not hesitating for even a second. He directly interrupted Hong: "Stop, stop, stop! Big sister! Children make choices; as an adult, I want them all! Install them all onto my Flesh Mecha!"

Hong tilted her head, and after precise calculation, gave a negative answer: "If all these genes are fused, your Flesh Mecha's size will become very massive. Our current standard glass culture pods in the basement simply cannot contain such a large volume; they will be burst open directly."

"If it must be done, how should this be solved?" Hong fell into academic thought. "Perhaps... we can first cultivate a small embryo, and then place it outside the pod, letting it slowly grow naturally."

Makabazi was unhappy the moment he heard this. "Don't do that, big sister! How slow is it for this embryo to grow on its own! By the time it grows up, the battle on the front line will have long been over, and the opportunity will have passed!"

Makabazi's huge bull eyes rolled around, and a bold idea suddenly popped up: "Hey? Big sister! Since we have so many bug genes, can't we perform a reverse operation... and directly build a Tyranids incubation sac?!"

"Using an incubation sac to accelerate the growth of the Flesh Mecha, the speed would definitely be lightning fast!"

Hearing this proposal. Little stars instantly appeared in Hong's eyes, which were previously without ripples! "That's right! Constructing an independent biomass incubation chamber outside the body! This logic is completely sound! The biological incubation chamber can expand enough to incubate larger units."

As a Stone Men with an almost obsessive pursuit of biotechnology, Hong simply couldn't resist the temptation of this highly challenging experiment. She was just about to turn and go to the console to directly cultivate the incubation sac.

But a warning suddenly popped up in her underlying logic: Lin Li had once strictly forbidden it, absolutely no abuse of Tyranids genes was allowed within Shelter!

To comply with the procedural flow. Hong stood in place and directly sent a [Experimental Request Regarding the Establishment of an Independent Incubation Sac] to Lin Li's pv terminal.

However! Before Lin Li, who was tens of astronomical units away and commanding the space battle, could reply to the message. Hong had already impatiently turned around and, directly on the central computer of the gene laboratory, rapidly tapped the virtual keyboard, starting to boldly write the underlying genetic program for the artificial Tyranids blood pool!

"As long as I don't cause any contamination leakage, the Creator will definitely be able to understand this scientific spirit of sacrifice." Hong comforted herself very reasonably in her heart while writing the program.