226: Chapter 227 Bad News

However, not long after!

When the mining ship bypassed the wreckage of a massive, derelict space station.

Everyone looked through the porthole and suddenly saw the dense, blood-colored, wall-of-flesh-like main fleet of the Hive Mind in the deep space ahead!

And surrounding those massive fleets...

There were some giant jellyfish-like biological recovery ships slowly drifting in space.

They were extending long tentacles, greedily gnawing on and dragging the hundreds-of-meters-long wreckage of Zerg frigates—which had been blown into several pieces by the Brotherhood of Steel—back toward the mothership.

Seeing this, all the players in the cabin gasped in unison.

"Holy crap!"

"I Hoe the Crops, You Are High Noon" jumped up from his chair in fright, pointing out the window,

"Buddy! Are you crazy?! How did we end up driving a piece-of-junk mining ship right into the heart of the enemy's main Hive Mind fleet?!"

"Stay calm! Stay calm!"

Industrial Buzzcut's eyes flashed with a gambler's fanaticism,

"Of course we're here to grab corpses and recover biomass! Where else can you scavenge faster than right at the enemy's home base?!"

Industrial Buzzcut turned around and quickly laid out the tactics for the dozens of players in the cabin:

"Brothers! Now is the time to make use of your remaining value!"

"When the airlock opens in a moment, put on your explosion-proof suits, pretend you're about to force a boarding on the mothership, and rush out with your propulsion backpacks to draw fire! Make as much noise as you can!"

"I'll take advantage of the chaos to fire a few shots with the laser cutter on the mining ship. That jellyfish recovery ship, which has no combat capability, will definitely be scared off! When that happens, I'll fire the heavy-duty mining tractor grapple! I'll hook that half of the frigate's wreckage tight and run!"

"Once you guys get killed by the bugs and respawn, I'll take 30% of the astronomical points from this corpse! You guys split the remaining 70% yourselves! How about it? Are you in?!"

The players were stunned after hearing this brain-dead, ridiculous tactic.

Sacrificing dozens of lives as bait just to use a mining ship to steal a frigate corpse from the Zerg's home base?

Isn't this just pure feeding?

But once they calculated the massive profit from that 70% of points... How much does it cost to respawn once, anyway!

"Good stuff!"

"I Hoe the Crops, You Are High Noon" gritted his teeth, "It really is true that people die for wealth! You've really mastered this tactic of snatching food from the tiger's mouth! Let's do it! Brothers, get ready to jump ship and die!"

...

The Guardian fortress, core command room.

Lin Li was frowning as he reviewed the casualty reports sent by the other defense legions.

Just then, the red lights in Iron Man 73's eyes flickered, and it issued an emergency alert:

"Creator! The radar edge array has detected an anomaly!"

"An unregistered armed civilian mining ship seems to be being chased frantically by two Zerg frigates in deep space! Behind that mining ship, it's actually using a tractor beam to tow a large amount of shocking, fleshy ship wreckage! Its speed has been slowed down, and it will likely be caught and destroyed by the bugs very soon!"

Lin Li was stunned when he heard this.

"A mining ship? How did these rebellious kids drive a mining ship to the front lines? Where is it?"

A faintly flickering blue dot immediately popped up on the holographic sand table.

Lin Li leaned in to look at the coordinates and immediately widened his eyes.

"So far out?! This is practically right next to the Hive Mind mothership's firing range!"

Lin Li looked at the blue dot fleeing frantically while towing the massive wreckage, and a flash of inspiration hit him, and he instantly understood.

"Wait! A mining ship pulling wreckage? These geniuses, could they have actually run to the Zerg's home base and snatched the wreckage the bugs were in the middle of recovering?!"

The reason the bugs are so formidable in the universe.

Besides their evolutionary ability to rapidly adapt to various battlefield situations, their core trump card is their ability to rapidly recover biomass and regenerate troops!

Therefore, recovering battlefield wreckage, especially the wreckage of those large frigates and cruisers, is a very important part of the Hive Mind replenishing its troops.

Only after recovering biomass can they continuously hatch massive amounts of bugs.

And around the mothership.

Because of the Brotherhood of Steel's suicide boarding attacks, many frigates were destroyed, so there was a lot of wreckage floating in that airspace.

The bugs were wary of The Guardian's firepower net and didn't dare to come out to recover it.

They could only timidly clean up around the mothership.

As a result! This group of money-grubbing players actually drove a piece-of-junk mining ship right into the enemy's dinner plate to steal meat!

Cutting off their troop-replenishment rations, no wonder they were being chased like mad dogs by the bugs!

Thinking of this, Lin Li laughed and slapped his thigh.

"They really are geniuses!"

Lin Li laughed and ordered,

"999! Fine-tune the main cannon firing parameters for me! Fire in that direction! Save that mining ship for me!"

U-999 received the order, and its huge mechanical head turned rapidly.

Soon, it mobilized two Mass-Energy Conversion Cannons on the side of the fortress.

After a brief charge, two anti-matter projectiles silently shot into deep space!

"Boom! Boom!"

The two Zerg frigates that were frantically chasing the mining ship were hit precisely on the spot, exploded directly from the inside, and turned into a piece of burning wreckage!

Because the distance wasn't too far, the shockwave from the explosion almost flipped the piece-of-junk mining ship.

But the optical surveillance footage that came back next left Lin Li completely dumbfounded.

He saw the mining ship controlled by the player, after being pushed away by the shockwave.

Not only did it not immediately accelerate to escape.

Instead, it operated the ship to perform a flashy, in-place drift turn!

Four or five grapples on the belly of the mining ship fired again, firmly hooking the wreckage of the two frigates that had just been destroyed!

Everything was hooked!

Afterwards, the mining ship contentedly sprayed propellant and slowly escaped back toward The Guardian.

Seeing this extreme, cheeky operation.

Lin Li couldn't help but applaud this player in the command room.

"A god-tier human!"

Lin Li touched his chin, thoughtful,

"Speaking of which, can we specifically set up a space fishing tactic based on this characteristic of the Hive Mind needing supplies?"

"Specifically send this kind of bait ship out to pretend to scavenge, lure the Zerg's main frigates out to chase, and then pull them into our ambush circle and destroy them with the fortress's main cannons."

But Lin Li thought about it and shook his head.

"No, that Hive Mind is very smart and has high computing power. With this kind of crude, straight-hook fishing, I'm afraid it won't fall for it a second time after being fooled once."

"But even so, we can offer more high-value bounties in the future to encourage players to go to the battlefield and use this kind of desperate method to snatch meat from the bugs!"

As long as we snatch all the corpses floating in space and cut off the Zerg's supply line.

If we drag it out slowly like this, let's see what that mothership uses to spawn troops! We have plenty of time to wear it down!

Just as Lin Li was happily calculating the next war of attrition in his mind.

73 spoke again.

"Creator! A communication request has just been detected!"

"An armed shuttle with the high-level livery of the Mobius Prime Adeptus Arbites is requesting to dock at our lower port! The other party claims to have a top-secret front-line intelligence report that must be reviewed by you personally!"

Hearing this, the smile on Lin Li's face instantly disappeared, and his brows furrowed tightly.

"An Adeptus Arbites shuttle? Delivering a message?"

Lin Li's heart skipped a beat,

"Could something major have happened on the surface of Mobius Prime? Was it breached by the bugs? That shouldn't be! With those tens of thousands of life-players down there as a safety net, how could it not be defended?"

Not daring to delay at all.

Lin Li hurried to put on his leader's Power Armor and quickly took the elevator to the metal docking port at the bottom of The Guardian.

The airlock door opened.

An Adeptus Arbites shuttle, its surface covered in high-temperature burn marks, landed steadily.

The cabin door lowered, and a weary-looking high-ranking Adeptus Arbites officer walked quickly down the ramp.

He saw Lin Li, immediately stood at attention, and gave a standard Imperial Aquila salute.

Then, the officer solemnly took out a parchment scroll sealed with red wax from his inner bulletproof pocket and handed it to Lin Li with both hands.

After delivering the letter, the officer said nothing, turned around, and boarded the craft to return immediately.

Lin Li stood at the docking port, crushed the hard wax seal with his bare hands on the spot, and unfolded the parchment scroll to quickly read the news on it.

He only looked at three lines.

Lin Li's pupils shrank violently, and his expression changed instantly!

"Bad news!"

Lin Li firmly rolled up the scroll in his hand and turned to rush back to the elevator with long strides.

A few minutes later, the door to the command room was pushed open.

Lin Li walked quickly to the holographic sand table and slammed the parchment scroll directly onto the table.

He looked around at Ushtan and the two Men of Iron, his voice slightly hurried:

"A top-secret war report just sent by the Adeptus Arbites!"

"The defense lines of the few star systems around us have been rapidly breached by the Zerg's main force over the past ten days, and have been completely devoured and digested into dead stars! This huge area of the defense line is completely finished!"

Ushtan, who was lowering his head to analyze the war situation, instantly furrowed his thick brows upon hearing this, his face full of shock.

"In other words..."

Ushtan stared fixedly at the star map,

"In this vast sector, our Yuanwang Star System has become a complete island?!"

"Since the prey around us has been eaten, this massive Zerg main force might continue to push deeper at any time, or even split up to invade and surround our star system from several other directions simultaneously!"

Ushtan raised his head:

"Lord! Is this news reliable? This is a strategic-level change! What about the Imperial Navy stationed in the surrounding star sectors? What about those high-and-mighty Astartes chapters? Don't they have any reaction at all?!"

"The news was sent with the highest security clearance by the Adeptus Arbites, it is absolutely reliable."

In fact, Lin Li and the others had calculated that it would take at least more than a month for the bugs to completely digest the surrounding human worlds. The reason is simple: the Adeptus Arbites' information stated that those human worlds all had large numbers of Astra Militarum stationed, and the Imperial Navy was also present in significant numbers.

Lin Li pressed his hands on the console, his tone heavy,

"Even if the Imperial Navy fleet and those Space Marine units react now and assemble their forces. By the time they dilly-dally over here, I'm afraid it will be too late!"

"It's fine if the other bugs continue to push into the inner star sector. But if those bugs get bored and turn around to surround us here, the pressure of defense will increase exponentially!"

Lin Li was very clear about his current trump cards.

Right now, the Spark Alliance is exhausting all its forces just to barely maintain a war of attrition with this tentacle of the Hive Mind in space.

If another full-strength Hive Mind fleet, or even multiple fleets, come to surround us.

To be honest, even with The Fourth Calamity's infinite respawns, Lin Li didn't have much confidence in being able to hold this star system under absolute firepower coverage. It might end up with him having to run away, or everyone hunkering down underground.

The command room fell into a deathly silence.

Lin Li closed his eyes, his brain running at high speed.

After thinking for a full minute, he suddenly opened his eyes, and a determined murderous aura shone in his black eyes.

"No! We can't keep dragging it out with them like this!"

Lin Li turned his head, his gaze sharp as a knife,

"Old Seven! Immediately release the limiters on the fortress's main engines! Let The Guardian push at full power! Press directly onto them! Exert absolute firepower pressure on the front of the Zerg's main fleet!"

"Old Wu! Call all the staff officers! Immediately formulate multiple boarding plans directly targeting the Zerg mothership for me!"

Lin Li slammed his fist onto the mothership projection on the holographic sand table:

"We can't afford to wait anymore! We must take a risky move! Before the Zerg's surrounding army arrives, end this battle in the shortest possible time!"